The Interaction of Market Failure and Structural Adjustment in Producer Credit and Land Markets: The Case of Nicaragua

While nonprofit organizations serve the community in significant ways, their heavy reliance on philanthropic and government funding is increasingly not sustainable, especially in the wake of economic downturns. The application of social entrepreneurial principles — including social enterprise activities — can improve the sustainability of the business model of nonprofits, while bolstering management capacity and enhancing mission. This paper argues that the current funding model of the nonprofit sector should be disrupted in order to achieve a greater level of financial sustainability and mission-driven success.     

Advertising and US alcoholic beverage demand: system-wide estimates

The effects of advertising on consumption of alcoholic beverages in the US are analysed. The goal is to obtain evidence on the importance of advertising at the level of beverage demand(beer, wine, spirits) and for total consumption of alcohol (per capita gallons of ethanol). A three-equation conditional demand system is estimated that includes own- and cros-beverage advertising as explanatory variables. Four models of the differential demand system are estimated, including the Rotterdam, AID, CBS, and NBR models, using annual US data for the period 1964-90 on beverage consumption, prices, expednitures, and real advertising. Estimates are obtained of the complete matrix of own- and cross-elascities for each beverage’ price and advertising. At the beverage level, the results indicate a positive butr very small effect of advertising on beverage consumption, with most of the impact due to wine advertising and non due to beer advertising. There is no efect of advertising in the composite demand function for alcohol. Hence, the results from system-wide modelling suggest that alcohol advertising serves to reallocate brand sales, with no effect on total ethanol consumption and very small effects on beverage consumption.     

Innovation management tools: implementing technology watch as a routine for adaptation

Innovation management (IM) is a multidisciplinary field which has been growing for the past few decades. However, the management of innovation is often considered equivalent to technology management or the management of research and development. By focusing on a set of small- and medium-sized enterprises operating in a medium-high-tech industry, the paper intends to determine the characteristics of IM tools. In particular, we address one of these tools, technology watch (TW), and define a set of generic stages to introduce the most relevant roles for its implementation. TW consists of the systematic observation, analysis and use of technological information, allowing companies to be aware of their external environment and learn from it. Through the implementation of TW processes, companies are able to assess and adapt their current technological base and the fit of their internal competences to the signals coming from the external environment.     

Early Warning for Currency Crises: What Is the Role of Financial Openness?

The paper explores whether financial openness—capital account openness and gross capital inflows—makes countries vulnerable to currency crises. A quarterly dataset on 46 advanced and emerging market economies (AEs and EMEs) during 1975Q1–2011Q4 is used, with the period after Q2 2007 used for out‐of‐sample testing. The key findings are: (1) capital account openness is associated with lower probability of currency crises, but less so for EMEs; (2) surges in gross capital flows are associated with increased risk of currency crises; and (3) the model performs well out‐of‐sample, confirming that early warning models are helpful in judging relative vulnerability.     

Raw materials price and technological uncertainty in a small open economy

This paper examines the implications of raw materials price uncertainty for capital allocation and compares the impact of production uncertainty and raw materials price uncertainty. It shows that the economy may avoid risk by allocating more capital in a sector using an input (for example, raw materials) which has a random price. This contrasts with multiplicative production uncertainty case, in which the economy avoids risk by allocating less capital to the risky (uncertainty) sector. Input efficiency uncertainty and materials input price uncertainty have the same implications for a raw-materials-importing economy, but quite opposite implications for a raw-materials-exporting economy.     

Results of a Delphi survey in drawing up the input-output tables for Catalonia

This work presents the results of an ambitious and innovative use of the Delphi technique in supplying a quantitative economic model, specifically in the preparation of the Input-Output Tables for Catalonia (TIOC 2001). Using this technique for obtaining subjective information from experts comes forward as a valid and reliable option for improving the quality of the data with which the Input-Output tables are constructed, also providing further economic and social advantages. The application presented thus opens up an interesting field of development for this technique and also gives several contributions for appraising the execution of a Delphi exercise of this type.     

Pension Funds and the U.K. Economy

Abstract

The paper considers the impact of U.K. defined benefit (DB) pension plan unding and investment on the U.K. economy. It suggests that many conventional theories are based on incomplete or inconsistent economics. In particular, the author suggests that:

? An economy cannot really gain competitive advantage from high returns on the domestic assets in which pension funds invest.

? DB liabilities are essentially similar for most schemes and can be closely matched with bonds.

? Funding pension liabilities has no primary impact on individuals’ consumption and saving or on firms’ capital investment.

? Pension funds are not natural investors in the equity of new ventures.

The conclusion of the paper is that the most significant impact of pension funds on the U.K. economy relates to the costs imposed by extreme mismatching between their financial assets and liabilities. The author argues that such risks can, in essence, “crowd out” entrepreneurial risk. He asserts that the U.K. economy would gain from greater focus on the matching of these assets and liabilities, and that the best way to stimulate enterprise is by eliminating the frictional costs in the economy arising from current practices.     

Spectrum sharing in the gray space

There has been considerable effort to let more wireless devices operate in white space spectrum, that is within frequency bands and geographic areas where no wireless devices are active. Making white space available is certainly useful, but there are other sharing opportunities as well, some of which have been obscured by dangerous misconceptions about the concept of unused spectrum. This paper discusses allowing more devices to operate safely in gray space spectrum, that is spectrum that is actively being used in that transmissions are underway—something many economic models assume is impossible. The paper focuses on primary–secondary sharing, so devices gaining access to spectrum operate on a secondary basis in a way that never causes harmful interference to primary systems. Examples of primary–secondary gray space sharing mechanisms are described in which devices are allowed to share spectrum with broadcasting, radar, and cellular systems. Quantitative analysis shows that it is technically possible to support significant communications among secondary devices in spectrum that is already heavily used by cellular or radar. However, gray space sharing generally causes primary and secondary systems to be more technically interdependent than white space sharing, so different policy and governance structures are needed. Secondary market rules can support gray space sharing in cases where there is a single primary spectrum user, such as a cellular carrier. In cases where technology is static, the regulator may be able to control access for secondary devices. However, in cases with multiple primary users and multiple secondary users of spectrum, as might be seen in bands with radar for example, a new kind of governance body will be needed to facilitate spectrum sharing.