From Coping Strategies to Tactics: London's Low‐Pay Economy and Migrant Labour

This article examines the means by which low‐paid migrant workers survive in a rapidly changing and increasingly unequal labour market. In a departure from the coping strategies literature, it is argued that the difficulties migrant workers face in the London labour market reduces their ability to ‘strategize’. Instead, workers adopt a range of ‘tactics’ that enable them to ‘get by’, if only just, on a day‐to‐day basis. The article explores these tactics with reference to the connections between different workers’ experiences of the workplace, home and community, and demonstrates the role of national, ethnic and gender relations in shaping migrant workers’ experiences of the London labour market and of the city more widely.     

Governing new global health-care markets: the case of stem cell treatments

Stem cell innovation has enabled the growth of a global market of treatments for a wide range of diseases but most of this market operates outside the domain of orthodox forms of innovation governance. Much of the analysis of this issue has adopted a supply side perspective informed by the values of the orthodox scientific model of biomedical innovation, arguing that national and transnational regulation has failed to impose appropriate standards on the ‘illicit’ supply of stem cell treatments. In contrast, this paper shows how and why the analysis of global stem cell innovation governance must incorporate the market and health consumer demand into the conceptual framework. Central to the argument is the role of innovation models in mediating the relationship between demand and supply in the global market of new stem cell treatments. Different models of scientific and medical innovation mediate that relationship in different ways and, in jurisdictions where health consumer demand is frustrated, may result in parallel political demands for change in stem cell innovation governance. Such demands are likely to be resisted by the dominant scientific model, producing a further response from health consumers and a continuing dynamic in the political economy of stem cell treatments.     

The company you keep: Qualitative uncertainty in providing a club good

Clubs are typically experience goods. Potential members cannot ascertain precisely beforehand their quality (dependent endogenously on the club's facility investment and number of users, itself dependent on its prices). Members with unsatisfactory initial experiences discontinue visits. We show that a monopoly profit maximizer never offers a free trial period for such goods. For quality functions homogeneous of degree of at least minus one, a welfare maximizer, motivated by distributional concerns to mitigate disappointed consumers' losses, always does. We demonstrate the robustness of this finding by showing that (i) without qualitative uncertainty (thus, no disappointed customers), neither welfarist nor monopolist offers free trials; and (ii) if the planner pursues an objective mixing welfare maximization with profit maximization, the likelihood of free trials increases with the weight put on welfare maximization. Regarding club quality and usage, the monopolist provides a socially excessive level of quality to repeat buyers when the quality function is homogeneous of degree zero. With nonhomogeneous quality functions, the monopolist permits too little club usage; quality may or may not be socially excessive.     

Malaria and Economic Development

Malaria tends to have a negative correlation with national income per capita. Many existing studies emphasize how falling rates of malaria can enhance economic development due to the beneficial effect on human capital. This paper emphasizes that causality may also run in the opposite direction, in particular, that higher incomes—arising for reasons having nothing to do with human capital—may allow for increased prevention and treatment of malaria, and therefore contribute to the negative correlation. We analyze the malaria‐income relationship for 100 endemic countries over a 17‐year period using a simultaneous equations model that accounts for reverse causality and incidental associations. For most countries, income growth has been the most important driver of the negative correlation between malaria and income. Although reducing malaria may be its own reward, it takes much more than reductions in malaria to foster development. This holds widely for different samples of countries.     

Optimal accumulation in a small open economy with technological uncertainty

Summary. This paper analyzes the optimal allocation problem of a small trading country facing an uncertain technology. It is involved in production of many commodities. Differentiability cannot be guaranteed, hence, the Ramsey-Euler condition of optimality needs to be modified. From the optimality criterion, we derive a pair of conditions, which does not require differentiability. If “enough” uncertainty is allowed, the sequence of the distribution functions of investment expenditure converges uniformly to a unique invariant measure. In addition to the weak convergence of the stochastic process of investment expenditure we also have the sequences of the stochastic process of investment expenditure converging weakly. Received: September 8, 1994; revised version: September 25, 1997     

Industry structure and CEO characteristics: an empirical study of succession events

Based on 134 CEO succession events in nondiversified, manufacturing firms, this study examines the relationships between industry structure and the characteristics of CEO successors. The paper also explores the performance implications of the fit between industry structure and CEO successors. Results indicate that industry structure plays an important, but not pervasive, role in explaining variations in newly selected CEOs. Specifically, the higher the level of industry product differentiation, the lower the organizational tenure, the higher the educational level and the greater the likelihood of a nonthroughput background in the CEO successor; the higher the industry growth rate, the lower the organizational tenure and age of the CEO successor. However, findings provide very limited support for the normative view that firms which match CEO successor characteristics to industry structure realize better postsuccession performance than those with lower levels of fit. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corporate strategy,executive selection,and firm performance

This article investigates three related questions: (1) Is corporate diversification strategy associated with the level of firm-specific experience (tenure) of selected CEOs? (2) Are tenure levels of selected CEOs related to subsequent organizational performance? and (3) Does diversification strategy influence the impact that CEO firm-specific experience has on subsequent organizational performance? Results indicate that while diversification levels do not relate to extent of tenure, the selection of CEOs with lower levels of firm-specific experience results in significantly improved performance among nondiversified firms. No such relationship is observed in more diversified firms.¹ © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Debt Structure Adjustments and Long-Run Stock Price Performance

We examine the long-run implications of debt structure adjustments using a sample of U.S. bond IPOs from 1971 to 1994. Bond IPOs result in simultaneous and pronounced changes in both debt maturity and debt ownership structures. We document that firms engaging in debt IPOs substantially underperform their size-and-book-to-market-matched benchmarks by 33.39 and 55.99% over the 3- and 5-year post-offer periods. Our results are strikingly similar to those reported for equity offers but contrast the evidence for seasoned debt offers. We find evidence that debt IPOs are timed to coincide with the market having the highest expectations concerning firms' prospects. A negative relation is documented between debt maturity and future growth opportunities. In part, the underperformance can be attributed to significantly reduced growth opportunities following the offering. Post-offer underperformance is more pronounced for (a) longer maturity issues and (b) firms that do not experience an increase in bank monitoring. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: G12, G24, G30, D82.     

California’s Three Strikes Law Revisited: Assessing the Long-Term Effects of the Law

Previous studies on the three strikes legislation in California draw conclusions based on data immediately following the passage of the law, which cannot account for the full deterrent effect of the law. Moreover, they do not account for the incapacitation effect. Distinguishing between deterrence and incapacitation is important for determining the efficacy of the law. Using data from 1991 to 2009, this paper is the first to examine the long-run effects. Our results show that the law had a significant deterrent effect on all crimes, including non-triggering offenses. Overall, the incapacitation effect is less significant. Further, enhanced penalties cause some felons to substitute between violent crimes and property crimes which carry a lower sentence. However, there is little evidence of substitution within crime categories. Surprisingly however, the added deterrent effect of the third strike is significantly smaller than for the second strike. The small marginal deterrence from the third strike also raises questions about the justification for such extreme severity of punishment.