Modernizing wholesalers and guava farmers in Mexico

This article focuses on the rapid development of the “modernizing wholesale” channel, with a study of guava traders and farmers in Mexico. This adds to a literature on modernization of food markets that has focused primarily on exports, supermarkets, and large processors and addressed less wholesale in general and rarely modernizing wholesale per se. We find that participation in the modernizing wholesale channel, relative to the traditional broker channel, requires greater land, regional, and nonland assets, as well as confers a premium controlling for quality, and spurs employment in harvesting and handling locally.     

Innovation, cycles and growth

The purpose of this paper is to present a model of growth with endogenous fluctuations. The main feature of our model is that it throws light on the relationships between long waves and business cycles in the economy. The driving forces in the model work in this way: endogenous R&D investment creates new cumulative knowledge. When this knowledge reaches a threshold H*, radical innovations occur which generate productivity growth via the substitution of old capital with new capital. These disruptive events appear recurrently, generating long waves and revitalizing the growth process. Short-term cycles in the model come from the interactions between these innovation-driven transformations and certain prey-predator mechanisms that involve the labor market. We find that our model presents excellent properties: the model generates endogenous cyclical growth as a disequilibrium process; persistent and irregular short cycles appear interwoven with the long waves; and there is a strong significant interaction between both kinds of fluctuations.     

A dynamic perspective to the internationalization of small-medium enterprises

Despite the fact that the dominant theories of the internationalization of small-medium enterprises (SMEs) prescribe a dynamic and evolutionary process for the firm, most of the empirical research on this topic has been based on in-depth studies of a few cases, or cross-sectional surveys, which cannot capture the dynamic nature of exporting decisions that occur over many years. In this study we propose an empirical framework for studying the internationalization of SMEs that: (a) identifies latent internationalization stages based on multiple indicators of the firms’ engagement and strategies in foreign markets over multiple years, and (b) analyses the firms’ movements among these latent states over time, as a function of main characteristics of the firms and their markets at each point in time.     

Growth,profits and foreign ownership in the Brazilian banking industry

The deregulation of the financial markets and their progressive globalization has favoured the internationalization of banking. Moreover, during the international financial crisis, the presence of foreign banks has increased in countries experiencing faster economic growth, such as Brazil. In this context, the aim of this study is to analyze the growth and profitability of the financial institutions in Brazil, taking into account the possible non-linearity of the relationship, the differences between Brazilian and foreign institutions and the effect of the crisis. Our results indicate that the entry of foreign institutions has a direct effect on the Brazilian banking industry.     

Banking solvency determinants in the EU: a model based on stress tests

Using a multilevel regression model, this article aims to find determinants of banking solvency in the European Union. The endogenous variable is defined as the capital ratio determined by stress tests. Both internal (financial ratios and sovereign debt exposures) and external (macroeconomic indicators) variables are proposed as covariates. The results reveal that capitalization, earnings, assets structure and exposure to PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) sovereign debt are significant among the former, and economic growth, interest and exchange rates, and real estate prices among the latter.     

Tax Amnesties and Income Tax Compliance: The Case of Spain

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the long‐term impact on Spanish individual income tax (IRPF) compliance of the amnesty measures granted in 1991 within the framework of the 1988–91 income tax reform programme. To that end, we combine time‐series techniques with outlier detection methods and the Bai and Perron (1998) test for the endogenous estimation of structural breaks. On the basis of the analysis of the monthly IRPF tax collection series from 1979 to 1998, we find that the amnesty had no effect on tax collection in either the short or the long term. By contrast, we find evidence of the permanent positive impact caused by the legislative and administrative measures linked to the IRPF reform process begun in 1988.     

Environmental taxes on intermediate and final goods when both can be imported

One of the most difficult administrative problems in implementing broad-based environmental taxes concerns the tax treatment of imports, particularly imports of final goods that are producedusing intermediate goods that are taxed domestically. Provided there is no joint production, taxing imported final goods based on the amount of intermediate goods consumed in their domestic production will raise marginal costs by the same amount for domestic and foreign producers. This rule is impossible to implement when final goods are produced as joint products, however, as in the petroleum refining and petrochemical industries. In such cases arbitrary assignments of intermediate good inputs to final goods-for example, on the basis of relative output weight or value-are likely to change the relative marginal costs of domestic and foreign producers.     

Investment option under CIR interest rates

We analyze extensively the characteristics of the solution to an irreversible investment decision when the only source of uncertainty comes from interest rates. They are assumed to be driven by the popular Cox–Ingersoll–Ross (CIR) stochastic process. Particular attention is paid to the impact that both CIR parameters and risk aversion have on the threshold rate.     

Accumulation pattern of the Brazilian economy in the 1990s and 2000s

This paper investigates the dynamic relationships among income distribution, debt ratio and capital accumulation in the Brazilian economy in the 1990s and 2000s. One explanation for the relatively slow growth of the Brazilian economy is the relatively low rate of investment. The paper presents an econometric model, based on Nishi, to investigate the causes of instability in investment in the period. It concludes that the Brazilian economy since the economic opening presents a debt-burdened pattern of capital accumulation.