Setting the conditions for going global: Dubai’s transformations and the Emirati women

Abstract

This study investigated how the rapid transformation of Dubai has affected the forms and shape of Emiratis’ consumption. Analysis of participant observations, projective techniques and existential phenomenological interviews with Emirati women living in Dubai uncovered ambivalence about economic power and loss of traditions and strategies for going global including embracing local capital, brand selection and spatiotemporal restrictions. The discussion notes that the global is something that is locally constructed whereby the locals play a key role in developing global structures of common difference.     

Income convergence within the MENA countries: A panel unit root approach

This article aims at testing the convergence hypothesis in MENA region using new tests of a unit root in panel data. Evans and Karras [Evans P., & Karras G. (1996). Convergence revisited. Journal of Monetary Economics, 37, 249–265] and Bernard and Jones [Bernard A., & Jones C. I. (1996). Productivity across industries and countries: Time series theory and evidence. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 135–146] recommend this technique to evaluate the income convergence hypothesis. According to them it avoids econometric problems of the cross-countries growth regressions testing convergence and sample bias of the multivariate cointegration techniques. We test for both absolute and the conditional convergence with panel unit root tests using the Summers and Heston's data 5.6 and 6.1 on the periods of 1960 to 1990 and from 1960 to 2000. The absolute convergence hypothesis use panel unit roots test with no fixed individual effects. The catching-up hypothesis is not rejected for most groups of countries of the region during both periods. If we allow a break in the unit root tests, the hypothesis is not rejected for more groups. The conditional convergence requires panel unit root tests with fixed individual effects. Again, during the whole periods, the conditional convergence is not rejected for the major part of the remaining groups of MENA countries.     

On Quantile‐based Asymmetric Family of Distributions: Properties and Inference

In this paper, we provide a detailed study of a general family of asymmetric densities. In the general framework, we establish expressions for important characteristics of the distributions and discuss estimation of the parameters via method‐of‐moments as well as maximum likelihood estimation. Asymptotic normality results for the estimators are provided. The results under the general framework are then applied to some specific examples of asymmetric densities. The use of the asymmetric densities is illustrated in a real‐data analysis.     

Formal international contracts in the presence of cultural distance: An empirical analysis of biopharmaceutical alliances

Formal contracts are designed to manage the moral hazard issues and inherent risks that come with relationships between organizations. These contracts play an important role in nonequity international alliances, where greater cultural distance between the partners gives rise to more uncertainty in the relationship. At the same time, the contract is the outcome of a negotiation process, and this process is affected by the cultural distance between the partners. This article addresses whether cultural distance affects contract design and content. Rather than test an established model, we use an inductive approach to conduct a detailed empirical analysis of 135 two‐party international research‐and‐development contracts for clinical development in the biopharmaceutical industry. The results show that cultural distance wields complex effects on the contract and its content. They also indicate that a contract will be less detailed—with fewer monitoring clauses and a narrower definition of the collaborative scope—when the partnering firms operate in highly distant national cultures.     

Building a Centre of Capital Accumulation: A Study of the Institutional Emergence of the French Private Equity Sector (from the Early 1980s to 2017)

ABSTRACT

This article describes a major shift in French capitalism: the emergence and development of the new private equity sector. It discusses the particularities involved in the construction of this capital accumulation centre in France, studying how an advantageous institutional arrangement was coproduced by fund managers, government and traditional industrial managers. As such, it takes an institutional approach focusing on the history of the rules that enable financial activities. This article’s empirical material takes the form of (hitherto untapped) archives from the professional association of French private equity funds covering the period from 1984 to 2017, 12 interviews with former presidents of the association and ten interviews with partners of large French private equity funds.     

A literature review of new methods in empirical asset pricing: omitted-variable and errors-in-variable bias

Financial Markets and Portfolio Management - Standard procedures in empirical asset pricing suffer from various issues that are common to all regression-based methods. This work reviews recently...     

Drivers,adoption, and evaluation of sustainability practices in Italian wine SMEs

Based on a survey with 64 small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in two Italian wine regions, this study aims to (a) identify key drivers and barriers of the adoption of sustainability and (b) compare the adoption and evaluation (use, financial/labor investments, and satisfaction) of sustainability practices in four management domains (marketing, chain, operational, and innovation). Results show that internal drivers were considered to be more important than external drivers. Economic sustainability‐oriented drivers scored significantly lower than drivers related to other dimensions, such as environmental sustainability and heritage. Key barriers refer to labor and investments costs, as well as concerns about greenwashing. Although there are substantial differences in adoption and evaluation of sustainability practices within and between management domains, this study confirms their widespread adoption in wineries. Among users, satisfaction levels outweigh the perceived investments. Except for innovation management practices, financial investments are considered to be lower than labor investments. Positive correlations between use‐satisfaction (within each management domain) and between investments or satisfaction levels (between management domains) further lend support for producers' adoption of multiple practices. At sustainability dimension level, heritage is negatively correlated with the evaluation indicators, indicating that it may act as a potential barrier to some sustainability practices. Segmentation analysis identified a low (30%) and high sustainability clusters (70%), which differ significantly in terms of sustainability perceptions and drivers, adoption, and evaluation of practices, as well as company characteristics. Future research needs to validate the findings on SMEs, compare our measures with more objective evaluation indicators, future adoption rates, and multidimensional sustainability practices.     

Impact of Immigration on Inhabitants' Educational Investments

We examine whether immigration into the labour market of the building and construction (BaC) industry affects enrolment in vocational programmes that teach the skills required in this industry. Results suggest that a higher supply of immigrant labour is associated with lower enrolment into programmes teaching BaC skills. The strength of this relationship increases according to the grades that the students achieved in lower secondary school. This finding indicates that the negative effect of immigration on educational recruitment is mainly caused by students who turn away from these programmes, rather than a reduction in apprenticeship positions offered by employers.