Choice of Diversification Strategies in an Emerging Market: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing Industries

The study seeks to measure the strategic choice of industries over different dynamic phases in the Indian economic environment. The total sample of 536 companies has been divided into 14 industries as per Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes. The paper also categorizes companies as per the cyclical changes in the economy, that is, growth, cyclical, and defensive industries. Evidence suggests that choice of diversification is industry specific and concurrently affected by the environmental conditions prevailing in the emerging economy. Food and beverages, plastic/rubber, and electrical equipment industries follow higher categories of diversification than other industries.     

Structural characteristics of firms and industries and black and white wage inequality in the U.S. economy: 1988

The effects of firm and job characteristics on the wages of blacks and whites are analyzed using data from the 1988 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth [Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1997]. This study focuses on 2,370 full-time private sector employees. The results show that, first, blacks are disproportionately employed in large establishments despite their lower cognitive achievements. Second, blacks do not enjoy significant wage premiums associated with supervisory positions. Third, although the wage gap between blacks and whites is reduced considerably, controlling for education and cognitive skills, the gap increases significantly when structural attributes are included in the wage regressions despite the large wage premiums associated with employment in large establishments.     

Can Mobile Money Help Firms Mitigate the Problem of Access to Finance in Eastern sub-Saharan Africa?

ABSTRACT

Mobile money is a mobile-phone-based financial tool that can transfer money safely and quickly across a wide geographical area. Mobile money has transformed the way businesses in Eastern sub-Saharan Africa operate. Nowadays, banks team up with mobile-money-service providers and pay interest on deposits and grant loans based on financial transactions in mobile-money accounts. In this paper, these recent developments are investigated in order to determine whether the adoption of mobile money by firms can actually help them mitigate the vexing problem of access to finance. To answer this question, the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys Program data set for the year 2013 is used, thus making the study applicable to the present time. The results obtained, after controlling for a large number of firm-level characteristics and using a newly introduced measure to identify access-to-finance status of the firms, indicate that firms which use mobile money are more likely to obtain loans or lines of credit. Further analysis shows that the firms that use mobile money are more productive than other firms in the region.     

Multi‐state Stochastic Processes: A Statistical Flowgraph Perspective

Two‐state models (working/failed or alive/dead) are widely used in reliability and survival analysis. In contrast, multi‐state stochastic processes provide a richer framework for modeling and analyzing the progression of a process from an initial to a terminal state, allowing incorporation of more details of the process mechanism. We review multi‐state models, focusing on time‐homogeneous semi‐Markov processes (SMPs), and then describe the statistical flowgraph framework, which comprises analysis methods and algorithms for computing quantities of interest such as the distribution of first passage times to a terminal state. These algorithms algebraically combine integral transforms of the waiting time distributions in each state and invert them to get the required results. The estimated transforms may be based on parametric distributions or on empirical distributions of sample transition data, which may be censored. The methods are illustrated with several applications.     

Factors influencing the adjustment of women on global assignments

This study tests a four-factor model proposed by Caligiuri and Cascio (in press) for predicting the cross-cultural adjustment of female expatriates. The four factors tested in this paper were family support, personality characteristics, organizational support and host nationals' attitudes towards female expatriates. Structured phone interviews with thirty-eight American female expatriates from US-based companies were conducted. The responses were content analysed and regression was conducted. The results suggest company and family support are significantly related to cross-cultural adjustment. Thus, suggestions are given for future research on female expatriates using the theoretical model of social support. Practical recommendations for how to maximize the likelihood of success for women on global assignments are also given.     

The Influence of Repetitive Health Messages and Sensitivity to Fluency on the Truth Effect in Advertising

Although merely repeating a product claim does not influence the objective validity of the claim, it often increases the subjective validity of the claim (the truth effect). Research notes that the truth effect plays an important role in health advertising. The present research investigates the moderating role of sensitivity to feelings of fluency (or processing ease) on the truth effect. The truth effect was more pronounced when the need for affect was high rather than low (Study 1) and when consumers were primed to trust their feelings (Study 2). Finally, Study 3 and Study 4 replicate these findings using advertising appeals. Advertisements that encourage consumers to focus on their feelings increase susceptibility to the truth effect.     

Beyond bankruptcy: Does the US bankruptcy code provide a fresh start to entrepreneurs?

This paper assesses the extent to which the US bankruptcy system is effective in providing small businesses a “fresh start” after a bankruptcy filing. I use data from the 1993, 1998 and 2003 National Survey of Small Business Finances to explore how firms fare after a bankruptcy filing. On the positive side, previously bankrupt firms are not any more burdened than the average small firm by problems relating to profitability, cash flow, health insurance costs, or taxes. Further, the fact that these firms are surviving several years after the filing is itself a testament to the efficient functioning of the US bankruptcy system. It suggests that the bankruptcy system goes a long way toward helping businesses recover after a bankruptcy filing.     

Health insurance and job creation by the self-employed

Health insurance is regulated at the state level by the use of state-mandated health benefits. These are regulations issued by the state that mandate minimum levels of certain benefits as part of policies offered, e.g., drug abuse and alcohol treatment services, treatment for mental illnesses, etc. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of state health insurance mandates on job creation by small firms using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) dataset for the period 1993–1995. Results from an ordered probit regression indicate that, the larger the number of mandates in a state, the lower the probability that a self-employed person will be a significant employment generator. These results hold when we consider both the sum of mandates as well as a cost-weighted measure of the most expensive mandates.