Ordinal Bivariate Inequality: Concepts and Application to Child Deprivation in Mozambique

This paper introduces a concept of inequality comparisons with ordinal bivariate categorical data. In our model, one population is more unequal than another when they have common arithmetic median outcomes and the first can be obtained from the second by correlation‐increasing switches and/or median‐preserving spreads. For the canonical 2 × 2 case (with two binary indicators), we derive a simple operational procedure for checking ordinal inequality relations in practice. As an illustration, we apply the model to childhood deprivation in Mozambique.     

Budget referendums and government spending: evidence from Swiss cantons

In many Swiss cantons, new government programs must be approved by a referendum of citizens before money can be spent. Referendums seem like a natural way to address citizen-legislator agency problems, yet statistical evidence on how referendums affect spending decisions is almost nonexistent. We estimate regressions for Swiss cantons using panel data from 1980 to 1998 and find that mandatory referendums reduced government spending by 19% for the median canton after controlling for demographics and other determinants of spending.     

The market power of OPEC 1973–2001

We apply a multi-equation dynamic econometric model on monthly data to test if the behaviour of OPEC as a whole or different sub-groups of the cartel is consistent with the characteristics of dominant producers on the world crude oil market in the period 1973–2001. Our results indicate that the producers outside OPEC can be described as competitive producers, taking the oil price as given and maximizing profits. The OPEC members do not fit the behaviour of price-taking producers. Our findings of low residual demand price elasticities for OPEC underpin the potential market power of the producer group, and are in line with the results in some recent energy studies. On the other hand, our findings indicate that neither OPEC nor different sub-groups of the cartel can be characterized as a dominant producer in the period 1973–1994. However, we find that the characteristics of a dominant producer to some extent fit OPEC-Core as from 1994. Thus, although OPEC clearly has affected the market price, the producer group has not behaved as a pure profit-maximizing dominant producer.     

Risk sensitivity in bargaining with more than two participants

In two-person bargaining over riskless outcomes where the outcome is chosen according to the Nash solution or the Kalai-Smorodinsky solution, an increase in a player's risk aversion is to the advantage of the opponent. It is shown in this note that for the n-person Nash solution, an increase in risk aversion is to the player's own disadvantage but needs not be advantageous to all the opponents. For the n-person Kalai-Smorodinsky solution, the increase is to the player's own disadvantage and to the advantage of all the opponents.     

The emergence of the global fintech market: economic and technological determinants

Small Business Economics - We investigate the economic and technological determinants inducing entrepreneurs to establish ventures with the purpose of reinventing financial technology (fintech). We...     

Efficiency and Ownership Structure: The Case of Poland

We examine the effects of foreign entry on productive efficiency during the Polish investment liberalisation. The performance of foreign acquisitions is compared to foreign firms entering the market through greenfield entry, as well as domestic acquisitions of privatised firms, domestic greenfields and remaining state‐owned (non‐privatised) firms during the period 1995–2000. We find that foreign privatised firms have realised larger productivity gains than all types of domestic firms and that this is not due to higher price‐cost margins, which is consistent with the idea that foreign firms bring in firm‐specific knowledge. Foreign greenfields have the highest average labour productivity, while foreign privatisations show the largest productivity increase.     

Trade Liberalization and Cartel Stability

Can reduced trade barriers promote a collusive understanding about not exporting into each others domestic markets? Reduced trade costs increase the short‐run gains from starting exporting, but can also make the long‐run punishment of such a strategy harsher. If collusion on prices is supported by a trigger strategy, a reduction in trade costs weakens competition in the sense that collusion is easier to sustain. In a corresponding model with collusion on quantities, this conclusion is reversed. The authors also discuss how results change if grim trigger strategies are replaced by stick‐and‐carrot punishments.     

The costs of motherhood: an analysis using matching estimators

We estimate the effect of motherhood on wages using matching. We distinguish between net and direct effects. The net effect includes the total wage costs, whereas the direct represents the causal effect. Since covariates are likely affected by motherhood, the latter effect is not immediately uncovered. We therefore implement two strategies: first, we confine the analysis to consider sector‐specific treatment effects; second, we impose additive separability on the outcome equation. We find negative net effects that vary little with sector. The direct effect is small and negative in the public sector and insignificant in the private sector. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consumers as Co-developers: Learning and Innovation Outside the Firm

This study describes a process in which a firm relies on an external consumer community for innovation. While it has been recognized that users may sometimes innovate, little is known about what commercial firms can do to motivate and capture such innovations and their related benefits. We contribute to strategy literature by suggesting that learning and innovation efforts from which a firm may benefit need not necessarily be located within the organization, but may well reside in the consumer environment. We also contribute to the existing theory on "user- driven innovation' by showing what firms purposively can do to generate consumer innovation efforts. An explorative case study shows that consumer innovation can be structured, motivated, and partly organized by a commercial firm that organizes the infrastructure for consumers' interactive learning in a public online domain.