The design and implementation of environmental policy often involve more than one pollutant, and must consider pollution as a byproduct of the production of marketable output. In this paper, we test ...the implicit assumption in the empirical literature that (1) production of marketable output, pollution and abatement are separable, and (2) different pollutants can be abated separately. Using unique plant-level data in India, we reject the null hypotheses of separability between marketable output and pollutants, and between different pollutants. Firms must incur abatement costs for reducing pollution levels. In addition, complement and substitute relationships between water pollutants are demonstrated with statistical significance.
We first derive a theoretical model to predict that the relation between nonperforming loan ratios and government shareholdings can be downward‐sloping, upward‐sloping, U‐shaped, and inversely ...U‐shaped. An increase in the government's shareholding facilitates political lobbying. On the other hand, private shareholding induces more nonperforming loans (NPLs) to be manipulated by corrupt private owners. We adopt a panel data set of forty Taiwanese commercial banks during 1996–99 for empirical analysis. The results show that the rate of NPLs decreased as the ratio of government shareholding in a bank rose (up to 63.51 percent), while the rate thereafter increased. Bank size was negatively related to the rate of NPLs. Rates of NPLs are shown to have steadily increased from 1996 to 1999. Banks established after deregulation, on average, had a lower rate of NPLs than those established before deregulation.
Using supermarket scanner data, we test a variety of hypotheses from trade journals about the invasion of private-label food products. According to conventional industry wisdom, name-brand firms ...defended their brands against new private-label products by lowering their prices, engaging in additional promotional activities, and increasingly differentiating their products. Our empirical evidence is inconsistent with these beliefs.
This study compares internal and external sources of capital in the insurance industry by analyzing reinsurance activity between affiliated and unaffiliated insurers. Tests are performed using data ...from a large sample of property-liability insurers that are affiliated with at least one other property-liability insurer. Results indicate that while demands for internal and external reinsurance have some factors in common, there are cost-based differences in internal and external capital, as well as structural differences in the use of internal and external reinsurance. Results are consistent with previous theories related to internal versus external capital markets. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
The influence of buyer and personal relationship characteristics on agricultural land prices has received little attention in the literature. Recently, Perry and Robison (2001) used a restricted ...nonlinear specification to model the influence of personal relationships on the implicit prices of land characteristics. In this paper a more flexible alternative model is proposed. An approach to general model specification and model selection is presented. The results indicate that buyer characteristics and personal relationships exert nonuniform effects on the implicit prices of land characteristics. Our results support the hypothesis that social capital affects the terms of trade in the land market. (JEL C14)
This article analyses whether alliances create shareholders value, and if this value differs depending on the similarity of the partners' businesses, or on the similarity of the partners' businesses ...with that of the alliance. Using data from 467 equity and non-equity based strategic alliances from 1996–1999 involving at least one listed Spanish bank, we find that, overall, alliances create shareholder value, but that the returns to shareholders are significantly higher when alliance activity is closer to the core business of the banks, than when alliances involve unrelated activities. Although there is no evidence that unrelated strategic alliances destroy value on average, the results obtained show that banks need to assess the benefits and costs of diversification strategies carefully, as their likelihood of success is initially smaller.
Price promotion and generic advertising are two common strategies to increase consumer demand for food products. Which one is preferred over the other depends largely, on the relative importance of ...state dependence and heterogeneity in household purchase decision and behaviour on desired commodity over time. In this article, this issue is investigated for household purchases of fluid milk products using a panel data dynamic Tobit model. The proposed econometric model accounts not only for state dependence and heterogeneity of the purchasing process, but also for the censoring or sample selectivity encountered when using household survey data. Empirical findings show that state dependence is negative and household heterogeneity over milk persists over time implying that advertising efforts aimed at increasing milk consumption would be more effective than short-term price promotions. The results also suggest that advertising efforts should concentrate on attracting new purchasers and increasing purchase frequencies for fluid milk products.
When does sub-national fiscal autonomy prompt regional growth and recovery and, under what conditions, does it have adverse effects? We argue that unearned income streams, particularly in the form of ...revenues from natural resource production or from budgetary transfers from the central government, transform regions dependent on these income sources into rentier regions. Governments in these regions can use local control over revenues and expenditures to shelter certain firms, i.e., natural resource producers or loss-making enterprises, from market forces. Using fiscal data from 80 Russian regions from 1996 to 1999, we test this hypothesis in both cross-sectional and panel specifications. Our results indicate that tax retention, which is a proxy for fiscal autonomy, has had a positive effect on regional reform and investment since the break-up of the Soviet Union. However, we also find that this effect decreases as rentable income streams to regions increase.
Journal of Comparative Economics
33 (4) (2005) 814–834.
This paper investigates the effects of certain corporate governance mechanisms on the performance of firms listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Based on a sample of 93 firms for the period 1996 ...through 1999, our results show an optimal board size of ten, favour concentrated over diffused ownership, and support separation of posts of CEO and chair. Moreover, while director shareholding is found to be an insignificant factor affecting firm performance, the results show expatriate CEOs performing better than their local counterparts. We need to err on the side of caution as sampling selection was based on data availability rather than any probability criterion.
As one of the dimensions of vulnerability, this paper empirically investigates the inability of rural dwellers to cope with negative income shocks. A variable coefficient regression model is applied ...to a two-period household panel dataset collected in the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, an area with high incidence of income poverty and low human development. The empirical model allows for a different ability to smooth consumption, approximated by a linear function of households' attributes, and controls for the endogeneity of observed changes in income, using qualitative information on subjective risk assessment. Estimation results show that the ability to cope with negative income shocks is lower for households that are aged, landless and do not receive remittances regularly.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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