Determinants of Co-operative Patronage in Alberta

Co-operative managers face an increasingly heterogeneous pool of potential members. Because these members bring a variety of economic and noneconomic demands to their co-operative, managers must know how different member characteristics and performance perceptions influence their decision to patronize a co-operative. This study applies three models of co-operative patronage to survey data from rural Alberta. A Poisson regression is used to determine the factors that explain the number of co-operatives used, while an index of co-operative patronage measures the relative intensity of co-operative versus proprietary firm usage. A third model contucts a Tobit analysis of the amount of business conducted with each of several different types of co-operatives. The results show that older farmers tend to partonize more co-operatives, and larger farms do a greater share of their business with co-operatives than do smaller fiarms. Farmers who believe co-operatives offer innovative products and services are more likely to patronize them, while a belief that co-operatives should play an active role in noneconomic matters is not important.     

Proxy-quality thresholds: Theory and applications

We consider alternative models of a regression containing a proxy for an unobserved regressor. For each model at most two pieces of prior information are necessary to determine the sign of any regressor coefficient: the sign of the partial correlation between the proxy and the unobserved regressor, and a lower bound on the partial or simple correlation between the proxy and the unobserved regressor. We apply our technique to investment and leverage regressions that contain a proxy for the incentive to invest. In both cases proxy quality must be high for the coefficient of interest to be non-zero.     

Inference with dependent data using cluster covariance estimators

This paper presents an inference approach for dependent data in time series, spatial, and panel data applications. The method involves constructing t and Wald statistics using a cluster covariance matrix estimator (CCE). We use an approximation that takes the number of clusters/groups as fixed and the number of observations per group to be large. The resulting limiting distributions of the t and Wald statistics are standard t and F distributions where the number of groups plays the role of sample size. Using a small number of groups is analogous to ‘fixed-b’ asymptotics of [Kiefer and Vogelsang, 2002] and [Kiefer and Vogelsang, 2005] (KV) for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation consistent inference. We provide simulation evidence that demonstrates that the procedure substantially outperforms conventional inference procedures.     

An examination of the intraday behavior of the yen/dollar exchange rate: The relationship between trading activity and returns volatility

This paper provides additional empirical evidence of the relationship between the volatility of returns and trading activity in foreign exchange markets. Five-minute yen/dollar returns exhibit significant skewness, kurtosis, negative first-order autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity. Market activity (as measured by the intensity of quote arrivals) has a positive and statistically significant effect on conditional returns volatility. Such evidence is consistent with predictions of mixture of distrubutions models.     

Are more resources always better for growth? Resource stickiness in market and product expansion

We examine how managerial growth logics combine with financial and human resource slack to influence the short‐term revenue growth of a sample of 112 manufacturing firms drawn from a unique database provided by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Our results provide evidence that firms pursuing product expansion logics generally grow more slowly than firms that are not expanding their product base, but that financial slack positively moderates this relationship. We also find that human resource slack enhances short‐term market expansion, but slows down short‐term product expansion. We discuss the implications of these results for resource‐based views of growth. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of presubscription and other attributes on long-distance carrier choice

This article describes how Japanese residential customers choose among long-distance carriers. Based upon a 1993 survey, the model indicates that the time required to register customers, whether extra digits are required to use a carrier, and whether a carrier can provide both local and long-distance calls, as well as the carrier's brand identity are significant service attributes that affect competitive outcomes. The effects of these services differences are quantified. Simulations are used to illustrate the competitive impacts of reducing service differences among carriers.     

Coauthorship and publication efficiency

This study extends a recent paper by Jean Louis Heck and Peter A. Zaleski [1991] on trends in economics journal publication from 1969–89. The primary purpose of the work is to analyze the impact on article production of an observed dramatically increasing tendency toward coauthorship among scholars in economics. A simple model is tested with total (per capita) articles as a function of time, American Economic Association (AEA) membership, and articles coauthored per year. Results suggest that the increasing trend toward coauthorship enhances productivity in total and per-capita article production. The authors would like to thank Gary Shelley, Janet K. Smith, Peter Zaleski, and an anonymous referee for comments on previous versions of this paper.