the demand for teacher characteristics in the market for child care evidence from a field experiment abstract this paper sheds light on two key issues regarding the demand for teacher characteristics in the market for center based child care first we study the extent to which teacher qualifications often considered important inputs to classroom quality are valued by providers during the hiring process we then examine the impact of state regulations on hiring decisions to do so a resume audit study was administered in which job seeker characteristics were randomly assigned to resumes that were submitted in response to real child care job postings in 14 u s cities our results indicate that center based providers may not hire the most qualified applicants for example we find that although providers have a strong preference for individuals with previous work experience in early childhood education ece those with more ece experience are less likely to receive an interview than those with less experience we also find that individuals with bachelor s degrees in ece are no more likely to receive an interview than their counterparts at the associate s level our analysis of state regulations shows that they strongly influence teacher hiring decisions we find that providers advertised job requirements are largely in compliance with the state standards for teachers experience and education in addition providers are substantially more likely to interview job seekers who meet these requirements given that most providers voluntarily exceed the state regulations a tentative conclusion is that such rules have a limited effect on child care supply and prices

innovation outcomes in a distributed organization intrafirm mobility and access to resources prior research has established a relation between intrafirm mobility and innovation outcomes at distributed organizations the literature has also uniformly agreed on the mechanism underlying this relationship the sharing of tacit knowledge and recombination of ideas that occurs because of intrafirm mobility but a second mechanism may also be at work intrafirm mobility might help distant employees secure access to resources for their innovative projects using unique data on travel employment and patenting for 1 315 inventors at the indian research and development r d center of a fortune 50 multinational i find that intrafirm mobility in the form of short duration business trips from a distant r d location to headquarters is positively related to higher subsequent patenting at the individual level i also find mobility immediately prior to meetings at which r d funds are most likely to be disbursed to be related to higher subsequent patenting this study sheds new light on how intrafirm mobility a

why political reservations many countries are amending their political systems to set aside positions to groups such as women and racial or religious minorities that are perceived as being disadvantaged using evidence from india this article assesses the case for these reservations jel h4 o15 several countries have introduced procedures either explicit quotas or forms of gerrymandering to ensure political representation of disadvantaged groups such as women or ethnic minorities in 2001 quotas for women in parliaments were in force in more than 30 countries in india seats are reserved for historically disadvantaged groups scheduled castes or sc and scheduled tribes or st in federal or state legislative assemblies and for both historically disadvantaged groups and women at all levels of the panchayat system the system of decentralized decision making on the basis of evidence accumulated about the indian experience this paper reviews the case for reservation

on the dynamics of ethnic fractionalization does fractionalization change over short periods of time if so are there any substantial implications for economic performance to answer such questions we construct a new panel data set with measures of ethnic linguistic and religious fractionalization for 26 former communist countries covering the period from 1989 to 2002 our fractionalization measures show that transition economies became more ethnically homogeneous over such a short period of time although the same did not happen for linguistic and religious diversity in line with the most recent literature there seems to be no effect of exogenous diversity on macroeconomic performance that is on per capita gdp growth however we find that dynamic endogenous ethnic diversity is negatively related to growth although this is still not the case for linguistic and religious diversity these findings are robust to different specifications polarization measures and instrument sets as well as to a composite index of ethnic linguistic religious fractionalization

stealth seeds bioproperty biosafety biopolitics transgenic seeds in both india bt cotton and brazil glyphosate resistant soybeans spread widely and rapidly through farming communities outside the reach of biosafety or bioproperty institutions stealth transgenics are saved cross bred repackaged sold exchanged and planted in an anarchic agrarian capitalism that defies surveillance and control of firms and states the outcome is more pro poor than alternative modes of diffusion but undermines a growing consensus in the international development community on appropriate bio safety and intellectual property institutions for biotechnology second stealth procurement of biotechnology divides nominally pro poor political coalitions driven by a great ideational divide on uncertainties and risks of transgenics the ability of seeds to move underground through stealth strategies of farmers undermines widely assumed bio safety regime capability likewise property in biotechnology appears less monopolistic and powerful more relational and contingent stealth practices of farmers in pursuit of transgenics contrary to wishes of firms states and many ngos suggest a different model of the farmer than that often encountered in both developmentalist and anti gmo discourse more active creative and autonomous less hapless and supine resultant incapacity of social institutions to secure interests of firms and states in biotechnology renders more likely eventual development of controls from genetic engineering the terminator technology of political dramaturgy

