Access to Financing in a Small Island Economy: Evidence From Mauritius

This relationship between access to financing and firm characteristics was studied. The authors used data from a survey of small and medium-sized enterprises from Mauritius, an island economy that is part of the sub-Saharan African continent. They examined the factors that affect the ability of firms to gain access to financing. Using the principal component analysis, the authors group variables affecting access to financing in four main components including working capital constraint, the external constraint, the size constraint, and the age constraint. The authors show that these components are important factors that influence the ability of firms to gain access to financing.     

Implementing efficient graphs in connection networks

We consider the problem of sharing the cost of a network that meets the connection demands of a set of agents. The agents simultaneously choose paths in the network connecting their demand nodes. A mechanism splits the total cost of the network formed among the participants. We introduce two new properties of implementation. The first property, Pareto Nash implementation (PNI), requires that the efficient outcome always be implemented in a Nash equilibrium and that the efficient outcome Pareto dominates any other Nash equilibrium. The average cost mechanism and other asymmetric variations are the only mechanisms that meet PNI. These mechanisms are also characterized under strong Nash implementation. The second property, weakly Pareto Nash implementation (WPNI), requires that the least inefficient equilibrium Pareto dominates any other equilibrium. The egalitarian mechanism (EG) and other asymmetric variations are the only mechanisms that meet WPNI and individual rationality. EG minimizes the price of stability across all individually rational mechanisms.     

Business Ethics in Russia

Most of the features of modern Russian business are transient, determined by the transitional character of the Russian economy and drastic changes in the social structure, ideology, and consciousness of Russian society in general. There are three main normative experiences in the traditions of Russian business: a) the experience of pre-Revolutionary business, specifically developed and practiced by the merchants of the old-believers extraction; b) the experience of socialist economy, which was more or less oriented to the public good and presupposed selfless aspirations by the economic agents; c) the experience of legally and administratively constrained private business and illegal shadow business, which expected businessmen to be vigorous, industrious and enterprising. The process of privatization was developed under the aegis of state, specifically the state bureaucracy. The influence of changes in the social-economic system has been ambivalent for social morals. However, the reforms could stimulate their improvement. The recent development in the cultural environment of business testify to the emerging space of civilized business, which manifests that it is practically useful for businessmen to be ethical.     

Shorter Reviews

US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment The technological reshaping of metropolitan America Vieillard-Baron, HervéLes banlieues françaises: ou le ghetto impossible and Stewart, Murray and Marilyn Taylor Empowerment and estate regeneration: a critical review Schneider, Robert A. The ceremonial city: Toulouse observed, 1738-1780 Gardezi, Hassan N. The political economy of international labour migration     

Flexible labour market and trade unions: Surprising career paths of Dutch sub-Saharan Africans

Starting from the empirical evidence that minorities are more likely to work on flexible contracts, we investigated the existence of an ethnic gap in flexible contracts between the native Dutch population and sub-Saharan African immigrants between 2006 and 2012. The migrant group is taken as a test case of ‘outsiders’. This study found, quite surprisingly and contrary to what several theories predict, that the expected ethnic gap in job status between the two groups disappeared in the 6 years between 2006 and 2012. Many sub-Saharan Africans successfully transformed their flexible contracts into permanent ones, catching up with the native Dutch by 2012. The analysis of the statutory provisions showed that the workforce numerical composition in the cleaning industry was important for the inclusiveness of sub-Saharan immigrants. This numerical compositional effect was facilitated by the collective agreements negotiated by trade unions, agreements that were extended to temp workers. Sub-Saharan Africans, overrepresented in the cleaning industry, have benefited disproportionally from the settled agreements. We thus conclude that trade unions can improve the inclusion of migrants not only by explicitly focusing on migrant representation but also by targeting sectors with an overrepresentation of migrants.     

Joint Private Safety Standards and Vertical Relationships in Food Retailing

In recent years, it has become common for downstream firms to impose Joint Private Standards (JPSs) on upstream producers. In this paper, we present an original model of a vertical relationship, explaining the incentives for and the effects of such JPSs with an example concerning food safety. The risk of a food crisis is endogenously determined. Using the concept of cartel stability ( d’Aspremont et al., 1983 ), it is shown that liability rules are crucial for JPSs to emerge, that a JPS can become a minimum quality standard, and that a more stringent JPS does not necessarily reduce the market risk.     

Strategies for sustainable intensification in East African highlands: labor use and input efficiency

Strategies for poverty alleviation and sustainable natural resource management usually focus on land use options for improving yields. Increasing the returns to critical factors requires possibilities for input substitution. Inadequate timing of input applications or nonavailability of complementary factors can seriously hinder this substitution. Such constraints particularly apply in less‐favored areas where soil organic matter content is too low for enabling efficient nutrient uptake and soil structure limits water infiltration and moisture retention. This article focuses attention on the importance of labor for crop management activities and input applications that enhance input efficiency in highland area cropping systems of Northern Ethiopia. Given the inherent complementarities between labor and nutrient supply during critical phases of the plant growth process, input efficiency strongly depends on labor use. We present a semiparametric bioeconomic modeling approach to analyze the available options for improving input efficiency in agricultural production. Input response equations are used that consider the returns per unit of land and labor as a function of specific combinations of material inputs and management practices. Critical trade‐offs may arise when opportunity costs for labor are considered or when complementary factors appear as binding constraints. The model enables assessment of feasible pathways for enhancing sustainable intensification and poverty alleviation in typical settings of the East African highland region.