Entrepreneurial leadership is crucial for economic growth in all countries, yet little is known about the leadership style of entrepreneurs in transition economies such as the BRIC countries (Brazil, ...Russia, India, and China). There has been a need for research into cross-cultural similarities in entrepreneurial characteristics that would support an argument for convergence across cultures. This article investigates entrepreneurial leadership styles based on interviews with 130 exemplary Russian entrepreneurs over a recent five-year period. The results showed that a large majority of these entrepreneurs had adopted an open leadership style similar to U.S. entrepreneurs, adding support to a convergence theory of entrepreneurial leadership style.
Farm direct payments (DPs) have been the main instrument of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to support farm income in the EU. This paper addresses the role of direct payments granted in the ...context of the market and income support policies and of rural development policies in the distribution of farm income among farmers.
Using the Gini coefficient and its disaggregation, this study investigates the impact of DPs on farm income inequality among a large sample of farms in Italy. The analysis is developed at a national level but also considers the three main regions of Italy and three types of farming.
The DPs are very concentrated but reduce farm income inequality. However, the recent CAP reform has weakened this latter positive characteristic.
The results of the analysis suggest the need to avoid a drastic reduction in the level of DPs because this is expected to increase farm income concentration and any attempt to change their distribution should be welcome if it results in a reduction of farm income concentration.
This article examines the microeconomics of productivity associated with specialization/diversification in production activities, with an application to Korean rice farms. Korean rice farms tend to ...be very small and highly specialized. Our analysis examines the productivity effects associated with both farm size and farm specialization/diversification in Korean agriculture. Relying on farm‐level panel data, the analysis studies farm productivity in a multi‐input multi‐output context, accounting not only for changes in inputs and technical change in rice production, but also for the role of diversification in the production of other crops in current and previous periods. We find positive but small productivity gains from farm diversification. These gains come mostly from complementarity effects across farm outputs, with minimal effect of scale economies. The positive complementarity effects work against nonconvexity effects, which provide strong productivity incentives for rice farms to specialize.
This paper investigates the impact of the London bombings on attitudes toward ethnic minorities, examining outcomes in housing and labor markets across London boroughs. We use a ...difference‐in‐differences approach, specifying “treated” boroughs as those with the highest concentration of Asian residents. Our results indicate that house prices in treated boroughs fell by approximately 2% in the 2 years after the bombings relative to other boroughs, with sales declining by almost 6%. Furthermore, we present evidence of a rise in the unemployment rate in treated compared to control boroughs, as well as a rise in racial segregation. (JEL J15, J71, R21)
This investigation analyses representations of gender and race in 19 Big Four UK accounting firms’ annual reviews from 2003 to 2007. Developing the critical literature considering the use of ...photographs in corporate annual reports and the intersection of accounting and gender and race it considers how photographs are used to depict men and women, black and white within firms’ annual reviews. Specifically, the paper analyses how people are represented in terms of job role, location, dress and their race and gender to arrive at its conclusions. As prior literature in accounting suggests, the reviews tend to under-represent women and people of colour; however, the effect is less marked than prior studies of corporate reporting. A finer grained analysis identifies the paucity of gender and race representations. Although an underlying theme of the annual reviews is to propose that the firms’ people create value for its clients and society, the job functions and locations in which people are portrayed evidences stereotyping and inequality.
