Temporary Migration and Foreign Direct Investment

The question of complementarity or substitutability of FDI and international labour mobility has not yet been answered. The substitutability assumption does not take into consideration the technological spillover of FDI in the host countries. Moreover, migration flows reveal cultural characteristics and labour force properties of their native country which may stimulate bilateral business networks, strengthening the complementarity assumption between capital and labour flows. In this paper we build a continuous time dynamic model where these offsetting forces are at work. We analyze whether, and to what extent, the increase in labour mobility might affect FDI outflows. A numerical simulation is performed showing that a higher income growth rate corresponds to a higher labour mobility. Some policy implications and further research direction are suggested.     

Indirect Taxation and Gender Equity: Evidence from South Africa

Abstract

This study adds to the growing literature on the distributional effects of indirect or consumption taxes in developing countries by exploring whether these taxes have differential gender outcomes. Using data from Statistics South Africa's 2000 Income and Expenditure Survey, the study investigates differences in tax incidence between “female-type” and “male-type” households, classified according to their demographic and economic attributes. The results suggest that zero-rating a well-targeted selection of basic foodstuffs and fuel for household use is important in protecting female-type households, especially those in the lowest quintiles and with children, from bearing an otherwise disproportionate share of the tax burden. In contrast, high taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and fuel for private transport result in a larger incidence on male-type households. The study also suggests ways in which the indirect tax structure could be refined to further reduce the large gender (and income) inequities that exist in South Africa.     

Factors Influencing Corporate Environmental Disclosure

In this paper, we have studied the factors that influence the environmental disclosures of Italian listed companies. We also aimed to verify the effects produced by the introduction of specific legislation (albeit of a voluntary nature) on environmental disclosures. The analysis has the advantage of including all of the informational documents produced by the company. The analysis shows an (excessively) low level of disclosure of environmental information by the companies examined. The econometric analysis then shows, contrary to our hypothesis and the results of previous analyses carried out in other countries, a negative and statistically significant relationship between environmental disclosures, the presences of minority shareholders and large auditors and the listing of the company, including in foreign markets. We lastly observed that the introduction of ad hoc legislation as purely voluntary only affects the contents of quantitative environmental disclosures, which are unsuitable for a highly industrialized developed country. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Dynamic Interplay of Visual and Textual Identification Strategies in Employees’ Magazines

This article explores how an organization’s identity is strategically communicated through texts and images in the employees’ magazines of a global Danish company with a worldwide readership of over 18,000 employees. Drawing on an interdisciplinary methodological framework related to organizational identification theory and social semiotics, it proposes a multimodal analysis model through which several identification strategies are explored at the level of each semiotic mode and at the level of their interplay. The article explains how identity is strategically communicated in accordance with the potential and constraints of texts and images. It claims that by exploring how these semiotic modes reinforce, complement or subvert each other, the identification strategies can be more thoroughly addressed. Shedding light on how the multimodal interplay contributes to communicate identity, this model can also be employed by communicators in order to nuance and improve their strategic communicative practice. By examining the semiotic modes’ complex interconnectivity and functional differentiation in the strategic communication of identity, this article expands the existing research work as the usual textual focus is extended to a multimodal one.     

Searching for Relationship Value in Business Markets: Are We Missing Something?

Economic value has always been the main consideration in decisions regarding alternative courses of action in management. The relationship perspective that became popular in service and business marketing research and practice involves the application of the value concept to business relationships. Recent research in marketing on the value of relationships has been concerned with identifying the various dimensions of relationships content that can, in principle, give origin to costs or benefits for the parties involved. The way in which parties in a business relationship perceive and interpret value and how their perceptions affect their behaviors have not been at the center of this research. We will argue in this paper that perceptions impact parties' behaviors and the way business relationships develop, and report findings of a longitudinal study of how buyers and suppliers perceive and interpret value of business relationships. We then revisit the concept of value and formulate three propositions regarding the meaning of value in the context of supplier-customer relationships.     

Loan managers’ decisions and trust in entrepreneurs in different institutional contexts

Loan managers’ trust in entrepreneurs can be a useful tool for overcoming entrepreneurial firms’ opaqueness. Nevertheless, the possibility for loan managers to leverage trust can be affected by differences in the regulative institutions within the banks (type of bank) and by place-bound normative institutions (social context). By relying on semi-structured interviews and a survey of 450 bank-entrepreneur relationships, this study finds that a positive impact of trust in lending relationships is sensitive to different place-bound normative institutions and to the regulative institutions within the banks. The results are robust with respect to potential endogeneity issues.     

The salient role of institutions in Women’s entrepreneurship: a critical review and agenda for future research

Institutions play an important role in women’s and men’s entrepreneurial behaviors. This article provides a systematic review of institutions and women’s entrepreneurship literature through an institutional lens, with a particular focus on informal and formal institutions. The article sets out to explore institutions for women’s entrepreneurship, illustrating why having an institutional perspective of women’s entrepreneurship contributes to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. To reach this aim, we analyze and classify the scholarship by explanatory factors and type of informal and formal institutions. The article suggests that gender roles, as an informal institution, influence the creation of both informal and formal institutions, and in turn, the women’s entrepreneurial behaviors is based on gender roles. Finally, a theoretical model is developed, which allocates women’s entrepreneurship in the center and shows the role of institutional environment in their decision to start new ventures. Implications for future research are finally discussed.     

How far can reduced childcare prices push female labour supply?

Exploiting exogenous variation in childcare prices stemming from a childcare price reform, this paper estimates effects of reductions in childcare costs on female labour supply. The reform introduced a cap on childcare prices, and lead to considerable reductions in prices depending on family type and region of residence. Since the price is determined by a handful of observed characteristics, we are able to match households that are similar in all relevant aspects, but experienced quite different price changes. Our difference-in-differences regression matching estimates are very precise, and close to zero.