fictitious freedom a polanyian critique of the republican revival prominent republican theorists invoke anonymous orders such as the market as mechanisms that secure freedom as non domination drawing on karl polanyi s account of fictitious commodities and demonstration of the impossibility of a just and rational market society this article critically scrutinizes neo republican assumptions regarding the market develops an alternate social theory within which to situate the ideal of non domination and illustrates the importance of this reconfiguration for the kind of collective agents and political strategies that can be expected to advance republican freedom in the economy

the impact of bt cotton on poor households in rural india the impact of genetically modified gm crops on the poor in developing countries is still the subject of controversy while previous studies have examined direct productivity effects of bacillus thuringiensis bt cotton and other gm crops little is known about wider socioeconomic outcomes we use a microeconomic modelling approach and comprehensive survey data from india to analyse welfare and distribution effects in a typical village economy bt cotton adoption increases returns to labour especially for hired female workers likewise aggregate household incomes rise including for poor and vulnerable farmers hence bt cotton contributes to poverty reduction and rural development

pride and prejudice using ethnic sounding names and inter ethnic marriages to identify labour market discrimination labour markets discriminate against workers with particular ethnic sounding names we use non random sorting into interethnic marriage and salient differences between sephardic and ashkenazi surnames to evaluate the causal impact of sephardic affiliation on wages using the 1995 israeli census we estimate the effect of a sephardic sounding surname on wages we first compare the wages of israeli jewish males born to sephardic fathers and ashkenazi mothers sa who are more likely to carry a sephardic surname with the wages of israeli jewish males born to ashkenazi fathers and sephardic mothers as we find that israeli labor markets discriminate based on perceived ethnicity sa workers earn significantly less than their as counterparts we then exploit the custom of women to adopt their husbands surnames to disentangle actual ethnicity from the ethnicity perceived by the market consistent with ethnic discrimination based on surnames we find that it is father in law s ethnicity rather than father s ethnicity that shapes female wage rates finally we find that labor markets discriminate based on surname only when those names provide additional information about ethnicity when ethnicity can be discerned from skin tone surnames do not provide additional explanatory power with respect to wages

the performance consequences of ambidexterity in strategic alliance formations empirical investigation and computational theorizing although alliance studies have generally favored an ambidextrous approach between exploration and exploitation they tend to overlook a firm s characteristics its industry constraints or the dynamic network in which the firm is embedded this study examines the ambidexterity hypothesis and its boundary conditions with a unique research method we not only analyze empirical data from five u s industries spanning eight years but also expand theoretical insights to the network level by building a computer simulation model both our empirical and simulation results reveal the contingencies of the ambidexterity hypothesis in alliance formation our findings show that although an ambidextrous formation of alliances benefits large firms a focused formation of either exploratory or exploitative alliances benefits small firms in an uncertain environment an ambidextrous formation enhances firm performance but so does a focused formation in a stable environment finally the simulation model demonstrates that a firm s centrality and structural hole positions in network relations can moderate the relationships between alliance formation choices and firm performance and that the ambidexterity hypothesis may be limited to the earlier stage of the network our study provides critical evidence into the viability of adopting a dynamic network perspective in understanding the ambidexterity hypothesis and advancing strategic alliance research beyond static and dyadic levels

organizational failure and intraprofessional status loss we examine variation in intraprofessional status changes for employees displaced by organizational failure we propose that failure related reductions in bargaining power are moderated by individual status characteristics that influence potential employers evaluations of job candidates and therefore individuals status loss risks treating a prominent law firm s failure as a quasi experiment we test our arguments by analyzing 224 firm partners transitions to subsequent employers most partners regained employment at firms of lower status than the failed firm but independent of their demonstrated productivity a partner s likelihood of status loss increased with tenure in the failed firm s partnership and decreased with educational prestige these results suggest not only that organizational failure can diminish cumulative career advantages but also that status characteristics that enable attainment such as education can protect individuals against status loss

