The contribution of minimum wage valorization policy to the decline in household income inequality in Brazil: A decomposition approach

There is a vast literature that estimates the effect of the minimum wage on wage inequality in various countries. However, as the minimum wage directly affects nonlabor income of families in some countries (in the Brazilian case via the benefits of the pension system and of certain social programs), this article extends the empirical analysis by studying the effects of the minimum wage on the level of inequality of household income as a whole. To accomplish that we employ a decomposition method that gauges the contribution of the increases in the minimum wage that occurred in recent decades in Brazil through the labor and nonlabor sources of household income. The results show that the minimum wage had a contribution of 64 percent to the observed fall in income inequality between 1995 and 2014 and that pensions were the most relevant channel over this period.     

Impacts of the End of the Coffee Export Quota System on International‐to‐Retail Price Transmission

We examine the impact of the end of the coffee export quota system (EQS) on international‐to‐retail price transmission in France, Germany and the United States. We take account of the existence of long‐run threshold effects and short‐run price transmission asymmetries (PTAs). We find evidence of threshold effects in both periods (EQS and post‐EQS) in all three countries and the presence of short‐run PTAs during the post‐EQS period in all countries, but not during the EQS period. Our results indicate that the threshold values are smaller in the post‐EQS period, suggesting that retail prices became more responsive to changes in international prices. However, the speed of adjustment towards the long‐run equilibrium decreases during the post‐EQS period in the three countries. In the short run, non‐linear impulse response analyses indicate that a shock in international prices was more persistent during the EQS period than in the post‐EQS period. Moreover, we find evidence of short‐run PTAs in the post‐EQS period, with differences across countries. We find support for the ‘rockets and feathers’ principle in the United States; in contrast, retail prices respond faster when international prices are falling in Germany and France. We explain these differences in terms of market structures.     

Entrepreneurial cognition and internationalization speed: towards a potential moderating effect of experiential and rational information processing

This study explores the influence that entrepreneurial cognition, in terms of the dichotomy in human information processing, has on the earliness of internationalization and post-entry speed. Entrepreneurial cognition is investigated through the lens of the dual-process theory, which posits that human information processing is formed of two systems, the experiential cognitive system (System 1) and the rational and analytical cognitive system (System 2). The speed of the entire internationalization process is analyzed in terms of earliness (how soon after inception a company enters its first international market) and post-entry speed (how fast it enters new markets after the first internationalization). Drawing on ten cases, we find that companies that internationalized earlier and faster were managed by entrepreneurs with higher levels of the experiential cognitive system. In contrast, companies that internationalized later and more gradually were managed by entrepreneurs with higher levels of the rational cognitive system. Thus, our study reveals that the speed of the entire process of internationalization is governed, at least partially, by the entrepreneur’s cognition. On the basis of our findings, we introduce three propositions on the moderation that the entrepreneur’s cognition exerts on the well-established relations between environmental signals and both earliness of internationalization and post-internationalization speed.

     

Coordination in a skeptical two-group population

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - This paper explores a situation in which a population split into two groups attempts to achieve the socially efficient outcome of a coordination...     

Estimating the direct impact of bank liquidity shocks on the real economy: Evidence from letter‐of‐credit import transactions in Colombia

This study identifies and provides an estimate of the impact of bank liquidity shocks on real economic activity by exploring letter‐of‐credit import transactions in Colombia during the 2008 to 2009 global financial crisis. The detailed dataset on letter‐of‐credit transactions allows for exploiting within‐importer–exporter variation across issuing banks. The study finds substantial effects of bank liquidity shocks on letter‐of‐credit import transactions: banks that were more vulnerable to adverse liquidity shocks—proxied by the ex ante reliance on wholesale funding or borrowings from foreign banks—reduced letter‐of‐credit issuances more in both intensive and extensive margins. The study also confirms that it had real effects: importer–exporter pairs that relied more on letter‐of‐credit transactions experienced a greater reduction in their total imports in response to adverse bank liquidity shocks.     

Disaggregating and reaggregating work: Workers,management and the struggle over creating coherency and purpose in a context of work degradation

The article argues that whilst there is a growing sense of degradation and worsening conditions (disaggregation) of work in the cleaning sector in general, there are some important contradictions which require complex organisational responses. In the main, there is a growing sense of isolation in this work, yet also a growing perception of autonomy and workers having to use discretion in new and challenging ways. This article focuses on these issues and management responses to reaggregate the nature of such work, creating new forms of identity and activities intended to enhance (or address) the levels of stability and sustainability at work as well as in operational processes. This management conundrum means that they need to deal with a range of job‐related, skill‐oriented worker learning and also representation issues. These responses bring to the fore the contested nature of such forms of work and how they are changing.     

Production Technology Estimates and Balanced Growth

Capital‐labour substitution and total factor productivity (TFP) estimates are essential features of many economic models. Such models typically embody a balanced growth path. This often leads researchers to estimate models imposing stringent prior choices on technical change. We demonstrate that estimation of the substitution elasticity and TFP growth can be substantially biased if technical progress is thereby mis‐specified. We obtain analytical and simulation results in the context of a model consistent with balanced and near‐balanced growth (i.e. departures from balanced growth but broadly stable factor shares). Given this evidence, a constant elasticity of substitution production function system is then estimated for the US economy. Results show that the estimated substitution elasticity tends to be significantly lower using a factor‐augmenting specification (well below one). We are also able to reject conventional neutrality forms in favour of general factor augmentation with a non‐negligible capital‐augmenting component. Our work thus provides insights into production and supply‐side estimation in balanced‐growth frameworks.     

Environmental orientation in tourism: the RTEO scale

This paper analysed the validity and reliability of the revised tourist ecological orientation (RTEO) scale. There are relatively few studies in the area of the ecological behaviour of tourists and, therefore, RTEO and other scales should be taken into account in future tourism research. This study is based on a sample of 461 golf tourists. A double analysis was carried out: (1) a qualitative analysis through expert opinion and (2) a quantitative analysis through the partial least squares approach. The results suggest that the RTEO scale is a brief, simple and reliable scale of environmental actions.     

The Effect of Customer Orientation on Smaller Sized Service Firms and on the Market: A Multilevel Application Embracing Firms and Customers

The aim of the present work is to ascertain the importance of customer orientation as a business strategy within the smaller services sector. The adoption of customer orientation is measured from the firm's point of view, and its effect on financial performance is analyzed. Customer perception is analyzed, using two variables, perceived value and loyalty. The sample consists of 100 Spanish rural tourism enterprises and 572 customers. The findings reveal that customer orientation has a direct effect on perceived value, and perceived value has a direct effect on loyalty toward the firm. Furthermore, customer orientation contributes to the achievement of financial performance.