Cross-subsidization Due to Inframarginal Support in Agriculture: A General Theory and Empirical Evidence

A general theory of cross-subsidization due to inframarginal support is developed. Two sources of output distortion are identified: exit deterrence and extramarginal output. Some firms would not be in business without the subsidy. Cost savings due to declining average costs are always greater than the losses incurred where price equals marginal cost. Moreover, it is theoretically possible for inframarginal subsidies to expand output more than equivalent fully coupled subsidies. Empirical analysis of U.S. dairy subsidies isolates these components of cross-subsidization and finds distortions from inframarginal support to be substantial, with implications for trade negotiations, dispute settlement, and policy formulation.     

Analysis of the Service Dominant Logic network,authors, and articles

The present study analyses research conducted in Service Dominant Logic (S-D logic), providing an overview of its intellectual structure. For that purpose, a structured approach was adopted through the implementation of bibliometric methods, using co-citation analysis combined with performance analysis and an integrative science mapping approach, which considered a timeline, a graph, and a distance-based perspective. This allowed the identification of the leading authors and of six clusters of articles based on bibliographic coupling, along with the most prominent research themes clustered in five subdomains of research based on co-occurrence of terms. The networks extracted show the associations between the main articles and concepts treated by the S-D logic community, unveiling the salient challenges and prospective expansion facing its future theoretical and practical context.     

From global start-ups to the borderless firm: Why and how to build a worldwide value system

Although the original concept of international new ventures included the geographic configuration of value activities, the subsequent development of the literature has gradually abandoned the concern about the geographic configuration of both input sourcing and output marketing to concentrate almost exclusively on the latter. Therefore, this paper argues that there is a need to re-focus the research so as to figure out how and why some companies are borderless. Borderless firms are defined as the result of the combination, early on, of geographically dispersed resources and capabilities, defying the home-base logic. A borderless firm presents the following characteristics (or a combination of them) from inception (or shortly thereafter): (i) value-added activities dispersed across different countries and regions; (ii) entrepreneurs not bounded by a home base; (iii) multinational founders and/or management teams; and (iv) a multinational workforce. To enquiry into this issue, the study uses five case studies of borderless firms. The results advance the understanding of the motives and processes behind the development, early on, of a borderless configuration of value activities.     

Throwing It All Away: Exploring Affluent Consumers’ Attitudes Toward Wasting Edible Food

The skewed allocation of food across the world population is a major concern, as the result is that some of us live in abundant supply while others spend their life in constant scarcity. While researchers have studied a variety of issues related to the amounts of food being wasted, or the waste of edible food across consumers with different demographic characteristics, less is known about the drivers of attitudes toward food waste. Based on survey data from a sample of affluent Norwegian consumers, we test how subjective food knowledge, environmental concern, age, and income are related to consumer attitudes toward wasting edible food. We find that all variables except income drive consumer attitudes. Implications for theory and public policy are offered.     

Are patent fees effective at weeding out low‐quality patents?

The paper investigates whether patent fees are an effective mechanism to deter the filing of low‐quality patent applications. The study analyzes the effect on patent quality of the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1982, which resulted in a substantial increase in patenting fees at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Results from a series of difference‐in‐differences regressions suggest that the increase in fees led to a weeding out of low‐quality patents. About 10% of patents in the lowest quality decile were filtered out, with the effect concentrated in the patents of firms whose overall patent portfolio was medium to large (more than 20 patents). The study has strong policy implications in the current context of concerns about declines in patent quality.     

Augmenting the eye of the beholder: exploring the strategic potential of augmented reality to enhance online service experiences

Driven by the proliferation of augmented reality (AR) technologies, many firms are pursuing a strategy of service augmentation to enhance customers’ online service experiences. Drawing on situated cognition theory, the authors show that AR-based service augmentation enhances customer value perceptions by simultaneously providing simulated physical control and environmental embedding. The resulting authentic situated experience, manifested in a feeling of spatial presence, functions as a mediator and also predicts customer decision comfort. Furthermore, the effect of spatial presence on utilitarian value perceptions is greater for customers who are disposed toward verbal rather than visual information processing, and the positive effect on decision comfort is attenuated by customers’ privacy concerns.     

Ecotourism as a conservation tool and its adoption by private protected areas in Brazil

Ecotourism in private reserves combines the establishment of protected areas with an incentive mechanism to conserve biodiversity. Brazil's private reserve system is well-established but little is known about its links to tourism. This study puts the global private protected area into context and quantifies the extent to which ecotourism has been adopted as a sustainable land-use practice on private reserves in Brazil. Our findings demonstrate that small reserves do contribute to conservation and are used for ecotourism. The belief that large reserves are necessary for ecotourism and conservation is challenged. Only 4% (n = 45) of the 1182 reserves are engaged in ecotourism, mainly those within the Atlantic Forest biome and these are generally small in size (<50 ha). Reserves provide modest to basic accommodation as well as education and economic opportunities that include adjacent communities. Hiking and bird watching are the most popular activities but many reserves are threatened by poaching and invasive species. The low adoption of ecotourism appears due to a combination of factors, including lack of landowner interest, constraints imposed by regulations, logistics and anthropogenic threats. Nonetheless, there is potential to expand ecotourism within private reserves as 143 further private reserves are located near those already engaged in ecotourism.     

Unobserved firm heterogeneity and the size-exports nexus: Evidence from German panel data

This paper starts from the stylized fact that firm size and exporting tends to be positively related. Using large sets of establishment panel data for three different industries from official statistics, evidence is presented that the familiar picture of an export/sales ratio that increases (at a decreasing rate) with firm size vanishes if unobserved firm heterogeneity is controlled for in a fixed-effects fractional logit regression model. This finding is well in line with the fact that many small firms are “hidden export champions.” JEL no. F10, D21, L60