Investing in development: Lessons of World Bank experience∗

This article comes from a book entitled Investing in Development: Lessons of World Bank Experience. The book was written by Warren C Baum and Stokes M Tolbert with the participation of a number of other World Bank staff members and several consultants. It is intended primarily as a guide for officials and others in developing countries concerned with managing the use of investment resources. It seeks to synthesize and make accessible in one place some of the principal lessons learned by the Bank in financing development in its member countries. The book is not focused on the Bank's own procedures. Instead, it has the much broader purpose of providing guidance to developing countries in the areas of national investment planning and budgeting, sector analysis and management, and the selection, preparation, and implementation of their whole portfolio of investment projects, regardless of the source of financing. Over the years, the Bank has published a wide selection of materials on various aspects of its work. But this is the first time it has sought to portray in one volume the full scope of the investment process. We present here the book's final chapter, which briefly summarizes the highlights of the Bank's experience.     

Constructing an ‘industry’: the case of industrial gases, 1886–2006

Historically minded social scientists who analyse business and industrial development over time – including business historians – often deploy the term ‘industry’ as if its meaning were both self-evident and unchanging through time. This article uses the case of the international industrial gases industry over the course of 12 decades to demonstrate some ways in which a more critical and dynamic view of ‘industry’ – in combination with recognition of the imperfect overlap between firms on the one hand and industries on the other – enables better understanding and analysis of both.     

The Effect of Rebate and Loan Incentives on Residential Heat Pump Adoption: Evidence from North Carolina

Environmental and Resource Economics - Electrification can promote deep decarbonization to tackle climate change with a cleaner power grid. Electric heat pumps provide a feasible and...     

Effect of emotional victim images in prosocial advertising: The moderating role of helping mode

Charities and marketers routinely incorporate images of recipients, for example victims of a flood or famine, in their prosocial advertising; however, previous literature suggests mixed results regarding the effectiveness of relying on sad versus happy images of victims. Recently, due to reactance to excessively traumatic marketing campaigns, happy victim images have been found to be more effective in eliciting prosocial behaviors. To extend this line of research, an experiment found that consumers are more willing to help when viewing advertisements featuring happy children over sad children. Moreover, helping mode moderates the relationship between victim image and helping intentions. The effect of a happy victim image is attenuated when consumers are asked to buy cause-related products rather than donate to charities. According to emotion regulation consumption theory, consumers mitigate the feeling of negative emotions by increasing their intention to buy cause-related products. Practically, the findings provide guidance on integrating victim images in prosocial advertising.     

Exploring Impacts of Community-Based Legal Aid on Intrahousehold Gender Relations in Tanzania

Community-based legal aid (CBLA) has been promoted as a promising intervention to reach rural marginalized populations who face barriers to accessing formal legal services and is increasingly implemented with the specific goal of protecting women's rights. This study evaluates the impact of a twelve-month CBLA program in northwestern Tanzania on intrahousehold gender relations using a clustered-randomized control trial across 139 villages. Among 1,219 women, the study finds those in treatment villages are more likely to refer others to paralegals for a variety of domestic issues; however, there are no measureable impacts on aggregate knowledge of marital law, intrahousehold decision making, or reported experience of twelve-month intimate partner violence. These overall results are robust to a number of other sensitivity analyses, including accounting for spillovers, attrition bounds, and modeling choices. While these results indicate limited potential for intrahousehold and gender-progressive change, program duration and intensity likely affected measurable positive impacts.     

NETWORK ANALYSIS OF TOURISM EVENTS: AN APPROACH TO IMPROVE MARKETING PRACTICES FOR SUSTAINABLE TOURISM

Farmers' markets have recently emerged as a new tourism event around the globe. Yet, little information is known about them. This article explores the network of stakeholders associated with farmers' markets through a qualitative analysis over a period of time of an Australian farmers' market. Multiple methods of data collection were used to build a case study of the farmers' market. The findings highlight the acute need for this farmers' market, and potentially many others that are similar, to strategically establish an appropriate and effective network of stakeholders for both organizational longevity and tourism sustainability.     

An entropy approach to size and variance heterogeneity in U.S. commercial banks

In this paper, we investigate the effect of bank size differences on cost efficiency heterogeneity using a heteroskedastic stochastic frontier model. This model is implemented by using an information theoretic maximum entropy approach. We explicitly model both bank size and variance heterogeneity simultaneously. We find that non-performing loans, federal insurance premium, legal expenses and director fees drive bank inefficiency as the bank becomes larger. Moral hazard, bank management and a ??too big to fail?? doctrine are likely explanations for the results from this study.     

The price of success: balancing the effects of entrepreneurial commitment,work-family conflict and emotional exhaustion on job satisfaction

This research explores job satisfaction among entrepreneurs to investigate two paths from entrepreneurial commitment to job satisfaction: the direct path and the family path that includes work-family conflict and emotional exhaustion. An empirical study of 232 small and micro firm business owners are used to test the hypotheses seeking to understand which path to job satisfaction has the greatest influence. The results indicate that although being committed to one’s own business increases job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion takes a greater toll. We conclude that negative aspects of entrepreneurship exert an important influence on entrepreneurs’ satisfaction with their job. These findings offer important theoretical and practical implications.

     

Is There Room at the Bottom for CSR? Corporate Social Responsibility and Nanotechnology in the UK

Nanotechnologies are enabling technologies which rely on the manipulation of matter on the scale of billionths of a metre. It has been argued that scientific uncertainties surrounding nanotechnologies and the inability of regulatory agencies to keep up with industry developments mean that voluntary regulation will play a part in the development of nanotechnologies. The development of technological applications based on nanoscale science is now increasingly seen as a potential test case for new models of regulation based on future-oriented responsibility, lifecycle risk management, and upstream public engagement. This article outlines findings from a project undertaken in 2008–2009 for the UK Government’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) by BRASS at Cardiff University, involving an in-depth survey both of current corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in the UK nanotechnologies industry, and of attitudes to particular stakeholder issues within the industry. The article analyses the results to give an account of the nature of corporate social performance (CSP) within the industry, together with the particular model of CSR operating therein (‘do no harm’ versus ‘positive social force’). It is argued that the nature of emerging technologies requires businesses to adopt particular visions of CSR in order to address stakeholder issues, and that the nanotechnologies industry presents specific obstacles and opportunities in this regard.