Constructing migration: Infrastructure,poverty and development in KwaZulu‐Natal

Migration and population movement are probably the most neglected of the significant dynamics behind rural poverty in South Africa. Little is known about how people move from place to place, and much of what we thought we knew may be incorrect. In KwaZulu‐Natal job search is no longer the single dominating reason given for migration. Instead, infrastructure ties with it for first place today, with land close behind. The first article in this two‐part report notes that as many as two thirds of the province's disadvantaged families have broken away from their communities of origin and moved at least once during their lifetimes. Perhaps three million have migrated in the last fifteen years. A second unexpected finding is the predominance of rural‐to‐rural migration. Three quarters of all moves recorded were rural to rural, with many orientated towards advantaged rural areas around small towns and secondary cities. Results show how streams are channelled towards poverty or opportunity, and argue for a review of prevailing concepts of rural‐urban relations which structure delivery efforts. The second article, to follow later, notes that recorded income levels are now higher in some rural destination areas than in the urban shack communities that accommodate rural‐to‐urban migrants. Results of various studies presented show how access to information affects migration patterns, and the article also explores the role of infrastructure as a determining force in the regional distribution of population and as a factor in people's own bootstrap anti‐poverty efforts.     

Innovations in the international financial markets

The appearance of the international financial markets is changing rapidly; new instruments are constantly being hatched and marketed, often with considerable success. However, the ingenuity of the markets does not always meet with applause; the banking supervisory authorities and central banks view the rapid pace of innovation with concern and the banking community also displays occasional unease. On balance, do the positive aspects outweigh the negative ones?     

Trust over time in exchange relationships: Meta‐analysis and theory

A common premise in prior research is that trust increases over time in relationships. Through a meta‐analysis of 39 studies, we find that the bivariate correlation between trust and relationship duration (1) is on average positive and small, and (2) varies significantly across studies indicating the presence of unobserved moderators. We therefore build a theoretical framework to specify four different mechanisms—initial bias correction, change in relationship value, identification, and trust‐based selection—that may affect the development of trust. We then argue that the relative strength of these mechanisms should influence whether trust increases, remains constant, or decreases over time. © 2013 The Authors. Strategic Management Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

How Swiss small and medium-sized firms assess the performance impact of mergers and acquisitions

While previous studies on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) mostly relied on large firms, our study is based on a sample that includes all Swiss M&As that took place in the period 2006–2008, mostly of which have been SMEs. We investigate the firm characteristics that determine the innovation and economic performance of M&As. The performance measures are based on firms’ assessments. These measures are regressed on a series of possible determining factors as postulated in existing theoretical and empirical literature. M&A performance is primarily affected by specific M&A characteristics, but not by general market characteristics such as demand development or competition conditions. Rather astonishingly, it is also not affected by firm characteristics such as capital intensity, human capital endowment and firm size. There is an interesting exception: innovation activities. This means that, with the remarkable exception of innovation activities, the level of M&A performance is determined primarily by factors of the M&A process itself.     

Further Results on Bayesian Method of Moments Analysis of the Multiple Regression Model

In this article we extend previous BMOM results by showing how information about a variance parameter and its relation to regression coefficients produces a rich class of postdata densities for regression parameters. Prediction and model selection techniques are also described. We also discuss the well-documented link between cross-entropy and the average log odds and then use this criterion in an experiment to compare results obtained from BMOM and Bayes approaches using data generated from known models.