Contribution to a renewed framework for analysing the interactions between family and capitalist agriculture

We examine whether current assumptions concerning the declining resilience of family farming and the growing influence of capitalist forms of agricultural production are being confirmed in the cocoa sector of Cameroon and the coffee sector of Kenya. This study is based on surveys of 181 family and capitalist farmers. Our results indicate that the capitalist approach is being consolidated on former colonial coffee estates in Kenya and on the cocoa pioneer front in Cameroon. This study also shows that in areas with a long history of family farming, family forms are showing good resilience due to a diversification of activities and sources of income, especially nonagricultural ones, and the patrimonialization of the land. Finally, this study proposes a framework for analysing the interactions between family and capitalist agriculture and their respective multisectorial strategies. For family farming, these strategies are based on work force mobility, whereas for capitalist agriculture, they are based on financial capital mobility.     

What makes Islamic banks different? A multivariate approach

Using data from 8615 banks (including 123 Islamic banks) in 124 developed and developing countries for the period between 2006 and 2012, we examine the financial characteristics that distinguish between conventional and Islamic banks. As banks’ financial characteristics are multi-faceted concepts, our indicators are constructed using principal component analysis. We find that Islamic banks are more capitalized, more liquid and more profitable, but have more volatile earnings compared to US and European banks. However, similarities in terms of liquidity and earnings volatility are more noticeable when the sample is limited to banks operating in countries where both systems coexist. Finally, we find that higher capital makes the returns of Islamic banks more volatile, while higher liquidity decreases the profitability of conventional banks.     

Locating fire stations: An integrated approach for Belgium

This paper illustrates the potential of a decision-support system developed for Belgium by a consortium of universities and a private firm, in the framework of a public call made by the Ministry of the Interior. The system is designed to provide the Belgian emergency management administration with a complete decision-aid tool for the location of fire stations. The originality of the project is that it includes a risk-modeling approach developed at a national scale. This analysis involves a multiscale GIS that includes a thorough representation of the physical, human and economic spatial realities, a risk-modeling approach, an adequate optimal location and allocation model (taking into account both queuing and staffing problems). The final result is an interactive operational tool for defining locations, equipment allocations, staffing, response times, the cost/efficiency trade-off, etc. This flexible tool can be used in an assessment as well as a prospective context. It has been used to draw a national reorganization plan for fire stations that started being implemented in 2010.     

Subjective performance of patent examiners,implicit contracts,and self‐funded patent offices

Self‐funded patent offices should be concerned with patent quality (patents should be granted to only deserving innovations) and quantity (as revenues come from fees paid by applicants). In this context, we investigate what is the impact of the self‐funded constraint on different bonus contracts and how these contracts affect the examiners' incentive to prosecute patent applications. We consider contracts in which a patent office offers bonuses on quantity quotas (explicit contract) and on quality outcome (either an implicit contract or an explicit contract based on a quality proxy). We find that a self‐funded constrained agency should make different organization choices of incentives. For a low quality proxy precision, an agency facing a tight budget operates well with implicit contracts. However, by only relaxing moderately the budget constraint, the agency might be worse off simply because this will preclude implicit contracts. Only very large patenting fees might allow the agency to compensate for the loss of implicit contracts.     

A note on mixture sets in decision theory

Decisions in Economics and Finance -     

License Auctions and Market Structure

We analyze the interplay between license auctions and market structure in a model with several incumbents and several potential entrants. The focus is on the competitiveness induced by the number of auctioned licenses. Under plausible conditions, we show that auctioning more licenses need not result in a more competitive final outcome, contrary to what common sense suggests. This is due to the nature of competition among incumbents, which sometimes exhibits free-riding. We illustrate some results with examples drawn from the recent European license-auctions for third generation (3G) mobile telephony.     

Optimal marketing behavior in oligopoly

In this paper we first generalize the Dorfman-Steiner theorem to the case of an oligopoly with multiple competitive reactions and expansible industry demand. We then review the literature through a series of corollaries. On the basis of the theorem developed, we attempt to shed light on a oligopolistic market over a period characterized by the raise of a leader.     

Disutility of pollution and endogenous growth

Endogenous growth is generally built on a positive externality hypothesis which is the opposite of a negative externality caused by pollution. We study a linear technology with simple assumption: an aggregate capital stock which represents a learning by doing effect and a pollution flow proportional to production. In this framework, we analyse the precise effects on growth of the disutility of pollution and its interaction with the utility of consumption in an economy without abatement technology. The decentralized equilibrium always leads to unlimited growth, but optimal growth is often limited (the negative effect of pollution dominating the positive effect of learning by doing). In this case, the optimal policy which leads the decentralized economy to follow the optimal growth path is to tax capital; in contrast with the optimal subsidy policy in an economy without pollution. When an abatement technology is introduced, the optimal solution can lead the economy to unlimited growth, whatever the form of the utility function.     

The financial content of inflation risks in the euro area

Recent studies have emphasized that survey-based inflation risk measures are informative about future inflation, and thus are useful for monetary authorities. However, these data are typically only available at a quarterly frequency, whereas monetary policy decisions require a more frequent monitoring of such risks. Using the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters, we show that high-frequency financial market data have predictive power for the low-frequency survey-based inflation risk indicators observed at the end of a quarter. We rely on MIDAS regressions for handling the problem of mixing data with different frequencies that such an analysis implies. We also illustrate that upside and downside risks react differently to financial indicators.     

The European sectoral social dialogue: questions of representation and membership

In the debates on the European social dialogue as a potential level of supranational industrial relations, the key questions of representations and mandates are often neglected. To what extent can the European sectoral social dialogue act for national constituencies across 27 Member States in the perspective of collective action by European associations? This article addresses this question by the means of three dimensions: the representation of heterogeneous members, the various degrees of national players' commitment in the European committees and finally, the definition of a common agenda among members.