Lost in translation? The relative wages of immigrants in the Portuguese labour market

This article examines the wage gaps between immigrant and Portuguese workers using matched employer–employee data for the 2002–2008 period. We found that most of the wage gap is not due to the worst endowments of the immigrants but to differences in the returns to those characteristics and to the immigrant status effect. In particular, immigrants’ education and foreign experience are significantly less valued in the Portuguese labour market. Overall, the wages of immigrants do not fully converge to those of comparable natives as domestic experience increases. The assimilation rates tend to be stronger in the first years after migration and for immigrants with higher levels of foreign experience. Total immigrants are a heterogeneous group of different nationalities, with immigrants from the EU15 and China starring as the two extreme cases.     

Imported inputs and skill upgrading

This paper studies the effect of imported inputs on the relative demand for high-skill labor. To this purpose, it applies propensity score matching techniques to firm-level data for 27 transition countries. The results show that importing inputs induces skill upgrading. Specifically, it explains more than one-quarter of the unconditional difference between importers and non-importers in the employment share of high-skill workers. The paper explores possible mechanisms behind this result. In particular, it reports suggestive evidence that importing leads firms to engage in high-skill intensive activities, such as production of new goods, improvement of product quality and, to a lesser extent, R&D and technology adoption.     

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ABSTRACT

The authors studied how knowledge derived from firms’ relationships—the so-called second-hand knowledge—is likely to influence their internationalization process. In this article, they examine how a European producer of textiles is able to sell worldwide, including to China, a highly competitive player in this industry. This article discusses models of firms’ networks and the extent to which such networks generate important knowledge that can explain internationalization behavior—how it is able to influence the selection of foreign markets and the entry mode used. The authors use the revised version of the Uppsala model of internationalization, which emphasizes the roles of trust-building, knowledge, and creation of opportunities within relationships.     

Trust and community building in the Doñana (Spain) toxic spill disaster

Appeals to public participation and, more generally, to a wider involvement of civic networks in the management of environmental conflicts are becoming more common after the difficulties that both the Market and the State appear to have in regulating these conflicts. The concern of this paper is with how central elements in civic society, such as interpersonal trust and community-building mechanisms, are influenced by environmental catastrophes. The case of the toxic spill disaster in Doñana, Spain, is presented in order to examine whether this accident had any effect on interpersonal trust and the mobilization of civic networks in the area. From the analysis, it can be concluded that involvement of civic networks in the management of these situations depends on the magnitude (real or perceived) of the disaster but also on the performance of public institutions regarding the event.     

Networks to Enforce European Law: The Case of the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network

Central to this paper is the aim to discuss the effectiveness of the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (also known as ??CPC Network??) for consumer protection in cross-border disputes in the European Union (EU). In doing so, this paper deals with the literature about networks established by grouping the Commission and national authorities to enforce European Law. The examples of the European Competition Network and the CPC Network are interesting because they raise questions with regard to the effectiveness and the accountability of emerging network-based law enforcement. The development of the CPC Network may have relevant implications for other areas of EU law and policy, including the question whether network-based governance could be transposed in other fields of EU Law.     

On the short-maturity behaviour of the implied volatility skew for random strike options and applications to option pricing approximation

In this paper, we propose a general technique to develop first- and second-order closed-form approximation formulas for short-maturity options with random strikes. Our method is based on a change of numeraire and on Malliavin calculus techniques, which allow us to study the corresponding short-maturity implied volatility skew and to obtain simple closed-form approximation formulas depending on the derivative operator. The numerical analysis shows that these formulas are extremely accurate and improve some previous approaches for two-asset and three-asset spread options such as Kirk’s formula or the decomposition method presented in Alòs et al. [Energy Risk, 2011, 9, 52–57]. This methodology is not model-dependent, and it can be applied to the case of random interest rates and volatilities.     

Exchange rate and long run equilibrium in transition economies

The purpose of this paper is to calculate pruchasing power parity rates and the real exchange rate using several methods of calculation to estimate long-run equilibrium real exchange rates in transition economies, mainly in Eastern European countries considered in transition, such as Poland. The authors calculate different measures of exchange rate misalignment (absolute and relative deviations from long-run equilibrium). Each measure is calculated using different price indices, which include consumer price indices, GDP deflactor, and unit labor cost. The expected values of these variables are used. To calculate the long-run equilibrium, different methods such as an error correction equation and a forward-looking model are utilized, and again, the expected values of the variables are introduced along with new variables. The estimation of the long-run cointegration equation of the equilibrium real exchange rate and the corresponding dynamic error correction specification strongly corroborates the model and produced fairly consistent results across the countries under study. Using appropriated proxies, the estimated long run equations were used to derive indices of the equilibrium real exchange rate.     

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.     

Estimating Price Elasticities of Food Trade Functions: How Relevant is the CES‐based Gravity Approach?

The main objective of this article is to examine econometric estimates of price elasticities of food trade functions. We investigate the relevance of the prominent gravity approach. This approach is based on the assumptions of symmetric, monotone, homothetic, Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) preferences. We test all these assumptions using intra‐European trade in cheese. In general, the assumptions made on preferences by the gravity approach are not supported by our dataset. The bias induced in the estimated price elasticities is ambiguous.     

What is strategic management,really? Inductive derivation of a consensus definition of the field

It is commonly asserted that the field of strategic management is fragmented and lacks a coherent identity. This skepticism, however, is paradoxically at odds with the great success that strategic management has enjoyed. How might one explain this paradox? We seek answers to this question by relying first on a large‐scale survey of strategic management scholars from which we derive an implicit consensual definition of the field—as tacitly held by its members. We then supplement this implicit definition with an examination of the espoused definitions of the field obtained from a group of boundary‐spanning scholars. Our findings suggest that strategic management's success as a field emerges from an underlying consensus that enables it to attract multiple perspectives, while still maintaining its coherent distinctiveness. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.