Planting Decisions and Uncertain Consumer Acceptance of Genetically Modified Crop Varieties

There exists much uncertainty about consumer attitudes toward genetically modified foods. If it happens that sufficient (insufficient) acres are planted under nonmodified seed to meet postharvest demand, then a price premium will not (will) emerge for the nonmodified varieties. A nonlinearity originates in the fact that a price premium may not be supported. This nonlinearity interacts with demand uncertainty to determine equilibrium plantings and the probability that postharvest varietal prices differ. Also, as planting approaches signals will be broadcast about the nature of postharvest demand. We show how the nonlinearity affects the types of signals that growers will prefer to receive.     

Price or politics? An investigation of the causes of expropriation*

Expropriations of foreign direct investment in developing countries are typically blamed on political and economic crises in those countries. Developing a new database of expropriations in the minerals sectors of developing country exporters, I show that expropriations were correlated with mineral price booms and that democratic governments were more likely to expropriate. No link is found between expropriations and political or economic crises, except at independence. A better explanation of expropriation would be opportunistic behaviour by host governments when profits of investments are high. In two developed countries, Australia and Canada, expropri‐ations are also found to occur during price booms.     

Career fields: a small step towards a grand career theory?

Little theory development has been done that accounts for the changes in the forms, actors and contexts of careers that we currently can see. Looking at careers from a ‘grand’ and unified theoretical perspective has a number of advantages. In particular, grand social theories allow the link between a well-elaborated and differentiated framework for social phenomena and for careers. Moreover, looking at careers from a unified perspective allows discussion of the great variety of aspects to careers in a single theoretical language. Based on the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this paper focuses on social fields as one major element of an effort towards a more comprehensive theoretical framework for professional and managerial careers. In particular, it discusses the constituting characteristics of career fields as social fields and the application of this concept to work-related careers. Rather than adopting or adapting a specific theory in order to illuminate a specific national context, this paper, by using Bourdieu's concepts, proposes a framework to illuminate particular aspects sometimes not sufficiently stressed by recent – and more especially Anglo-Saxon – career research. Avoiding a choice between objective or subjective career and macro- or micro-perspective, it allows the strengthening or re-introduction of themes like multi-level analysis, simultaneous actionstructure view, combining ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ perspectives, power distribution, social hierarchy and thus social inequalities into career research.     

On optimal choice of order statistics in large samples for the construction of confidence regions for the location and scale

Given a large sample from a location-scale population we estimate the unknown parameters by means of confidence regions constructed on the basis of two order statistics. The problem of the best choice of those statistics to obtain good estimates, as $n\rightarrow \infty ,$ is considered.     

HRM structures and subsidiary discretion in foreign multinationals in the UK

This article uses a large-scale representative survey to examine a key aspect of control in multinational companies (MNCs): the extent of central influence over human resource (HR) policy formation in subsidiaries. This is a crucial aspect of behaviour, relevant for example for the cross-border diffusion of policies and practices and for the institutional distinctiveness of practice within a given host environment. The article assesses how far policy is determined by corporate headquarters or some other higher-level organizational structure. Its novelty lies primarily in its exploration of the influence of the structure of the HR management (HRM) function on subsidiary discretion. It finds, first, that the degree of central control is influenced for different HR issues by nationality of ownership and by international product/service standardization. Second, there is some variability in the antecedents associated with discretion on different HR issues. Finally, aspects of the structure of the HRM function significantly affect discretion, notably the networking of HR managers across borders and the direct reporting relationships within the function between the UK and higher organizational levels.     

Comparative and qualitative robustness for law-invariant risk measures

When estimating the risk of a P&L from historical data or Monte Carlo simulation, the robustness of the estimate is important. We argue here that Hampel’s classical notion of qualitative robustness is not suitable for risk measurement, and we propose and analyze a refined notion of robustness that applies to tail-dependent law-invariant convex risk measures on Orlicz spaces. This concept captures the tradeoff between robustness and sensitivity and can be quantified by an index of qualitative robustness. By means of this index, we can compare various risk measures, such as distortion risk measures, in regard to their degree of robustness. Our analysis also yields results of independent interest such as continuity properties and consistency of estimators for risk measures, or a Skorohod representation theorem for ψ-weak convergence.     

Demand for litigation in the absence of traditions of rule of law: an example of Ottoman and Habsburg legacies in Romania

The paper investigates the impact of historical legacies of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires on demand for litigation in contemporary Romania in criminal cases. It finds that nowadays a key difference between these two historical zones is that in the Habsburg counties demand for litigation increases if the income goes up; in the Ottoman counties, however, the demand remains constant. Furthermore, the demand for litigation in poor counties is smaller in Habsburg than in Ottoman counties. We provide several explanations to this phenomenon and compare it to the anecdotal evidence of culture of judicial appeals in other countries.     

Tropical Agriculture: Is Africa Different?

We investigate the determinants of agricultural productivity in a panel of 27 tropical developing countries from 1984 to 2005 and test whether the coefficients of the right‐hand side variables are significantly different in sub‐Sahara Africa. We find evidence that the point estimates of fertilizer usage, telephones, tractor usage, rainfall and irrigation are positively and significantly related to agricultural productivity in the tropics. We also show that sub‐Saharan Africa is different in several respects. For instance, we find no evidence that fertilizer is associated with greater agricultural productivity in the African sample. Also, while the coefficient on infrastructure is positively associated with agricultural productivity in the full sample, its quantitative effect is smaller in sub‐Saharan Africa. As a robustness test, we experiment with an alternative measure of tropicality and find that the results are broadly similar.     

Measuring firm performance: Bayesian estimates with good and bad outputs

Set in the airport industry, this paper measures firm performance using both desirable and bad outputs (i.e. airport delays). We first estimate a model that does not include the bad outputs and then a model that includes bad outputs. The results show important differences in the efficiency and productivity results depending on whether bad outputs are or are not included in the model. The differences reflect the resource cost to society and the potential cost to an airport if such externalities were internalized. Finally, the paper provides measures of shadow prices for the bad output, in our case airport delay, and discusses the results in terms of several interesting trends affecting US airports.     

Drivers of the cost of capital: The joint role of non-financial metrics

Recent marketing studies suggest that non-financial metrics, such as customer satisfaction and brand value, help explain the variation in the cost of equity and the cost of debt. These studies typically focus on only one non-financial metric and one component of capital cost. In this study, we broaden the understanding of the relevance of non-financial metrics to the cost of capital. We investigate the joint role of customer satisfaction, brand value, and corporate reputation for stock market beta and credit ratings, which reflect variation in equity and debt risk premiums across firms. In addition to the joint direct influence of these metrics on capital cost, we also study their interaction effects. We develop a conceptual model to explain the effects on capital costs and test the resulting hypotheses in a broad sample of 344 firms from diverse industries using data from the 1991–2006 period.