EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION AND THE NON‐LINEAR RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WAGE‐PRODUCTIVITY GAP AND UNEMPLOYMENT

This paper studies the relationship between the wage‐productivity gap and the unemployment rate in OECD countries between 1985 and 2007. In particular, we investigate whether differences in the employment protection across countries affect the link between these two variables. We show that the elasticity of unemployment with respect to the wage‐productivity gap is non‐linear and that it switches from a positive to a negative value with stricter employment legislation. From a theoretical point of view, we argue that this result is related to a set of labor market reforms introduced in many OECD countries, which affected the relative strictness of institutions.     

Bankable emission permits under uncertainty and optimal risk-management rules

This article proposes a theory of banking of emission permits under conditions of regulatory uncertainty. Based on a two-period partial equilibrium framework, we examine the effects of increasing risk–in the sense of a mean preserving spread–regarding a future permit allocation at the firm level. We also examine the role of an agency to pool risks by re-allocating permits for a group of firms. Our results are twofold. First, an increase in risk may lead to changes in a firm’s banking strategy, depending on the third partial derivative of its production function with respect to pollution. Second, we define an optimal risk-sharing rule between agents to respond to political decision changes. Our results overall suggest that the bankability of permits may be used as a risk-management tool.     

Product Line Choice in Retail Duopoly

This paper develops a successive duopoly model to identify conditions under which differentiated retailers that compete in quantities, when deciding on the range of brands to offer, will carry overlapping product lines. They will do so when retail margins on each brand are not too asymmetric. Otherwise, the less profitable brand is foreclosed from the market. It is shown that welfare increases if the upstream industry is perfectly competitive, even though fewer brands may be sold. With price competition though, exclusive dealing arises when retailers are not too differentiated and in‐store competition is sufficiently intense.     

Social mix policies in Paris: discourses, policies and social effects

Since the 1980s, the issue of social mix has become a public policy category in France. Enshrined in legislation, yet remaining controversial, it represents a major premise on which housing policies have been reconfigured. The concept of social mix is essentially based on who lives where, but it is also evoked in the context of urban renewal schemes for social housing estates, as well as in relation to new-build developments. A study of the bases of social mix policies conducted in Paris since 2001 in the context of the embourgeoisement of the capital shows the fundamental role of social housing stock. The City Council has become involved in policy decisions about both the location and the allocation of social housing. Particular attention has been paid to the middle classes in the name of the principle of ‘balancing the population’. In order to measure the effects of the policy, this article relies on an analysis of two City of Paris schemes that have the stated intent of creating social mix. One of these schemes consists of redeveloping a working-class neighbourhood, Goutte d'Or, while the other involves the new acquisition of social housing in various more affluent neighbourhoods in the capital. This comparative study of the population shows that, whether in a neighbourhood poised for gentrification or in a more affluent neighbourhood, this policy has major effects on forms of local social cohesion, setting in motion individual trajectories and reshaping social and/or ethnic identities.     

Explaining the Strategic Groups–Firm Performance Relationship: A Multilevel Approach Applied to Small and Medium‐Sized Hotel Companies in Spain*

One of the main research questions in the field of strategic management is why firms obtain different performance levels. This paper answers this question from the strategic groups approach. This paper analyzes the linkage between strategic groups and firm performance offering a multilevel analysis about the relative importance of intergroup and intragroup performance differences based on the use of hierarchical linear models. The results show that intragroup differences explain firm performance better than intergroup differences.     

About the interactive influence of culture and regulatory barriers on entrepreneurial activity

In this paper cultural values and regulatory barriers to start-up are presented as characteristics of the business environment which influence the international differences in the level of entrepreneurial activity. A first objective of this paper is to measure the importance of a country’s cultural values in determining the national level of entrepreneurial activity, calculated by the Total Entrepreneurial Activity rate from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Culture is studied using Schwartz’s value structure (Schwartz 1994). This allows for the differentiating of seven cultural orientations that are then arranged around three bipolar dimensions: Autonomy- Embeddedness, Egalitarianism-Hierarchy and Harmony-Mastery. The paper also studies the effect of regulatory barriers for business start-ups on the Total Entrepreneurial Activity in different countries. Regulatory barriers are determined using data from the “Doing Business” project of the World Bank. The role of cultural values and regulatory barriers in entrepreneurial activity is tested using data from 56 countries and Structural Equation Modeling. The paper shows that cultural values and regulatory barriers are not related to entrepreneurship in the same way in countries with differing levels of development. On the contrary, the strength and nature of the influence of both factors on entrepreneurial activity depends on a country’s per capita GDP. Furthermore, the impact of regulatory barriers on entrepreneurship is moderated by cultural values. Thus, the discouraging effect of the regulatory barriers on entrepreneurial activity is more important in those countries with a societal culture characterized by autonomy, egalitarianism and harmony values.     

