Determinants of Trade Costs and Trade Growth Accounting between India and the European Union during 1995–2010

This study aimed to utilise the micro‐founded measure of trade cost derived by Novy to estimate the relative bilateral trade costs of India with its European Union partners. The advantage of using such a model is that the trade costs can be derived entirely using observable trade data. The results show that Indian tariff equivalent with its major EU trading partners has declined by 20 percentage points between 1995 and 2010, with Malta and Latvia experiencing the greatest decline. The study then decomposes the bilateral trade growth to ascertain whether it is an outcome of increased domestic production or reduction in bilateral and multilateral trade barriers. Novy's model indicates that the decline in relative bilateral trade costs explains the greatest percentage of this trade growth, which is partially offset by decline in multilateral resistance terms that has diverted trade away to other trading partners primarily in South and South‐East Asia and North America.     

Institutional Investor Ownership and Corporate Pension Transparency

We examine the association between institutional ownership and defined benefit (DB) pension decisions. We find that institutional ownership is negatively associated with pension underfunding, opportunistic increases in the expected rate of return assumption in the presence of underfunding, and significant ownership of the firm's own stock in the DB plan portfolio. Furthermore, these relations are stronger when institutional ownership is concentrated, when institutions are nontransient investors, or when institutions are relatively large. These results suggest that institutional investors are monitoring firm pension decisions, particularly those institutions with stronger monitoring incentives or resources.     

Is the representation of beneficiaries by international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) still pornographic?

This paper examines how beneficiaries are represented by International Nongovernmental Organizations (INGOs) to attract potential donors' attention and if such representations stereotype people of color living in developing countries. The study draws on the multi-level methodological approach to understand the content and overall meaning of 320 photos from the 32 largest INGOs operating in the United States. Findings suggest that INGOs still portray beneficiaries stereotypical and thereby reinforcing colonial narratives of “Othering” by an overwhelming representation of single mothers, infants, and girls, and few representations of men and families; and greater emphasis on deliberately positive representation.     

Optimality of least squares in the seemingly unrelated regression equation model

In this article the authors have investigated the situations in which the single-equation least squares estimator is identical with the generalized least squares estimator in the seemingly unrelated regression model. The condition obtained turned out to be advantageous from an empirical point of view as it permits one to decide whether to go for a single-equation least squares method or Zellner's method with estimated disturbance variance covariance matrix for estimating the coefficients in the model.