Geographical indication protection and rural livelihoods: insights from India and Thailand

The paper synthesises the results from empirical case studies undertaken in India and Thailand on the welfare impacts of geographical indications (GIs). The findings indicate a positive effect from GI protection on the well‐being of farm households and rural poverty. GI protection also preserves the traditional knowledge embedded in a GI good as well as the traditional heritage of the locality that produces the good. The findings support the call for stronger intellectual property rights protection.     

The Joint Estimation of Child Participation in Schooling and Employment: Comparative Evidence from Three Continents

This paper uses data from Peru, Pakistan and Ghana to analyse simultaneously child labour and child schooling, and compares them between these countries. We use a multinomial logit estimation procedure that analyses the participation and non-participation of children in schooling and in employment and, in particular, allows the possibility that a child combines schooling with employment or does neither. We also use an ordered probit estimation procedure based on a ranking of the various child schooling/employment/non-schooling/non-employment outcomes. The results point to both similarities and striking dissimilarities in the nature of child labour and child schooling between the chosen countries. For example, in Pakistan, but not in Peru, the girl child's ordering of schooling/employment outcomes shows her at a position of extreme disadvantage. Household poverty discourages a child from achieving superior outcomes, but the effect varies markedly across the three countries.     

The difficulties of supplying new technologies into highly regulated markets: the case of tissue engineering

This study provides an insight into the difficulties companies encounter in transposing basic science into commercially viable healthcare technologies, focusing on the issue of establishing a dominant supply model within a highly regulated market. The core issue is how to scale-up customised scientific processes into products able to supply wider and possibly mass markets. In tracing the development of approaches to scaling-up, the paper highlights the influence regulatory regimes have on high technology regulated products and services. The paper details the implications of two contrasting supply initiatives towards operationalising tissue engineering, based on differences in regulatory regimes between Europe and the USA.     

An Experimental Analysis of Trust and Trustworthiness

We report results from experiments analyzing trust and trustworthiness, which are components of social capital and have an impact on diverse economic phenomena. We conduct a within-subjects experiment where subjects participate in both the trust game and the dictator game and find that transfers in the trust game are higher and are motivated by expected reciprocation. Subjects in our experiment exhibit positive reciprocity. We find that trustworthiness in the trust game implies trust but not vice versa. Trustworthy subjects are also more generous in the dictator game. Finally we explore gender differences in behavior and find that men are more trusting than women but there are no significant gender differences in reciprocal behavior.     

INFLOW OF FOREIGN CAPITAL AND TRADE LIBERALIZATION IN A MODEL WITH AN INFORMAL SECTOR AND URBAN UNEMPLOYMENT

Abstract.  The paper has made an attempt to analyse the effects of liberalized trade and investment policies on welfare and open unemployment in a developing economy in terms of a three sector Harris-Todaro type general equilibrium model. Following empirical evidence it is assumed that there is wage rigidity in urban sectors, which leads to the simultaneous existence of open unemployment and an urban informal sector in the migration equilibrium. The paper deserves special attention for its interesting results which are completely opposite to those generated by the standard Harris-Todaro model.     

On non-negative variance-estimation

Summary Pursuing the works ofRao [1972, 1977] andChaudhuri [1976] the problem of non-negative estimation of the variance of the ratio-estimator based on Sen-Midzuno[Sen], [Midzuno] scheme of sampling is studied further. With this problem it is noted that (1) some of the recently published [videRao, 1972, 1977;Chaudhuri] non-negativity conditions can never be realised and (2) some other conditions can hold only in trivial circumstances. Similar results are observed in connection with other strategies of sampling finite population parameters as well.     

Some results concerningHorvitz-Thompson's T 1-class of estimators

Summary The question of availability of a unique best estimator inHorvitz-Thompson's T ₁-class of estimators is dealt with in general and a simple sampling scheme yielding such an estimator is found out; the efficiency of the same is studied and a method of improving on it is also discussed.     

Household Production and Environmental Kuznets Curves – Examining the Desirability and Feasibility of Substitution

This paper provides a theoretical explanation for the widely debatedempirical finding of Environmental Kuznets Curves, i.e., U-shaped relationships between per-capita income and indicators of environmentalquality. We present a household-production model in which the degradationof environmental quality is a by-product of household activities. Householdscan not directly purchase environmental quality, but can reduce degradation by substituting more expensive cleaner inputs to production for less costlydirty inputs. If environmental quality is a normal good, one expectssubstitution towards the less polluting inputs, so that increases in incomewill increase the quality of the environment. It is shown that this onlyholds for middle income households. Poorer households spend all income on dirty inputs. When they buy more, as income rises, the pollution also rises.they do not want to substitute, as this would reduce consumption ofnon-environmental services for environmental amenities that are alreadyabundant. Thus, as income rises from low to middle levels, a U shape can result. Yet an N shape might eventually result, as richer households spend all income on clean inputs. Further substitution possibilities are exhausted.Thus as income rises again pollution rises and environmental quality falls.     

Determinants of corporate cash holdings: Evidence from spin-offs

We study the factors that influence the cash allocation decision around a spin-off, using variables suggested by the trade-off theory, and controlling for the possible endogeneity of leverage and cash ratios. Spin-offs provide an opportunity to examine the determinants of cash allocation at the margin at the time of creation of a new entity. Our results indicate that managers allocate higher cash ratios to smaller firms, and firms with high research and development expense ratio, low net working capital ratio, and low leverage. Thus, higher cash ratios are correlated with difficulty of raising external capital and reduced availability of cash from internal sources. In addition, managers also base the cash allocation on observable immediate growth opportunities instead of on long-term possible growth. An analysis of excess cash ratios, defined as the difference between the actual and predicted cash ratios, indicate that firms are, on average, allocated less cash than suggested by trade-off models, and this deviation in allocated cash from predicted levels is explained only by concurrent profitability of the firms (a pecking order theory implication).     

Estimating sensitive proportions from Warner’s randomized responses in alternative ways restricting to only distinct units sampled

Warner’s (J Am Stat Assoc 60:63–69, 1965) pioneering ‘randomized response’ (RR) technique (RRT), useful in unbiasedly estimating the proportion of people bearing a sensitive characteristic, is based exclusively on simple random sampling (SRS) with replacement (WR). Numerous developments that follow from it also use SRSWR and employ in estimation the mean of the RR’s yielded by each person everytime he/she is drawn in the sample. We examine how the accuracy in estimation alters when instead we use the mean of the RR’s from each distinct person sampled and also alternatively if the Horvitz and Thompson’s (HT, J Am Stat Assoc 47:663–685, 1952) method is employed for an SRSWR eliciting only, a single RR from each. Arnab’s (1999) approach of using repeated RR’s from each distinct person sampled is not taken up here to avoid algebraic complexity. Pathak’s (Sánkhya 24:287–302, 1962) results for direct response (DR) from SRSWR are modified with the use of such RR’s. Through simulations we present relative levels in accuracy in estimation by the above three alternative methods.