Piggy Banks: Financial Intermediaries as a Commitment to Save

Banks and other intermediaries may help savers commit to investment plans that savers could not stick to if they held assets directly. We illustrate this commitment function using a version of the Diamond and Dybvig (1983) model where savers’ short-run liquidity needs are correlated with shocks to investment opportunities. The investment securities are all freely tradeable, yet savers still do better if they delegate their investment decisions to an intermediary that overrides the savers’ liquidity demands when investment opportunities warrant. Bank CDs, insurance annuities, pensions, and even social security, by locking funds out of reach, may all constitute real world examples of this commitment role of financial intermediaries.     

Advanced practice nurse outcomes 1990-2008: a systematic review

Advanced practice registered nurses have assumed an increasing role as providers in the health care system, particularly for underserved populations. The aim of this systematic review was to answer the following question: Compared to other providers (physicians or teams without APRNs) are APRN patient outcomes of care similar? This systematic review of published literature between 1990 and 2008 on care provided by APRNs indicates patient outcomes of care provided by nurse practitioners and certified nurse midwives in collaboration with physicians are similar to and in some ways better than care provided by physicians alone for the populations and in the settings included. Use of clinical nurse specialists in acute care settings can reduce length of stay and cost of care for hospitalized patients. These results extend what is known about APRN outcomes from previous reviews by assessing all types of APRNs over a span of 18 years, using a systematic process with intentionally broad inclusion of outcomes, patient populations, and settings. The results indicate APRNs provide effective and high-quality patient care, have an important role in improving the quality of patient care in the United States, and could help to address concerns about whether care provided by APRNs can safely augment the physician supply to support reform efforts aimed at expanding access to care.     

An experimental test of behavior under team production

This study reports experiments that examine behavior under team production and a piece rate. In the experiments, participants complete a forecasting task and are rewarded based on the accuracy of their forecasts. In the piece‐rate condition, participants are paid based on their own performance, whereas the team‐production condition rewards participants based on the average performance of the team. Overall, there is no statistically significant difference in performance between the conditions. However, this result masks important differences in the behavior of men and women across the conditions. Men in the team‐production condition increase their performance relative to men in the piece‐rate condition. However, this gap in male performances across conditions diminishes over the course of the experiment. In contrast, women in the team‐production condition show significantly lower performance than the women in the piece rate. As a consequence of these differences, men in the team‐production condition show significantly better performance than women in the team‐production condition. We also find evidence that men show stronger performance when they are in teams with a larger variation in skill level. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Scottish theme towns: have new identities enhanced development?

Three small towns in southwest Scotland have recently been branded as distinct theme towns, based on books, artists and food. This is an attempt to make them more attractive to visitors and thereby improve their economy. The objective of this research is to establish whether the new identities possessed by the towns have enhanced their development. It is argued, using data reviewing the past decade, that they have all developed, albeit at different rates, in terms of the economy and culture. Moreover, it is maintained that social capital has been enhanced and is a factor whose importance has been under-appreciated by planners and observers of this type of process. The relevance of the new identity to the pre-branding identity is also seen as a factor in successful development and ideas of authenticity and heritage are brought to bear on the relationship.     

Network legitimacy diffusion: a model for corporate entrepreneurship

International corporate entrepreneurship increasingly requires broader internal and external networks and legitimacy seeking in areas where the corporation and the entrepreneur are not well known. In this article, the important factors that influence the degree of legitimacy granted to corporate entrepreneurs are proposed and discussed. Specifically, we identify three primary levels of legitimacy: pragmatic legitimacy, normative legitimacy, and structural legitimacy. A model is proposed that suggests that organizations move through these levels of legitimacy resulting in differing brokering behaviors for network building. In addition, we integrate this effort into a global perspective by focusing on corporate entrepreneurs who seek to engage in international efforts. Implications for future research are provided.     

