An econometric test of the self-employment model: The case of Italy

In this paper the authors put forward their attempt to test a self-employment model using an Italian data set which collects information about 78 Italian provinces (out of 95) over the period of 1985–1988. The self-employment model is introduced as a useful way to explain the formation of new small firms and subsequently previous econometric studies based on this model are discussed and compared.Once the empirical definitions of the variables are clarified, the econometric specification is introduced in Section 4 and results are discussed in Section 5 and 6.The general outcome of the estimates backs to a certain extent the self-employment approach which has already been tested with good results both in the U.K. and in the U.S. As far as the income choice is concerned, it turns out to be important in explaining the birth of new small firms. With regard to the role of job-losses, they also turn out to be significantly correlated with the high rates of firm formation.On the other hand, the discussion reported in Section 5 underlines the importance of other environmental factors which were not included in the original specification of Section 4. In particular, if the numerosity of the existing small firms is taken into account, self-employment relationships lose some of their significance. p]The laborer asks what he thinks the entrepreneur will be able to pay, and in any case will not accept less than he can get from some other entrepreneur, or by turning entrepreneur himself. In the same way the entrepreneur offers to any laborer what he thinks he must in order to secure his services, and in any case not more than he thinks the laborer will actually be worth to him, keeping in mind what he can get by turning laborer himself.Knight, 1921, p. 273     

Food Fraud and Risk Perception: Awareness in Canada and Projected Trust on Risk-Mitigating Agents

During the past few years, food fraud has become a source of concern for consumers in many parts of the world. Major cases of food fraud have been found in Canada in recent months, including the Mucci case, in which Mexican tomatoes were sold as Canadian, as well as the case of a poultry farmer selling nonorganic chicken as organic. The authors aim to assess the level of awareness and trust among Canadian consumers in relation to fraudulent and counterfeit food products. This exploratory study is meant to establish latent determinants on consumers’ risk perception of food fraud in general. These determinants include education, income, geographical region, age, sex, and health-related predisposition such as food allergies and intolerances. To this end, a random survey was conducted across Canada in January 2017. A sample size of 1088 was used for this study. Findings indicate that older, more-educated consumers generally feel more vulnerable, to various degrees, than do other consumers. Consumers who are aware and have experienced food fraud previously are likely to trust other consumers as risk-mitigating agents more so than public regulators or industry. Several limitations are presented, and future research paths are suggested.     

Urbanization and start-up rates in different geographies: Belgium,the Netherlands,and Sweden

This study addresses the mediating role of settlement patterns in the relationship between urbanization and start-up activity. Places do not operate in a vacuum and to understand the effect of “own” density on start-up patterns, we need to account for the urban spillovers or borrowed size that they may experience from other places nearby. The results can explain the empirical ambiguity in the relationship between urbanization and start-up patterns: the relationship between urbanization and start-up rates becomes more similar between countries when controlling for country-specific settlement patterns by including a spatially lagged urbanization variable and variables measuring the distance to urban centers. Accounting for the relative location of places and relevant sorting effects, we find that “own” density has a consistently negative effect on start-up activity. Yet, access to other places has a generally positive effect. This implies that nearby regions profit from the advantages offered by urban environments without having to deal with the costs involved.     

Health Effects of Air Pollution: A Statistical Review

We critically review and compare epidemiological designs and statistical approaches to estimate associations between air pollution and health. More specifically, we aim to address the following questions:

• 1 Which epidemiological designs and statistical methods are available to estimate associations between air pollution and health?
• 2 What are the recent methodological advances in the estimation of the health effects of air pollution in time series studies?
• 3 What are the the main methodological challenges and future research opportunities relevant to regulatory policy?

In question 1, we identify strengths and limitations of time series, cohort, case‐crossover and panel sampling designs. In question 2, we focus on time series studies and we review statistical methods for: 1) combining information across multiple locations to estimate overall air pollution effects; 2) estimating the health effects of air pollution taking into account of model uncertainties; 3) investigating the consequences of exposure measurement error in the estimation of the health effects of air pollution; and 4) estimating air pollution‐health exposure‐response curves. Here, we also discuss the extent to which these statistical contributions have addressed key substantive questions. In question 3, within a set of policy‐relevant‐questions, we identify research opportunities and point out current data limitations.     

