Cross-national product value perceptions

Can a psychographic variable, i.e., a value perception of a product, be successfully compared across national boundaries? Using students in four countries, the authors tested for similarity in a two-stage process. Value perception was tested by comparing samples using only the owners of the products first, and then using only the nonowners. Similarities were found that bridge national borders. These similarities are evident where the respondents sampled are owners of the base products or have a high degree of market knowledge regarding these products.     

The international diffusion of biotechnology: the arrival of developing countries

According to conventional economic theory, countries tend to converge in economic and technological terms towards the leader. More recently, empirical approaches by economic historians (Abramovitz, Landes, Madison, Reinert) have found that while some countries are catching up, others are falling increasingly behind. Several theories compete to explain the precise mechanisms that explain how technological diffusion takes place. The paper reviews them and draws testable hypotheses for the study of international biotechnology diffusion. Biotechnologies are one of the leading sets of technologies developed in the late 20th century. They encompass applications in agriculture, chemicals, environment and pharmaceuticals. The United States has led the way in both scientific and industrial development of biotechnologies and these have quickly spread to Canada, Japan and Western Europe. Are the main developing countries adopting biotechnology? A study of the adoption of human health biotechnology in eight developing countries in Asia (China, India, Korea, and Singapore) and Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) was conducted, based on the analysis of in situ interviews, patents and scientific publication. The study shows a marked process of adoption and learning in science: each of the above-mentioned developing countries is increasing its share of world publication between 1996 and 2008. However, their share of biotechnology patents for the same period has barely increased. There are also regional differences in terms of sectoral concentration; Latin America, Argentina and Brazil are eager adopters of agricultural biotechnology and are moving up in the pharmaceutical records. Several Argentinean, Chinese, Indian, and South Korean pharmaceutical companies have been particularly active in the development of biogenerics.     

Media richness and internet exploration

Previous research found that media richness is associated with positive evaluation of a web site. An experiment was carried out where participants were instructed to explore a web site presenting a popular town: Venice. According to a random distribution, participants were exposed (or not) to street‐sounds when exploring the web site and had the possibility to control (or not) the photography (using a 360° navigation with their mouse) displayed on the web site. Results shown that higher evaluation were associated with sounds and mouse‐control. Theory of media richness was used to explain our results and the managerial application for tourism was discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Roles of extension and ethno-religious networks in acceptance of resource-conserving agriculture among Ethiopian farmers

This article analyses roles of social and extension networks in adoption of resource-conserving practices among Ethiopian farmers. We gathered data from 297 randomly sampled households on their agricultural practices, social networks, access to the extension, and geographical location. After examining general determinants of practising resource-conserving agriculture, we employ a two-stage regression with full-maximum likelihood correction for selection bias to establish the roles of general social networks and external professionals in acceptance of conservation techniques. In accordance with previous research, probit regression in the first stage shows that the access to extension increases with farmers’ wealth and the size of their personal networks, and decreases with the distance of their households from village centres. However, after accounting for this unequal access to extension, the second-stage linear regression shows that regardless of education, wealth or geographical location, those whose religion and ethnicity match with their agent, report learning more about conservation from extension sources. Furthermore, farmers who are socially well connected within the community tend to be less receptive to agents’ recommendations regarding resource conservation. Dissemination policy of conservation agriculture should consider the ethnic and religious affinity between farmers and their extension agents. It also needs to pay more attention to socially and geographically isolated individuals.     

Tax System Sustainability Evaluation: A Model for EU Countries

Intereconomics - We follow the multi-dimensional approach to socio-economic sustainability and distinguish among the needs of society in the four dimensions that make up the basic pillars in our...     

Joint Ventures versus Contractual Agreements: An Empirical Investigation

In this paper, we empirically investigate the determinants of the governance form of strategic alliances. We use a database with 1,344 worldwide alliances in several industrial sectors. In contrast with previous empirical studies, we find that alliances undertaking R&D activities are more likely to use loose forms of organization (contractual agreements) than more hierarchical ones (joint ventures), and this result is even stronger when the alliance takes place in technologically sophisticated sectors. Moreover, we show that alliances between rival firms tend also to be organized with forms closer to arm’s length transactions. When the scope of an alliance is multidimensional or the alliance is an international one, however, firms prefer more hierarchical organizations such as joint ventures. This paper was partially written while the first author was visiting the University of the Basque Country. We would like to thank Reinhilde Veugelers and the project FWO spillovers 6.0131.98 at the Katholieke Universiteit of Leuven for the use of the K.U. database. Financial support from projects Progetto Giovani Ricercatori – 1999 Universitá di Udine, SEJ 2004-02172/ECON, 9/UPV 00035.321-13560/2001, UPV 00038.321-13503/2001 is gratefully acknowledged. We are also indebted to two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.     

Incorporating rigidity and commitment in the timing structure of macroeconomic games

This paper proposes a novel framework that generalizes the timing structure of games. Building on alternating move games and models of rational inattention, the players' actions may be rigid, i.e., infrequent. This rigidity in the timing of moves makes the game more dynamic and asynchronous, acting as a commitment mechanism. Therefore, it can enhance cooperation and often eliminate inefficient equilibrium outcomes present in the static (normal form) game. Interestingly, (i) this can happen even in a finite game (possibly as short as two periods) and (ii) without reputation building. Furthermore, (iii) the required degree of commitment may be under some circumstances arbitrarily low and under others infinitely high. Our main example comes from macroeconomics in which various rigidities have played a central role. Investigating the Kydland–Prescott–Barro–Gordon monetary policy game, we derive the necessary and sufficient degree of long-term policy commitment to low inflation under which the influential time-inconsistency problem is eliminated.     

Correction to: Multinational corporations and tax havens: evidence from country‑by‑country reporting

International Tax and Public Finance - The original version of this article contained a mistake in the co-author name “Javier Garcia?Bernando”.     

Prevalence and Forms of Workplace Bullying Among University Employees

Over the past decade, a growing number of Anglo-American and Scandinavian researchers have documented the extent to which the university environment provides opportunities for workplace bullying. By contrast, there has been a visible lack of similar studies in non-Western national contexts, such as the Czech Republic and other Central Eastern European (CEE) countries. The present article addresses this gap by reporting the findings of the first large-scale study into workplace bullying among university employees in the Czech Republic. The exposure to bullying was assessed with the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) in a sample of 1,533 university employees. The results showed that 13.6 % of the respondents were classified as bullying targets based on an operational definition of bullying (weekly exposure to one negative act), while 7.9 % of the respondents were identified as targets based on self-reports. This prevalence is comparable to bullying rates in Scandinavia but considerably lower than in Anglo-American universities. Differences between Anglo-American and Czech universities were also found with respect to the status of perpetrators (bullying was perpetrated mostly by individual supervisors in the Czech sample), perceived causes of bullying (structural causes perceived as relatively unimportant in the Czech sample), and targets’ responses to bullying (minimal use of formal responses in the Czech sample). The authors propose that cross-cultural differences as well as differences between the Anglo-American model of “neoliberal university” and the Czech model of university governance based on “academic oligarchy” can be used to explain these different findings.