Productivity growth patterns in US dairy products manufacturing plants

We analyse the productivity growth patterns in the US dairy products industry using the Census Bureau's plant-level data set. We decompose Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth into the scale and technical change components and analyse variability of plants’ productivity by constructing transition matrices. We observe a cross-sectional dispersion in plant-level productivity growth in the industry. Even though the industry aggregate shows a small TFP growth rate ?0.3%, quartile rank analysis shows that while the lowest productivity quartile plants average 1.9% loss in productivity, the highest productivity quartile plants average 1.1% growth annually. Our results show considerable movements of plants in their productivity rank categories overall and across age groups, and we find that the scale effect contribution to TFP growth accounts for about 90% of TFP growth on average in the industry. These plants extract scale efficiencies over technological progress to fuel TFP growth. The youngest plants start with the lowest productivity growth at the initial time period, but they catch up older plants productivity, which present the highest average growth rate through years. This may indicate a ‘learning-by-doing’ process for the industry.     

Small Business vulnerability to floods and the effects of disaster loans

In this paper, we examine the impacts of floods on businesses and the efficacy of small business administration (SBA) disaster loans on mitigating disaster aftereffects. We find lack of business adaptation to extreme events in the short term, indicating their extreme vulnerability to flood disasters. Our results further indicate that subsidized disaster loans are important for businesses, with statistically significant effects estimated for businesses employing fewer than 50 people. At the margin, for every additional dollar spent on disaster loans per establishment in a county, four small businesses survive. Gloomy projections about increasing frequency and severity of disasters imply there will be significant loss in local economic activities because of increased vulnerability of small businesses to these incidents. Moreover, these effects will have implications nationwide, given the vital role small businesses play in creating jobs.     

Predictability of Emerging Market Local Currency Bond Risk Premia

This article investigates the source of predictability of emerging market (EM) local currency bond risk premia by using a dynamic factor approach based on a large panel of economic and financial time series. We find strong predictable variation in EM local currency excess bond returns that is associated with macroeconomic activity. We provide evidence that the main predictor variables are the factors based on real economic activity that are highly correlated with measures of industrial and manufacturing production; however, factors based on global financial factors also contain information about the future local currency bond returns. The predictive power of the extracted factors is both statistically significant and economically important. Our research has important implications for policymakers and pension fund managers.     

The Role of Agents and Brokers in the Market for Health Insurance

Health insurance markets in the United States are characterized by imperfect information, complex products, and substantial search frictions. Insurance agents and brokers play a significant role in helping employers navigate these problems. However, little is known about the relations between the structure of the agent/broker market and access and affordability of insurance. This article aims to fill this gap by investigating the influence of agents/brokers on health insurance offering decisions of small firms, which are particularly vulnerable to problems of financing health insurance. Using a unique membership database from the National Association of Health Underwriters together with a nationally representative survey of employers, we find that small firms in more competitive agent/broker markets are more likely to offer health insurance and at lower premiums. Moreover, premiums are less dispersed in more competitive agent/broker markets.     

Democracy in the neighborhood and foreign direct investment

The determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) have been extensively studied. Even though there is extensive research in the area, most of it is based on analyzing the effects of host country characteristics on FDI flows, and yet there is little research on how neighboring country characteristics play a role in facilitating FDI flows to host countries. This paper analyzes the association between the democracy level in neighboring countries and FDI flows to host countries. Using bilateral FDI flows from the OECD countries, with a large host country sample, we find that countries surrounded by democratic countries attract higher FDI flows. Furthermore, we find evidence that countries that are surrounded by neighboring countries with good institutions tend themselves to have better institutions, experience lower civil conflict, and have higher political stability and hence indirectly attract higher FDI flows. Our findings suggest that if neighboring countries act in such way as to become more democratic, FDI flows to these countries would be higher since not only does improving the quality of democracy attract more FDI inflows, but also being surrounded by neighboring advanced democratic countries will also lead to higher FDI flows to them.     

Consequences of New Product Development Speed: A Meta‐Analysis

Five meta‐analyses previously have been published on the topic of new product development involving the concept of new product development speed. Three of these studies have investigated antecedents to new product development success, of which just one was new product development speed. The other two studies used new product development speed as the dependent variable, and analyzed antecedents to achieving speed. This article extends previous empirical generalizations in this domain by using a meta‐analytic methodology to understand the link between new product development speed and new product success at a more granular level. Specifically, it considers the relationship with different dimensions of success as measured overall or compositely, operationally (i.e., the process measures of decreasing development costs and proficiently managing market entry timing and the product measures of technical product performance and product competitive advantage), and relative to external success outcomes (i.e., customer based and financial success). While the results indicate that, in general, new product development speed is associated with improving success outcomes, those relationships may diminish or even disappear depending upon a number of methodological design decisions and research contexts. A subsequent meta‐analysis of the antecedents of development speed provides a more holistic picture of development speed. These results are broadly consistent with those produced by another recent meta‐analytic investigation of the issue. Together, these findings have important implications for academics pursuing further research in this domain, as well as for managers considering implementing a program to increase new product development speed.     

Organizational citizenship behaviour: a study of young executives in Canada,Iran, and Turkey

One of the most interesting constructs in organizational studies and human resource management is perhaps the concept of organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB). OCB emphasizes constructive and cooperative employee behaviours that contribute to the organization, yet do not fall within the domain of mandatory in-role behaviours. While researchers have investigated the role of contextual attitudes and dispositional attributes on the OCB, there is a lack in cross-cultural examination of this concept. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of individuals' job-related attitudes and dispositional characteristics on their OCB in three different societal cultures, that is, Canada, Iran, and Turkey. Data reported were collected from 220 young executives in these three countries. The results reveal similarities and differences among these cultures on cognitive and affective predictors of OCB.     

Measuring human development: a stochastic dominance approach

We consider a weighting scheme that yields a best-case scenario for measured human development such as the official equally-weighted Human Development Index (HDI) using an approach that relies on consistent tests for stochastic dominance efficiency. We compare the official equally-weighted HDI to all possible indices constructed from a set of individual components to obtain the most optimistic scenario for development. In the best-case scenario index education is weighted considerably more than the other two components, per capita income and life expectancy, relative to the weight that it gets in the official equally-weighted index. It also turns out that the improvement in the official HDI is mainly driven by improvements over time in the education index, the component moving fastest relative to its targets, when compared with per capita income and life expectancy. We find that the best-case scenario hybrid index leads to a marked improvement of measured development over time when compared with the official equally-weighted HDI.     

Uncertainty and commitment in commissioning of health services

This article reports on the use of management accounting information in commissioning of health services in England. The effects of environmental pressures and uncertainty on the use of this information in the decision-making process was examined. The relationship was further analysed from the perspective of interorganizational dependence and commitment with reference to particular financial management and budgeting practices. A more integrated approach to health care commissioning could be achieved by better harmonizing fund allocation, performance measurement and management systems and by supporting cultivation of joint multiprofessional groups so that regional hubs of information could be used to formulate consistent, bottom-up and lasting local strategies to secure inter-organizational trust and mutual dependency between local health alliances.