Retail network spatial expansion: An application of the percolation theory to hard discounters

This article concerns the spatial organization of a retail network. During the expansion of a retail network, the location decision process does not necessarily lead to a regular distribution of outlets throughout the territory. The case of 5 hard discount store networks in France in their development stage illustrates this situation. A hard discount network strategy to fight against incumbent stores relies on the postulate that its competitiveness stems from its perfect cost control, and consequently, its ability to impose its brands to the consumers. To explain hard discounter spatial strategies, the diffusion theory was primarily developed by retaining only the temporal dimension of the process. But this model is not well established for the disordered environment in which the networks are managed. The percolation theory facilitates a new approach of the diffusion in this disordered medium that represents the retail network.     

Global competition and cooperation in the electronics industry: the case of X-ray equipment, 1900–1970

The electronics industry is often regarded by scholars as an example of a sector driven by endless technological innovation and major competition between a few large companies, thus embodying the common view whereby the free market leads firms to innovate. On the other hand, some business historians have also emphasised that, since the beginning of the twentieth century, most of these companies were engaged in various international cartel agreements. The business and economic history literature on this industry reveals a clear-cut divide between the inter-war years and the post-war era. In this paper, however, we argue that technical and commercial cooperation between large electronics companies continued in various forms despite the spread of anti-trust policies after 1945. In this case study, we explore the global X-ray equipment industry from its beginnings around 1900 to the advent of the CT scanner in the early 1970s. The paper focuses on Siemens and Philips, the two largest manufacturers of radiological equipment. It demonstrates that both companies pursued their commercial and technical cooperation at least until the 1970s, although it was much less overt as during the interwar years.     

Wage differences between Austrian men and women: <Emphasis Type="Italic">semper idem?</Emphasis>

In most OECD countries, the wage gap between men and women has narrowed during the past two decades. Developments of the last 20 years, e.g., increased labour market attachment of women or the introduction of equal pay laws, may have reduced the gender wage gap. We investigate the extent, persistence, and socio-economic determinants of the gender wage gap in Austria, for the years 1983 and 1997. Using wage decomposition techniques, we find that the average gender wage gap was almost as high in 1997 as it was in 1983. Not accounting for differences, the gender wage gap dropped from 25.5 to 23.3% of men’s wages. Taking observable differences between men and women into account, we estimate that the mean gender wage gap that cannot be explained, i.e., discrimination against women, dropped from 17 to 14% of men’s wages. A decomposition of the gender wage gap over time indicates that both returns to human capital and less discrimination were responsible for the narrowing of the gender wage gap.

Value at Risk and Economic Growth

The improvement of data statistics as well as the econometrician methods have facilitated the introduction the new variables and factors I the economic growth analysis. In this sense, real variables have mainly been considered in the economic growth studies, but not financial or risk management aspects. In this sense, it is interesting to analyze the relationship between economic growth and value at risk and the feed-back process. The goal of the paper is to analyze the relationship between economic growth and risk management and the feed-back process. We will consider economic variables, including economic growth, rule of law, human capital, fiscal policy and monetary policy, among others, in our analysis. We will analyze the theoretical relationships between these variables and risk and the effects of risk on economic growth. We will also develop an empirical analysis considering the case of 15 European Union countries.

The evaluation of a surveillance system for violent and non-intentional injury mortality in Colombian cities

Since 2002, the Institute for Peace Promotion and Injury/Violence Prevention (CISALVA) at the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia and the Colombia Program at Georgetown University have developed and implemented 21 epidemiologically based municipal crime observatories in intermediate-sized municipalities in Colombia. These crime observatories serve as monitoring centres that provide low cost, geo-referenced methods of data collection and analysis, which allow cities to develop more responsive policies and prevention programmes and enhance governance. This article focuses on the methodology employed and lessons learned that may be applicable to similar settings. Worth noting within the results was a significant decrease in homicides after the first year of the programme. Whether or not such results could be attributed to the method or to the nature of the interventions and policy initiatives stemming from it remains open to conjecture.     

The factor content of regional bilateral trade: The role of technology and demand

The Heckscher–Ohlin–Vanek (HOV) model in its strict form has been strongly rejected by the data. Relaxing some assumptions of the standard HOV model is key to find improvements in its performance. We apply the Davis and Weinstein (2001) methodology to analyse the validity of the HOV model using regions rather than countries. Surprisingly, our results using data for 17 Spanish regions are similar to theirs with international data for OECD countries. Accounting for technological differences improves the predictive capacity of the factor proportions model and including trade costs and geography reduces significantly the missing trade problem. However, relaxing the assumption of factor price equalisation does not improve the performance of the HOV model in a regional setting.     

Equilibrium price formation in markets with differentially informed agents

We consider a pure exchange economy with a finite set of types of agents which have incomplete and asymmetric information on the states of nature. Our aim was to describe the equilibrium price formation and analyze how the lack of information may affect the allocation of resources. To do so, we adapt to an asymmetric information scenario a variant of the Shapley–Shubik game introduced by Dubey and Geanakoplos (J Math Econ 39:391–400, 2003 ).