the embeddedness of networks institutions structural holes and innovativeness in the fuel cell industry plentiful research suggests that embeddedness in alliance networks influences firms innovativeness this research however has mostly overlooked the fact that interorganizational ties are themselves embedded within larger institutional contexts that can shape the effects of networks on organizational outcomes we address this gap in the literature by arguing that national institutions affect the extent to which specific network positions such as brokerage influence innovation we explore this idea in the context of corporatism which fosters an institutional logic of collaboration that influences the broker s ability to manage its partnerships and recombine the knowledge residing in its network as well as the extent of knowledge flows among network participants we argue that differences in institutional logics lead brokerage positions to exert different effects on firm innovativeness we propose that the firm spanning structural holes obtains the greatest innovation benefits when the firm the broker or its alliance partners are based in highly corporatist countries or under certain combinations of broker and partner corporatism we find support for these ideas through a longitudinal study of cross border fuel cell technology alliance networks involving 109 firms from nine countries between 1981 and 2001

innovating in the periphery the impact of local and foreign inventor mobility on the value of indian patents abstract we examine the impact of local and foreign labor mobility in india by modeling one regional and one global network each of which captures the inter organizational mobility of inventors our analysis of the regional network shows that within india the productivity of inventors does not improve when they move from foreign to indian organizations in the global network we find that indian organizations remain located in the periphery as a result of employing a small number of inventors from foreign organizations however in the instances when inventors are hired from foreign organizations they are able to produce patents with a higher impact in comparison to inventors hired from other indian organizations furthermore when the inventors are hired from abroad the impact of their patents is even higher in comparison the implications of these findings for innovation and policy in the emerging economy context are discussed

getting a bonus social networks performance and reward among commercial bankers research on the effects of social networks on individual status attainment has exploded in recent years but the results remain equivocal varying across network structures types of ties and outcome variables the focus in this literature has been on two primary outcomes performance benefits and rewards including promotion and compensation these two types of outcomes have often been conflated however despite the fact that high levels of one do not guarantee high levels of the other we examined the effects of job performance network tie strength and network structures on the size of the year end bonuses received by 71 relationship officers in a major multinational commercial bank we found that in networks based on information acquisition both strong ties and sparse networks are positively associated with high bonuses as is the combination of the two in networks based on approval and support for one s deals neither tie strength nor density predicts bonus size but the benefits of strong ties increase as network density increases our results demonstrate the importance of distinguishing networks based on collegial relations from those based on authority as well as the importance of distinguishing the network factors that improve performance from those that generate favorable evaluations independent of performance

the paradox of sustainable innovation the eroom effect moore s law backwards innovation has been widely acknowledged as a key mechanism for addressing sustainable development concerns however less attention has focused on downstream commercialization challenges such as achieving increasingly complex and stringent regulatory approval such challenges may hinder the development of more sustainable technologies especially those coming from smaller or publically funded institutes as well they may obstruct the development of applications that could provide societal benefits but may only have limited commercial viability due to small market niches or applicability to customers with limited financial means we explore this apparent paradox using the concept of the eroom effect moore s law backwards i e where improved price performance due to technological advances are outweighed by increasing costs of regulatory approval and other commercialization costs we illustrate this phenomenon with two cases of publically funded institutes one developing transgenic cotton and the other lignin transformation technology that can replace petroleum based feedstocks in a number of industrial applications we discuss the unintended consequences of the eroom effect and conclude with implications for industry policy and ngos

exploring the locus of invention the dynamics of network communities and firms invention productivity departing from prior research analyzing the implications of social structure for actors outcomes by applying either an ego network or a global network perspective this study examines the implications of network communities for the invention productivity of firms network communities represent dense and nonoverlapping structural groups of actors in a social system a network community lens helps identify new ways to study firms access to diverse knowledge inputs in a dynamic system of interorganizational relationships specifically we examine how the membership dynamics of a network community affect the invention productivity of member firms by either enabling or constraining access to broad diverse knowledge inputs our findings suggest first that a firm reaps the greatest invention benefits in a network community with moderate levels of membership turnover second a firm attains the greatest invention productivity when its own rate of movement across different network communities is moderate third we find that community members located in the core of their network community can benefit more from membership dynamics and prior community affiliations than those on its periphery in empirical analyses we use the evolving community structure of the network of interorganizational partnerships in the global computer industry over 1981 2001 to predict firms patenting rates

are emily and greg more employable than lakisha and jamal a field experiment on labor market discrimination we study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help wanted ads in boston and chicago newspapers to manipulate perceived race resumes are randomly assigned african american or white sounding names white names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews callbacks are also more responsive to resume quality for white names than for african american ones the racial gap is uniform across occupation industry and employer size we also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names differential treatment by race still appears to still be prominent in the u s labor market jel j71 j64