Background: To improve efficiency and quality, a number of policies have recently been implemented to increase competition and cooperation within the health systems of many countries. We theorize how ...hospital performance, measured as productivity, is contingent upon network embeddedness, the extent to which a hospital is involved in a network of interconnected interorganizational relationships. Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the effects on hospital productivity resulting from both collaborative network ties and competitive relationships between providers. Methodology: We used panel data collected between 2003 and 2007 from 35 hospitals in Abruzzo, one of the most populated regions of central Italy. We used secondary data of hospital activities regarding both clinical and administrative aspects. For each year, we examined the intensity of interhospital competition and the unique position each provider has within a larger network of relationships with other hospitals. Other idiosyncratic organizational characteristics were examined as well. Findings: Our results show that hospital productivity is negatively related to the degree of competition that a hospital faces and positively related to the degree with which hospitals establish collaborative relationships. We also found that the negative impact on hospital productivity due to competition was lessened when hospitals were more likely to create cooperative network ties. Practice Implications: Because interhospital collaboration and competition are related to hospital productivity, they should constitute a core element in the strategic planning of a hospital's operation. Health administrators should implement policies that favor collaborative network ties at the regional level and mitigate interorganizational rivalries when establishing collaborative relationships with local competitors.
Accounting conservatism and corporate social responsibility have received much attention in the recent literature. The current study draws upon Watts, who recognizes that one role of conservatism is ...to reduce the likelihood of excess wealth transfers to its stakeholder groups and Post et al., who assert that a key aspect of positive corporate social performance is the (equitable) distribution of corporate wealth. Accordingly, this study empirically investigates and finds a positive relation between conservatism and strong social performance.
This paper presents the findings of a study on the impact of ‘Payment by Results’ (PbR) on performance measurement and management in three National Health Service (NHS) Trusts in the East of England. ...The study employs concepts from structuration theory and institutional theory to provide a holistic analysis of change in these organisations. Structuration theory is shown to be valuable in understanding the context of change and in highlighting the emergent contradictions that resulted from new approaches to performance management, as new conceptions of organisational activity premised on ‘cost’ and ‘income’ were introduced. Institutional theory was employed to analyse the process of change in specific organisational contexts, given its emphasis on the importance of contradiction for praxis, as organisational members enact the change process. Significant findings include the importance of financial performance, adoption of a business-focused attitude and co-operative relationships between clinicians, managers and accountants in achieving change.
The IMF Articles of Agreement forbid a country from manipulating its currency for unfair advantage. The US Treasury has been legally required since 1988 to report to Congress biannually regarding ...whether individual trading partners are guilty of manipulation. One part of this paper tests econometrically two competing sets of hypothesized determinants of the Treasury decisions: (1) legitimate economic variables consistent with the IMF definition of manipulation - the partners' overall current account/GDP, its reserve changes and the real overvaluation of its currency, and (2) variables suggestive of domestic American political expediency - the bilateral trade balance, US unemployment and an election year dummy. The econometric results suggest that the Treasury verdicts are driven heavily by the US bilateral deficit, though other variables also turn out to be quite important. In 2005 China announced a switch to a new exchange rate regime. The exchange rate would be set with reference to a basket of other currencies, with numerical weights unannounced, allowing a movement of up to ± 0.3% within any given day. Although this step was originally accepted at face value in public policy circles, scepticism is in order. The second econometric part of the paper evaluates what exchange rate regime China has actually been following. We use the technique introduced by Frankel and Wei (1994): one regresses changes in the value of the local currency, in this case the RMB, against changes in the values of the dollar, euro, yen and other currencies that may be in the basket. We find that within 2005, the de facto regime remained a peg to a basket that put virtually all weight on the dollar. Subsequently there has been a modest but steady increase in flexibility with some weight shifted to a few non-dollar currencies - but not those one might expect. In any case, the weight on the dollar was still fairly heavy in 2006. The paper tests whether the decline in the implicit weight on the dollar is related to the pressure from US officials. It also considers whether the increase in flexibility that we have seen, small though it is, has been gradually accelerating, at a rate that would suggest the likelihood of some genuine flexibility in the not-so-distant future. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishers
This study empirically examines the bandwagon effect of product-popularity information on the choices of audiovisual content products. Regression analysis is conducted using the data of Hollywood ...movies' box office revenues in 73 countries during 2003-2007. The results confirm the aggregate bandwagon effect in audiences' selections of Hollywood movies and shows that the strength of the bandwagon effect is magnified by how uncertain people are about the quality of movies.
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