Testing for cointegration using the Johansen methodology when variables are near-integrated: size distortions and partial remedies

We investigate the properties of Johansen’s (J Econ Dyn Control 12:231–254, 1988; Econometrica 59:1551–1580, 1991) maximum eigenvalue and trace tests for cointegration under the empirically relevant situation of near-integrated variables. Using Monte Carlo techniques, we show that in a system with near-integrated variables, the probability of reaching an erroneous conclusion regarding the cointegrating rank of the system is generally substantially higher than the nominal size. The risk of concluding that completely unrelated series are cointegrated is therefore non-negligible. We suggest ways of identifying the problem and different approaches to reduce the size distortions of the tests.     

New Zealand’s perfect storm of entrepreneurship and economic development

Applying a grounded-theory approach to analyzing the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data, we attempt to explain why New Zealand exhibits only a moderate level of economic development despite its high level of entrepreneurship. By statistically analyzing why 34 other countries in the 2005 GEM dataset exhibit small deviations from the classical quadratic curvilinear relationship between entrepreneurship and economic development, we develop a better understanding of the entrepreneurial framework conditions underlying New Zealand’s large deviation from this trend line. Based on our findings from the GEM data we make policy recommendations that could aid in moving New Zealand (and other countries) closer toward the trend line and thus promote economic development.     

Income Distribution across Ethnic Groups in Malaysia: Results from a New Social Accounting Matrix

A new social accounting matrix is constructed for Malaysia for the year 2000 to analyze sources of income inequality among ethnic groups in Malaysia. The analysis reveals that income inequality can be decomposed into the interaction of: (i) hourly wages; (ii) working hours per week; and (iii) number of dependents per household. The results of the analysis suggest that occupational differences are the main factor contributing to wage inequality in Malaysia. Ethnic Malays tend to work in low‐wage industries while ethnic Chinese and Indians are more likely to work in higher‐wage industries.     

Framing and Interorganizational Knowledge Transfer: A Process Study of Collaborative Innovation in the Aircraft Industry

This article explains how and why organizational actors' decisions about interorganizational knowledge transfer might change over time. We find that organizational actors' framing of future innovation developments, as either an opportunity or a threat, motivates them to engage or disengage in interorganizational knowledge transfer activities. Shifts in framing lead organizational actors to leverage their relational context and knowledge base in new ways, thereby emphasizing the role of agency in drawing upon these structures. These findings are incorporated into a process model that explains discontinuous change in interorganizational knowledge transfer.     

R&D and productivity in Danish firms: some empirical evidence

The aim of the paper is to examine the relationship between R&D capital and productivity using microdata for Danish manufacturing firms. The influence of factors such as ownership, innovative characteristics and source of funding accounted for. The return to accumulated R&D capital is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 9–12%, whereas the short-run effect of R&D is insignificant. Furthermore, the direct influence from foreign ownership, source of funding accounted for, innovative characteristics and ownership dispersion on productivity are analysed. However, none of the factors seem to have an impact on firm productivity. The same is the case for the indirect influence coming from interaction with accumulated R&D capital.     

Exploring the animosity domain and the role of affect in a cross-national context

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to the development of animosity theory in three areas; construct domain, the mediating role of affect and model testing.Design/methodology/approachExploratory and empirical research is carried out in two countries in order to explore the domain and to test the factor structure and the hypotheses through confirmatory analysis.FindingsWe find animosity is a four-dimensional construct which impacts buying behavior through affect.Originality/valueThe research extends the domain of the animosity construct to a four-dimensional structure rather than the two-dimensional structure used in most previous studies. It is the first study to empirically test an extended animosity domain and investigate the mediating role of affective emotional responses between animosity and buying intentions.     

The De-Mediterraneanisation of the Mediterranean?

This paper uses the issue of tourism development in the Mediterranean as a prism through which to look at more general questions of socio-cultural, politico-economic, and environmental processes in the region. The paper is underpinned by a concern with space and spatial transformations (at various levels including those of the town, the countryside, and of the wider area inhabited by both). The starting point is the acceleration of coastal development, engendered, as much of this has been, by tourism. Tourism related shifts of economic gravity to coasts, particularly obvious in the case of islands, has been accompanied by the deepening and extension of more purely capitalist relations of production in the region. Ethnographic signs of this have taken a variety of forms. One has been the urban demographic and spatial transformations which have lead to a continuing rise of urban individuation and the associated further erosion of historic Mediterranean patterns of relationships within and between different sorts of urban collectivities. Another has been the continuing de-coupling of spatial and kinship boundaries. Movements of populations, particularly of young people, to the coast have increased the autonomy of individual members of kinship structures while decreasing the moral authority of elders and other representatives of kin groups as wholes. Interior landscapes have witnessed a continuing decline in the polyculture characteristic of the historic Mediterranean. Such landscapes are themselves influenced by the rise of the coastal monocrop of tourism. One of the most striking manifestations of this is the growing disrepair and degradation of terraces and dry stone walls. Finally, there is the broadening disjunction between, on the one hand, tourist imagery built on rhetorical references to the traditional Mediterranean, to be found in post-cards (of peasant farming and fishing, for example) or internet advertisements (of second homes in 'unspoilt' island bolt holes, for example) and the daily facts of the overuse and the running down of natural resources. Holding in mind aspects of the historical Mediterranean as they come to be measured against contemporary developments in the region, we are left with the question of whether the Mediterranean is being, to coin a term, de-Mediterraneanised.     

The Institutionalisation of “Noise” and “Silence” in Urban Politics: Riots and Compliance in Uganda and Rwanda

Amid ongoing debates about institutions and development, the importance of informal institutions (or norms) is widely recognised. Relatively little, however, is known about how informal institutions form and persist over time in particular contexts. This paper combines a concern with the process of informal institutionalisation and a focus on everyday politics in urban areas. Drawing on a comparative study of Kampala (Uganda) and Kigali (Rwanda), it argues that in the former the regular mobilisation of urban social groups into protests and riots has institutionalised what might be termed “noise” as the most meaningful form of political participation. In Kigali, by contrast, comparatively “silent” processes of collective mobilisation that involve structured activities and community “self-policing” have become institutionalised. The paper analyses these differential patterns, considering the tacit norms of negotiation in each case and the incentives for urban social and political actors to adhere to them.