Assets and African Americans: Attempting to Capitalize on Hopes for Children Through College Savings Accounts

Although some racial inequalities have lessened in the half-century since the passage of the first major civil rights legislation, the racial wealth gap remains and in recent years seems to be widening. Households with children are the least likely to be asset secure or have sufficient resources to enable investment in opportunities for mobility. Viewing inequality from this perspective indicates that what households are able to save and invest for the future might have a more lasting impact on the life chances of children than their current income and consumption. Summarizing data from the Saving for Education, Entrepreneurship, and Downpayment (SEED) Initiative, a quasi-experimental study that is part of a national demonstration of Child Development Accounts (CDAs) in the United States, this paper describes how African-American households engage with one important investment opportunity - college savings accounts for their pre-school children. Combining account monitoring, survey, interview and focus group data, we explore the reasons that many households chose not to open accounts or invest their own money. We offer suggestions for making asset development programs viable for low-income African-American families and their children.     

The impact of cultural differences in U.S. business-to-business export marketing channel strategic alliances

Given slower growth and fierce competition in the domestic market, combined with increasing opportunities in many overseas markets, more and more U.S. companies are going international. While many doing so may initially use a direct exporting approach that relies on foreign channel members to distribute the product in the host country, over time, strategic alliances among distribution partners may form based on trust, commitment, and cooperation. For these alliances to succeed, the partners' perceptions of these variables need to be congruent so that expectations on each side of the dyad are reasonably similar. However, what happens when the cultural backgrounds of each channel partner are substantially different? This study empirically examines whether cultural differences do affect trust, commitment, and cooperation in international marketing channel alliances between U.S. exporters and their foreign distribution partners. Based on the survey responses from 149 U.S. exporters with marketing alliances abroad, cultural differences do affect trust, commitment, and cooperation. The greater the cultural differences between channel partners, the lower the levels of trust, commitment, and cooperation. Managerial implications are discussed, and study limitations are identified.     

Do Retail Foreign Direct Investment Restrictions Affect Retail Channel Structure?

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the existing retail channel structure research by investigating the impact of retail foreign direct investment (FDI) restrictions on retail channel structure as well as the moderating impact of a country's level of economic development on this relationship. Using a panel data set of 79 countries over the period 1999–2012, we show that retail FDI restrictions can influence retail channel structure development and that the relationship between retail FDI restrictions and retail channel structure is moderated by a country's level of economic development.