Electronic Commerce,Trade and Tariff Revenue: A Quantitative Assessment

This paper assesses the quantitative importance of electronic commerce in trade and tariff revenue, in light of the WTO decision on ‘duty‐free cyberspace’. Electronic commerce is likely to boost international trade in software, digitizable media products (music, books) and many services sectors significantly. However, despite the growing importance of electronic commerce for trade, tariff revenue loss from duty‐free electronic commerce is unlikely to be significant.     

Organizational form and environment: an analysis of between‐form and within‐form responses to environmental change

This study extends previous research on organizational adaptation to major environmental shifts by empirically examining the potential constraining effects of organizational form, operationalized using the Miles and Snow typology, on the type of responses enacted as well as the performance effects of the responses. Results indicate that a fit between environmental contingencies and organizational form relates to superior performance. The results also provide support for the idea that organizations systematically move toward the higher‐performing forms for a given environment. Consistent with organizational configuration logic, while these responses lead to performance improvements when a between‐form change is made, they do not necessarily lead to performance improvements when a within‐form change is made. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Financial Constraints and Small and Medium-Sized Firms’ Export Propensity: Evidence from Portuguese Manufacturing Firms

The internationalization of firms through exports is often crucial to their survival and growth in this era of globalization. This is particularly the case for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in small and saturated markets, as is the case in Portugal. However, firms face several barriers to exporting, and this study aims to verify whether financial constraints influence a firm’s export propensity. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 12,732 Portuguese manufacturing SMEs during the period 2008–2012, and tests two different proxies of financial constraints: the liquidity and leverage ratios. The results indicate that the SMEs in less healthy financial positions are less likely to export than the others are, although the impact of financial constraints on these Portuguese firms appears to be relatively small.     

Educational quality as perceived by the actors involved: reflections based on a study in the Environmental Sciences course

Training professionals for the new 21st century requires universities to make major changes in their conception of teaching, which, through the active, committed participation of teachers and students, will lead to the building and developing of the competencies needed by students for them to perform efficiently, ethically and with social commitment in their future jobs. The participation of teachers and students and their commitment to quality in the teacher training process are essential elements in the search for alternative ways to enhance university teaching. This article discusses the teacher training experiences had by the author in the ICE of Madrid Polytechnic University with the inclusion of data from a study undertaken on the Environmental Sciences course of this university where teachers, students and postgraduates’ perception of the quality of their vocational training at university is an important starting point for the design of strategies aimed at enhancing the quality of teaching.     

Decomposing productivity patterns in a conditional convergence framework

In this study we examine regional data on per worker GDP, disaggregated at sectoral level, by focusing our interest on the role of differences in the sectoral composition of activities, and in productivity gaps that are uniform across sectors, in explaining the catching-up process, which is realized through physical and human capital as well as technological knowledge accumulation. Our objective is to investigate how much of the interregional inequality in aggregate productivity per worker is imputable to each component. A methodology for identifying and analyzing sources of inequality from a decomposed perspective is developed in the growth framework by combining a shift-share based technique and a SUR model specification for the conditional-convergence analysis. The proposed approach is employed to analyze aggregate interregional inequality of per worker productivity levels in Italy over the period 1970–2000. With respect to the existing empirical results, our approach provides a more comprehensive and detailed examination of the contribution of each identified component in explaining the regional productivity gaps in Italy. It is argued that region-specific productivity differentials, uniform across sectors, explain a quite large share of differences in productivity per worker. However, sectoral composition plays a non negligible role, although decreasing since the end of 1980s, and very different productivity patterns emerge within geographical areas.

