University Students’ Attitudes Towards Entrepreneurship: A Two Countries Comparison

There is general agreement that attitudes towards the entrepreneur, entrepreneurial activity, and its social function are determinant factors for university students to decide an entrepreneurial career.This empirical study aims at assessing and comparing the attitudes of university students towards entrepreneurship and enterprise formation in Catalonia and Puerto Rico, using a sample of 837 and 435 students, respectively.Results reveal a positive entrepreneur’s image. Both samples have a favorable perception of desirability of new venture creation, although the perception of feasibility is by far not so positive and only a small percentage has the firm intention to create a new company.     

Evaluación de las prácticas de trabajo decente en las empresas. Análisis de las metodologías de calificación ambiental,social y de gobernanza

Las agencias de calificación ambiental, social y de gobernanza (ASG) han adquirido una función preeminente en el ámbito de la inversión responsable como proveedoras de datos no financieros. La bibliografía anterior sobre la construcción de métricas ASG no esclarece los procedimientos de las agencias para evaluar el trabajo decente. A partir del análisis de seis agencias de calificación, los autores investigan cómo se miden y evalúan los resultados empresariales en la dimensión de trabajo decente, señalando las dificultades conexas. El objetivo es determinar en qué medida la inversión responsable y las calificaciones ASG contribuyen a promover y a mejorar el trabajo decente en las empresas.     

Introducing Environmental Variables in Nonparametric Frontier Models: a Probabilistic Approach

This paper proposes a general formulation of a nonparametric frontier model introducing external environmental factors that might influence the production process but are neither inputs nor outputs under the control of the producer. A representation is proposed in terms of a probabilistic model which defines the data generating process. Our approach extends the basic ideas from Cazals et al. (2002) to the full multivariate case. We introduce the concepts of conditional efficiency measure and of conditional efficiency measure of order-m. Afterwards we suggest a practical way for computing the nonparametric estimators. Finally, a simple methodology to investigate the influence of these external factors on the production process is proposed. Numerical illustrations through some simulated examples and through a real data set on Mutual Funds show the usefulness of the approach.JEL Classification: C13, C14, D20     

A coalitional theory of unemployment insurance and employment protection

This paper examines the role of coalition formation in the empirically observed negative correlation between employment protection and unemployment benefit. We study an economy composed of four groups of agents (capitalists, unemployed people, low- and high-skilled workers), each one represented by a politician. Politicians first form political parties and then compete in a winner-takes-all election by simultaneously proposing policy bundles composed of an employment protection level and an unemployment benefit. We first show that, in the absence of parties (i.e., in a citizen-candidate model), low-skilled workers are decisive and support a maximum employment protection level together with some unemployment benefit. We then obtain that, under some conditions, allowing for party formation results in all policy equilibria belonging to the Pareto set of the coalition formed by high-skilled workers together with unemployed people. Policies in this Pareto set exhibit a negative correlation between employment protection and unemployment benefit.     

Adaptation and Mitigation in Long-term Climate Policy

The paper analytically explores the optimal allocation of investments into mitigation and environmental adaptation against climate change damages at a macroeconomic level. The economic-environmental model is formulated as a social planner problem where adaptation and abatement investments are separate decision variables. The existence of a unique steady state is proven. A comparative static analysis of optimal investments leads to essential implications for associated long-term environmental policies. It is shown that the optimal policy mix between adaptation and mitigation is lower for countries with higher economic efficiency for all applicable parameter ranges. Data calibration and numerical simulations are provided to estimate practical validity of theoretical outcomes.     

Do brain drain and poverty result from coordination failures?

The bidirectional causal links between high-skilled emigration and poverty can give rise to multiple equilibria and coordination failures. Two countries sharing identical characteristics may end up in either a “low poverty-low brain drain” equilibrium or in a “high poverty-high brain drain” equilibrium. In this paper, we build a model which endogenizes high-skilled emigration and economic performances in order to derive the conditions under which multiplicity occurs. After identifying country-specific parameters, we find that in the majority of developing countries, the best equilibrium is selected and that the observed brain drain is inevitable. In 22 small developing countries however, the worse equilibrium prevails, implying that poverty and brain drain are increased by coordination failure. These countries require appropriate development policies, such as a temporary subsidization of the repatriation of their high-skilled expatriates. Our results are robust to the inclusion of a brain gain mechanism.     

Asymmetry, realised volatility and stock return risk estimates

In this paper we estimate minimum capital risk requirements for short and long positions with three investment horizons, using the traditional GARCH model and two other GARCH-type models that incorporate the possibility of asymmetric responses of volatility to price changes. We also address the problem of the extremely high estimated persistence of the GARCH model to generate observed volatility patterns by including realised volatility as an explanatory variable into the model??s variance equation. The results suggest that the inclusion of realised volatility improves the GARCH forecastability as well as its ability to calculate accurate minimum capital risk requirements and makes it quite competitive when compared with asymmetric conditional heteroscedastic models such as the GJR and the EGARCH.     

The effects of supportive management and job quality on the turnover intentions and health of military personnel

To be competitive in today's increasingly complex and rapidly changing envi‐ronment, organizations must retain personnel and promote the well‐being of employees. We examine the relationship of both support provided to person‐nel and job quality with employee health and turnover intentions among a sample of 450 military personnel. Factors involving the supportive manage‐ment of personnel (i.e., supervisory support, organizational support, and work‐life balance) and factors pertaining to job quality (i.e., work stimulation and job clarity) were indirectly related to health and to turnover intentions through the mediating influence of job satisfaction. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Do stable strategic time periods exist? Towards new methodological and theoretical insights

This paper investigates a fundamental issue in the current research on strategic groups: the existence or non‐existence of the so‐called ‘stable strategic time periods’ (SSTPs). Our study provides new evidence by adding new methodological and theoretical insights. The research setting is the Spanish banking industry over a 15‐year period, 1983–1997. Unlike all prior longitudinal research that found SSTPs, the multi‐method procedure that we used in this study (i.e. equality of variance and covariance matrix and mean vector of strategic variables and a subsequent grouping analysis performed through the MCLUST) has led us to reject the existence of SSTPs in the industry under study. Based on these original findings, we conclude by suggesting a proposition which should be corroborated in future empirical studies on strategic groups. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pitfalls of Normal-Gamma Stochastic Frontier Models

Although conceptually pleasing, normal-gamma frontier models lead to difficult estimation problems. It is shown here that unless the sample size reaches several thousands of observations the shape parameter of the gamma density is hard to estimate, and that this carries over to estimates of the stochastic frontier, the individual inefficiencies, and the allocation of the overall variance to the stochastic frontier and to the inefficiencies.