Agricultural Incentives in Developing Countries: Measuring the Effect of Sectoral and Economywide Policies

The impact of sector-specific (direct) and economywide (indirect)policies on agricultural incentives for eighteen developingcountries for the period 1975–84 are estimated. The directeffect is measured by the proportional difference between theproducer price and the border price (adjusting for distribution,storage, transport, and other marketing costs). The indirecteffect has two components. The first is the impact of the unsustainableportion of the current account deficit and of industrial protectionpolicies on the real exchange rate and thus on the price ofagricultural commodities relative to nonagricultural nontradables.The second is the impact of industrial protection policies onthe relative price of agricultural commodities to that of nonagriculturaltradable goods. We find that (1) in almost all cases the directeffect is equivalent to a tax on exportable goods (–11percent on average) and to a subsidy for importables (20 percenton average); (2) the indirect effect also taxes agriculture(–27 percent on average) and dominates the direct effect(whether the direct effect is positive or negative); and (3)the direct policies for both importables and exportables stabilizedomestic producer prices.     

Liquidity, Trading Size, and the Co-existence of Dealership and Auction Markets

This paper analyses the co-existence of two markets for the same shares, a quote-driven market and an order-driven market, as observed for example for the trading of continental shares on the London SEAQ International. The focus is on the trade-off between the uncertain execution price faced by investors on an auction market and the implicit transaction cost represented by the spread in a dealer market. We obtain that those investors who desire to make large trades will prefer to trade with the dealer, while trades of smaller size will be carried out on the auction market. Moreover, we explicitly investigate the interrelations between the two markets showing that the pricing policy followed by a dealer depends on the conditions prevailing on the auction market.
(J.E.L: G10, D40)     

Technology Exploitation Paths: Combining Technological and Complementary Resources in New Product Development and Licensing

Technological resources in the form of patents, trade secrets, and know‐how have become key assets for modern enterprises. This paper addresses a critical issue in technology and innovation management, namely, the commercial exploitation of technological resources resulting from research and development (R&D) investments. Extracting economic value from these resources by maximizing the benefits for shareholders is an extremely challenging task because technological resources are intangible, idiosyncratic, uncertain, predominantly tacit, and with poorly defined property rights. In their attempt to extract the maximum value from their technological resources, firms increasingly combine their internal exploitation through new product development (NPD) with external exploitation through licensing. However, most existing studies on NPD and technology licensing have treated the two exploitation paths independently and in isolation, which has resulted in two separate research streams using different theories and addressing different managerial challenges. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to filling this gap by developing and testing a comprehensive conceptual framework that simultaneously considers the antecedents affecting the successful implementation of NPD and licensing strategies as well as their consequences on firm profitability. The paper in particular investigates the effects of the interplay between technological resources and three types of complementary resources, marketing, manufacturing, and relational. We test the model using structural equation modeling on a sample of 733 Spanish manufacturing firms observed from 2003 to 2007. The data provide support for the existence of different paths to market firm technologies: an internal path, whereby the ownership of technological resources fully explains NPD performance, and an external path, whereby high intensity of marketing and relational resources reinforces the positive effect of technological resources on licensing performance. This sustains the relevance of the resource‐based value‐enhancing effects of complementary resources in licensing, as opposed to the motivation‐reducing effects advanced by transaction cost‐based literature. Moreover, the empirical analysis shows a substitution effect between NPD and licensing, whereby their simultaneous pursuit at intense levels is associated with lower profit margins. This provides evidence of the much theorized, but seldom tested, rent dissipation effect. These findings offer several contributions to research on licensing, NPD, open innovation, and the resource‐based view of the firm. On a managerial level, they suggest that achieving maximum value from proprietary technologies may not entail exploiting them both through external and internal paths. Managers are also informed that the resource combinations that enhance licensing performance include marketing and relational resources.     

Inflation and capital accumulation in an OLG model with money in the production function

This article analyses the consequences of the money supply growth rate on capital intensity and economic growth in an overlapping-generations model with real balances entering the production function. Within this theoretical framework, anticipated inflation generates an ambiguous effect on capital–labour ratio, because two forces work simultaneously in opposite directions: one driving towards a pure Tobin effect (due to the OLG demographic structure of the economy) and the other pushing down the capital stock (due to the productive role of real balances). Despite the unclear effects exerted on capital intensity, higher monetary growth rates unambiguously reduce real money demand, consumption, total wealth and welfare.     

The Formation of a Tourist Destination's Image via Information Sources: the Moderating Effect of Culture

The present study aims to outline the growing importance of culture in the field of tourism. More specifically, it highlights culture as a moderating variable in pre‐visit tourist destination image formation, through the information sources utilized by the tourist in the selection of a holiday destination (that is, travel agencies alone vs. travel agencies together with the Internet). For this purpose primary research used a multicultural sample of 371 tourists from different European countries. The results show that the formation of a destination's pre‐visit image amongst tourists, based on the information sources they use, is moderated by the level of uncertainty‐avoidance of their national cultures. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Microfinance and gender inequality: cross-country evidence

Microfinance enables poor women to engage in income-generating activities, which helps them become financially independent, strengthening their decision-making power within the household and society. Consequently, microfinance has the potential to reduce gender inequality (GI). Case-study evidence from across the developing world both supports and contradicts this hypothesis. We therefore revisit this issue using macroeconomic cross-country panel data for 64 developing economies over the period 2003–2014. We find that women’s participation in microfinance is associated with a reduction in GI. However, regional interactions reveal that cultural factors are likely to influence the GI–microfinance nexus.     

Comparing the employment-output elasticities of migrants and nationals: the case of the Gulf Cooperation Council

Many countries have large or increasing migrant populations. We estimate the elasticity of private-sector employment to nonoil GDP for nationals and migrants using a Seemingly Unrelated Error Correction (SUREC) model. We use data from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, which have a particularly large share of foreign workers. Our results indicate that the employment response is statistically significantly lower for nationals, who have an estimated short-run elasticity of only 0.15 and a long-run response of 0.7, than for migrants, where the short- and long-run elasticities are 0.35 and almost unity. Lower elasticities could signal higher labour market adjustment costs. In the context of low oil prices, forecasts imply a significant jobs shortfall for nationals in the coming years.     

On the interaction between public and private capital in economic growth

This paper introduces two forms of interaction between private and public capital in an endogenous growth model in which productive government expenditure takes the form of a stock-variable and public capital is used in part as an input in the production of final output and in part to increase its own supply. While the first form of interaction involves the stocks of the two capital-goods and takes place within the final output sector through the specification of the aggregate production function (Cobb?CDouglas vs. CES), the second one concerns the rates of investment in the two kinds of capital. The share of productive public expenditure devoted to output production can be either exogenous or endogenous. Our results suggest that when this share is exogenous, along the balanced growth path the optimal growth rate of the economy is a positive function of the degree of complementarity between the two forms of investment. When the share of productive public expenditure devoted to output production is endogenous, the public capital share in GDP becomes, along with the model??s preference parameters, an important determinant of the economy??s long run growth. We also find that the optimal growth rate is an increasing function of the elasticity of substitution between public and private capital inputs in goods production, and is independent of the complementarity/substitutability between the two forms of investment.