Twin Deficits in the European Countries

Public debt is a burden on future electors and taxpayers. In the absence of constitutional constraints, the incumbent government may show the cost of some public expenditures or tax reductions toward the future by financing them via new debt. However, according to the Ricardian theorem of public debt, the burden of debt is always anticipated via increased saving. If this theorem were true, a budget deficit would not affect the current account of the balance of payment. This paper analyzes the relationship between trade deficit and budget deficit. Using yearly data for the period between 1970 and 2010 in 33 European countries, we find evidence supporting the hypothesis that a chronic and robust budget deficit generates a trade deficit. The dynamic estimates show that a 1 % decrease in the government budget surplus/GDP ratio tends to deteriorate the current account/GDP ratio of 0.37 %, confirming previous studies with a different empirical basis. Dividing the sample period into two sub-periods (1970–1991 and 1992–2010), empirical findings show that current and past values of government budget influence trade balance in the first sub-period, whilst past values of government budget affect trade balance in the most recent years. Moreover, the estimated effect of government budget on current account balance is positive and equal to 0.48 and 0.30, respectively. For the high deficit countries, a long-run relationship between these variables has been found, showing that one percentage point increase in budget surplus/GDP ratio is associated with an improvement in the current account balance of roughly 0.15 percentage point. The estimated long-run government budget elasticity is negative and statistically significant, while the estimated speed of adjustment is equal to 0.33. Finally, Granger causality tests show mixed results.     

Nature-based recreation associated with connectedness to nature and leisure satisfaction among students in Brazil

ABSTRACT

There is growing evidence that nature-based recreation (NBR) during childhood promotes connectedness to nature, which in turn fuels NBR during adulthood. In addition to providing a number of health benefits, NBR participation may enhance leisure satisfaction, an important predictor of happiness and life satisfaction. In this exploratory study, we tested these hypothesised links using a path model with a cross-sectional sample of 224 Brazilian college students, where NBR participation during childhood increases connectedness to nature and NBR participation during adulthood, which in turn promotes leisure satisfaction. The model fit the data well χ² (2) = 1.924, χ²/df = 0.962 (N = 220, p = .38), CFI = 1.00, AGFI = .978, GFI = .996, and RMSEA = .00, with results showing an indirect positive link between NBR during childhood and leisure satisfaction, and a direct link between NBR during adulthood and leisure satisfaction. The indirect effect of connectedness to nature on leisure satisfaction was also significant: NBR during childhood fostered connectedness to nature, which motivated NBR during adulthood and higher levels of leisure satisfaction. Leisure practitioners can improve people’s leisure satisfaction by promoting engagement in NBR activities across life stages and emphasising connection to nature.     

Taxation of shareholder capital gains and the choice of payment method in takeovers

From December 1999, shareholders who disposed of shares in Australian takeovers in exchange for scrip could elect to defer capital gains taxation until the disposal of the shares received. We investigate payment method choice by acquiring firms before and after this regulatory change to assess whether target shareholder capital gains tax liabilities became an important factor considered in choosing the form of payment. The results show that, subsequent to the regulatory change, there is a significantly higher probability that equity will be offered as consideration where target shareholder capital gains are greater. This finding confirms the importance of shareholder level taxation in explaining corporate acquisition structure and adds to previous European and US evidence on factors associated with payment method choice in takeovers.     

Abnormal returns before acquisition announcements: evidence from Europe

Acquisition announcements influence the stock price of target firms, providing an opportunity for insiders to obtain significant abnormal returns. We study the presence of positive abnormal returns before the announcement date, in target firms, quoted in Euronext markets (Belgium, France, The Netherlands and Portugal) from 2001 to 2007. We investigate whether the pre-announcement run-up of prices can be explained by rumours in the media and the percentage of capital previously owned by the bidding firm, among other factors. We examine cumulative abnormal returns in an event window of 60 days prior the acquisition announcement, with the event date adjusted for the previous disclosure of news about the acquisition, in the media. We compute a run-up index, and find that there are abnormal positive returns before the announcement date, confirming previous studies. We find that a significant part of the run-up is explained by: (i) market anticipation triggered by legitimate sources of information, namely, rumours in the media about the possibility of an acquisition bid and (ii) the percentage of capital previously owned in the target firm, by the bidding firm.     

Nonlinearities in economic growth and club convergence

This paper deals with heterogeneity and nonlinearities in the growth process by developing a two-stage strategy to identify and estimate a club convergence model with threshold externalities. Because of identification and collinearity problems, we develop an entropy-based estimation procedure which simultaneously takes account of ill-posed and ill-conditioned inference problems. First, clubs are identified by introducing a mapping structure in a conditional convergence model. Finally, we estimate a multiple club convergence model, where clubs correspond to subsets of total observations. Our procedure is applied to assess the existence of club convergence for a large sample of countries (1965–2008).