Abstract
We study differences in markups earned by Bangladeshi garment exporters across buyers with different sourcing strategies and make three contributions. First, we distinguish buyers with a ...relational versus a spot sourcing strategy and show that a buyer’s sourcing strategy is correlated across products and origins. Buyer fixed effects explain most of the variation in sourcing strategies, suggesting that these depend on organizational capabilities. Second, we use novel data that match quantities and prices of the two main variable inputs in the production of garments (fabric and labor on sewing lines) to specific export orders. We derive conditions under which these data allow measurement of within exporter-product-time differences in markups across orders produced for different buyers. Third, we show that exporters earn higher markups on otherwise identical orders produced for relational, as opposed to spot, buyers. A sourcing model with imperfect contract enforcement, idiosyncratic shocks to exporters, and buyers that adopt different sourcing strategies trading off higher prices and reliable supply rationalizes this and other observed facts in the industry. We discuss alternative explanations and policy implications.
Multiculturalism still matters and is even more important after 7/7 than it was before. The political discourse and rhetoric of integration sits uncomfortably alongside both multicultural realities ...e.g. the civil disturbances in Birmingham, England (October 2005), Paris, France (November 2005) and Sydney, Australia (December, 2005) and social scientific notions of where multiculturalism positions itself domestically and internationally. This edited collection is intended to be a major contrib.
This paper examines the impact of institutional variables on multinational enterprises’ choice between majority and minority acquisitions in their foreign affiliates and how this choice influences ...their propensity to collaborate with local firms. Using the institutional theory and the transaction costs theory, we develop a number of hypotheses. In particular, we suggest that majority acquisitions will be more likely than minority acquisitions and greenfields to enter collaborative R&D projects in countries that belong to the Civil Law/Eastern European legal tradition, or countries where the protection of minority shareholders is poor. These hypotheses are tested using an unbalanced panel of subsidiaries controlled by British multinationals, located in 39 countries. The results confirm our theoretical predictions.
Abstract
Market power of intermediaries contributes to the low incomes of farmers in India. I study the role of spatial competition between intermediaries in determining the prices that farmers ...receive in India by focusing on a law that restricts farmers to selling their goods to intermediaries in their own state. I show that the discontinuities in market power generated by the law translate into discontinuities in prices. Increasing spatial competition by one standard deviation causes prices received by farmers to increase by 6.4%. I propose and estimate a quantitative spatial model of bargaining and trade to shed light on spatial and aggregate implications. Estimates from the structural model suggest that removing the interstate trade restriction in India would increase competition between intermediaries. Thereby average farmer prices and their output would increase by at least 11% and 7%, respectively. The value of the national crop output would increase by at least 18%. However, there are distributional consequences as well, as some farmers stand to lose due to increased local production.
The suicide bombings carried out in London in 2005 by British Muslims revealed an enormous fifth column of Islamist terrorists and their sympathizers. Under the noses of British intelligence, London ...has become the European hub for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism - so much so that it has been mockingly dubbed Londonistan. In this ground-breaking book Melanie Phillips pieces together the story of how Londonistan developed as a result of the collapse of traditional English identity and accommodation of a particularly virulent form of multiculturalism. Londonistan has become a country within the country and not only threatens Britain but its special relationship with the U.S. as well.
In 2008, three years after Hurricane Katrina cut a deadly path along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, researchers J. Steven Picou and Keith Nicholls conducted a survey of the survivors in ...Louisiana and Mississippi, receiving more than twenty-five hundred responses, and followed up two years later with their than five hundred of the initial respondents. Showcasing these landmark findings, Caught in the Path of Katrina: A Survey of the Hurricane's Human Effects yields a more complete understanding of the traumas endured as a result of the Storm of the Century. The authors report on evacuation behaviors, separations from family, damage to homes, and physical and psychological conditions among residents of seven of the parishes and counties that bore the brunt of Katrina. The findings underscore the frequently disproportionate suffering of African Americans and the agonizingly slow pace of recovery. Highlighting the lessons learned, the book offers suggestions for improved governmental emergency management techniques to increase preparedness, better mitigate storm damage, and reduce the level of trauma in future disasters. Multiple major hurricanes have unleashed their destruction in the years since Katrina, making this a crucial study whose importance only continues to grow.
