Spatio-temporal determinants of the structural and productive transformation of regions in Central and East European countries

This paper investigates the determinants of the structural (between-sectoral) and productive (within-sectoral) transformation of 56 NUTS2 regions in Central and East European (CEE) countries over the 2008–2014 period. Over the analysed period, a transformation of the analysed regions has taken place towards the tertiary sector and high value-added activities. The results from a spatial panel Durbin analysis reveal the existence of product-space linkages and point to a productive transformation towards high technology-intensive activities as an important driver of industrial development. Equal access to digital infrastructure in urban and rural areas and transfer of skills, knowledge and resources through the inflow of foreign investment and imports of production inputs increase the contribution of manufacturing to regional employment. The effect of profit tax reductions on the share of manufacturing employment is about five times larger than the effect of government subsidies to production.     

Credit Risk Models and Agricultural Lending

Credit risk models are developed and used to estimate capital requirements for agricultural lenders under the New Basel Capital Accord. The study uses credit value-at-risk methods to calculate probability of default, loss given default, and expected and unexpected losses. Two applied models, CreditMetrics and Moody's KMV , are estimated using farm financial data. The results show that the necessary capital for agricultural lenders under the New Basel Accord varies substantially depending on the riskiness and granularity of the portfolio.     

Antecedents and outcomes of fashion innovativeness in retailing

Challenging market conditions force the fashion industry to find new ways of introducing new products, adjusting and stimulating unplanned purchases within fashion stores. Fashion innovativeness and visual merchandising play a key role in this challenge. This study examines how fashion innovativeness is related to motivational factors for shopping and actual unplanned purchases in fashion retailing. It also investigates the moderating effect of visual merchandising on the relationship between fashion innovativeness and unplanned purchases. The data, obtained through a consumer survey, were analysed using factor analyses and structural equation modelling. The results show that fashion innovativeness is positively affected by sexual attraction, shopping for recreation, recognition enhancement, and aesthetic expression, and positively influences unplanned purchases. The link between fashion innovativeness and unplanned purchases is moderated by visual merchandising. This study also provides recommendations for retailers on increasing unplanned purchases in their stores using the concept of fashion innovativeness.     

Corporate Repurchase Decisions Following Mutual Fund Sales

This paper examines managerial response to widespread selling by mutual funds. We study the effect on share repurchases of liquidity‐based price pressure measured by mutual fund transactions caused by capital outflows. Firms whose shares undergo widespread selling by funds experiencing large outflows are more likely to repurchase their own shares, controlling for the effect of returns on share repurchases. The empirical results suggest that firms act as buyers of last resort and provide price support for their own shares.     

Shareholder coordination and corporate innovation

We show that greater shareholder coordination, as proxied by the geographic proximity between institutional investors, is positively related to corporate innovation outcomes. This relationship is driven by coordination among dedicated and independent institutions who have strong monitoring incentives and is more pronounced among firms with lower blockholder ownership and greater information asymmetry where there is greater benefit to monitoring. We propose that shareholder coordination promotes corporate innovation through a reduction in managerial agency problems. Overall, our results are consistent with the notion that greater shareholder coordination enables diffuse shareholders to monitor managers more effectively and enhances corporate innovation.     

Connecting U.S. Health Expenditures with the Health Sector Workforce

The National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA) produced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report that U.S. health care spending was $2.6 trillion in 2010. More recent estimates from Altarum Institute confirm that the health sector represents 17.9 percent of our national output. The data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the health sector continued to create jobs throughout the recession and recovery and now accounts for nearly one in nine jobs. For the first time, we link the workforce by occupation to national spending on health care services by aligning data sets from the BLS and Bureau of Economic Analysis with the NHEA. We find $1 trillion, or 57 percent of the $1.78 trillion spent on personal health care services, went to health sector labor. Characterizing the health sector workforce and its contribution to health expenditures informs the potential for spending reductions and the implications of such reductions on employment.     

Antecedents of consumers' time perceptions in a hypermarket retailer

This study examines the effects of five antecedents on consumers' time perceptions in a hypermarket environment. Findings indicate that the actual shopping time spent in the store and planned shopping activities significantly influence consumers' shopping time perceptions, while consumers' waiting time perceptions are driven by both actual checkout waiting time and actual shopping time. The article examines time gaps, i.e. consumers' errors in time estimation, as related to store loyalty intention and finds that past consumer purchases moderate the relationship between both time gaps and store loyalty intention. Managerial implications are discussed in the article.     

Institutions and growth in limited access societies

We build a dynamic political economy model with a two-class society, workers and the elite, in which the elite formation, the innovation rate and fiscal policy are endogenous. The model generates a mapping between institutions and patterns of growth consistent with empirical evidence. Ex ante, when facing constraints in choosing institutions, the elite may delegate policy control to some of its members, even though such delegation exacerbates the conflict within the elite and causes policy failures. Committing to such institutional arrangements prevents more harmful outcomes, such as rapid entry and subsequent deterioration of the elite?s economic and political power.