Supply chain finance schemes in the procurement of agricultural products

Product, information, and finance flows are all interrelated within the modern supply chain; thus, it is now more than ever of paramount importance for practitioners to integrate procurement and financial decisions. This challenge is exemplified in many agricultural supply chains, where operational risks are significant and access to capital differs sharply across firms. We study three management tactics that some large food/beverage manufacturers – situated downstream in these chains – have used to meet the challenge: ordinary fixed price contracts (or soft tolling) with direct suppliers, hard tolling and contract farming where the manufacturer intervenes upstream, providing capital, and coordinating procurement decisions. We place these upstream intervention schemes in the theoretical context of supply chain finance (SCF) and model their application to a three-echelon agricultural supply chain. We perform a numerical study in order to understand how the structure of capital constraints in the chain may influence the manufacturer's choice of SCF scheme. The numerical study is based on a business case that reflects the barley–malt supply chain of Heineken N.V. Despite greater coordination opportunities, we show that upstream intervention is not necessarily preferable for the manufacturer. Nevertheless, the preferred SCF scheme can be inferred on the basis of relatively simple characterization of the capital constraints in the supply chain.     

Does sovereign debt weaken economic growth? A panel VAR analysis

We estimate panel vector autoregressions to analyze the highly disputed relationship between sovereign debt and economic growth. Using data on 20 developed countries, we find no evidence for a robust effect of debt on growth, even for higher levels of debt. We do find a significant negative reverse effect of growth on debt, which explains the negative correlation.     

The influence of entrepreneur’s personal characteristics on MSEs growth through innovation

Research in the separate areas of innovation and growth has considerably intensified in recent years. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the entrepreneurs’ personal characteristics that might explain the growth of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) through innovation. This study examines the key entrepreneurs’ personal characteristics affecting micro and small enterprises (MSEs) upgrading, defined here as substantial growth through innovation. Six major determining types of entrepreneurs’ characteristics were identified from the innovation and the growth literature: education, work experience, gender, motivations, nationality and age. The empirical results which are based on t-tests of the differences between upgraders and non-upgraders, the linear probability model and the logit model, all suggest that work experience and motivations are cornerstones in the likelihood that an MSE will upgrade. The policy implications of this study on promoting MSEs upgrading are also discussed.     

Candidate gene studies and the quest for the entrepreneurial gene

Candidate gene studies of human behavior are gaining interest in economics and entrepreneurship research. Performing and interpreting these studies is not straightforward because the selection of candidates influences the interpretation of the results. As an example, Nicolaou et al. (Small Bus Econ 36:151?C155, 2011) report a significant association between a common genetic variant in the DRD3 gene and the tendency to be an entrepreneur. We fail to replicate this finding using a much larger, independent dataset. In addition, we discuss the candidate gene approach and give suggestions to avoid the publication of false positives.     

Search Engine Optimization: What Drives Organic Traffic to Retail Sites?

The lion's share of retail traffic through search engines originates from organic (natural) rather than sponsored (paid) links. We use a dataset constructed from over 12,000 search terms and 2 million users to identify drivers of the organic clicks that the top 759 retailers received from search engines in August 2012. Our results are potentially important for search engine optimization (SEO). We find that a retailer's investments in factors such as the quality and brand awareness of its site increases organic clicks through both a direct and an indirect effect. The direct effect stems purely from consumer behavior: The higher the quality of an online retailer, the greater the number of consumers who click its link rather than a competitor in the list of organic results. The indirect effect stems from our finding that search engines tend to place higher quality sites in better positions, which results in additional clicks because consumers tend to click links in more favorable positions. We also find that consumers who are older, wealthier, conduct searches from work, use fewer words, or include a brand name product in their search are more likely to click a retailer's organic link following a product search. Finally, the quality of a retailer's site appears to be especially important in attracting organic traffic from individuals with higher incomes. The beneficial direct and indirect effects of an online retailer's brand equity on organic clicks, coupled with the spillover effects on traffic through other online and traditional channels, leads us to conclude that investments in the quality and brand awareness of a site should be included as part of an SEO strategy.     

One job,one deal…or not: do generations respond differently to psychological contract fulfillment?

This paper investigates generational differences in the relations between psychological contract fulfillment and work attitudes. Data were collected from a sample of 909 employees in the Dutch service sector. Structural equation modeling analyses were used to test the moderating effects of generational differences on the influence of psychological contract fulfillment on affective commitment and turnover intention. The relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and these work outcomes was moderated by generational differences. Furthermore, results indicate that different generations respond differently to different aspects of psychological contract fulfillment, such as career development, job content, organizational policies, social atmosphere and rewards. The study provides evidence that generational differences impact the reciprocal relationship between employer and employee. Results from this study suggest that Baby Boomers and Generation X may be more motivated by social atmosphere, whereas Generation Y may be more motivated by job content and career development. Fair organizational policies are particularly motivating to Generation X, and providing rewards, though more important to Generation Y, seem mostly unrelated to work outcomes. This article is the first to study the moderation of generational differences in the relationships between psychological contract fulfillment and work outcomes.     

Evolution in games with a continuous action space

Allowing for games with a continuous action space, we investigate how evolutionary stability, the existence of a uniform invasion barrier, local superiority and asymptotic stability relate to each other. This is done without restricting the populations of which we want to investigate the stability to monomorphic population states or to strategies with finite support. The authors have benefitted from careful and precise comments by Gerard van der Laan, Jan van Mill, the editor and an anonymous referee. Matthijs van Veelen gratefully acknowledges financial support by the Netherlands’ Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).     

Estimation of Search Frictions in the British Electricity Market

This paper studies consumer search and pricing behavior in the British domestic electricity market following its opening to competition in 1999. We develop a sequential search model in which an incumbent and an entrant group compete for consumers who find it costly to obtain information on prices other than from their current supplier. We use a large data set on prices and input costs to structurally estimate the model. Our estimates indicate that consumer search costs must be relatively high in order to rationalize observed pricing patterns. We confront our estimates with observed switching behavior and find they match well.     

Beyond Ethnic Stereotypes – Identities and Outdoor Recreation Among Immigrants and Nonimmigrants in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

Studies on immigrants' recreational use of greenspace have tended to focus on ethnic groups as homogeneous entities. In a qualitative study based on group interviews, this article focuses on the cultural diversity among and within ethnic groups. We used an identity perspective to study outdoor recreation of young Dutch adults with Chinese, Turkish, or nonimmigrant backgrounds. Results show that primarily personal identities, age, and ethnicity inform recreational behavior. The multiplicity of peoples' identities results in more heterogeneity between and within ethnic groups, as well as more homogeneity between immigrants and nonimmigrants, than commonly described. When immigrants are considered as a homogeneous group that underparticipates in outdoor recreation, individual immigrants who frequently participate in outdoor recreation are overlooked. Furthermore, we show that acculturation does not progress at the same rate among all ethnic groups, and that ethnic identity may be sustained among second and subsequent generations through certain recreational activities.     

Prices and heterogeneous search costs

We study price formation in a model of consumer search for differentiated products in which consumers have heterogeneous search costs. We provide conditions under which a pure‐strategy symmetric Nash equilibrium exists and is unique. Search costs affect two margins—the intensive search margin (or search intensity) and the extensive search margin (or the decision to search rather than to not search at all). These two margins affect the elasticity of demand in opposite directions and whether lower search costs result in higher or lower prices depends on the properties of the search cost density.