“Do incentives matter to promote high technology-driven entrepreneurial activity?”

A productive human capital is a necessary but not sufficient condition for regional economic growth. An additional condition is the adequate allocation of talented people in innovative entrepreneurial activities, which according to previous literature have a higher social value than traditional ones. Using a large and representative sample of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) located in the Basque Autonomous Community (Spain), we empirically analyze, separately in manufacture and services, whether individual incentives and market conditions are aligned in such a way that the talent is properly allocated in innovative entrepreneurial activities. Through a novel use of existing empirical methods we find that (i) entrepreneurs operating in high-tech sectors have, on average, more entrepreneurial talent and private returns than their counterparts; and that (ii) entrepreneurial talent and private returns are positively and significantly correlated. These novel insights suggest that private and social incentives are adequately aligned.     

Tourism managers' view of the economic impact of cruise traffic: the case of southern Spain

This article focuses on analysing the perception that the tourism sector itself has of its impact in cities at which cruises call. We use a sample of 371 managers of tourism establishments in the hinterlands of two Spanish cruise ports. The conclusions confirm the good public image that cruise traffic has traditionally enjoyed. However, the vision that the managers have is not uniform but depends on the characteristics of the tourist establishment and its own experience. Managers also advocate the direct intervention of the public administrations, even with economic aid, to favour the implementation of cruise tourism in their cities.     

Cultural tourism as tourist segment for reducing seasonality in a coastal area: the case study of Andalusia

The present paper analyses the seasonal concentration on the Andalusian coastline, a Spanish Mediterranean coastal destination characterised by its high seasonality in the summer months. The analyses were conducted by separating tourists according to their main travel motivation, and distinguishing sun and sand tourists from cultural and other segments tourists, based on their place of origin and on the coast they visited. The quantitative tools applied included the additive decomposition of the Gini index and the calculation of the relative marginal effects. The proposed methodology serves as a useful tool for tourism managers and administrators interested in reducing seasonality, since it facilitates the identification of tourists segments that can effectively contribute to the reduction of seasonal concentration. Among the main results for the studied area, it was found that given the heterogeneity of the groups of tourists (both domestic and foreign), it was much more effective to separate tourist segments by their main travel motivation. The cultural segment was the most favourable for deseasonalisation, especially within domestic tourists, since with foreigners the same deseasonalising effect was not present in all the coasts analysed.     

Common stories of reintroduction: A discourse analysis of documents supporting animal reintroductions to Scotland

Political decisions on environmental issues are increasingly required to be ‘knowledge based’, which has led to a wealth of (scientific) expert documents that aim to inform decision-making. However, the roles of rhetoric and argumentation in those documents have received relatively little scientific attention. We studied 111 expert documents in support of reintroductions to Scotland and identified the elements that constituted the discourses of white-tailed eagle, beaver and lynx. Similar building blocks (so-called storylines) were found in all three debates. The pro-reintroduction discourse as a whole bore resemblance with other contemporary environmental management discourses: In what could be termed ‘win-win logic’, positive storylines were combined to point at the necessity of a management intervention, in our case a reintroduction. Yet, additional mechanisms were also at work which suggests that downplaying negatives can be as important as dwelling on positives. Crucially, we found that the Scottish pro-reintroduction discourse might have become increasingly ‘reflexive’ in terms of its rhetoric and argumentation. The latter development may have major implications for political decision-making. A more critical use of rhetoric and argumentation in expert documentation is needed to achieve environmental political decision-making that is open to any possible outcome of deliberation (including non-reintroduction).