Dalit vision of India: from bahishkrut to inclusive Bharat

Dalits continue to remain “bahishkrut’ (outcaste, ostracised, ghettoised, and socially boycotted) in modern India. They are still in search of an inclusive civilisation that would not isolate them in time and space. Even the process of globalisation does not promise them any decent avenues of mobility. The future project of dalits and their friends and sympathisers is going to be to change the protocols of social interaction along egalitarian lines and ultimately in favour of dalit and non-dalits. The dalit vision of India, thus, is to transform India from bahishkrut to an enlightened and inclusive India. The elements of this future vision vis-à-vis technology, the state, democracy, nationalism, civil society and its deeply rooted prejudices are identified and discussed.     

Efficient Liability Rules: Complete Characterization

Received May, 18, 2000; revised version received March, 19, 2001     

The impact of product diversification strategy on the corporate performance of large Spanish firms

We analyze the impact of product diversification on performance. This topic has been discussed in the literature, and there is no consensus so far as to the significance or the direction of the impact. Performance is measured using Tobin's q for a sample of 103 large, non-financial Spanish firms (1992–1995). Diversification is measured by means of a categorical variable, as suggested by Varadarajan. The principal results indicate that the firms with intermediate levels of product diversification have the highest performance, while the firms with low and high levels of diversification show significantly lower performance, which performance is not significantly different between them.     

MNE competence‐creating subsidiary mandates

The determinants of R&D intensity differ between subsidiaries in a multinational enterprise (MNE). Previous literature suggests that whether a subsidiary achieves a competence‐creating output mandate depends on the qualities of its location. R&D strategies in competence‐creating subsidiaries are supply‐driven while those in purely competence‐exploiting subsidiaries are demand‐driven. Using data on U.K. subsidiaries of non‐U.K. MNEs, we find that the level of subsidiary R&D depends on MNE group‐level and subsidiary‐level characteristics as well as locational factors. The R&D of mandated subsidiaries rises with acquisition, but for non‐mandated subsidiaries R&D falls upon acquisition. MNEs that grow through acquisition have more inter‐subsidiary R&D diversity. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Accommodating spatial correlation across choice alternatives in discrete choice models: an application to modeling residential location choice behavior

This paper presents a modeling methodology capable of accounting for spatial correlation across choice alternatives in discrete choice modeling applications. Many location choice (e.g., residential location, workplace location, destination location) modeling contexts involve choice sets where alternatives are spatially correlated with one another due to unobserved factors. In the presence of such spatial correlation, traditional discrete choice modeling methods that are often based on the assumption of independence among choice alternatives are not appropriate. In this paper, a Generalized Spatially Correlated Logit (GSCL) model that allows one to represent the degree of spatial correlation as a function of a multi-dimensional vector of attributes characterizing each pair of location choice alternatives is formulated and presented. The formulation of the GSCL model allows one to accommodate alternative correlation mechanisms rather than pre-imposing restrictive correlation assumptions on the location choice alternatives. The model is applied to the analysis of residential location choice behavior using a sample of households drawn from the 2000 San Francisco Bay Area Travel Survey (BATS) data set. Model estimation results obtained from the GSCL are compared against those obtained using the standard multinomial logit (MNL) model and the spatially correlated logit (SCL) model where only correlations across neighboring (or adjacent) alternatives are accommodated. Model findings suggest that there is significant spatial correlation across alternatives that do not share a common boundary, and that the GSCL offers the ability to more accurately capture spatial location choice behavior.     

BARGAINING AMONG FARMERS,GOODWILL, AND THE SUCCESS OF COOPERATIVES

A model of concessional bargaining among farmers explains the success (or lack thereof) of cooperative institutions in rural farm settings in the developing regions. Concessional bargaining in day‐to‐day interactions generates goodwill, which helps smoothen future dealings amongst farmers as well as with outside agents. In particular, we model the existence of goodwill amongst farmers as enhancing their ability to collectively bargain with an outside dealer that buys their farm produce. Results suggest that when dealing with each other, farmers offer higher concessions when the risk of loss or reversal in bargaining power is high; however, the level of concession is also influenced by the degree of reciprocity and parameters that affect bargaining surplus. Findings provide further insights over the success of cooperative institutions in rural farm settings where inter‐farmer goodwill dynamics determines the cooperative's bargaining outcomes. Specifically, when farmers generously reciprocate each other's goodwill gestures, it leads to better outcomes through increasing their cooperative reservation price. In contrast, when the degree of reciprocity is lower, or when the risk of bargaining power switching is higher, farmers extract more surplus from other farmers, and this also lowers the cooperative's bargaining outcomes and makes the cooperative arrangement unviable in the long term.     

Modeling Cyclical Asymmetries in European Imports

This paper applies smooth transition models to capture the nonlinear behavior in the imports data of six major European economies and to assess whether such nonlinearities are related to business cycle asymmetries. Two classes of switch between regimes are considered: endogenously determined transition that assumes nonlinearities are generated by idiosyncratic components specific to foreign trade, and exogenous transition based on GDP growth as a more direct indicator of the cyclical state of the economy. The results support the proposition that the dynamics of imports are nonlinear. In Belgium, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, regimes change over the business cycle, while in Germany and Italy the switch between regimes is endogenous. National characteristics play a role in defining the position of extreme regimes, the smoothness of the transition, and local dynamics within each state.Previous versions of this article have been presented at the 57th International Atlantic Economic Conference (Lisbon, Portugal, March 10–14, 2004) and at the VII Encuentro de Economía Aplicada (Vigo, Spain, June 3–5, 2004). The authors thank the conference participants and an anonymous referee for their comments.