The Relationship Between Top Management Team–Outside Board Conflict and Outside Board Service Involvement in High‐Tech Start‐Ups

Corporate governance research has extensively studied the relationship between outside board characteristics and outside board involvement. We add to this literature by investigating the extent to which interactions between outside board members and the top management team (TMT) affect the functioning of the outside board. Building on conflict theory, our study shows that conflict between TMT and outside board is an important antecedent for outside board service involvement. Specifically, drawing from a hand‐collected data set of 70 high‐tech start‐ups in Belgium, we find that TMT–outside board task conflict is both directly and indirectly, that is, through TMT–outside board relationship conflict, related to outside board service involvement.     

The American frontier: Technology versus immigration

How important was international immigration for the US and its demography during the nineteenth century? This paper investigates, quantitatively, its effect on the westward movement of population and the regional and secular changes in fertility. Beside immigration, two alternative forces are considered: technological progress and the land policy (the Homestead Act). An optimal growth model with endogenous fertility and migration is calibrated, and counterfactual experiments reveal that the main driving forces were productivity growth and the declining cost of transportation. International immigration played a lesser role.     

A quantitative analysis of China's structural transformation

The structural transformation of China - or the reallocation of resources from the agricultural sector to the nonagricultural sector - between 1978 and 2003 was truly remarkable. We develop a two-sector neoclassical growth model to quantitatively assess the driving forces of China's recent structural transformation. In addition to the forces currently emphasized in the literature-sectoral productivity growth—we show that China's transformation was accelerated significantly by the gradual reduction in the relative size of the Chinese government. We find that the reduction in the size of the Chinese government accounted - by itself - for 15% of the reduction in the agricultural share of employment. Two mechanisms explain this: (i) in our model the lower tax rate associated with reduced intervention encouraged the accumulation of physical capital, which is produced in the nonagricultural sector; (ii) lower inefficiencies induced incomes to rise and, given our preferences, resulted in a disproportionate increase in the demand for the nonagricultural good.     

The welfare state after the great recession

The economic crisis has given rise to significant challenges to the welfare state. Given that welfare expenses account for a large proportion of all state spending in the member countries of the European Union, reducing government spending means cutting welfare measures. Yet social protection, in particular unemployment insurance benefits and minimum income support, has significantly softened the impact of the crisis for millions of individuals. The global recession calls into question the financial viability of current programmes, and the crisis is being used by some as an opportunity to roll back the welfare state permanently. The present Forum discusses challenges to and opportunities for the welfare state after the crisis.     

THE U.S. WESTWARD EXPANSION*

The U.S. economic development in the 19th century was characterized by the westward movement of population and the accumulation of productive land in the West. This article presents a model of migration and land improvement to identify the quantitatively important forces driving these phenomena. The conclusion is that the decrease in transportation costs induced the westward migration, whereas population growth was responsible for the investment in productive land.     

The US Unemployment Insurance Scheme: A Model for the EU?

Intereconomics - The system of unemployment insurance (UI) used in the United States has often been cited as a model for Europe. The American model illustrates that it is possible to create and...     

Shifting patterns and determinants of Asia-pacific tourism to Australia, 1990–2010

Australia is an increasingly important international holiday destination. Especially travel demand from Asia-Pacific countries has increased, which has led Australian policy-makers to believe the Asia-Pacific region will remain the largest growth market for holiday tourists. This article first presents an overview of the evolution and shifting geographical patterns of Asia-Pacific tourism to Australia between 1990 and 2010, and relies on this to explore the major determinants underlying these changes using a bootstrapped loglinear multiple regression analysis. Results indicate that income (GDP per capita) remains the most important factor explaining tourism demand, albeit that the Australian holiday market is becoming increasingly mature. Distance, as a proxy for travel costs, has large negative elasticity that has slightly increased over time as the effects of air transport liberalization have been off-set by oil prices’. The paper is concluded with an outlook on some possible opportunities and challenges for future tourism demand to Australia.     

FERTILITY SHOCKS AND EQUILIBRIUM MARRIAGE‐RATE DYNAMICS

Female marriage probabilities were 50% higher in France in the years after World War 1, despite a large drop in the sex ratio. We develop a model of marital matching in which composition effects in the singles pool affect postdisruption matching rates. When calibrated to French data from World War 1, this mechanism explains 2/3 of the postwar rise in female marriage probabilities as the result of better composition of the pool of single men. We conclude that endogeneity issues make the sex ratio a potentially unreliable indicator of female marriage prospects.