Competition and political organization: Together or alone in lobbying for trade policy?

This paper employs a novel data set on lobbying expenditures to measure the degree of within-sector political organization and to explore the determinants of the mode of lobbying and political organization across U.S. industries. The data show that sectors characterized by a higher degree of competition tend to lobby more together (through a sector-wide trade association), while sectors with higher concentration and more differentiated products lobby more individually. The paper proposes a theoretical model to interpret the empirical evidence. In an oligopolistic market, firms can benefit from an increase in their product-specific protection measure, if they can raise prices and profits. They find it less profitable to do so in a competitive market where attempts to raise prices are more likely to reduce profits. In competitive markets firms are therefore more likely to lobby together, thereby simultaneously raising tariffs on all products in the sector.     

Paths of evolution for the Chinese migrant entrepreneurship: a multiple case analysis in Italy

Chinese diaspora is one of the most important areas in the field of immigrant entrepreneurship and the Chinese case is, for absolute numbers, entrepreneurship rates and scientific attention, one of the most significant phenomena in the world and in Italy. While much of the literature on the topic focuses on ethnic networks and social ties, there is a lack of studies that acknowledge the role of business networks in the later growth of migrant entrepreneurship, when the importance of social ties within the ethnic community diminishes. This paper tries to answer the following research question: Which is the role of ethnic networks and business networks in the path of evolution of Chinese migrant entrepreneurship? Thus, the paper analyses the structure and characteristics of ethnic networks and business networks and the role of each in the growth and evolution of Chinese migrant entrepreneurship. Our research considers business networks as the main focus of analysis that may replace social ties in consolidating insidership in new business settings and in finding new opportunities. A qualitative methodology is adopted, namely a multiple case study. Five cases of individual Chinese companies settled in a specific area are presented, for which the networks in which they are involved are traced and analysed. The case analysis shows that in the evolution of Chinese migrant entrepreneurship, ethnic networks are very important in the early phases of the business, but the role of cross-cultural business networks becomes relevant for further development. Implications—managerial and for policy makers—are highlighted and discussed.     

Unobservable skill dispersion and comparative advantage

This paper investigates a theoretical mechanism linking comparative advantage to the distribution of skills in the working population. We develop a tractable multi-country, multi-industry model of trade with unobservable skills in the labour market and show that comparative advantage derives from (i) cross-industry differences in the substitutability of workers' skills and (ii) cross-country differences in the dispersion of skills. We establish the conditions under which higher skill dispersion leads to specialization in industries characterized by higher skill substitutability across tasks. The main results are robust when the model is extended to allow for partial observability of skills. Finally, we use distributions of literacy scores from the International Adult Literacy Survey to approximate cross-country productivity differences due to skill dispersion and we carry out a quantitative assessment of the impact of skill dispersion on the pattern of trade.     

The effects of offshoring on wages: a meta-analysis

Review of World Economics - Offshoring, either as FDI or offshore outsourcing, is a phenomenon of increasing importance that has been widely studied in the economics literature. Studies analysing...     

The relentless de facto privatization process of Chilika Lake,India

In the early 1990s Chilika Lake saw a conflict over aquaculture practices that culminated in a process of de facto privatization of the lake waters and the implementation of illegal shrimp cultivation. An earlier article explored the class dynamics of the conflict and the present paper, based on a 2015 fieldwork revisit, reviews the unfolding of the socioeconomic dynamics underlying the illegal aquaculture activities. Looking at recent developments in the implementation of illegal shrimp cultivation in the lake, it interrogates the underlying balance between coercion and consent, and the implications for the livelihoods and protest politics of the fishing people. The paper draws attention to the reality of occupational displacement, analysing its implications for the viability of the fisher people's oppositional movement. Through doing so, it draws renewed attention to the complexity of state–society relations underlying the dynamics that govern conflict and critically contributes to recent debates on subaltern politics.     

Firm heterogeneity and lobby participation

The structure of protection across sectors has been interpreted as the result of competition among lobbies to influence politicians, but lobbies have been treated as unitary decision makers and little attention has been devoted to the importance of individual firms in this process. This paper builds a model where individual firms determine the amount of resources to allocate to political contributions and shows that, in the presence of a fixed cost of channeling political contributions, it is efficient for a lobby to be formed by the largest firms in a sector. Therefore the size distribution of firms plays an important role: sectors with a higher share of firms above a given size exhibit higher intensity of political activity. This prediction is borne out by the data: industries characterized by higher firm size dispersion obtain a higher level of protection. The model is also tested against the leading ‘Protection for Sale’ paradigm, employing a newly matched data set on firm-level political contributions. The empirical evidence shows that, accounting for individual firm behavior, the model explains a larger fraction of the variation of protection across sectors.     

Fueling ecological neglect in a manufactured tourist city: planning,disaster mapping,and environmental art in Cancun,Mexico

Abstract

This article explores how tourism urban governance fuels patterns of ecological neglect. It turns a critical eye on Cancun, a leading Caribbean beach tourist destination and battered epicenter of anthropogenic climate change. First, the article contextualizes Cancun’s design and construction as a state development project and manufactured tourist city. It describes the city’s socio-spatial segregation and highlights the role of hurricanes in processes of beach enclosure. Second, it explores a series of risk maps elaborated as responses to international demands on coastal disaster mitigation and beach erosion. I show how local authorities, academics, and the Mexican state are bound to disregard risk maps to further enclose the Caribbean beach and keep the city productive for tourism. Finally, I look at the adoption of anthropogenic narratives on climate change as tourist attractions in Cancun’s Underwater Museum of Art, a unique coalition between conservation, art and tour-operators in the city. I show that turning sea level rise and ocean acidification into tourist spectacles through copyrighted art, this attraction depoliticizes tourism’s responsibility in patterns of environmental degradation. The article serves to reflect on the tacit paradoxes that plague efforts to imagine alternative environmental politics and sustainable tourism urbanisms outside neoliberal trends.     

Local community participation in ecotourism and conservation issues in two nature reserves in Nicaragua

This paper explores the factors influencing community participation in ecotourism and how this affects conservation in the Nature Reserves of Mombacho Volcano and Datanlí-El Diablo in Nicaragua. Information was collected using individual structured and semi-structured interviews and focus groups, with local people, farmers and tour operators, combining quantitative and qualitative techniques. The farmers in the two communities are engaged in the protection of the reserves because of environmental concern and also because their own welfare is at stake. In different ways, the farmers and communities benefit from ecotourism, but not enough. Either they are excluded from the management system, or they lack resources to promote the sites and improve infrastructure. Community participation is to a large extent dependent on the management system, but it is not the only aspect required to make ecotourism successful. A minimum of governmental support to infrastructure and local entrepreneurship is required. In the case presented, there are direct economic benefits from ecotourism, as the records of visitors illustrate. But there are many differences between the two reserves and their communities, illustrating that ecotourism development is complex and demanding, and demonstrating that ecotourism is not a “one size fits all” approach to sustainable development.     

Prior knowledge and social networks in the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities

In this study we analyze the effects of prior knowledge and social networks on the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. The prior knowledge considered is associated with the successes and failures experienced in the entrepreneurial trajectory and, therefore, derived from the exploitation of prior opportunities. In analyzing social networks, we examine the strength of the relationships between entrepreneurs, managers and entrepreneurial associations. As an explanatory factor of the entrepreneurial process, we also include the influence of the entrepreneurial opportunities recognized. Through a hierarchical regression analysis, we show that the number of potential opportunities recognized, the number of previous opportunities successfully exploited and the strength of entrepreneurial social networks positively influence the number of opportunities developed and exploited.