Language and market inclusivity for women entrepreneurship: the case of microfinance

Inclusive markets are key to fostering female entrepreneurship, and the microfinance sector has recognized and acted on this. Existing research has studied how institutions and organizational factors facilitate the process by which microfinance and other financial intermediaries tackle gender-based financial exclusion. But while the role of cultural institutions has been recognized as important, little research has systematically integrated culture in the study of gender-based financial exclusion. We posit that language is a cultural institution that influences the extent to which financial intermediaries are successful in outreaching women and supporting female entrepreneurship. Inspired by a performativity approach, we develop a set of hypotheses that delineate how a specific feature of language, gender marking in grammar, moderates the role of institutional (state capacity) and organizational (NGO status and global ties) factors in shaping microfinance outreach to women. Using the ratio of female to male borrowers in 2361 microfinance organizations from 115 countries during the period 1995–2015, we confirm that market inclusion of women depends on organizational and institutional factors, and that gender marking in grammar influences those relationships.     

Do security breaches matter? The shareholder puzzle

This article analyzes the effect of computer breaches on publicly traded equities from 2005 to 2017. An event study is performed and breaches analyzed conditioned on whether the breach announcement has been made in the mainstream media or through other channels. We find that in the period prior to the announcement date in the media, the mean abnormal return is negative, reflecting a likely leakage of information. In the period following the announcement date, the mean abnormal return is positive, often more than offsetting the previous declines. The findings have important implications for analysts, portfolio managers, institutional investors, and regulators.     

Nonprofit Organizations in Mexico: A Preliminary Study on Knowledge Creation From the Beneficiaries’ Perspectives

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to assess knowledge-creation activities by nonprofit organizations in Mexico from the beneficiaries’ perspectives. The ontological shift Socialization, Externalization, Combination, Interiorization (SECI) model and nonparametric tests were applied to a sample of 429 beneficiaries of 89 nonprofit organizations. The results found socialization was the most important and externalization was the least important aspect of the four types of dynamic knowledge interaction, suggesting an imbalance in knowledge creation, specifically in the conversion from tacit to explicit knowledge, which implies a problem, failure, or explicit barrier between the nonprofit organizations and their beneficiaries. The results further suggest weak links between age and externalization activities, gender and combination activities, and educational attainment and socialization activities. In sum, nonprofit organizations should consider beneficiaries’ individual characteristics when developing activities, disseminating materials, and communicating with the public. The study contributes to our understanding of tacit and explicit knowledge-creation activities by nonprofit organizations in Mexico.     

The Entrepreneurial Market Process—An Exposition

The title of this article embraces three implicit, distinct claims: (i) that market phenomena are governed by definite chains of cause and effect, (ii) that these chains of cause and effect constitute and generate a definite process, and (iii) that what drives this systematic process is (not the pattern of mutual constraints which reflect the maximizing decisions of market participants, but) the outside‐the‐box, “daring,” hunches of entrepreneurs. The first of these three claims are fully consistent with the central thrust of economic science for over two centuries. The second of these claims will require us to clarify what we mean by “process.” The third of these claims challenges, as we shall see, the conventional wisdom of mainstream micro‐economic thought of the past century.     

Technology Innovation Indicators

Abstract
A survey of the US patent database has yielded indicators to trends in technology innovations. Three types of indicator were developed, namely technology maturity, growth potential and product vs process innovations. The patent data show how innovations in one technology area are linked to other technologies and a measure of these links was incorporated into the above trend indicators. Results have a wide range of applications, including assessment of technological opportunities and helping a company in the analysis of strategic alternatives.     

Census of population and housing, 1983. Educational level: selected data from the sample enumeration

Selected findings from the enumeration of a 20 percent sample of households from the 1983 census of Israel are reported concerning educational status. Data are presented separately for Jews and non-Jews.     

Effects of the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines on Merger Review: Based on Ten Years of Practical Experience

Review of Industrial Organization - We assess how the 2010 Merger Guidelines have been applied by agencies and courts. We conclude that:     

Investment Incentives Under Emission Trading: An Experimental Study

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on incentives to adopt advanced abatement technology under emissions trading. Our experimental design mimics an industry with small asymmetric polluting firms regulated by different schemes of tradable permits. We consider three allocation/auction policies: auctioning off (costly) permits through an ascending clock auction, grandfathering permits with re-allocation through a single-unit double auction, and grandfathering with re-allocation through an ascending clock auction. Our results confirm both dynamic and static theoretical equivalence of auctioning and grandfathering. We nevertheless find that although the market institution used to reallocate permits does not impact the dynamic efficiency from investment, it affects the static efficiency from permit trading.