Elderly Care and Intrafamily Resource Allocation when Children Migrate

This paper considers the intrafamily allocation of elderly care in the context of international migration where migrant children may be able to provide financial assistance to their parents, but are unable to offer physical care. To investigate the interaction between siblings, I take a non-cooperative view of family decision-making and estimate best response functions for individual physical and financial contributions as a function of siblings' contributions. I address the endogeneity of siblings' contributions and individual migration decisions by using siblings' characteristics as instrumental variables as well as models including family fixed effects. For both migrants and non-migrants, I find evidence that financial contributions function as strategic complements while siblings' time contributions operate as strategic substitutes. This suggests that children's contributions toward elderly care may be based on both strategic bequest and public good motivations.     

Supplier development programs and firm performance: evidence from Chile

This paper evaluates the impact of the Chilean Supplier Development Program, aimed at improving and stabilizing the commercial linkages between small and medium-sized suppliers and their large firm customers, during the period 2003–2008. We use the panel structure of our dataset to control for observables and time-invariant unobservable factors that affect the participation and performance of firms. We find that both small and medium enterprises and large firms benefited from the coordination efforts. The program increased sales, employment, and the sustainability of small and medium-sized suppliers; it also increased the sales of large firms and raised their ability to become exporters. In addition, we find that the timing of the effect is different for suppliers and large firms. While the effect on suppliers appeared 1 year after the firms enrolled in the program, the effect on large firms took 2 years to appear.     

Experimental designs for estimating plateau-type production functions and economically optimal input levels

Estimation of nitrogen response functions has a long history and yet there is still considerable uncertainty about how much nitrogen to apply to agricultural crops. Nitrogen recommendations are usually based on estimation of agronomic production functions that typically use data from designed experiments. Nitrogen experiments, for example, often use equally spaced levels of nitrogen. Past agronomic research is mostly supportive of plateau-type functional forms. The question addressed is if one is willing to accept a specific plateau-type functional form as the true model, what experimental design is the best to use for estimating the production function? The objective is to minimize the variance of the estimated expected profit maximizing level of input. Of particular interest is how well does the commonly used equally-spaced design perform in comparison to the optimal design. Mixed effects models for winter wheat (Triticum aestivium L.) yield are estimated for both Mitscherlich and linear plateau functions. With three design points, one should be high enough to be on the plateau and one should be at zero. The choice of the middle design point makes little difference over a wide range of values. The optimal middle design point is lower for the Mitscherlich functional form than it is for the plateau function. Equally spaced designs with more design points have a similar precision and thus the loss from using a nonoptimal experimental design is small.     

CSR Information Disclosure on the Web: A Context-Based Approach Analysing the Influence of Country of Origin and Industry Sector

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a much-discussed subject in the business world. The Internet has become one of the main tools for CSR information disclosure, allowing companies to publicise more information less expensively and faster than ever before. As a result, corporations are increasingly concerned with communicating ethically and responsibly to the diversity of stakeholders through the web. This paper addresses the main question as whether CSR information disclosure on corporate websites is influenced by country of origin and/or industry sector. Analysing the websites of 127 corporations from emerging countries, such as Brazil, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand and South Africa, it becomes evident that both country of origin and industry sector have a significant influence over CSR information disclosure on the web (CSRIDOW). Based on the data studied, country of origin has a stronger influence over CSRIDOW than industry sector.

Aggregate Versus Disaggregate Data in Measuring School Quality

This article develops a measure of efficiency to use with aggregated data. Unlike the most commonly used efficiency measures, our estimator adjusts for the heteroskedasticity created by aggregation. Our estimator is compared to estimators currently used to measure school efficiency. Theoretical results are supported by a Monte Carlo experiment. Results show that for samples containing small schools (sample average may be about 100 students per school but sample includes several schools with about 30 or less students), the proposed aggregate data estimator performs better than the commonly used OLS and only slightly worse than the multilevel estimator. Thus, when school officials are unable to gather multilevel or disaggregate data, the aggregate data estimator proposed here should be used. When disaggregate data are available, standardizing the value-added estimator should be used when ranking schools.     

On the joint effect of technological and management innovations on performance: increasing or diminishing returns?

Most studies on innovation are aimed at covering technological innovation, neglecting other modes of innovation based on non-technological drivers. The latter, referred to as management innovation, consists of the implementation of new management practices, processes or organisational tasks. This work advances knowledge on the topic by exploring the joint effect of simultaneously introducing technological and management innovations on performance. Based on an analysis of 12,563 Spanish firms drawn from CIS data, our findings suggest that firms frequently pursue the simultaneous or joint introduction of both technological and management innovations and that integration impacts positively on a firm’s performance, evidencing an inverted U-shape that suggest positive but diminishing returns. A theoretical framework using the capability-based view embraces the emerging conversation on management innovation issues and its relationship with the well-researched technological one.     

How Does Investor Sentiment Affect Stock Market Crises? Evidence from Panel Data

We test the impact of investor sentiment on a panel of international stock markets. Specifically, we examine the influence of investor sentiment on the probability of stock market crises. We find that investor sentiment increases the probability of occurrence of stock market crises within a one‐year horizon. The impact of investor sentiment on stock markets is more pronounced in countries that are culturally more prone to herd‐like behavior, overreaction and low institutional involvement.     

The Intergenerational Effects of Paternal Migration on Schooling and Work: What Can We Learn from Children's Time Allocations?

This paper explores the short-run effects of a father's U.S. migration on his children's schooling and work outcomes in Mexico. To get around the endogeneity of paternal migration, I use individual fixed effects and instrumental variables estimation (FEIV) where the instrumental variables are based on U.S. city-level employment statistics in two industries popular with Mexican immigrants. Overall, the estimates suggest that in the short-run, children reduce study hours and increase work hours in response to a father's U.S. migration. Decomposing the sample into sex- and age-specific groups suggests that this is mainly driven by the effects of paternal migration on 12-15 year-old boys. These results are consistent with a story in which the immediate aftermath of a father's migration is one of financial hardship that is borne in part by relatively young children.     

Testing log-linear models with inequality constraints: a comparison of asymptotic, bootstrap, and posterior predictive p-values

An important aspect of applied research is the assessment of the goodness-of-fit of an estimated statistical model. In the analysis of contingency tables, this usually involves determining the discrepancy between observed and estimated frequencies using the likelihood-ratio statistic. In models with inequality constraints, however, the asymptotic distribution of this statistic depends on the unknown model parameters and, as a result, there no longer exists an unique p -value. Bootstrap p -values obtained by replacing the unknown parameters by their maximum likelihood estimates may also be inaccurate, especially if many of the imposed inequality constraints are violated in the available sample. We describe the various problems associated with the use of asymptotic and bootstrap p -values and propose the use of Bayesian posterior predictive checks as a better alternative for assessing the fit of log-linear models with inequality constraints.     

Operating lease decision and the impact of capitalization in a bank-oriented country

This article explores the reasons why firms engage in operating leases and examines the potential impact of a change in the related accounting rules. We focus on the accounting advantage of off-balance financing, which does not affect the typical accounting-based covenants especially important in bank-oriented countries. However, we also consider other economically based arguments. Using manually collected operating lease data for Spanish listed firms, we use the constructive capitalization method to measure as-if liabilities. The results confirm that not only size and industry affect the decision but that firms closer to breaching their covenants are also more inclined to choose operating leases. Consequently, it is argued that such firms will be more affected by the accounting change; indeed, the inclusion of liabilities in the balance sheet might tighten financial covenants in loan agreements as evidenced in the paper. Not surprisingly, firms are strongly opposed to the accounting change.