too good to be true the unintended signaling effects of educational prestige on external expectations of team performance in this paper we report the results of two experimental studies designed to test how demographic characteristics affect outsiders assessments of a firm s top managers we draw on theories of evaluation and status characteristics to examine the interactive effects of managers racial characteristics and educational prestige on external perceptions in the first study we find that top executives educational background and race affected analysts valuation of a firm s stock outside analysts made the highest stock price projections for firms led by white executives who had highly prestigious educational backgrounds but made the lowest valuations for firms led by african americans with the same prestigious education we posit that the moderating effect of executives racial characteristics stems from outsiders assumptions that african american managers received preferential treatment in the admissions process for high prestige universities in the second study we find that when we explicitly removed the possibility of preferential selection analysts gave the same stock valuation to firms led by white and african american executives with high educational prestige we discuss the implications of these findings for theory and management

why new crop technology is not scale neutral a critique of the expectations for a crop based african green revolution poverty reduction during the asian green revolution has been attributed to the inherent scale neutrality of new crop varieties making them equally beneficial to small scale and large scale farmers the term scale neutral is now reappearing in debates on agricultural development in africa with claims that crop technology is inherently scale neutral and that african smallholders will significantly benefit from new crop varieties not specifically developed for their contexts using a social shaping of technology sst perspective and the concept of biological embeddedness this paper critically examines whether it is helpful to describe crop technology as scale neutral when drawing lessons from the asian green revolution about how new crop technology can be of benefit to african smallholders the paper describes how political commitment rather than inherently scale neutral crops was central for the outcome of the asian green revolution it also highlights that while the effects of crop biology are often disregarded in adoption studies biology significantly affected the ability of green revolution crop technology to benefit smallholders and continues to do so today using maize and gm crops as examples this paper suggests that gm crops in their current form have reinforced a technological trajectory established with hybrid technology and directed it away from smallholder practices and agroecologies consequently describing crop technology as inherently scale neutral is not helpful for understanding how crop technology works in africa today and prevents important lessons being learned from the asian green revolution

race and employment outcomes evidence from nba coaches we study the impact of management diversity on employment outcomes using data on nba head coaches that includes information on the race of each coach and his supervisor we find that a supervisor is more likely to hire a coach of his own race we also find that black coaches are less likely to be rehired to a second job within three years than their white counterparts and that a head coach s race affects the quality of the opportunities he is offered these findings are stronger for first time coaches than experienced coaches suggesting that observable information on performance mitigates bias jel j0 j4 j7

networks diversity and productivity the social capital of corporate r d teams we argue that the debate regarding the performance implications of demographic diversity can be usefully reframed in terms of the network variables that reflect distinct forms of social capital scholars who are pessimistic about the performance of diverse teams base their view on the hypothesis that decreased network density the average strength of the relationship among team members lowers a team s capacity for coordination the optimistic view is founded on the hypothesis that teams that are characterized by high network heterogeneity whereby relationships on the team cut across salient demographic boundaries enjoy an enhanced learning capability we test each of these hypotheses directly and thereby avoid the problematic assumption that they contradict one another our analysis of data on the social networks organizational tenure and productivity of 224 corporate r d teams indicates that both network variables help account for team productivity these findings support a recasting of the diversity performance debate in terms of the network processes that are more proximate to outcomes of interest

foreign competition domestic knowledge base and innovation activities evidence from chinese high tech industries using panel data analysis for a sample of chinese high technology industries from 1998 to 2008 this study examines how industry characteristics affect industry innovation activities differing from existing studies our research considers the impact of foreign competition on innovation activities at industry level in a large emerging economy the results indicate that the intensity of competition from foreign invested enterprises fies and domestic skill intensity affect industry buy and make activities foreign competition is positively associated with the intensity of buy activity but negatively affects the intensity of make activity further the findings show that domestic skill intensity weakens the impact of foreign competitive pressure on innovation activities our empirical evidence has important policy implications

informal job search and black youth unemployment in this paper i analyze how young black and white unemployed jobseekers use various methods of search and the employment outcomes which result from their use the focus is on distinguishing informal search methods i e friends and relatives or direct application without referral from more formal ones in analyzing racial differences the results show that the two informal methods of search account for about 90 of the difference in employment probabilities between white and black youth this also accounts for 57 71 of the difference in unemployment rates between the two furthermore most of these results reflect differences in the ability of these methods to generate job offers as opposed to differences in search effort or job acceptance rates however our ability to explain these differences through personal family and household characteristics was generally quite limited this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

