Political budget cycles and voting within a federal country: The influence of political alignment

We study how distributive politics affects political budget cycles and voting within a federal country. Our model predicts not only that the president favors politically aligned governors with larger transfers, but also that voters favor gubernatorial candidates aligned with the expected presidential incumbent because larger transfers are expected in the future. These predictions are upheld by the data from Argentinean provinces during the 1984–2014 period. Our findings imply that political alignment can trump the selection effect of voting the most competent candidate. This can help explain in particular coattail effects when gubernatorial and presidential elections are concurrent.     

Trip Cultural Activities and Tourism Expenditure in Emerging Urban‐cultural Destinations

Although tourism expenditure is determined by different factors, the literature has not analysed the extent to which trip cultural activities affect tourism expenditure in the destination. The focus of this paper is a microeconomic analysis performed in 14 emerging urban‐cultural destinations in Andalusia (Spain). The results confirm that there are activities related to cultural visits, attendance at events or gastronomic activities that determine tourism expenditure. These results guide the implementation of specific actions by the policy‐makers in these destinations aimed at increasing the economic impact of tourism, based on the creation of high value‐added tourism products to overcome their mere dependence on built heritage. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sustainable Entrepreneurship Research: Taking Stock and looking ahead

The recognition of entrepreneurship as a solution to, rather than a cause of, environmental degradation and social inequality moved the field to identify a new type of entrepreneurial activity, namely sustainable entrepreneurship. Scholarly interest has spiked in recent years; however, aside from its aspirational appeal, there remains a lack of understanding of the nature of the phenomenon and the future of sustainable entrepreneurship in theory and practice. This review seeks to provide a conceptual basis for stimulating scholarly thought and improving our collective understanding of sustainable entrepreneurship as a distinct subdomain within entrepreneurship research. Based on boundary definition and delineation of main features, this review critically discusses the main challenges ahead and elaborates on the research implications and future research directions beyond current, dominant approaches to entrepreneurial action. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

How ready-to-use therapeutic food shapes a new technological regime to treat child malnutrition

Since the turn of the 21st century ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) has emerged as the preferred solution to treat acute malnutrition without complications. RUTF is a more appropriate technology than formerly prevalent powdered milk solutions because it enables outpatient care, simpler treatment protocols and production in the field. In this paper we analyze the forces driving the diffusion of RUTF as an innovation to treat child malnutrition and discuss the main features characterizing the new technological regime that results from its wide adoption. We combine the theoretical discussion and the review of secondary sources with insights from field research in Ethiopia, encompassing personal interviews with relevant parties and direct observation of how RUTF works in practice. This technology assessment exercise enables us to suggest some opportunities for policy intervention.     

Regulating the banking industry in transition economies: Exploring interactions between capital and reserve requirements

This paper examines the ‘prudential' role of reserve requirements in transition economies using a general-equilibrium banking model. The analysis stresses the role that reserve requirements may play in enforcing an adequate level of bank capitalization in a context in which it is difficult to assess the true value of bank assets. The paper also explores the interactions that exist between capital and reserve requirements and the effect of these regulations on the financial structure of banks and on the level of credit and interest rates.     

School completion in urban Latin America: the voices of young people from an informal settlement

Despite progress in improving secondary school completion in Latin America, a high proportion of young people from urban marginalised neighbourhoods continue to drop out. On the basis of in-depth interviews with young people in an informal settlement of the City of Buenos Aires, the paper aims to broaden the understanding of the processes that lead to school dropout in these neighbourhoods. It does so by examining what young people value being and doing, and how they interpret the value of secondary school in their own lives and contexts. The results point to the critical importance of the family in young peoples’ processes of reasoning and decision-making, the complex interaction between capabilities, and the benefits of schools that provide social and emotional support to students and families. The paper argues that listening to the voices of young people can give significant insights for the design of policies to close the gap in education outcomes in segregated urban contexts.     

Polychoric versus Pearson correlations in exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of ordinal variables

Given that the use of Likert scales is increasingly common in the field of social research it is necessary to determine which methodology is the most suitable for analysing the data obtained; although, given the categorization of these scales, the results should be treated as ordinal data it is often the case that they are analysed using techniques designed for cardinal measures. One of the most widely used techniques for studying the construct validity of data is factor analysis, whether exploratory or confirmatory, and this method uses correlation matrices (generally Pearson) to obtain factor solutions. In this context, and by means of simulation studies, we aim to illustrate the advantages of using polychoric rather than Pearson correlations, taking into account that the latter require quantitative variables measured in intervals, and that the relationship between these variables has to be monotonic. The results show that the solutions obtained using polychoric correlations provide a more accurate reproduction of the measurement model used to generate the data.     

Promotion dynamics the Peter Principle: Incumbents vs. external hires

The “Peter Principle” (Peter and Hull, 1969; Fairburn and Malcomson, 2001; Lazear, 2004) suggests that individuals are “promoted to their level of incompetence”. A corollary of the “Peter Principle” prediction is that external hires should have an advantage when competing with incumbents for a higher position. Using five years of personnel records from a single large U.S. corporation, this paper contributes to the literature on internal labor markets and intra-firm job mobility by testing this prediction for career advancement. Results support the idea of differences in promotion dynamics among incumbents and external hires, since past career advancement within the firm result in a lower probability of subsequent promotion, even after controlling for workers' heterogeneity and tenure on the current job. The advantage for external hires does not hold once other job changes (lateral transfers, task reorganizations) are considered, highlighting that promotions are a very different job placement mechanism than transfers. Overall, the evidence points out towards declining performance following promotion, as opposed to alternative competing hypothesis of probation placement or “handicapping” external candidates.     

Would You Choose Your Preferred Option? Comparing Choice and Recoded Ranking Experiments

Previous research has shown that results from a choice experiment are statistically different from those obtained from a ranking experiment that is recoded and treated as a choice experiment using only the first rank. By avoiding some of the shortcomings of previous comparisons, we obtain the opposite results using data from the valuation of a cork oak reforestation program in the south of Spain. Structural models and welfare estimations are statistically indistinguishable irrespective of the use of parametric or bootstrapping tests. Further, we employ follow-up questions and subsample analysis to test whether divergences appear when potential effects are isolated.