Selecting the country in which to start internationalization: The non-sequential internationalization model

The paper analyses the selection of the country in which a firm starts internationalization. It proposes that some firms strategically choose a non-sequential internationalization, that is, they select a country that is dissimilar to their country of origin for their first foreign expansion. The reason for this is that some firms develop, in their home country, three types of knowledge that are useful to overcome foreign expansion difficulties: knowledge to manage complexity, developed by having multiple operations at home; knowledge to manage differences in competitive conditions, developed by operating in business-to-business industries, and knowledge to manage differences in institutional environments, developed by allying to a foreign firm at home.     

Outliers - robust ECM cointegration tests based on the trend components

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the behavior of the ECM non-cointegration test when there are additive outliers in the time series under different co-breaking situations. We show that the critical values of the usual ECM test are not robust to the presence of transitory shocks and we suggest a procedure based on signal extraction to bypass this problem. These procedure renders ECM tests with a left tail of distribution under the null that is robust to the presence of additive outliers in the series. The small sample critical values and the empirical power of the test are analyzed by Monte Carlo simulations for several low frequency filters. The proposed empirical methodology is applied to the CPI-based US/Finland real exchange rate.JEL Classification: C22, C12, C15, C52, C51 Corresponding author: Alvaro EscribanoWe thank A. Lucas for kindly providing us with the data for the empirical example. Previous drafts of this paper have greatly improved thanks to the comments of two anonymous referees and the Associate Editor. The first author wishes to thank members of Department of Statistics and Econometrics, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, and Department of Economics, University of Maryland at College Park. The second author acknowledeges support from the following grants: Spanish MCyT BEC2002-00279, The European TMR-ERB-40618C97-0994 and the Secretaría de Estado de Universidades PR2003-0305. This paper was finished while Alvaro Escribano was visiting the Department of Economics, Georgetwon University, Washington DC, USA.     

Amino acid formula as a new strategy for diagnosing cow’s milk allergy in infants: is it cost-effective?

Aims: To estimate the cost-effectiveness of a new strategy that uses an amino acid formula in the elimination diet of infants with suspected cow’s milk allergy (CMA).

Materials and methods: This pharmacoeconomic study was developed from the perspective of the Brazilian Public Healthcare System. The new strategy proposes using an amino acid formula in the diagnostic elimination diet of infants (≤24 months) with suspected CMA. The rationale is that infants who do not respond to the amino acid formula do not suffer from CMA. Patients with a positive oral challenge test receive a therapeutic elimination diet based on Brazilian Food Allergy Guidelines. This approach was compared to the current recommendations of the Brazilian Food Allergy Guidelines. A decision model was constructed using TreeAge Pro 2012 software. Model inputs were based on a literature review and the opinions of a panel of experts. A univariate sensitivity analysis of incremental cost-effectiveness ratios was performed.

Results: The mean cost per patient of the new amino acid formula strategy was R$3,341.57, while the cost of the current Brazilian guidelines strategy was R$3,641.08. The mean number of symptom-free days per patient, which was used as an indicator of effectiveness, was 900.6 and 875.7 days, respectively. The new strategy is, therefore, dominant. In the sensitivity analysis, the dominance was maintained with parameter variation.

Limitations: In the absence of information in the literature, some premises were defined by a panel of specialists.

Conclusions: The new strategy, which uses an amino acid formula in the elimination diagnostic diet followed by an oral food challenge, is a dominant pharmacoeconomic approach that has a lower cost and results in an increased number of symptom-free days.     

Virtuousness and the Common Good as a Conceptual Framework for Harmonizing the Goals of the Individual,Organizations, and the Economy

Despite the expansion of the regulatory state, we continue to witness widespread unethical practices across society. This paper addresses these challenges of ethical failure, misalignment, and dissonance by developing a conceptual framework that provides an explicit basis for understanding virtuousness and the common good directed toward the goal of eudaimonia or human flourishing. While much of the literature on virtuousness has focused on the organization, this paper uses a more comprehensive understanding that also incorporates the agent and the economy examined through their relational order. The common good provides direction for guiding behavior of all the various stakeholders and the context for understanding virtuousness, while it is through virtuousness that the common good is effectively realized. Virtuousness and the common good are therefore in effect ‘two sides of the same coin.’ This paper develops a virtuousness–common good conceptual framework which explores the basis for harmonizing the goals of the individual, organization, and the economy.     

Location advantage: Emergent and guided co-evolutions

We analyze how location advantage is created and developed at the country level. We argue that location advantage can be best understood as the result of the interaction between two distinct types of co-evolutionary processes: emergent, whereby location advantage is created as the result of agglomeration dynamics in product and factor markets; and guided, whereby location advantage is created as the result of infrastructure dynamics in institutions and endowments. We illustrate empirically the application of the co-evolutionary perspective and the differences between emergent and guided co-evolutionary processes with the analysis of the development of location advantage in the Costa Rican tourism industry.     

Why do consumers purchase goods and services in the informal economy?

To evaluate critically the dominant discourse that consumers acquiring goods and services in the informal economy are rational economic actors seeking a lower price, the results of a 2007 Eurobarometer survey involving 26,659 face-to-face interviews in 27 European Union member states form the basis for analysis. The finding is that achieving a lower price is the sole motive for just 44% of informal economy purchases, one of several rationales in 28% of transactions, and not a rationale in 28% of acquisitions. Consumers also use the informal economy to circumvent the shortcomings of the formal economy in terms of the availability, speed, and quality of goods and services provision, as well as for social and redistributive reasons, with multilevel mixed-effects logit regression analysis revealing how the prevalence of these rationales significantly varies across populations. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of the findings.     

“Authors’ Reply: Financial and Demographic Risks of a Portfolio of Life Insurance Policies with Stochastic Interest Rates: Evaluation Methods and Applications,” Maria Giuseppina Bruno,Emanuela Camerini and Alvaro Tomassetti,October 2000 - Discussion by Fabrizio Cacciafesta

Abstract

This paper presents and compares different risk classification models for the annual number of claims reported to the insurer. Generalized heterogeneous, zero-inflated, hurdle, and compound frequency models are applied to a sample of an automobile portfolio of a major company operating in Spain. A statistical comparison between models is performed with the help of various specification tests (Score and Hausman tests for nested models, Vuong test or information criteria for nonnested ones). Interesting results about claiming behavior are obtained.