Capital indivisibility and tax competition: Are there too many business areas when some of them are empty?

In this paper, we propose a model where local jurisdictions must engage a development cost before competing for hosting a firm with uncertain preferences among possible sites. We first show that even an optimizing central planner managing all the jurisdictions develops more sites than there are plants to host. Doing so, he diversifies his supply and has a higher probability of hosting the firm. Then, we show that, if every jurisdiction is managed by a local government, there are more developed sites than with the central planner, which implies excess supply.     

Forging Strategic Alliances in Canada's Agrifood Sector: Framework for Analysis and Action

In recent years, participants in Canadas agrifood sector have become more concerned about their competitiveness and have identified strategic alliances as being vital to becoming more competitive. This paper is a review of economics, strategic management and other social science literature examining several issues such as:

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  the types of objectives organizations should pursue using strategic alliances
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  the appropriate configuration for a strategic alliance, given its objectives
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  advantages and disadvantages of strategic alliances versus other types of business relationships
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  factors that enhance or inhibit organizations' abilities to forge alliances.

The latter part of the paper concentrates on what managers interested in pursuing strategic alliances can do to enhance their chances of success.     

Role of education and extension in the adoption of technology: a study of upland rice and soybean farmers in Central-West Brazil

This paper explores reduced form determinants of the adoption of certain technologies by upland rice and soybean farmers in the Center-West region of Brazil. We merge community level data on the availability and quality of publicly provided infrastructure, principally extension, to the farm level data containing information on farmer human capital as well as land quantity and quality. By using community level measures of availability and quality of extension, we avoid problems of endogeneity of farm level measures of extension use. We find positive impacts of farmer education on the diffusion process, in accordance with other studies. We also isolate effects of the quality in regional extension investment as measured by the average experience of technical extension staff. These results indicate that investments in human capital of extension workers does have a payoff in terms of farmer adoption of improved cultivation practices.     

Convergence to competitive equilibria and elimination of no-trade (in a strategic market game with limit prices)

The strategic market games literature contains many results that predict Walrasian equilibria in the competitive limit. However, they usually come at the expense of ad hoc assumptions that rule out “pathological” no trade equilibria. This paper studies a strategic market game with limit prices. The set of Nash equilibrium allocations of this game converges to the set containing all competitive equilibria and no-trade, when players are replicated. Moreover, two rounds of iterated deletion of weakly dominated strategies eliminate the no-trade equilibria. Hence, replication paired with two rounds of iterated dominance gives a clean prediction of competitive equilibrium.     

The consumer's relational commitment: main dimensions and antecedents

As in business-to-business relationships, consumers often establish and maintain long-term relationships with firms. This article uses a multidisciplinary approach with the aims of describing the process that a consumer follows until committing to a firm and identifying the main dimensions and antecedents of the consumer's commitment. As antecedents of commitment, the proposed model considers dependence and trust through the reduction in uncertainty and in the perception of opportunism. The empirical study for the consumer–garage relationship suggests that the consumer's trust reduces the fear and perception of the firm's opportunism and engenders affective and temporal commitment.     

Determinants of Foreign Versus Domestic Real Estate Investment: Property Level Evidence from Listed Real Estate Investment Firms

We examine the determinants of foreign real estate investment relative to the domestic case using the portfolios of a large sample of publicly traded real estate investment companies; where foreign investment is defined as the property owner headquarters being located in a different country than a given asset. The cross-sectional results provide strong evidence that real estate firms are more likely to take a smaller stake in larger assets when investing abroad. The penchant for large assets holds when controlling for economic activity, real estate investment opportunities, depth and sophistication of the capital markets, investor protection and the legal framework, administrative burdens and regulatory limitations, and the socio-cultural and political environment at both the property nation and headquarter nation levels. In general, foreign ownership is less likely with industrial, office, retail, and self-storage properties. Capital market development is consistently negatively related to foreign investment.     

A Cross-National Study on Online Consumer Perceptions,Trust, and Loyalty

This article analyzes the validity of signaling theory and relationship marketing in e-commerce and in two different countries with different stages of technology development. We advance a model that reflects the role played by website characteristics as determinant factors of trust and loyalty to the website. The model is tested for young Internet users. It is examined in Spanish and Japanese contexts to ascertain whether any differences emerge due to differing cultures and shopping contexts. Results reveal few differences between Spain and Japan, despite their contrasting development of e-commerce and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Customer service is the most important website signal to engender trust, a feature closely linked to loyalty both in Japan and Spain. However, reputation seems more important when engaging Japanese buyers' trust, whereas only website design has an impact on Spanish buyers' trust.     

Regulatory Sanctions on Independent Directors and Their Consequences to the Director Labor Market: Evidence from China

We investigate the regulatory sanctions imposed on independent directors for their firms’ financial frauds in China. These regulatory sanctions are prima-facie evidence of significant lapses in business ethics. During the period 2003–2010, 302-person-time independent directors were penalized by the regulator (the China Securities Regulatory Commission—the CSRC), and the two stock exchanges. We find that the independent directors with accounting experiences are more likely to be penalized by the CSRC, though they do not suffer more severe penalties than do the other sanctioned independent directors. We also find that independent directors suffer less severe penalties than do the insider directors. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the sanctions on independent directors are tied to their assumed ethical and legal responsibilities. Following a regulatory sanction, penalized independent directors experience a significant decline in the number of other board seats held. However, they can gain board seats in better quality firms. We find that interlocked firms that share penalized independent directors with the fraud firm do not suffer from a valuation decline. Overall, our results suggest that regulatory sanctions have not triggered further sanctions on the penalized directors in the labor market but they have, instead, created a disincentive for these directors to serve on the company boards of high-risk firms.