Participation and Consumption of Illegal Drugs among Adolescents

This paper identifies the determinants affecting the adolescent populations' decision regarding whether or not to consume illegal drugs. The authors estimate a simultaneous Type II Tobit model for each sample substance, including marijuana, LSD, amphetamines, cocaine, volatile substances, and heroine. The data are drawn from three Spanish Surveys on Drug Use in the School Population conducted in 1994, 1996, and 1998. The results indicate that illegal drug use among Spanish adolescents is clearly determined by economic variables. It is similarly determined by other sociodemographic variables, such as personal habits, family environment, and the receipt of information regarding the negative consequences of drug use. This paper was partially written while José Alberto Molina was Visiting Researcher at the Fundación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada-FEDEA (Madrid, Spain), to which he would like to express his thanks for the hospitality and facilities provided. The authors are grateful to two anonymous referees for their helpful observations on an earlier version of this paper. Similarly, Namkee Ahn, as well as various participants at the XIX Spanish Health Economics Meeting (Zaragoza, Spain) and at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (Washington DC), have all offered valuable comments and suggestions. Finally, the authors would like to express their gratitude for the financial support provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education-CICYT and the European Commission (Project FEDER 2FD97-2057). The usual disclaimer applies.     

Asymptotic and Bootstrap techniques for testing the expected value of a fuzzy random variable

In this paper we will consider hypothesis-tests for the (fuzzy-valued) mean value of a fuzzy random variable in a population. For this purpose, we will make use of a generalized metric for fuzzy numbers, and we will develop an approach for normal fuzzy random variables, and two different approaches for the case of fuzzy random variables taking on a finite number of different values. A real-life example illustrates the use of the last two approaches. Finally, a comparison between the introduced techniques is developed by means of simulation studies leading to close inferential conclusions.Acknowledgements.The research in this paper has been partially supported by MCYT Grants BFM2002-01057 and BFM2001-3494. Their financial support is gratefully acknowledged. The authors are sincerely grateful to their colleague Gil González-Rodríguez for all his comments and suggestions in connection with this paper; his scientific support has been very valuable. The authors want also thank the referees of the first version of the paper because of their useful hints to improve it.     

Does corruption affect income inequality and poverty?

This paper provides evidence that high and rising corruption increases income inequality and poverty. An increase of one standard deviation in corruption increases the Gini coefficient of income inequality by about 11 points and income growth of the poor by about 5 percentage points per year. These findings are robust to use of different instruments for corruption and other sensitivity analyses. The paper discusses several channels through which corruption may affect income inequality and poverty. An important implication of these findings is that policies that reduce corruption will most likely reduce income inequality and poverty as well. Received: March 2, 2000 / Accepted: September 20, 2001     

Cross-country determinants of bank income smoothing by managing loan-loss provisions

This paper studies the determinants of income smoothing by management of loan-loss provisions in banks around the world. Using a panel database of 3221 bank-year observations from 40 countries and controlling for unobservable bank effects and for the endogeneity of explanatory variables, we find that bank income smoothing depends on investor protection, disclosure, regulation and supervision, financial structure, and financial development. Results suggest there is less bank income smoothing not only with the strength of investor protection, but also with the extent of accounting disclosure, restrictions on bank activities, and official and private supervision, while there is more income smoothing with market orientation and development of a country’s financial system.     

Voluntary Provision of Public Goods and Technology

This paper highlights issues in the theory of voluntary provision of public goods, building on the investigation by Peacock in connection with the contributions by Coase and Buchanan. Our goal is twofold. We first draw attention to the early literature investigating the provision of public goods and to the successive theoretical analysis. We then focus on the impact of technology on supply and demand. Examples of different types of public goods are provided, with special attention to the cultural sector, to investigate whether and how technology affects the efficiency and the effectiveness of the related public goods provision. The implementation and exploitation of technological advancements are investigated in view of the role of different actors (public, private) at different levels of government.     

