Approaching rainfall-based weather derivatives pricing and operational challenges

Review of Derivatives Research - This article approaches some of the current rainfall derivatives pricing and operational challenges through an empirical application to Comunidad Valenciana, Spain....     

Functions and failures: how to manage technological promises for societal challenges

Technological promises are becoming part of the way in which scientific and technological communities try to attract the attention of stakeholders, aiming at legitimation, reputation, and funding. Not all promises, however, become reality. With the increase in the use of promises comes the risk of disillusion and cynicism, which may affect negatively policy-makers and the public opinion. The paper suggests that the introduction in the field of S&T and innovation policy of a tool commonly used in engineering fields aimed at identifying and measuring all possible failures of a proposed technology. Instead of focusing on the magnitude of promises, it suggests that a useful perspective can be gained by placing systematic attention to the negative side, i.e. all reasons why a given technology may fail to deliver the promises. The paper develops the methodology, presents a case study, and illustrates the benefits of using it in policy-making.     

Entrepreneur subsidiary of business groups from emerging markets: a multi-level perspective

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - This study examines the effects of firm resources on entrepreneur subsidiaries of business groups. Resource-based theory is the foundation...     

Farm size,land yields and the agricultural production function: An analysis for fifteen developing countries

The paper analyzes the relationship between factor inputs, land yields and labor productivity for farms of different size on the basis of FAO farm management data for 15 developing countries. For all but three countries a strong negative correlation is found between farm size on the one side, and factor inputs and yields per hectare on the other. The fitting of unconstrained production functions to the above data suggests that in only few cases the decline in yields for increasing farm size can be attributed to decreasing returns to scale. The higher yields observed in small farms are mainly to be ascribed to higher factor inputs and to a more intensive use of land. Therefore, where conspicuous labor surpluses exist, the superiority of small farming provides solid arguments in favor of land redistribution. Such an agrarian reform would determine higher output, higher labor absorption and a more equitable income distribution, thus contributing in a decisive manner to the alleviation of rural poverty. The paper also provides estimates of cross-sectional production functions for the 15 countries analyzed. Empirical relations are found between the output elasticities of land, labor and intermediate inputs and physical indicators of their scarcity. The paper concludes by proposing a simple method for deriving a long-term production function for agriculture.     

Family Firms and Labor Productivity: The Role of Enterprise‐Level Bargaining in the Italian Economy

We investigate the role of Italian firms in labor productivity performance. We find that family‐owned firms have lower labor productivity than their non‐family counterparts. In a second step, we estimate the role of firm‐level bargaining (FLB) to determine whether family‐controlled firms that adopt this type of bargaining may partially close the gap in terms of labor productivity with their non‐family competitors. Our results, obtained through IV estimation to control for endogeneity bias, suggest that enterprises under family governance achieve significant labor productivity gains—greater than those achieved by their non‐family counterparts—when they adopt firm‐level bargaining.     

Team formation processes in new ventures

While entrepreneurship research theorizing about the team formation in start-up ventures exists, such studies mostly focus on different outcomes of team formation, for example the number of employees. Questions about how team formation processes unfold and the factors, such as labor-market institutions, influencing their evolvement remain unanswered. To address this research gap, we analyze the venture creation processes of 344 ventures in Germany and the USA, offering particularly typical examples of countries with regulated and deregulated labor-market institutions respectively. Based on optimal matching techniques, we illustrate how team formation processes differ over time in terms of founder and employee involvement and the hiring of service providers. Furthermore, we use binary logistic regressions to identify the extent to which national labor-market institutions account for these differences.     

Information and Knowledge as Antecedents of Consumer Attitudes and Intentions to Buy and Recommend Fair-Trade Products

The authors propose and empirically test a causal model to understand how the availability of fair-trade information and consumer knowledge about this issue affect consumers’ attitudes and intentions toward fair-trade products. The model is built upon the attitude-behavior paradigm and the premises of agency theory. It is tested through structural equation modeling with a sample of 292 Spanish consumers. The findings are that consumers do not have good knowledge about fair trade and that this is significantly determined by the lack of information about this in the market. It is also observed that consumers’ perceptions about the availability of fair-trade information have negative effects on their concern about this issue and that such information as is available is not effective in reducing consumer skepticism. The research represents an extension of previous fair-trade literature because the role of information and communication in improving consumer attitudes and buying intentions has rarely been explored in the case of ethical products.     

Personalized charity advertising. Can personalized prosocial messages promote empathy,attitude change,and helping intentions toward stigmatized social groups?

This study examines the role of personalized charity advertising in promoting empathy, attitude change, and helping intentions toward stigmatized social groups. Based on theories of message involvement, empathy, and reactance, we predicted that higher levels of involvement elicited by a personalized charity advertisement would reinforce empathy and prosocial outcomes. An online experiment was conducted using a personalized and a nonpersonalized version of a charity advertisement for a campaign soliciting donations of winter coats for homeless people. As expected, structural equation modeling revealed a positive indirect effect of personalization on prosocial outcomes (attitudes and behavioural intentions toward homeless people, and willingness to donate to the campaign) that was mediated by involvement and empathy. However, in addition to promoting involvement and empathy, personalization also led to heightened reactance, which detracted from the positive effects. Theoretical as well as practical implications of the findings for personalized charity advertising are discussed.