The European origins of economic development

Although a large literature argues that European settlement outside of Europe during colonization had an enduring effect on economic development, researchers have been unable to assess these predictions directly because of an absence of data on colonial European settlement. We construct a new database on the European share of the population during colonization and examine its association with economic development today. We find a strong, positive relation between current income per capita and colonial European settlement that is robust to controlling for the current proportion of the population of European descent, as well as many other country characteristics. The results suggest that any adverse effects of extractive institutions associated with small European settlements were, even at low levels of colonial European settlement, more than offset by other things that Europeans brought, such as human capital and technology.     

Minimum return guarantees,investment caps,and investment flexibility

We study the merits of capped retirement products with guarantee for investors who have the flexibility to dynamically adjust their investment strategy. All contracts under consideration are fairly priced such that the net profit of the provider is zero. Without the rider, an expected utility maximizing CRRA investor does not want an investment cap. Here, she commits herself to a strategy a priori. With the flexibility rider, the optimization problem changes and the optimal strategy is a response to an exogenously set price. A fair pricing then anticipates the optimal response of the investor. We show that the maximum expected utility of the investor can, for anticipated fairly priced products, be obtained for a finite cap. Thus, a capped product design can give a Pareto improvement to the otherwise uncapped contract version.     

Time pressure and creativity in industrial design

Creativity is a critical aspect of competitiveness in all trades and professions. In the case of designers, creativity is of the utmost importance. Based on the perspective of industrial design, the relationship between creativity and time pressure was investigated in this study using control and experimental groups. In the first part of the study, fuzzy theory, the Creative Product Analysis Matrix, the Analytic Hierarchy Process, and Consensus Assessment Techniques were integrated to establish a method to evaluate creativity in industrial design. Moreover, the experimental and control groups were compared using three tests: the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, the product concept development test, and the product aesthetic development test. Six hypotheses were examined. Based on an analysis of the results, suggestions are offered to improve creativity management. The suggestions can serve as reference for creativity management of individuals, groups and companies in order to make the concept generating process more efficient.     

Structural shocks and dynamic elasticities in a long memory model of the US gasoline retail market

A structural multivariate long memory model of the US gasoline market is employed to disentangle structural shocks and to estimate the own-price elasticity of gasoline demand. Our main empirical findings are: (1) there is strong evidence of nonstationarity and mean reversion in the real price of gasoline and in gasoline consumption; (2) accounting for the degree of persistence present in the data is essential to assess the responses of these two variables to structural shocks; (3) the contributions of the different supply and demand shocks to fluctuations in the gasoline market vary across frequency ranges; and (4) long memory makes available an interesting range of convergent possibilities for gasoline demand elasticities. Our estimates suggest that after a change in prices, consumers undertake a few measures to reduce consumption in the short- and medium-run but are reluctant to implement major changes in their consumption habits.     

Surplus distribution and characteristics of social enterprises: Evidence from microfinance

The issue of surplus distribution has hardly been analyzed in the context of the social economy. This paper highlights the main drivers of distribution between various stakeholders of microfinance institutions (MFIs), which are an example of social enterprises. We focus on three major variables: size, governance structure and subsidies. Our results show that the size of the institution is the main indicator of the surplus that the organization keeps as a self-financial margin. Moreover, MFIs with a cooperative ownership structure allocate a larger part of their surplus to their employees, whereas non-profit organizations and shareholder-firm MFIs do not allocate their surplus in a significantly different way among their main stakeholders. Finally, we do not find any clear-cut effect of subsidies on the surplus allocation process.