Unpacking the interplay between organisational factors and the economic environment in the creation of consumer vulnerability

ABSTRACT

Access to credit is a key enabler of modern life. Yet many consumers face factors beyond their control which sometimes render them unable to borrow from mainstream lenders. This paper documents how firm-related factors determine lending thresholds and shape who is, or is not, a creditworthy customer. The impact of the 2008 economic recession on lending decisions is explored, an aspect that has been insufficiently discussed even though recessions are cyclical events. Drawing on semiotics and using multiple case studies, the study captures not only the groups that were excluded but also the reasons for exclusion. Empirical support is offered for the notion of vulnerability as a fluid state and the role of the timing of decisions as a source of vulnerability is described.     

Tax incentives… or subsidies for business R&D?

We study whether firms’ actual use of R&D subsidies and tax incentives is correlated with financing constraints -internal and external- and appropriability difficulties and investigate whether both tools are substitutes. We compare the use of both policies by SMEs and by large firms and find significant differences both across instruments and across firm size. For SMEs, financing constraints are negatively correlated with the use of tax of credits, while they are positively associated with the likelihood of receiving a subsidy. The use of legal methods to protect intellectual property is positively correlated with the probability of using tax incentives, but not with the use of subsidies. For large firms external financing constraints are correlated with instrument use, but results regarding appropriability are ambiguous. Our findings suggest that (1) direct funding and tax credits are not perfect substitutes in terms of their ability to reach firms experiencing barriers associated to market failures; (2) one size may not fit all in innovation policy when the type or intensity of market failure differs across firm size, and (3) subsidies may be better suited than tax credits to encourage firms, especially young knowledge-based firms, to start doing R&D.     

Bank size and risk-taking under Basel II

We analyze the relationship between bank size and risk-taking under the Basel II Capital Accord. Using a model with imperfect competition and moral hazard, we show that the introduction of an internal ratings based (IRB) approach improves upon flat capital requirements if the approach is applied uniformly across banks and if the costs of implementation are not too high. However, the banks’ right to choose between the standardized and the IRB approaches under Basel II gives larger banks a competitive advantage and, due to fiercer competition, pushes smaller banks to take higher risks. This may even lead to higher aggregate risk-taking.     

Competency Training for Managing International Cooperation Engineering Projects

Organizations are becoming more and more aware of how important it is to strengthen the competences of their project managers. This fact acquires greater relevance in the development and international cooperation sector because of the need to have qualified professionals who can take up the challenges and address the specific demands of an ever more demanding and constantly evolving sector. This article provides the results of research that more than 100 experts in project management and administration participated in to detect which competences are the most relevant in this context.     

Price assessments by consumers: influence of purchase context and price structure

Among the numerous factors that influence decisions on prices, consumer behaviour has special significance. This paper reviews and analyses relevant studies conducted during the last few decades. On the basis of our analysis, four categories of factors that determine consumer behaviour have been identified. Additionally, we have developed an experimental research design to analyse the influence that the following factors have on price perception: price structure (i.e. price level, order of presentation and price differences), purchase context (i.e. reason for purchase or product use) and demographic characteristics (i.e. gender). Results reveal a significant influence of these variables on consumer behaviour.     

Building ambidexterity: The role of human resource practices in the performance of firms from Spain

Both researchers and managers are increasingly interested in how firms can pursue ambidextrous learning—that is, simultaneously exploring new knowledge domains while exploiting current ones. In this study, we attempt to bring human resource management into this forum by introducing and testing how high‐involvement human resource practices shape the social climate that affects the firm's ambidextrous learning and subsequent performance. A field study of 198 companies from Spain showed that high‐involvement human resource practices were positively related to the social climate that, in turn, facilitates ambidextrous learning and improved performance. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Factores determinantes de la lealtad al proveedor de servicios turísticos online

The aim of this study is to analyze the factors determining loyalty towards online tourist services supplier with a model which integrates the influence of trust in tourism websites with the conceptual framework of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 305 airline travel tickets online purchasers, with the use of structural equation models. The results of the empirical study suggest that the three variables of TPB (perceived control, subjective norm and attitude) positively influence loyalty towards Internet use to purchase airline tickets. The role of trust is especially relevant as it also boosts the effect of TPB variables. Finally, a set of managerial implications are considered.     

Accessing and producing tissue cultured banana plantlets in Costa Rica and Jamaica: Insights on the distributive consequences of emerging technologies

This paper analyzes the distributive dynamics associated with production, access to, and use of tissue-cultured banana plantlets in Costa Rica and Jamaica. In particular, it studies the research, commercialization, and production strategies undertaken in these two countries. It identifies the actors involved, the mechanisms implemented to produce and improve access to tissue cultured plants, as well as barriers to broad-based adoption. The discussion is framed by the concept of absorptive capacities and more particularly, by a revised perspective that differentiates between potential and realized capacities. In so doing, it emphasizes the dynamic aspects behind the process of moving from potential to realized capacities. Inherent aspects of tissue culture technology overlap and interact with socio-economic conditions; and become key to the dynamics of knowledge advancement, production, and distribution of benefits. In this context, policy choices play a major role in directing the dynamics towards a more distributed technological development.     

Capital regulation, bank competition, and financial stability

We analyze capital requirements if banks compete for loans and deposits. Banks and firms are subject to a risk-shifting problem. The ambiguous effect of competition on banks’ risk-taking translates into an ambiguous effect of capital requirements on financial stability.     

Estimators for the common principal components model based on reweighting: influence functions and Monte Carlo study

The common principal components model for several groups of multivariate observations is a useful parsimonious model for the scatter structure which assumes equal principal axes but different variances along those axes for each group. Due to the lack of resistance of the classical maximum likelihood estimators for the parameters of this model, several robust estimators have been proposed in the literature: plug-in estimators and projection-pursuit (PP) type estimators. In this paper, we show that it is possible to improve the low efficiency of the projection-pursuit estimators by applying a reweighting step. More precisely, we consider plug-in estimators obtained by plugging a reweighted estimator of the scatter matrices into the maximum likelihood equations defining the principal axes. The weights considered penalize observations with large values of the influence measures defined by Boente et al. (2002). The new estimators are studied in terms of theoretical properties (influence functions and asymptotic variances) and are compared with other existing estimators in a simulation study.