Editorial introduction: Is the World Bank lending effective in developing countries?

This special issue of Economic Systems includes five papers about the World Bank lending in developing countries. The motivation for the special issue stems from the relatively extensive literature on the sister institution, namely, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but not on the World Bank itself. The papers’ focus is the influence of the World Bank lending on economic growth, education and health, poverty reduction, and regulation in the recipient countries. The papers’ findings contribute to our understanding of the effects of the World Bank lending in developing countries, which reflects both successes and shortcomings.     

Knowledge Types in Technology

Starting with the distinction of natural science, engineering science ("technology") and engineering practice ("technics"), the paper will stress the difference between technological and technical knowledge. The first part will discuss the relationship between science and technology, arguing that technology is a genuine type of knowledge rather than "applied science". In technics, however, even technological laws, as transformations of scientific laws, cover a certain part of knowledge only. The greater part of technical knowledge includes technical know-how, functional rules, structural rules, and socio-technological understanding, which is just developing in our times. The classification of knowledge types will be used for determining which kind of knowledge may seem appropriate to general technological education.     

Understanding the determinants of crime

In this paper, we use an overlapping generations model where individuals are allowed to engage in both legitimate market activities and criminal behavior in order to assess the role of certain factors on the property crime rate. In particular, we investigate if differences in the unemployment rate, fraction of low human capital individuals in an economy, apprehension probability, duration of a jail sentence, and income inequality could be capable of generating large differences in crime rates that are observed across countries. We find that small differences in the apprehension probability and income inequality can generate quantitatively significant differences in the crime rates across similar environments.     

Performance consequences of new CEO ‘Outsiderness’: Moderating effects of pre‐ and post‐succession contexts

This study seeks to reconcile inconsistent findings on the performance consequences of new CEO origin. Drawing on five decades of empirical research on CEO succession outcomes, I develop a more refined theoretical conceptualization and a finer‐grained measurement of the underlying construct of the insider vs. outsider CEO, and build and test a more comprehensive and nuanced framework of the succession context. A longitudinal investigation of the U.S. airline and chemical industries (1972–2002) indicates that new CEO ‘Outsiderness’, conceptualized as a continuum raging from new CEOs who have a greater combination of firm and industry tenure to those who have no experience in the firm and the industry, has no main effect on post‐succession firm performance. However, significant moderating effects are found when environmental munificence, pre‐succession firm performance, and concomitant strategic and senior executive team changes are considered. Together, these findings highlight the need to consider both pre‐ and post‐succession contextual factors for evaluating the performance effects of new CEO outsiderness. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Organizational learning as a situated routine-based activity in international settings

A large body of research has extensively studied the mechanisms behind organizational learning processes. However, there have been few studies of the learning process that explore the influences of history, context, and social meaning in international settings. Rather, the focus within the international management field has been on knowledge transfer. This study adopts a situated routine-based view of organizational learning to highlight the influence of national institutional characteristics on the acquisition and enactment of new knowledge. It is based on in-depth case studies that systematically compare the ways in which Japanese parent company knowledge diffuses to subsidiaries in the UK automotive industry. It concludes that organizational learning within the context of multinational corporations is shaped by actors’ enactment of new practices that are embedded in broader institutional contexts, where the links between knowledge transfer and the reinforcement of or change in routines are important in determining the level at which a subsidiary learns.     

Regional Shifts in Pork Production: Implications for Competition and Food Safety

U.S. pork production and processing is consolidating in larger, more economically efficient units, and shifting from the Midwest into the Southeast. A regional model of farm supply and processing demand shows that smaller Midwest operations can survive only if processing capacity remains concentrated in that region. Salmonella incidence is higher in the Southeast and on larger farms. Restricting salmonella incidence in hogs delivered for processing to the minimum feasible level would increase total industry costs by 3%, due to increased production and delivery costs. It would also increase the comparative advantage of farms and processing firms in the Midwest.     

INTERNAL MIGRATION IN TURKEY, 1965–1985: TEST OF CONFLICTING FINDINGS IN THE LITERATURE

The purpose of this paper is to bring new insights to some of the conflicting findings in the migration literature about developing countries by using detailed analyses of Turkish migration data. The possible reasons behind inconsistencies in the findings are explained in terms of spatial and temporal characteristics of the data, and by national macro factors (mainly the level of urbanization and the characteristics of the urban systems). Tested were rural out-migration and push factors; changes in the size of rural-to-urban and urban-to-rural return migration; the effect of distance; and the share and effect of rural-to-urban migration in the urban growth and in the unbalanced population distribution in developing countries.     

Agrarian Change and Labour Supply in Turkey, 1950–1980

Agrarian structures based on small peasant property can have two opposite kinds of impact on urban wages. In the first type, stable smallholder farming bringing high returns puts upward pressure on wages. In the second type, smallholder farming that does not bring sufficient returns leads to semi‐proletarianization in which workers' access to rural sources of income functions as wage subsidy and puts downward pressure on wages. This paper argues that the situation in Turkey between 1950 and 1980 fits the second type. By pointing out the factors that changed the attitude of the migrant labourers towards class struggle from relative passivity to increasing militancy, it suggests that instead of the rural ties of the emerging working class, the main reason behind the dramatic rise in urban wages in Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s was the working‐class struggle throughout the period.     

基于改进F-N曲线的滑坡可接受风险水平研究

滑坡灾害的可接受风险水平是滑坡领域的重要研究内容之一,它常常用F-N曲线直观地表示风险频率与后果之间的关系,然而这种传统方法的参数由人为确定,主观性强,缺乏理论依据,且同一个参数不能适用多个地区和风险.以滑坡灾害的相关规范为依据,用风险矩阵的方法做衔接,绘制出3种决策态度下的滑坡灾害可接受风险的F-N曲线.相比传统的方法,改进后的F-N曲线避免了以上缺陷,使得滑坡灾害可接受风险水平的确定更加精准,同时该方法也可运用到其他领域的相关规范,来研究其可接受风险水平.     

Packages with Cartoon Trade Characters Versus Advertising: An Empirical Examination of Preschoolers' Food Preferences

The present study examines mainly the comparison between child-appeal packages and TV advertising and suggests that packages with cartoon trade characters play a more effective role compared to TV advertising in preschoolers' food preferences.

Preschoolers who watched a cartoon film CD embedded with commercials (the treatment group) and who watched the same CD without commercials (the control group) selected the chocolate wafer with a cartoon trade character (73.6% vs. 26.3%) rather than the advertised one.