What Drives Green Product Development and How do Different Antecedents Affect Market Performance? A Survey of Italian Companies with Eco‐Labels

Green products can play a key role in the achievement of sustainable development goals. Through a survey of 188 Italian companies with eco‐labeled green products, this study aims at understanding the relative importance of several motivations to develop green products, the influence of different motivations and firm characteristics on green product features (radicalness and differentiation), and which factors affect market performance of green products. This study reports a ranking of 49 motivations, highlighting that the most relevant are related to the prospect of market benefits. Results also show that product radicalness and differentiation have partially different antecedents in terms of motivations, while being a family firm positively influences only product differentiation. With regards to factors affecting market performance of green products, prospect of market benefits, availability of new technologies, firm foreign ownership, product radicalness and differentiation show a positive influence, while firm age displays a negative effect.     

The determinants of academic spin‐off creation by Italian universities

The aim of this work is to investigate the university level determinants of academic spin‐off (ASO) firm creation in Italy. We are interested in particular in the relationship between university funding and the university propensity to create spin‐offs, and test the effect of public and third‐party funds on this tendency. We estimate the effect of several variables for the characteristics of the university and the context. In contrast to our expectations, results indicate that third‐party funding does not exert an effect on the propensity of the university to generate ASO firms. Similarly, and in contrast to what the literature suggests, scientific productivity, context innovativeness and patenting experience also do not have a positive and significant effect on the propensity to generate spin‐offs. We find that ASO creation is influenced by the amount of public income, by past experience in creating spin‐offs and by the presence of a technology transfer office. This work contributes to our understanding of the differences between Italy and the Anglo‐Saxon countries in relation to the phenomenon of ASO creation and has some important implications for policy.     

Multinational firms and host country market structure: A review of empirical literature

We address the impact of multinationals on host country market structure through reviewing existing empirical literature. Our main conclusion is that the majority of studies focus on samples of manufacturing industries/firms, neglecting the service sector, despite its importance. Future research should be directed to this sector and explore the possibility of bidirectional causality between foreign presence and host country industry concentration. Studies concerning the impact of multinationals on entry, exit and survival of host country firms must use more recent data, investigate the role of vertical linkages and taking into account other control variables that may affect the exit rate. Finally, future work should take into account the mode of foreign firm establishment in the host country.     

Improving Firm Environmental Performance and Reputation: The Role of Employee Green Teams

This paper examines the link between a firm's organization environmental management capability, represented by the development of green teams made up of employees, and its performance. In particular, two categories of firm performance will be analysed: environmental performance and environmental reputation. This link has been investigated in a sample made of the largest publicly traded US companies. Data about green teams have been collected through the content analysis of firm environmental/sustainability/corporate social responsibility reports and/or their websites, whereas data about environmental performance and reputation are those reported in the US 500 Newsweek's 2010 Green Ranking. Regression analysis results show that the creation of employee green teams positively affects both environmental performance and environmental reputation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Why Do Small States Receive More Federal Money? U.S. Senate Representation and the Allocation of Federal Budget

Empirical research on the geographic distribution of U.S. federal spending shows that small states receive disproportionately more dollars per capita. This evidence, often regarded as the consequence of Senate malapportionment, in reality conflates the effects of state population size with that of state population growth. Analyzing outlays for the period 1978–2002, this study shows that properly controlling for population dynamics provides more reasonable estimates of small‐state advantage and solves a number of puzzling peculiarities of previous research. We also show that states with fast‐growing population loose federal spending to the advantage of slow‐growing ones independently of whether they are large or small. The two population effects vary substantially across spending programs. Small states enjoy some advantage in defense spending, whereas fast‐growing ones are penalized in the allocation of federal grants, particularly those administered by formulas limiting budgetary adjustments. Hence, a large part of the inverse relationship between spending and population appears to be driven by mechanisms of budgetary inertia, which are compatible with incrementalist theories of budget allocation.