Land Invasions,Insecure Property Rights and Production Decisions

This paper investigates empirically the effect of land invasions on farm production decisions. The main hypothesis is that more invasions in a region are associated with lower investment, and in particular a bias towards annual crops as opposed to long‐term crops. We use a county‐level dataset for the state of Paraná, Brazil, from 2003 to 2007, with 1,995 observations. The panel data structure allows us to control for fixed effects, such as the formalisation of land titles and land concentration, which might be correlated with the intensity of invasions. An instrumental variable fixed effects model was estimated to avoid other sources of bias. Our main finding is that land invasions are associated with lower long‐term crop production and a higher percentage of annual crops, which could accelerate land degradation, and undermine environmental sustainability.     

Beyond the personal–anonymous divide: agency relations in powers of attorney in France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Powers of attorney are often interpreted as evidence of trust among the parties involved. We build a novel dataset of notarized powers of attorney, capturing a wide variety of agency relationships in four large French commercial cities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to test hypotheses on the relational basis of economic relationships. We find little support for the idea of a radical shift from personal to anonymous relationships during our period. Our results point to more nuanced transformations. The preference for proxies in the same occupation as the principal somewhat declined, while professional proxies emerged and principals used relational chains, especially involving notaries, to find proxies.     

In search of excellence in the UK

Peters and Waterman's “In Search of Excellence” has become one of the best selling business books of the decade yet continues to be the subject of controversy. This article examines the debate surrounding the book by looking at its origins, the criticisms that it has attracted and empirically investigating how well the book describes successful British and Japanese companies competing in UK markets. The results show that, although it describes many of the characteristics of successful companies, “In Search of Excellence” neglects several competitive issues that help describe business success.     

How Choice Experiment Design Affects Estimated Valuation of Use of Gestation Crates

This study utilises a split‐sample experimental approach where six different choice experiment designs that vary in the number of attributes are used to control for the effects of design dimensions and consumer inferences in assessing consumer demand. Our application is in the use of gestation stalls (crates) in pork production. Our findings suggest that effects of both the mixture of attributes included in the design and consumer inferences on the specific attributes presented in experiments influence estimated willingness‐to‐pay and consumer welfare. Implications are that when researchers limit their studies to the use of a unique choice experiment design, resulting willingness‐to‐pay estimates might not be robust to different specifications.     

Heterogeneity, Job Creation and Unemployment Volatility

In this paper, I explore the impact of match‐specific heterogeneity at the job creation margin on business cycle fluctuations. I show that this form of heterogeneity alone does not help to amplify labor market volatility, either under full or under asymmetric information. First, I show analytically that, under full information, heterogeneity has no first‐order effect on the response of unemployment and job creation to productivity, and actually tends to dampen the response of market tightness. Then, in a series of calibrations, I show that with both full and asymmetric information, the model delivers labor market volatilities close to the representative‐agent, full‐information benchmark.     

Linking individual performance to business strategy: The people process model

During the last five years, a team of researchers has worked with the senior human resource (HR) teams of seven large companies with United Kingdom operations. This research initiative has focused on a number of aims, one of which has been to understand and model how business strategies are translated through human resource strategies and people processes into individual and organizational performance. This article summarizes the key findings, provides a map of how this translation takes place in these companies, and discusses why some people processes are more strongly linked to business strategy. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Soft and Hard Models of Human Resource Management: A Reappraisal

Two of the most widely adopted models of human resource management are the hard and soft versions. These are based on opposing views of human nature and managerial control strategies. The hard model is based on notions of tight strategic control, and an economic model of man according to Theory X, while the soft model is based on control through commitment and Theory Y. We argue that because these assumptions are so divergent, they cannot both properly be incorporated within a single model of human resource management. Eight in-depth case-studies were carried out, involving questionnaires, interviews and focus groups in order to find out whether organizations were practising either form of HRM. We found that no pure examples of either form existed. The paper concludes that the rhetoric adopted by the companies frequently embraces the tenets of the soft, commitment model, while the reality experienced by employees is more concerned with strategic control, similar to the hard model. This distinction between rhetoric and reality needs to be taken into account in conceptualizations of human resource management.     

Comparative perspectives on research dynamics and performance: A view from the periphery

The author takes a global look at the entire world of R and D, dividing it into the Centre (the large countries of the developed world) and the Periphery (small developed countries and the Third World). Her objective is to help to formulate a programme of studies to make R and D carried out in the Periphery more relevant to its needs.
Her view is that (a) too many past studies of R and D productivity have been carried out by the Centre on the Centre and (b) too much effort has been expended on measuring outputs and too little on the inputs that could be controlled to produce more output. In the paper she looks at the three major clusters of controllable input factors that could influence R and D productivity. The clusters considered are those pertaining to research groups, the 'atoms' of R and D (size, age, composition, management style and task diversity), to the institutional setting (organizational form, institutional goals etc.) and to the general socio-cultural environment of the country concerned. In each case she questions whether their effects on productivity, mainly derived from studies of R and D at the Centre is likely to apply in the same way to R and D carried out at the Periphery.
The author remarks that the factors listed in the paper are not exhaustive and in any case their interrelationships would also need to be discovered. The paper contains a large number of so far unanswered questions about input/ output relations in the context of the periphery that could provide starting points for research.     

New small firm survival in England

This paper investigates the determinants of the survival, between 2001 and 2004, of 622 small firms in England. Seventy one percent of these firms were less than 5 years old in 2001. Prior work by industrial economists has primarily focussed upon factors such as profitability and exit barriers. In contrast, this paper adopts a more managerial approach by examining whether the human capital of the business owner and organisational variables explain survival and non-survival. Our results suggest the founder’s education and bank finance promote firm survival. Firms which compete on price, or report being financially constrained at start-up, are much less likely to survive.

Post-Tax Capital Investment Appraisal: Plant and Machinery

Tax considerations are important for companies which are no longer tax exhausted. Taxation has a major impact upon project yield and net present value (NPV) for capital investment in plant and machinery. This paper uses the weighted average cost of capital model to demonstrate that the impact of corporate taxation upon NPV need not be in the same direction as the impact upon yield. The NPV is reduced by the nominal 35% rate of corporation tax only when the pre-tax yield is very high; for low yielding projects the post-tax NPV can range from less than zero per cent to over 100% of the pre-tax NPV depending upon the gearing. The tax deductibility of the costs of the debt finance component of capital expenditure has a major and subtle interaction with other parameters which always favours high gearing.