Protecting Quality of Wine Exports to China: Barriers and Bridges

There is a great potential for wine to deteriorate during shipment and storage of wines being exported from the United States to China. Certification of storage conditions such as that provided by the Hong Kong Quality Assurance Agency (HKQAA) is a key bridge to protecting quality and maintaining value in the auction market there. A literature review and semistructured interviews with winery managers, freight forwarders, transportation experts, and representatives of HKQAA provide qualitative analysis of barriers and bridges to protecting quality. The article presents a strong case for the adoption of storage and transportation standards for wine, such as the Wine Storage Management System implemented by HKQAA. Looking at wine exports through the lens of Total Quality Management provides the basis for recommending formal certification.     

The effects of U.S. monetary policy on Colombia and Panama (2002–2007)

I study the economies of Colombia (floating exchange rate) and Panama (dollarized) to illustrate how the monetary policy of a large economy can export capital structure distortions to small open economies that follow different exchange rate regimes. The paper contributes to the literature on international business cycles in two ways. First, it adds to recent research that extends the Mises–Hayek business cycle theory to an international context. Second, most current research abstracts from effects on the production structures of emerging market economies when analyzing the transmission of monetary policy shocks. This paper seeks to fill this gap by studying structural effects of U.S. monetary policy on the economies of Colombia (floating exchange rate) and Panama (dollarized).     

DRUG POLICY AND INTERGENERATIONAL INCOME MOBILITY IN THE UNITED STATES

A conviction for drug possession blocks some of the most common pathways through which individuals from low income families achieve upward economic mobility in the United States, such as access to higher education, entry‐level employment, and military service. These considerations are of growing importance because the number of drug‐related arrests have nearly quadrupled since 1980. This article estimates the effect of a conviction for drug possession on earnings mobility using a sample of individuals born between 1980 and 1984, some of the first cohorts to come of age in the context of intensive U.S. drug criminalization and enforcement. To distinguish the effect of a drug conviction from the effect of drug use or general criminality, I compare mobility among individuals with drug convictions to control groups who self‐report significant drug use and who have had interactions with the criminal justice system that did not lead to a drug conviction. I find that relative to these groups, a drug conviction reduces the probability of transitioning upward from various points in the lower half of the income distribution by 10–15 percentage points, or as much as 50%, and that these effects are substantially stronger for non‐whites than for whites. These findings suggest that a policy of decriminalizing nonviolent drug possession would substantially increase intergenerational mobility among low income populations, and this effect should be weighed alongside more conventional costs and benefits in formulating optimal drug policy. (JEL J38, J15, K42)     

Tariffs and Wages in Trade Theory

The theory of production and trade is motivated in large part by the effects of tariffs on wages. General equilibrium models that examine these effects include constant costs, factor proportions, specific factors, imperfect competition and noncompetitive factor market. The present paper reviews the effects of tariffs on wages in small open economies across this broad range of trade theory. From this wide perspective, tariffs support wages only under narrow sets of assumptions. There should be no presumption that tariffs support wages.     

INVESTMENT ANALYSIS FOR AUTOMOTIVE ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURING: A CASE STUDY

Investment opportunities for electronics manufacturing can create many challenging components within the standard context of economic analysis theory. First, most of these operations are dependent on significant capital investment with short analysis periods due to technological obsolescence. These problems are compounded with the reality of short product lives and fluctuating consumer demands. Perhaps the most challenging environment for electronics manufacturing is that of automotive electronics. These facilities are typically faced with similar manufacturing issues common in all electronics production but have the added difficulty in meeting very stringent quality and reliability requirements in a globally competitive market. This case study investigates the challenges in evaluating investment options in electronics manufacturing and pays specific attention to those issues that are most common to the automotive electronics market. In addition, the analysis investigates various sensitivity issues related to these investment opportunities and investigates an alternative investment option for a flexible manufacturing process.     

Innovation in family and non-family SMEs: an exploratory analysis

This study provides an exploratory analysis of differences between family and non-family firms in innovation investment, product and process innovation outcomes, and labor productivity. Using data from the Community Innovation Survey on 2,087 German small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we observe significant disparities at each stage of the innovation process. Whereas family SMEs have a higher propensity to invest in innovation at all, conditional on investing in innovation, these companies do so less intensively than their non-family counterparts. Family SMEs further tend to outperform non-family SMEs in terms of process innovation outcomes when controlling for innovation investment. Given the level of product and process innovation, however, family SMEs underperform regarding labor productivity in comparison to non-family SMEs. These findings complement previous empirical research by illustrating how the presence of a dominant family relates to innovation inputs and outputs of SMEs in Europe’s largest economy and its innovative SME sector.     

Small clicks,great effects: the immediate and delayed influence of websites containing serious games on behavior and attitude

The number of websites containing persuasive serious games and advergames has increased over the past several years, but their immediate and delayed effects on behavior are still not well understood. The present field experiment (n = 388, varied socio-professional groups) demonstrates that interactivity linked to this type of website provokes positive effects on immediate behavior (purchases of energy-saving light bulbs, ESLBs) in a ‘real setting.’ It further affected the behavior (installation of ESLBs at home), the memorization of the website's arguments, gains in knowledge, attitude, and other judgments regarding ESLBs, when measured two weeks later. The digital signature of a commitment to perform an expected behavior via a web page also provokes positive behavioral effects. This can accumulate through the effects of interactivity. We close with a discussion of the possible psychological processes involved, theoretical and practical implications and limitations as well as new perspectives for advertising and advergames research.