Ocupational segregation,labour force participation and the relative earnings of men and women

A model of the labour market is developed in which particiaption rates of men and women,wages rates of men and women and occupational segregation are determined simultaneously. The model is estimated using cross-sectional data from Australia. The most important empirical results are that (a) particiaption rates,wage rates and occupational segregation should be viewed as being simultaneously determined,(b) differences in male and female labour-force attactment and human capital attainment are important determinants of the gender composition of occupations and (c)there is little direct evidence in this study to support discrimination-based theories of occupational segregation.     

Making things the same: Gases,emission rights and the politics of carbon markets

This paper analyses the development of carbon markets: markets in permits to emit greenhouse gases or in credits earned by not emitting them. It describes briefly how such markets have come into being, and discusses in more detail two aspects of the efforts to ‘make things the same’ in carbon markets: how different gases are made commensurable, and how accountants have struggled to find a standard treatment of ‘emission rights’. The paper concludes by discussing the attitude that should be taken to carbon markets (for example by environmentalists) and the possibility of developing a ‘politics of market design’ oriented to making such markets more effective tools of abatement.     

A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of R&D,Patents, and Product Innovation on Firm Performance

Because of increasing levels of competition and decreasing product life cycles, a firm's ability to generate a continuous stream of innovations may be more important than ever in allowing a firm to improve profitability and maintain competitive advantage This paper investigates several issues that are central to an examination of the innovation productivity in a firm. First, the relationship between a firm's commitment to research and development and its innovative outcomes is examined. Two innovative outcomes are analyzed: (1) invention, which focuses on the development of new ideas; and (2) innovation, the development of commercially viable products or services from creative ideas. Invention is measured by the number of patents granted, and innovation is assessed by the number of new product announcements. Second, because many inventions ultimately result in marketable innovations and because patents may provide protection for new products, the relationship between patents and product announcements is also investigated. Finally, the ability of a firm to benefit from its inventions and innovations is studied by examining their separate effects on firm performance, measured as return on assets (ROA) and sales growth. Drawing from a sample of 272 firms in 35 industries over 19 years, the results from a model of simultaneous equations provided support for some of the hypotheses, but several other surprising findings were found. As expected, R&D spending was positively related to patents. This finding is consistent with others who argue that internal research capabilities, particularly those with a strong basic research component, is key to enabling a firm to generate creative outputs. More surprising was the finding of increasing returns to scale to R&D spending. While this contradicts much of the existing research, it is consistent with economic arguments for the advantages of scale in innovation. Also interesting is the finding that, while a significant curvilinear relationship exists between R&D spending and product announcements, it is not the predicted inverse‐U but instead a U‐shaped relationship. Consistent with previous work, product announcements were found to be positively related to both performance measures. A negative relationship was found between patents and both ROA and sales growth. While these findings were unexpected, they are intriguing and call into question the value of patents as protection mechanisms. In addition, these results may be resulting from the rise of strategic patenting, where an increasing number of firms are using patents as strategic weapons. As expected, a positive relationship was found between patents and new product announcements.     

Disappointment aversion equilibrium in a futures market

This article examines the effect of disappointment aversion on the equilibrium in a commodity futures market. Consider a commodity market with a producer and a speculator. We show that the equilibrium price is positively related to either agent's risk or disappointment aversion, and to the market volatility. The market trading volume is positively related to the producer's risk or disappointment aversion, but negatively related to the speculator's risk or disappointment aversion. The producer lowers his or her reference point in response to an increase in the risk aversion or disappointment aversion of either agent, and to an increase in spot price volatility. The speculator raises his or her reference point when the producer becomes more risk averse or disappointment averse, or when the spot price becomes more volatile. A more disappointment‐averse speculator will lower his or her reference point. However, a more risk‐averse speculator raises (lowers) the reference point if he or she is less (more) risk averse than the producer. Numerical examples are provided to further support the above analytical results. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 23:135–150, 2003