Does direct foreign investment affect domestic credit constraints?

Firms in developing countries cite credit constraints as one of their primary obstacles to investment. Direct foreign investment may ease credit constraints by bringing in scarce capital. Alternatively, if foreign firms borrow heavily from domestic banks, they may crowd local firms out of domestic capital markets. Using firm data from the Ivory Coast, we test whether: (1) domestic firms are more credit constrained than foreign firms, and (2) whether borrowing by foreign firms exacerbates domestic firm credit constraints. Results provide support for both hypotheses. We also find that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are less financially constrained than other domestic enterprises.     

Post OPA-90 Vessel Oil Transfer Spill Prevention: The Effectiveness of Coast Guard Enforcement

Although oil spills from tanker accidents receive the most publicity, most vessel spills are not the result of accidents but of oil transfer activities. We investigate determinants of the size of vessel oil transfer spills as well as the effectiveness of Coast Guard enforcement activities in reducing their size. Vessel out-of-water and in-water oil transfer spillage functions are estimated utilizing tobit regression and detailed data on individual vessel oil transfer spills as well as Coast Guard safety/environmental enforcement activity data for the 1991–1995 period. Our estimation results suggest that Coast Guard hull but not machinery inspections are effective in reducing both out-of-water and in-water spills; patrols by air, but not by boat, are effective in reducing out-of-water spills; but neither is effective in reducing in-water spills. The results also show that the type of vessel (oil- and non-oil-cargo), vessel characteristics, vessel operations, weather/visibility conditions, and waterway type are determinants of post OPA-90 vessel oil transfer spills.     

Reinterpreting the performance of immigrant wages from panel data

Immigrants differ from the native born in terms of unobserved factors, such as motivation, and observed factors, including those related to the interruption of labour market activity and earning capacity, which may bias estimates of immigrant integration. Using panel data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, we show that using potential experience, rather than actual experience, exaggerates estimates of the disruption and recovery caused by immigration. More importantly, we find support for omitted variables bias, arising from unobserved fixed effects. Instrumental variable estimates for both pooled and separate samples of immigrant and native born men demonstrate a wage disadvantage for immigrants upon entry that persists through their lifetime. Standard estimates of a modest wage advantage for the children of immigrants also suffer from omitted variables bias arising from unobservables. Contrary to most of the literature to date, our instrumental variable estimates which allow for unobservable fixed effects suggest that immigrants never catch up to otherwise comparable native born workers, but their children do just as well. We would like to thank Statistics Canada for permitting access to the data and solving associated technical problems, the Prairier Centre for Research on Immigration and Integration for financial assistance, and Peter Schnabl for excellent research assistance. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the 10th International Conference on Panel Data in Berlin, July 5–6, 2002. The authors take sole responsibility for errors, omissions and interpretation of the data.     

The measurement and decomposition of nonuse values: A critical review

We critically review the literature that claims that existence values, or nonuse values in general, are a large and measurable component of total value for certain environmental resources. Our concern is not with the question “do nonuse values exist?” For some individuals they surely do. Rather, our concern is with two interrelated questions: are there operationally meaningful theorems which might lead to the specific measurement of nonuse values, and do we in fact have a body of credible evidence which shows that nonuse values, particularly components of any nonuse value, are “large”? We find nothing in the way of operationally meaningful hypotheses which would permit the estimation of values attributable to specific motives of individuals. We find no credible basis for claims related to either the measurement of existence and other motive-related values or claims for the “large” relative size of such values. In short, we question the conventional wisdom that such values are measurable and that they are significant as a component of total value.     

Agency Structure and Firm Culture: OSHA, EPA, and the Steel Industry

We compare models of Occupational Safety and Health Administration(OSHA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforcementand compliance for steel plants during the 1980s. We find thatOSHA and EPA respond similarly to plant-level compliance andmeasures of hazardousness, but differently to firm-level complianceand risks of plant closing, and we relate the differences tothe agencies' differing organizational structures. Plant-levelcompliance is affected by enforcement pressure, compliance costs,and the firm's overall compliance behavior in similar ways forthe two regulatory areas, but environmental compliance was alsosensitive to plant size and risk of closing. Finally, we findthat the likelihood that a plant was in compliance with oneagency seemed at most weakly related to whether it was in compliancewith the other, but that plants likely to receive enforcementattention from one agency were also more likely to receive enforcementattention from the other agency.     

Stability and agreement criteria for the termination of Delphi studies

This paper addresses the question of the methodology of testing for stability between successive Delphi rounds and the necessity of doing so prior to the analysis of the level or type of consensus. Following a discussion of a hierarchical set of a criteria for determining the termination of such studies, the paper reviews some of the more common treatments of the subject in the literature. It is finally proposed that a χ² test be used to test the stability of responses between rounds. The method is demonstrated by a numerical example.     

A multilevel, identity-based approach to leadership development

A frontier of leadership development is examined involving the respective roles of levels-of-analysis and identity in constructing an integrated development system. An approach is described in which individual and relational leadership identities are the focus of developmental efforts at lower organizational levels (e.g., individual contributor and first-level supervisor) but collective identities become the focus at higher levels (e.g., general manager and above). The separate areas of levels-of-analysis and leader identities are first discussed in terms of their respective relevance to leadership development. These are then discussed jointly in elaborating on a proposed development approach that integrates across organizational levels as well as levels of development (i.e., leader development and leadership development). In developing collective leadership identities, processes that involve participants in engaging across boundaries (functional, hierarchical, geographical) are recommended.