This paper aims to analyze the approach of Serbian and Spanish authorities towards Holocaust commemoration during the year 2005. During the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, there ...was further institutionalization of Holocaust memory by designating January 27 as the official day of remembrance on a global and European level. Adapting old forms of commemoration to new transnational frameworks brought other issues to the forefront – the memory of wars, the question of suffering of the Serbian/Spanish and Jewish people and the interpretation of the role of local fascist forces in the Holocaust.
The 8th October 2005 Kashmir earthquake, in northern Pakistan has triggered thousands of landslides, which was the second major factor in the destruction of the build-up environment, after ...earthquake-induced ground shaking. Subsequent to the earthquake, several researchers from home and abroad applied a variety of remote sensing techniques, supported with field observations, to develop inventories of the earthquake-triggered landslides, analyzed their spatial distribution and subsequently developed landslide-susceptibility maps. Earthquake causative fault rupture, geology, anthropogenic activities and remote sensing derived topographic attributes were observed to have major influence on the spatial distribution of landslides. These were subsequently used to develop a landslide susceptibility map, thereby demarcating the areas prone to landsliding. Temporal studies monitoring the earthquake-induced landslides shows that the earthquake-induced landslides are stabilized, contrary to earlier belief, directly after the earthquake. The biggest landslide induced dam, as a result of the massive Hattian Bala landslide, is still posing a threat to the surrounding communities. It is observed that remote sensing data is effectively and efficiently used to assess the landslides triggered by the Kashmir earthquake, however, there is still a need of more research to understand the mechanism of intensity and distribution of landslides; and their continuous monitoring using remote sensing data at a regional scale. This paper, provides an overview of remote sensing and GIS applications, for the Kashmir-earthquake triggered landslides, derived outputs and discusses the lessons learnt, advantages, limitations and recommendations for future research.
Este artigo apresenta as atividades desenvolvidas no Programa de Apoio às Licenciaturas (Prolicen), com intervenções educativas como foco à Educação para as Relações Étnico-Raciais, de modo que ...fossem trabalhados aspectos que contribuíssem para a valorização e ressignificação das culturas indígenas brasileiras, superando o prisma colonizador. Dentre as ações, destaca-se o processo de avaliação inicial sobre os conhecimentos prévios dos estudantes, para posteriormente desenvolver atividades como palestras, representação gráfica (desenho), estudos e debates sobre a temática, de maneira a contextualizá-las às questões atuais sobre as culturas originárias brasileiras. Como base teórica, utilizamos dos princípios de uma educação multicultural e antirracista, além de documentos oficiais nacionais. Os dados nos permitiram ressaltar a importância do Prolicen na formação inicial docente, assim como apresentar resultados significativos obtidos através da percepção dos estudantes do Ensino Médio no tocante à desmitificação de elementos vinculados a esses povos.
Hazard and risk assessment of landslides with potentially long run-out is becoming more and more important. Numerical tools exploiting different constitutive models, initial data and numerical ...solution techniques are important for making the expert’s assessment more objective, even though they cannot substitute for the expert’s understanding of the site-specific conditions and the involved processes. This paper presents a depth-integrated model accounting for pore water pressure dissipation and applications both to real events and problems for which analytical solutions exist. The main ingredients are: (i) The mathematical model, which includes pore pressure dissipation as an additional equation. This makes possible to model flowslide problems with a high mobility at the beginning, the landslide mass coming to rest once pore water pressures dissipate. (ii) The rheological models describing basal friction: Bingham, frictional, Voellmy and cohesive-frictional viscous models. (iii) We have implemented simple erosion laws, providing a comparison between the approaches of Egashira, Hungr and Blanc. (iv) We propose a Lagrangian SPH model to discretize the equations, including pore water pressure information associated to the moving SPH nodes.
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