Competition,External Economies of Scale,and Unionized Wage

We provide a rationale for the mixed relationship between product market competition and unionized wage, and more importantly, for a generally unexplained empirical evidence of a positive relationship between product market competition and unionized wage. We show that a higher product market competition decreases (increases) unionized wage if the external scale economies are weak (strong). However, a higher product market competition may decrease or increase the unionized wage if the external scale economies are moderate.

     

Two-period supply chain coordination strategies with ambidextrous sustainable innovations

This study considers a manufacturer with ambidextrous sustainable innovation capability selling products in environmentally conscious market through an independent retailer in a two-period game setting. We design a two-period game theoretic and dyadic supply chain (SC) model considering exploitative and exploratory nature of environmental innovations. We study five different contract types, namely, wholesale price contract, vertical Nash game structure, cost sharing contract, revenue sharing contract and two-part tariff contract. We demonstrate the impact of market sensitivity towards sustainable innovation and cost parameters on optimal level of decision parameters. The equilibrium results reveal that a suitably designed two-part tariff contract can be used to achieve coordination in a fragmented SC. The equilibrium results assist managers to optimise the SC based on the two-period contract model. The results obtained in this study can help the decision-makers to take decisions on investment in the ambidextrous sustainable innovation under different types of contract structures.     

Medicaid and long‐term care: The effects of penalizing strategic asset transfers

Medicaid provides a critical source of insurance for long‐term care, and individuals may strategically offload assets (typically to children) to meet the means‐tested eligibility requirement. In this article, we quantify the extent of such behavior using variation in the penalty for improper parent‐to‐child transfers induced by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. We estimate difference‐in‐differences models based on the hypothesis that only individuals with high levels of nursing home risk (high risk) will alter transfers because of the Act. We find that over a 2‐year horizon, high‐risk individuals reduced transfers to children on the extensive margin by 11 percent and that the average total amount of transfers decreased by $4,860. The results hold only for coupled respondents. We also conduct a triple‐differences analysis to examine heterogeneity with financial literacy and find that even those with a low level of financial literacy responded to the penalty.     

Trade cost reduction and foreign direct investment

While the “proximity-concentration” theory suggests a positive relationship between trade cost and foreign direct investment (FDI), there is ample evidence showing a negative relationship between them. We show that the possibility of exporting back to the home country from a host country, which is often referred as “home-country export platform FDI”, may generate a negative relationship between trade cost and FDI. Market demand and product market competition may play important roles in this respect.     

PARETO HONOURING POVERTY REDUCTION

Policy reforms often pit the poor against the poor by triggering a fall in poverty for some but an increase in poverty for others. Aggregated national measures gloss over these fine patterns and pronounce ‘a reduction in poverty’– is such aggregation across poor individuals ethically permissible? Addressing this type of aggregation is a hard issue. This paper has made an attempt in that direction by outlining an axiomatically grounded aggregate measure of such gains or losses, duly giving more importance to the losses to a poor compared to the gains of another poor.     

Risk preferences estimation of exporting firms under exchange rate uncertainty

This note empirically analyses how exchange rate fluctuations affects firms’ optimal production and exporting decisions. A firm’s elasticity of risk aversion determines the direction of the impact of exchange rate risk on exports. Based on a flexible utility function that incorporates all possible risk preferences, a unique structurally estimable equation is derived. Quantile regression method is used to estimate this equation and compute the risk aversion elasticities for a panel of Indian firms. This approach allows us to demonstrate how characteristics of exporters at the intensive margin varies with the level of elasticities across the conditional exchange rate distribution.     

Epistemic communities and the global alliance against tobacco marketing

The World Health Organization's (WHO's) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is a major blow to the worldwide expansion strategies and marketing practices of transnational tobacco companies. As expected, the industry vehemently opposed the treaty, lobbying instead for voluntary agreements and regulation by the market. However, in spite of bitter and persistent opposition by the tobacco industry, the FCTC was adopted by WHO. If the tobacco industry “lost” its battle to prevent FCTC from being institutionalized, who “won” and how? Our research suggests that the efforts of the epistemic community—a like‐minded network of professionals whose authoritative claim to consensual knowledge provides them with a unique source of power in public policy decision making—won the battle by being able to better convince the decision makers as to the needs of the FCTC by relying on, and successfully disseminating, its knowledge, expertise, and ideas. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Understanding offshoring: A research framework based on disintegration, location and externalization advantages

We present an analytical framework explaining offshoring in this paper. We address the question: why do firms offshore their business functions? Given the growing prevalence of offshoring as a dominant business practice in the world of global business, this question merits further research attention. We propose that firms embark on offshoring when they perceive three sets of interrelated advantages: disintegration advantages (D), location-specific resourcing advantages (L) and externalization advantages (E). Theories from multiple disciplines form the foundation of Disintegration–Location–Externalization (DLE) framework. Implications for managers, government policy makers and recommendations for future research are explored.     

Toward a rapprochement between the two basic paradigms of educational research

Whereas the natural-science approach has promoted the application of the hypothetico-deductive paradigm, the humanistic approach has encouraged educational researchers to employ the interpretive/symbolic paradigm. These two paradigms are contrasting in their ontology, epistomology, human model and methodology. After comparing the perspectives of the above two approaches to educational research, some justifications have been offered for the utilization of symbolic/interpretive paradigm by emphasizing the need for naturalistic observations, qualitative data, semiotical analysis and intuitive inferences for gaining a better understanding of the teaching-learning process as also the social reality in which it takes place. Although the unification of the two approaches seems antithetical, still there are many empirical instances of the fusion between the two in the areas of perception, learning, remembering, creativity and classroom behaviour. The advantages in the integration of the two paradigms may be seen in the light of the changing conceptions of the world and models of man. For enriching educational research, we need both analytical and synthetic orientations, micro and macro data, statistical and clinical predictions, deductive and inductive inferences, as well as theoretic objectivity and practical valuations. The unification is expected to pave the way for more precision, objectivity as also synthesis in understanding different educational phenomena.     

Geography,Informal Information Flows and Mutual Fund Portfolios

This paper explores how informal information channels impact mutual fund performance. We measure the strengths of two location‐based information channels: 1) information transfers among fund managers (fund‐fund links) and 2) transfers between managers and the companies in which they invest (fund‐company links). We find that each channel increases investment performance in the absence of the other, but decreases it when acting in combination. Stock selection associated with the presence of one channel, but the absence of the other, earns positive future returns. Our results indicate that the economic benefits of informal information channels depend critically on the nature of their interactions.