Does the WTO Increase Trade and Cause Convergence?

We study whether proximity to the nearest tax haven affects FDI and the number of American affiliates in a tax haven. Our results show that distance to the nearest tax haven is positively related to FDI inflows and the number of American affiliates in tax havens. These findings suggest that there is harmful competition between tax havens. We also find evidence of positive spillovers: the number of American affiliates in a tax haven is positively related to the number of affiliates in its closest neighboring tax haven. This suggests the presence of agglomeration benefits given there is an affiliate in a nearby tax haven.     

Achieving environmental sustainability through green transformational leadership policy: Can green team resilience help?

The race to gain competitive advantage through the formulation of a sustainable business strategy is key for the survival in the global business sphere. Even more importantly is the quest to deploy an effective green strategy to combat the numerous negative impact industrialization has on the environment. Researches pointed out the role of leaders and stakeholder's engagement in bringing about reform. This research focuses on how to build a robust psychological capital within an organization through the leader's transformative ability in combating environmental issues. This is necessary because research related to green transformational leadership and the effect on green team resilience has not been considered in literature. Drawing from the combination of three theories; broaden-and-build theory, job demand–resource theory, and conservation of resource theory, this study contributes to the extant literature by testing the effect of green transformational leadership via the mediating role of green work engagement to green team resilience. Using Amos 20 version to analyze 351 questionnaires that were collected from employees in four and five star hotels in Turkey, the result reviews that green transformational leadership has a positive effect on green work engagement and green team resilience, and green work engagement fully mediates the relationship between the variables. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The economic impact of superfund’s litigation on the value of the firm: An empirical analysis

The authors use a standard event-study methodology to evaluate the capital market reaction to superfund lawsuits brought against firms between 1980 and 1990. The results of the time series study indicate that the firms, on the average, suffered a statistically significant loss of 1.30 percent ($30.17 million) of their market value over the two-day event interval. The magnitude of the penalty varies among the industries examined, with the greatest impact falling on the pollution management industry. The lawsuit appears to have significant information effect, with the losses providing some indication that the lawsuits could impose costly constraints on the firms.     

The measurement of conjectural variations in an oligopoly industry

Using independently derived estimates for the market demand elasticity and firm marginal cost, this paper measures the conjectural variations (cv's) of the eight largest U.S. steel firms for the years 1920 to 1972. Comparisons are then made between the measured cv's and those predicted by certain industry conduct hypotheses. Specifically the hypotheses are those for competitive behavior, Cournot behavior, imperfect collusion, and industry profit maximization (perfect collusion). One of the two extreme theories of firm behavior, industry profit maximization, is rejected, but the acceptance or rejection of the other theories depends on the assumptions made about the cost structure of the sample firms.     

Learning about the future: From the learner's perspective

The path for a hopeful future depends on learning, a process that is a complex symphony of human experience. It is a process that demands deep questioning and critique of our world-views. It is a process that requires that we open ourselves to and effectively cope with a myriad of emotions. It is a process that compels us to engage in soul-searching as we explore our human responsibilities and commitments, connect with the meaning and purpose of our very existence and choose paths of action based on those reflections. Learning to care for future generations and the world they will inherit is a unique and holistic process. Our ability to support this form of learning begins with an understanding of the human experience of learning, from the perspective of learners.     

Assessing Total Factor Productivity Growth in Sub‐Saharan African Agriculture

The importance of the agricultural sector in the economic development process is well known. Improvements in agricultural productivity are often found to spill into other areas of a developing economy, potentially improving the standards of living of urban and rural workers alike. Given the importance of this sector, accurate measures of total factor productivity (TFP) across countries can be helpful in identifying conditions, institutions or policies that promote agricultural development. In this article, we estimate TFP growth in agriculture for a panel of 39 sub‐Saharan African countries from 1961 to 2007. We also develop a set of development outcome measures theoretically consistent with strong agricultural performance to serve as external validation of our results. We find that three estimation methods (stochastic frontier, generalised maximum entropy, and Bayesian efficiency) generate relative rankings that are consistent with the development outcome measures, providing external validation of the methods. However, the data envelopment analysis approach performs poorly in this regard.     

Utilities bounded below

It is common to work with utilities which are not bounded below, but it seems hard to reconcile this with common sense; is the plight of a man who receives only one crumb of bread a day to eat really very much worse than the plight of a man who receives two? In this paper we study utilities which are bounded below, which necessitates novel modelling elements to prevent the question becoming trivial. What we propose is that an agent is subjected to random reviews of his finances. If he is reviewed and found to be bankrupt, then he is thrown into jail, and receives some large but finite negative value. In such a framework, we find optimal investment and consumption behaviour very different from the standard story. As the agent’s wealth goes negative, he gradually abandons hope of ever becoming honest again, and plunders as much as he can before being caught. Agents with very high wealth act like standard Merton investors.     

Bankruptcy and steel plant shutdowns

The bankruptcies resulting from the American steel industry downturn in the period, 1999–2002, raise the question of whether the bankruptcy process itself led to permanent plant shutdowns and job losses. With information on 110 of the steel plants operating in the United States in 1994, this paper develops empirical models of steel plant closure and firm bankruptcy to see if the latter impacts on the former. Based on survival models, the results provide support for the hypothesis that the bankruptcy of steel companies could have led to viable steel plants closing, and thus, the bankruptcies in themselves may have caused permanent inefficient employment loss.     

Livestock as a buffer against HIV and AIDS income shocks in the rural households of Zimbabwe

The objective of this study was to determine the extent to which households use livestock sales to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS income shocks. Using survey data from the Muzarabani and Bindura districts of Mashonaland Central Province in Zimbabwe, the econometric analysis indicated that livestock, particularly poultry and small stock, play a significant role in smoothing income fluctuations due to HIV/AIDS. Cattle sales compensate for 71 per cent of income shortfalls due to HIV/AIDS. About 90 per cent of HIV/AIDS-afflicted households, headed mainly by women or children, used poultry and goats as consumption-smoothing strategies when faced with negative income shocks. Government and other stakeholders were advised to support the use of small stock as a strategy for coping with HIV/AIDS economic shock in female- or child-headed households in rural areas.