Railpolitik: The Financial Realities of Operating Britain's National Railways

This article analyses the context and financial performance of Britain's national railways under private ownership in the first half of the 20th century and public ownership in the second half of the century, in order to understand the problems confronting the railways and the implications for privatization. The evidence shows that Railtrack's collapse was inevitable: it is impossible for the railway industry to generate the revenue to cover the full cost of the infrastructure and services, including the financial claims of the providers of capital, without jeopardizing network performance. Privatization could not resolve the external constraints and the consequent financial problems. The final section considers the implications of this analysis for the future of the industry.     

A cross-national investigation of incentive sales compensation

Why do managers choose one sales compensation form rather than another? Theoretical answers typically focus on the type of plans managers should design, not on the factors that managers actually consider. Managers from various national origins pursue and weigh objectives through experience in a way that theoretical models may not capture. Incorporating conceptualizations from a wide range of disciplines, we specify a model examining the influence of cultural factors on sales compensation decisions of managers (incentive vs. fixed pay and parity vs. equity allocation). The model, tested with data collected from bank managers across six European countries, illustrates the importance of considering national culture when designing sales force compensation policies applied across multiple countries. We also find evidence that most European bank managers accept incentive pay to motivate salespeople but, perhaps paradoxically, overwhelmingly reject equity allocations to achieve control and parity. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on international governance systems and the diffusion of sales force management practices.     

The consumer's relational commitment: main dimensions and antecedents

As in business-to-business relationships, consumers often establish and maintain long-term relationships with firms. This article uses a multidisciplinary approach with the aims of describing the process that a consumer follows until committing to a firm and identifying the main dimensions and antecedents of the consumer's commitment. As antecedents of commitment, the proposed model considers dependence and trust through the reduction in uncertainty and in the perception of opportunism. The empirical study for the consumer–garage relationship suggests that the consumer's trust reduces the fear and perception of the firm's opportunism and engenders affective and temporal commitment.     

Empleo manufacturero en la Región Centro de México. Una estimación por gran división

In this paper, the production performance by great division and its effects on formal job generation in the central region of Mexico is analyzed. The more dynamic manufacturing divisions are identified and with the estimation of an employment function with panel data for each of the nine manufacturing great divisions, it is found that divisions I. Food, beverages and tobacco, II. Textiles, clothing and leather industry, III. Wood and wood products and IX Other manufacturing industries exhibit a high income elasticity of employment (0.716, 1.035, 0.781 and 0.94) and that the more technical divisions, with greater innovation processes and highly exporting divisions such as division VIII. Metal products, machinery and equipment show a lower elasticity.     

Manufacturing labor in the Central Region of Mexico. An estimation by great division

The production performance and its effects in the generation of formal employment in the Central region of Mexico are analyzed at the major division level of manufacture. The most dynamic activity divisions of the manufacturing industry are identified and, by estimating a function of employment with panel data for each of the nine major divisions of manufacture, it is reported that the activity divisions: I. Food products, beverages and tobacco, II. Textiles, clothing and leather industry, III. Timber industry and wood products and IX. Other manufacturing industries show high employment income elasticity (0.716, 1.035, 0.781 and 0.94). Furthermore, the divisions that comprise the more technical branches, with greater innovation processes and high levels of export, such as division VIII. Metal products, machinery and equipment, show lower elasticity.     

Are the cultural accounting values a relevant issue for the SMEs’ financing options?

This paper aims to examine the financing options of the managers/owners of SMEs (small and medium-sized companies) from a point of view that incorporates cultural values, namely, conservatism and secrecy. Data were collected with the use of a questionnaire conducted for managers/owners of a sample of 1629 Portuguese SMEs, and with the use of accounting and financial information from the period 2009 to 2011. 438 managers/owners provided valid answers, corresponding to a response rate of 27%. Using multivariate regression techniques as a basis, the results showed that a significant number of managers/owners supported the negative relationship between conservatism/secrecy and the business financing options associated with a higher risk (debts with costs). The results also showed that a more significant number of managers/owners of national SMEs choose sources of financing in light of the pecking order theory.     

A posteriori ratemaking using bivariate Poisson models

Recently, different bivariate Poisson regression models have been used in the actuarial literature to make an a priori ratemaking taking into account the dependence between two types of claims. A natural extension for these models is to consider a posteriori ratemaking (i.e. experience rating models) that also relaxes the independence assumption. We introduce here two bivariate experience rating models that integrate the a priori ratemaking based on the bivariate Poisson regression models, extending the existing literature for the univariate case to the bivariate case. These bivariate experience rating models are applied to an automobile insurance claims data-set to analyse the consequences for posterior premiums when the independence assumption is relaxed. The main finding is that the a posteriori risk factors obtained with the bivariate experience rating models are significantly lower than those factors derived under the independence assumption.     

Equilibrium leadership in tax competition models with capital ownership: a rejoinder

This paper reconciles two opposite results in the tax competition literature. Kempf and Rota-Graziosi (J Public Econ 94(9–10):768–776, 2010) and Hindriks and Nishimura (J Public Econ 121:66–68, 2015) have shown that the two Stackelberg outcomes prevail as the subgame perfect equilibria when capital is entirely owned by nonresidents. However, Ogawa (Int Tax Public Finance 20(3):474–484, 2013) has shown that the simultaneous-move outcome prevails when capital is entirely owned by residents. We develop a model in which capital ownership can vary freely between these two polar cases. We show that there exists a unique degree of residential capital ownership such that the equilibrium switches from the Stackelberg to the simultaneous-move outcomes. The chance for the simultaneous-move outcome to prevail increases with the extent of production asymmetry between regions. Partial ownership also induces a novel effect of tax leadership that we call the preference reversion effect.