Estimating the Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture in Low-Income Countries: Household Level Evidence from the Nile Basin, Ethiopia

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the impact of climate change on agriculture in a typical developing country. The economic implications of climate change are estimated by using both a farm productivity and a Ricardian framework. Data are drawn from about 1,000 farms producing cereal crops in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia. The thin plate spline method of spatial interpolation was used to predict household specific rainfall and temperature values using meteorological station data collected for 30?years across the regions. We found that climate change adaptation has a significant impact on both farm productivity and farm net revenues. We complement the analysis by providing an estimation of the determinants of adaptation. Extension services (both formal and farmer to farmer), as well as access to credit and information on future climate changes are key drivers of adaptation.     

R&D cooperation with scientific institutions: a difference-in-difference approach

Economists and business managers have long been interested in the impact of research and development (R&D) cooperation with scientific institutions on the innovation performance of firms. Recent research identifies a positive correlation between these two variables. This paper aims to contribute to the identification of the relationship between R&D cooperation with scientific institutions and the product and process innovation performance of firms by using a difference-in-difference approach. In doing so, we distinguish between two different types of scientific institutions: universities and governmental research institutes. For the econometric analyses, we use data from the German Community Innovation Survey. In total, data from up to 560 German service and manufacturing firms are available for the difference-in-difference analyses. The results suggest that R&D cooperation with universities and governmental research institutes has a positive effect on both product innovation and process innovation performance of firms.     

ARE FINANCIAL AND SOCIAL EFFICIENCY MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE? A CASE STUDY OF VIETNAMESE MICROFINANCE INSTITUTIONS

A major debate in microfinance focuses on the existence of a trade‐off between the financial sustainability of microfinance institutions (MFIs) and their outreach to poor clients. This paper adds to this debate by analyzing whether financial and social efficiency are mutually exclusive in a context of implicit subsidies by the state and international donors. We use data from a sample of 28 Vietnamese MFIs and apply Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to identify the existence of a trade‐off. Our analysis shows that for Vietnamese MFIs financial and social efficiency are not related. We interpret this as evidence for the fact that there is no support to believe that there is such a trade‐off. Subsidies, based on which most Vietnamese MFIs currently operate, helps them to show high financial efficiency, while at the same time being able to attain their social goals. Nevertheless, this model may not be sustainable in the long‐term.     

An Econometric Analysis of I(2) Variables

This paper provides a selective survey of the recent literature dealing with I(2) variables in economic time series, that is, processes that require to be differenced twice in order to become stationary. With reference to particular economic models intuition is provided of why I(2)-and polynomial cointegration are features likely to occur in economics. The properties of I(2) series are discussed and I review topics such as: Testing for double unit roots, representations of I(2) cointegrated systems, and hypothesis testing in single equations as well as in systems of equations. Different data sets are used to illustrate the various econometric and statistical techniques.     

Estimating the LQAC model with I(2) variables

This paper derives a method for estimating and testing the Linear Quadratic Adjustment Cost (LQAC) model when the target variable and some of the forcing variables follow I(2) processes. Based on a forward-looking error-correction formulation of the model it is shown how to obtain strongly consistent estimates of the structural parameters from both a linear and a non-linear cointegrating regression where first-differences of the I(2) variables are included as regressors (multicointegration). Further, based on the estimated parameter values, it is shown how to test and evaluate the LQAC model using a VAR approach. A simple easy interpretable metric for measuring the model fit is suggested. In an empirical application using UK money demand data, the non-linear multicointegrating regression delivers an economically plausible estimate of the adjustment cost parameter. However, the restrictions implied by the exact LQAC model under rational expectations are strongly rejected and the metric for model fit indicates a substantial noise component in the model. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corporate Social Responsibility and NGO Directors on Boards

Journal of Business Ethics - In the years 2009 to 2016, approximately 35% of Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 firms had at least one director with a professional background in...     

The Swedish industrial support program of the 1970s revisited

The economy-wide dynamic cost-benefit study of the Swedish industrial subsidy program 1976 through 1984 (Carlsson et al. Res Policy 10(43):336–354 1981; Carlsson J Ind Econ 32(1):9–14, 1983a, b) is revisited in light of later economic development. Since the Swedish Micro to Macro model (Eliasson Am Econ Rev 67(1):277–281 1977a, 2017a) was used for quantification, this article is both (1) a study on the calibration of high dimensional micro-based and nonlinear economic systems models, and (2) a post inquiry into the empirical credibility of the cost-benefit calculations performed. We find that the Micro-based Macro model represents the minimum of detailed resolution necessary for the dynamic cost benefit calculations of the micro interventions in the Swedish economy we study. Even though the increased model complexity meant significant parameter calibration difficulties, a thoroughly researched model specification with exactly defined policy interfaces (with the markets of the economy) should take priority over parameter estimation problems, and always be preferred to estimating the parameters of a wrongly specified model perfectly. The oil price shocks of the 1970s caused radical market disorder in the western economies, bankrupting some 35% of Swedish manufacturing and threatening the Swedish government with massive unemployment. We confirm the earlier results that the government choice of a radical employment rescue policy came at enormous social cost in the form of economic stagnation, and still did not prevent the unemployment of the rest of OECD Europe from hitting Sweden a decade later, and persisting well into the next millennium. According to an alternative simulated policy scenario on the model, had the subsidies been replaced with a general lowering of the payroll tax of the same magnitude and the consequent increase in unemployment taken immediately during 1976–1980, production structures would have been radically and rapidly reorganized, normal employment would have been rapidly restored, and neither the stagnation nor the radical increase in unemployment of the early 1990s would have occurred. In retrospect we see no reason to worry about the empirical credibility of this computed dynamic trade off between Keynesian demand and Schumpeterian supply effects (caused by resource reallocations and endogenous structural change due to the price change), as we did then. We conclude with certainty that this trade-off would not even have been discovered as a possibility had we used a traditional model that did not embody these micro-macro linkages.     

Technical basis for collective (Group) pensions insurance in Norway — K 1946

I. Introduction.

In 1933 O. Aabakken in this journal ¹ Olav Aabakken: “A New Basis of Calculation for Collective Pensions Insurance in Norway”. 1933. dealt with the collective (group) pensions insurance in Norway and especially with the technical basis — K 1931 — which was adopted in 1931 by the life offices in common for this branch of insurance. This basis was worked out from the experiences since 1917, when collective pensions insurance was introduced in Norway. When the National old-age insurance was introduced in 1936, the life offices adopted some new collective pensions benefits which could be employed in the cases where an adjustment to the National old age insurance was desirable. O. Böe has described the mode of adjustment. ² Olav Böe: “Relations between Collective Pensions Insurance, Employer's Pension Funds and National Insurance in Norway”. Transactions of the Eleventh International Congress of Actuaries, Paris 1937.      

The value of commuting time in an empirical on-the-job search model – an application based on moments from two samples

This article estimates the Value of Commuting Time (VOCT) among Swedish males in an empirical on-the-job search model. It uses a large sample of employee-establishment linked data obtained from administrative registers. The sample lacks information on mode choice for the journey to work. We therefore estimate a mode choice model on another sample and use this model to link the administrative data to the relevant set of travel times, costs and distances. The VOCT is found to be 1.8 times the net hourly wage rate in the sample. The relatively high estimate results from a high VOCT among cohabiting men.