Sector variation and ecological modernization: towards an analysis at the level of the firm

This paper is the first of a series of two in which the authors consider ecological modernization of state environmental policy in the context of individual firms. This is explored through three themes: the influences of industrial sector, company size and type of environmental regulation. In this paper, the significance of industry sector is explored and the authors show how lead and laggard sectors react in quite different ways. In the second paper (Vol. 7 No. 5), the theme of variability to the challenge of ecological modernization through the study of the impact of firm size and response to regulation is pursued. Throughout, the authors emphasize the need to understand the context in which firms operate and perceive their environment if we are to make progress in our knowledge and refine appropriate policies, tools and mechanisms to help steer industry on a more sustainable path. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Company size,environmental regulation and ecological modernization: further analysis at the level of the firm

In the paper published in Business Strategy and the Environment (7, (3)) entitled ‘Sector variation and ecological modernization: towards an analysis at the level of the firm’, the authors situated their analysis of firms within the framework of ecological modernization. They indicated the part which sector variability plays in firms positioning themselves towards environmental issues. In this paper, the authors extend their analysis to consider the effects that environmental regulation and company size have on the levels of environmental motivation demonstrated by companies and what this reveals about the prospects for a move towards ecological modernization. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Produce Retail Price Volatility and Perceptions in the Canadian Market: Nutrition Security Variances

Nutrition security has been studied but rarely in the context of a developed economy. Furthermore, few studies have looked at how fluctuating produce process may influence nutrition security and how consumers cope with abrupt macro-economic changes. Between 2014 and 2015, Canadian consumers saw produce prices jump by more than 25% in a year in some cases. This exploratory survey looks at socioeconomic factors and evaluates how price increases influence produce consumption and substitution. A total of 1007 respondents participated in a cross national survey over a two-week period. Results show that lower income households are more vulnerable than higher income respondents. Results also explore a few more behavioral factors such as where produce shopping occurs and how market data is gathered before purchases. Respondents who consult flyers and use apps are more likely to behave rationally and cope with changing prices. Some limitations are presented. And finally, future research thrusts related to produce price fluctuations and nutrition security are suggested.     

Innovation Roadmapping: Building Concepts from Practitioners’ Insights

Cartographic roadmaps used for navigating from A to B provide a strong metaphor for innovation roadmaps used at firms for navigating from the present to the future. Now ready to move beyond this metaphor—the pace and proliferation of knowledge on innovation roadmapping have reached a point at which it would be useful to lay out some groundwork for extended theorizing and research in this area. This paper contributes here by reporting on a qualitative inductive research based on documented practitioners’ insights. To better understand the phenomenon of innovation roadmapping (what it is and what it is not) and its impact on innovation performance, this study builds concepts in the context of strategic innovation management theory. Through a systematic analysis of the qualitative data extracted from 12 cases selected from the extant literature, this research found five concepts with common ground in these cases and built a framework in which innovation roadmapping is established by (1) a strategy of time pacing, (2) synchronizing dialogues, and (3) mapping innovation elements to a timeline. Furthermore, the systematic analysis of the documented practitioners’ insights indicates that roadmapping affects either the innovation performance of (4) competitive timing or (5) industry synergy. Overall, this leads to an initial formulation of theory with this conceptual framework and six related propositions. The key insights for innovation managers in industrial firms are that, in striving for competitive timing or industry synergy, roadmapping provides a means to achieve these objectives and, in deploying roadmapping in the organization, dialogue and pacing are critically important.     

Stability of the World Trade Web over time – An extinction analysis

The World Trade Web (WTW) is a weighted network whose nodes correspond to countries while edge weights reflecting the value of imports and/or exports between countries. In this paper we introduce to this macroeconomic system the notion of extinction analysis, a technique often used in the analysis of ecosystems, for the purpose of investigating the robustness of this network. In particular, we subject the WTW to a principled set of in silico “knockout experiments,” akin to those carried out in the investigation of food webs, but suitably adapted to this macroeconomic network. Informed by results in network theory as well as studies of contagion in economic networks, we seek to understand the role of connectance in the robustness of the system. We interpret increasing connectance as one aspect of a move towards globalization and liberalized trade policy. Broadly, our experiments confirm two conjectures. First, that the WTWs are “robust yet fragile” networks — robust to random failures but fragile under targeted attack. Second, that growing connectance has both positive and negative impacts on robustness. More specifically, we find that increasing connectance corresponds to increasing robustness for small shocks but to decreasing robustness in the face of large, cascading shocks up to the system. This yields evidence in support of the view that globalization, as witnessed by increasing connectance, increases the ability of a system to absorb shock up until a certain size, whereupon the shock overwhelms the system and sparks a broader contagion. We anticipate that experiments and measures like these can play an important role in the evaluation of the stability of economic systems.