Remittances and the Brain Drain: Do More Skilled Migrants Remit More?

In most destination countries, immigration policies are tiltedmore and more in favor of skilled individuals. Whether thisshift hurts economic prospects in sending countries, as arguedby the traditional brain drain literature, is somewhat controversial.The most recent literature focuses on the link between skilledoutmigration and educational achievements in the home country.This article emphasizes a different channel. It considers theargument that skilled migrants raise economic welfare at homeby sending a relatively larger flow of remittances. While skilledmigrants typically earn more, and so might be expected to remitmore, they are also likely to spend more time abroad and toreunite with their close family in the host country. These secondtwo factors should be associated with a smaller propensity toremit. Thus, the sign of the impact of the brain drain on totalremittances is an empirical question. A simple model has beendeveloped showing that skilled migrants may indeed have a lowerpropensity to remit from a given flow of earnings. An empiricalequation of remittances is estimated as a measure of the braindrain in developing countries using the Docquier and Marfouk (2004)data set. Evidence is found that the brain drain is associatedwith a smaller propensity to remit.     

The incentive to give incentives: On the relative seniority of debt claims and managerial compensation

We show that the relative seniority of debt and managerial compensation has important implications for the design of remuneration contracts. Whereas the traditional literature assumes that debt is senior to remuneration, there are in reality many cases in which remuneration contracts are de facto senior to debt claims in financially distressed firms and in workouts. We theoretically show that risky debt changes the incentive to provide the manager with performance-related incentives (a “contract substitution” effect). In other words, the relative degree of seniority of managers’ claims and creditors’ claims in case a bankruptcy procedure starts is crucial to determine the optimal incentive contract ex-ante. If managerial compensation is more senior than debt, higher leverage leads to lower power incentive schemes (lower bonuses and option grants) and a higher base salary. In contrast, when compensation is junior, we expect more emphasis on pay-for-performance incentives in highly-levered firms.     

Bayesian Conjoint Choice Designs for Measuring Willingness to Pay

In this paper, we propose a new criterion for selecting efficient conjoint choice designs when the interest is in quantifying willingness to pay (WTP). The new criterion, which we call the WTP-optimality criterion, is based on the c-optimality criterion which is often used in the optimal experimental design literature. We use a simulation study to evaluate the designs generated using the WTP-optimality criterion and discuss the design of a real-life conjoint experiment from the literature. The results show that the new criterion leads to designs that yield more precise estimates of the WTP than Bayesian D-optimal conjoint choice designs, which are increasingly being seen as the state-of-the-art designs for conjoint choice studies, and to a substantial reduction in the occurrence of unrealistically high WTP estimates.     

Bargaining Coalitions in the WTO Agricultural Negotiations

This paper aims to understand the structural features of bargaining coalitions in the Doha Round of the WTO. We provide an empirical assessment of the preferences of each negotiating actor considering general economics indicators, development levels, structure of agricultural sectors and trade policies. Bargaining coalitions are analysed by grouping countries using a cluster analysis procedure. The clusters are compared with existing coalitions in order to assess their degree of internal homogeneity as well as their common interests. Such a comparison allows the identification of possible ‘defectors’, i.e. countries that, according to their economic conditions and policies, seem to be relatively less committed to the positions of the coalition they join. In addition, the ex‐post analysis of the counterfactual coalitions sheds light on the ‘distance’ between different coalitions as well as between individual countries and the best alternative group available. Empirical results confirm our research hypothesis: clusters of structurally homogeneous countries well represent existing bargaining coalitions. In particular, the G‐20 shows a high degree of internal coherence, which, in our framework, may provide a clue to the ‘sustainability’ of this coalition and to its relevance in the Doha Round negotiations.     

Supplier selection using a multi-criteria decision aid method

An ever-increasing trend in today's industrial firms is to exploit outsourcing for those products and activities deemed to be outside the company's core business. Given the financial importance and the multi-objective nature of supplier selection decision, in this paper an effort is made to highlight those aspects that are crucial to process qualitative and quantitative performance measures. In this paper, the contribution of a multi-criteria decision aid method ( ) to such problems is investigated, together with how to allow for a simultaneous change of the weights (importance of performance criteria), generating results that can be easily analysed statistically, performing an innovative sensitivity analysis. By way of example, the model is applied to a mid-sized Italian firm operating in the field of public road and rail transportation. The whole suppliers selection model presented ( techniques plus high-dimensional sensitivity analysis) seems to be a useful additional tool inside the final choice phase of a supplier selection process. Finally, potential issues for future research are presented.     

