THE GINI CONCENTRATION INDEX: A REVIEW OF THE INFERENCE LITERATURE

More than a century ago, Corrado Gini proposed his well-known concentration index for measuring the degree of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. His index is still extremely relevant and widely used in several fields of research and application. In this paper, we focus on the inferential properties of the Gini index, and discuss the main directions of analysis proposed in the literature. The aim of the paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the main developments on the inferential aspects of the Gini concentration ratio. We feel that this work can provide a valuable contribution to those scholars who are approaching the large amount of literature on the inferential properties of the Gini index.     

The triple-edged sword of sensitivity of sales,cash flows,and debt to investments: Venture survival and capital investments

Drawing on reliable financial performance data of 192,855 venture-year observations, representing a total of 66,174 ventures with 8.13% of the ventures failing (5380 ventures), we find that neither sales-investment sensitivity nor cash-flow-investment sensitivity is associated with venture survival. However, debt-investment sensitivity lowers the hazard of failure. Sales-investment sensitivity and debt-investment sensitivity under munificence and dynamism lower the hazard of failure. However, cash-flow-investment sensitivity at high levels of dynamism or munificence does not influence the hazard of failure. The effect sizes are small but nonetheless meaningful. The findings have implications for ventures attempting to match performance and capital structure with investment.     

Technical Efficiency of the Brazilian Municipalities: Correcting Nonparametric Frontier Measurements for Outliers

In this paper we estimate the DEA technical efficiency for 4796 Brazilian municipalities, by applying a recently proposed “Jackstrap” method, which combines Bootstrap and Jackknife resampling techniques, to reduce the effect of outliers and possible errors in the data set. We perform calculations to identify and eliminate high leverage municipalities, using different variants of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), as well as Free Disposal Hull (FDH). Corroborating previous results, efficiency results for the Brazilian municipalities show a clear relationship between the size of the municipality and its efficiency scores. Indeed, under both DEA variants, smaller cities tend to be less efficient than larger ones hence indicating that the quality of the frontier adjustment improves significantly as the size of the municipality increases. We present arguments that may explain to some extent these findings, such as economies of scale and the excess spending due to revenue from royalties. However, such effects require further, more careful examination.     

The relationship between total factor productivity growth and employment: some evidence from a sample of European Regions

This paper provides a structural estimation of an equilibrium matching model with exogenous productivity growth on a sample of European Regions for the period 1976–2000. Using a three-stage least squares procedure, I estimate a simultaneous equation model for employment, wages and capital stock. The importance of the study of the relationship between growth and employment is due to the fact that the sign of this connection is not clear-cut. Theoretical models imply that the impact of productivity on employment is ambiguous. Furthermore, the empirical contributions are still not so many to reach a strong conclusion on the sign of the relationship above. This paper finds that the impact of productivity growth on employment is negative in the short-run and this effect remains negative even in the long-run. The implication of my results is that all new technology is embodied in new jobs and job creation plays no role in the employment dynamics of the sample I have considered.     

Abnormal returns before acquisition announcements: evidence from Europe

Acquisition announcements influence the stock price of target firms, providing an opportunity for insiders to obtain significant abnormal returns. We study the presence of positive abnormal returns before the announcement date, in target firms, quoted in Euronext markets (Belgium, France, The Netherlands and Portugal) from 2001 to 2007. We investigate whether the pre-announcement run-up of prices can be explained by rumours in the media and the percentage of capital previously owned by the bidding firm, among other factors. We examine cumulative abnormal returns in an event window of 60 days prior the acquisition announcement, with the event date adjusted for the previous disclosure of news about the acquisition, in the media. We compute a run-up index, and find that there are abnormal positive returns before the announcement date, confirming previous studies. We find that a significant part of the run-up is explained by: (i) market anticipation triggered by legitimate sources of information, namely, rumours in the media about the possibility of an acquisition bid and (ii) the percentage of capital previously owned in the target firm, by the bidding firm.     

Geographical concentration and the dynamics of countries' specialization in technologies

This paper examines the empirical dynamics of countries' technological specialization in six technology fields using distribution dynamics. In all technology fields innovation activities are performed by relatively few countries and the degree of concentration is fairly stable in time. Intra-distribution dynamics is characterized by persistence of within field countries' specialization levels around or below the mean, while high specialization levels revert towards lower values. This strengthens the case for absorptive capacity. Electronics show some distinctive properties: they have the highest degree of geographical concentration and numerous small countries among those specialized; they also are the least mobile technology field. In a Schumpeterian perspective, this is in line with "creative accumulation".     

What money buys: clients of street sex workers in the US

The article presents a review of current theoretical and empirical approaches to sex work, followed by the presentation of an original theoretical framework (Della Giusta et al., 2006), which is tested with an econometric model of the characteristics of demand for sex services by a sample of clients of street sex workers in the US. We present findings in relation to stigma and the relationship between paid and unpaid sex that corroborate our model's hypotheses and are in line with findings from other empirical studies. Furthermore, we identify in our sample two diametrically opposite profiles: one for clients whom we label ‘experimenters’, and one for more experienced ones that we name ‘regulars’, we also estimate attitudes toward risk, and draw implications in terms of both policy and future theoretical and empirical research.