Foreign education and international trade: empirical evidence from selected Latin American countries

Social ties among university students – of friendship, mutual trust and attachment to the alma mater – tend to be robust and enduring. Through information-diffusion and behaviour-enforcement mechanisms, they can boost the economic exchanges between countries. This paper tests the influence of Latin American people with a tertiary education in OECD countries on the bilateral trade between the home economy and the country of the alma mater, taking into account potential endogeneity concerns. Results show that Latin American student networks exert strong, positive and significant effects on bilateral imports and exports. A 10% increase in the number of Latin American students in the OECD economy boost bilateral trade by about 3%. At a more disaggregated level, their impact on differentiated goods is significantly higher than on homogenous products. Their incidence is lower in the presence of bilateral trade agreements and economic integration between countries. Results are robust to the deep economic and political transformations of the period considered, and to the use of different regressors and specifications.     

Brand‐Situation Congruity: The Roles of Self‐Construal and Brand Commitment

The present research examines the moderating roles of self‐construal and brand commitment in brand‐situation congruity effects in persuasion. Self‐construal refers to how individuals perceive themselves in the context of relationships with others (Singelis, 1994). Individuals with independent self‐construal, who emphasize autonomy and assertiveness, value consistency regardless of social contexts, whereas people with interdependent self‐construal value their relationships with others and adapt with flexibility to social situations. Commitment is a psychological state that globally represents the experience of dependence on a relationship and denotes a long‐term orientation, including a feeling of attachment to a relational partner and a desire to maintain a relationship (Rusbult, 1983). In the same vein, brand commitment refers to emotional or psychological attachment to and dependence on a brand (Beatty & Kahle, 1988x). Experiment 1 demonstrated that brand‐situation congruity, for which brand preference increases when the brand personality is congruent (vs. incongruent) with social situational cues, was stronger for interdependent (vs. independent) self‐construal individuals. Experiment 2 provided further support for the moderating role of self‐construal, when primed, in situation congruity effects as well as evidence for another moderator, brand commitment. That is, the moderating effect of self‐construal on brand‐situation congruity was stronger when consumers held weak (vs. strong) commitment to the target brand.     

Technological and Organizational Change and the Employment of Women: Early Twentieth-Century Evidence from the Ohio Manufacturing Sector

Abstract

Using a data set that tracks the employment and wages of male and female production and clerical workers in Ohio from 1914 to 1937, this study finds that among manufacturing establishments, female employment and real wages rose rapidly throughout this period, particularly within clerical occupations. There were also substantial increases in the proportion of women in Ohio's manufacturing workforce, and women's wage increases kept pace with those of men. After matching the employment and wage data to input and output data from Ohio's manufacturing census, the study estimates the parameters for industry group translog production functions. The estimates indicate that Ohio's manufacturers adopted new organizational structures and technologies that favored an increasingly intensive use of female clerical labor. The study performs a counterfactual exercise that illustrates the extent to which non-neutral technological and organizational changes over this period explain the observed increases in the employment and remuneration of female clerical workers.     

Global Geopolitics and Local Geoeconomics in Northwest Africa: The Industrial Port of Granadilla (Canary Islands,Spain)

In the world scenario of US unilateralism, this paper argues the competition for control over Africa's resources between the major powers (United States, the European Union and China) provides a renewed geostrategic situation for the Canary Islands (Spain). First, the political and economic rivalry over Northwest Africa adds new dimensions to the geostrategic location of the Archipelago, which constitute NATO's southern flank and a logistic platform for neighbouring Africa. Second, it focuses on the particular case of the industrial megaport envisaged for Granadilla (Tenerife), examining its geostrategic projection as an important infrastructure both for the Canarian ruling elites' geoeconomic interests and also for the geopolitical interests of the major world powers.     

It's no longer mine: the role of brand ownership and advertising in cross-border brand acquisitions

Although cross-border brand acquisitions are increasingly common in the global marketplace, research on how consumers respond to them is limited. Building on social identity and psychological ownership theories, we introduce the concept of brand ownership to the advertising literature, and show its negative effects on consumer reactions to a brand acquisition. Furthermore, we demonstrate that consumers’ disidentification (i.e., an oppositional motivation) with an acquiring country moderates the negative effect of consumers’ brand ownership on consumer attitudes after a brand acquisition. The results reveal that consumers with high levels of brand ownership develop more negative post-acquisition brand attitudes when a brand is acquired by a country with which consumers strongly disidentify (i.e. dissociative vs. out-group). Furthermore, our research introduces the concept of a brand ownership appeal in advertising, and demonstrates that it is an effective advertising strategy in enhancing post-acquisition brand attitudes for consumers with high levels of brand ownership. Important theoretical and managerial advertising implications conclude this research.     

Does Corruption Affect suicide? Econometric Evidence from OECD Countries

The question to what extent corruption influences suicide still remains unanswered. This paper examines the effect of corruption on suicide using a panel data approach for 24 OECD countries over the period 1995?C2004. Our results show that suicide rates are lower in countries with lower levels of corruption. We also find evidence that this effect is approximately three times larger for males than for females. It follows from these findings that corruption has a detrimental effect on societal well-being and its effect differs based on the social position of genders.     

Is Corporate Advertising Effective in a Crisis? The Effects of Crisis Type and Evaluative Tone of News Coverage

The present study examines how consumers respond to corporate advertising during a corporate crisis. In particular, it examines what impact two factors—crisis type and the evaluative tone of a news story—have on consumer responses to corporate advertising. Results of the experimental study suggest that the crisis type—an accident or a transgression crisis—is a critical factor affecting ad credibility and changes, between pre- and post-tests, in perceptions of and attitudes toward the corporation. In addition, the results reveal that while the effect of the evaluative tone of the news story is not statistically significant for each of the dependent variables, the marginally significant effect on the set of dependent variables calls for more careful attention to this issue in future research.     

Are commercial bank lending propensities useful in understanding small firm finance?

We consider recent criticism by Berger et al. (J Bank Finance 31:11–33, 2007) of the use of commercial bank lending propensities (e.g., small business loans/total assets) as research tools. We use 2SLS cross sectional regressions with bank fixed effects to examine the relationship between small business lending and bank size. Our results indicate that the propensity to lend to small businesses declines as bank size increases, and the growth in small business lending does not keep pace with the growth in bank size. An increase in bank asset size from $1 billion to $100 billion reduces the ratio of small business loans to total loans and leases by 28 percentage points. Contrary to Berger and Black (2007) we find that most small business loans are made by small banks. For 1993 to 2006 as a whole, small banks (those under $1 billion) accounted for only 14.1% of total deposits and 9.7% of total banking assets, but they accounted for 28.4% of small business loans outstanding. This is consistent with the pattern shown by lending propensities. We conclude that these propensities remain very useful tools in research on small firm finance.