Cost management and value creation: the missing link

Understanding of the relationship between the costs of the firm and the value the firm provides to its customers is the key to the ability of the firm to reach its profit potential. From this perspective the firm needs to have a thorough understanding of its activities, their costs and their relation to market prices. Advanced cost management studies and practices suggest a variety of different tools that help us understand the relationship between value and cost. However, most of these studies provide us with qualitative tools only. An exception is studies related to product cost planning, as in the case of target costing or value analysis/value engineering. This paper, while being a part of emerging literature on strategic cost management, extends the existing knowledge of the relationship between costs and value by introducing the value creation model (VCM). In particular, the VCM model defines the firms' cost structure in terms of value added, non-value added but required activities, as well as of waste. A firm's cost structure is aligned with value attributes embedded in products and services. The VCM model seeks to understand the trade-off between what the customer is willing to pay for a product/service bundle (value) and the cost the firm bears to provide what the customer desires. Based on these trade-offs, VCM defines value multipliers, which help the firm determine which activities the firm should focus on in order to develop a competitive advantage.     

The ‘China’ question in mobile Internet standard-making: Insights from expert interviews

This article explores the actions of Chinese stakeholders as norm entrepreneurs in mobile Internet standard-making within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Through semi-structured interviews with key experts from the Internet stakeholder communities, this article contextualises a rapidly transforming and increasingly politicised issue in the broader context of China's engagement with the global multistakeholder Internet governance architecture, as well as the debate on China's rise in the Liberal International Order. Furthermore, it incorporates the views and experiences of technologists working first-hand in standard-making, as they are often disregarded in political-scientific literature. Through the analytical lens of cognitivist regime theory, this article argues that the stronger China and Chinese stakeholders grow economically and politically, the more they become involved in the existing Internet governance regime complex, increasing their influence in the existing institutional arrangements without necessarily acting for changing their norms, rules, and principles. Through these theoretical and methodological approaches, new light is shed on the role of private and public Chinese stakeholders and on the relation between them.     

Greenwashing and environmental communication: Effects on stakeholders' perceptions

Since the first Earth Day in the 1970s, corporate environmental performance has increased dramatically, and cases of greenwashing have increased sharply. The term greenwash refers to a variety of different misleading communications that aim to form overly positive beliefs among stakeholders about a company's environmental practices. The growing number of corporate social responsibility claims, whether founded or not, creates difficulties for stakeholders in distinguishing between truly positive business performance and companies that only appear to embrace a model of sustainable development. In this context, through the lens of legitimacy and signalling theory, we intend to understand and assess the different influences that various types of misleading communications about environmental issues have on stakeholders' perceptions of corporate environmental responsibility and greenwashing. Stakeholder responses to an environmental scandal will also be assessed. The hypotheses tested through a four‐for‐two design experiment reveal that different levels of greenwashing have a significantly different influence on stakeholders' perceptions of corporate environmental responsibility and stakeholders' reactions to environmental scandals.     

Human resource management–well‐being–performance research revisited: Past,present, and future

The authors provide an up‐to‐date theoretically based qualitative review of research dealing with the relationship between HRM, employee well‐being, and individual/organisational performance (HRM‐WB‐IOP research). The review is based on a systematic critical analysis of all HRM‐WB‐IOP studies (N = 46) published in 13 core HRM and management journals in the 2000 to 2018 period. The authors first identify different theoretical models of the HRM‐WB‐IOP relationship, which they then use to map research in the area. The results show that mutual gains conceptualisations play a dominant role in extant HRM‐WB‐IOP research, at the expense of alternative conflicting outcomes and mutual losses models, which are also shown to receive very limited empirical support across the 46 studies. As part of this mapping exercise, the authors identify important knowledge gaps in the area and conclude by setting out a number of key recommendations for future research to address these gaps.     

A financially justifiable and practically implementable approach to coherent stress testing

We present an approach to stress testing that is both practically implementable and solidly rooted in well-established financial theory. We present our results in a Bayesian-net context, but the approach can be extended to different settings. We show (i) how the consistency and continuity conditions are satisfied; (ii) how the result of a scenario can be consistently cascaded from a small number of macrofinancial variables to the constituents of a granular portfolio; and (iii) how an approximate but robust estimate of the likelihood of a given scenario can be estimated. This is particularly important for regulatory and capital-adequacy applications.