race and marriage in the labor market a discrimination correspondence study in a developing country in mexico as in most latin american countries with indigenous populations it is commonly believed that european phenotypes are preferred to mestizo or indigenous phenotypes however it is hard to test for such racial biases in the labor market using official statistics since race can only be inferred from native language moreover employers may think that married females have lower productivity and hence they may be more reluctant to hire them we are interested in testing both hypotheses through a field experiment in the labor market the experiment consisted on sending fictitious curriculums cvs responding to job advertisements with randomized information of the applicants the cvs included photographs representing three distinct phenotypes caucasian mestizo and indigenous we also randomly vary marital status across gender and phenotype hence our test consists on finding whether there are significant differences in the callback rates we find that females have 40 percent more callbacks than males we also find that indigenous looking females are discriminated against but the effect is not present for males interestingly married females are penalized in the labor market and this penalty is higher for indigenous looking women we did not find an effect of marital status on males

money supply class power and inflation monetarism reassessed recent sociological work shows that pro market neoliberal policies across advanced capitalist countries are due to distributional struggle between classes in the 1970s and 1980s the orthodox monetarist view alternatively sees neoliberal reform as a nonpolitical attempt to end the stagflation crisis of the 1970s from this perspective monetary and fiscal expansions brought high inflation and central bank discipline and government austerity is the solution but the recent trend of low inflation despite accelerating money growth and government spending contradicts this view analyses of time series cross section data for 23 oecd countries from 1960 to 2009 support the thesis that the rise and fall of inflation is more about distribution of power between labor and capital than about monetary and fiscal discipline inflation in the 1970s originated from a strong working class and hurt capital more than it did workers while neoliberal repression of workers power has kept inflation low from the 1980s onwa

is co invention expediting technological catch up a study of collaboration between emerging country firms and eu inventors firms from emerging countries are going global and europe is attracting around one third of their direct outward investments growing internationalization constitutes an opportunity for technological catch up in this paper we analyze brazilian indian and chinese cross border inventions with european union eu 27 inventors during the period 1990 2012 our results suggest that these inventions represent an opportunity for emerging country firms to accumulate technological capabilities access frontier knowledge and appropriate the property rights of co inventions this paper contributes to understanding catching up by emerging country firms c 2015 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

evidence on discrimination in employment codes of color codes of gender there is substantial racial and gender disparity in the american economy as we will demonstrate discriminatory treatment within the labor market is a major cause of this inequality the evidence is ubiquitous careful research studies that estimate wage and employment regressions help wanted advertisements audit and correspondence studies and discrimination suits that are often reported by the news media yet there appear to have been periods of substantial reductions in economic disparity and discrimination for example donohue and heckman provide evidence that racial discrimination declined during 1965 1975 1 gottschalk has produced statistical estimates that indicate that discrimination against black males dropped most sharply between 1965 and 1975 and that discrimination against women declined during the interval 1973 1994 2 but some unanswered questions remain why did the movement toward racial equality stagnate and eventually decline after the mid 1970s what factors are most responsible for the remaining gender inequality what is the role of the competitive process in the elimination or reproduction of discrimination in employment

orchestrating impartiality the impact of blind auditions on female musicians a change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras adoption of blind auditions with a screen to conceal the candidate s identity from the jury provides a test for sex biased hiring using data from actual auditions in an individual fixed effects framework we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras

sex discrimination in restaurant hiring an audit study in an audit study of sex discrimination in hiring comparably matched pairs of men and women applied for jobs as waiters and waitresses at restaurants in philadelphia in high price restaurants where earnings are higher job applications from women had an estimated probability of receiving a job offer that was lower by about 0 4 and an estimated probability of receiving an interview that was lower by about 0 35 both estimated differentials are statistically significant additional evidence suggests that customer discrimination partly underlies the hiring discrimination

embeddedness in the making of financial capital how social relations and networks benefit firms seeking financing i investigate how social embeddedness affects an organization s acquisition and cost of financial capital in middle market banking a lucrative but understudied financial sector using existing theory and original fieldwork i develop a framework to explain how embeddedness can influence which firms get capital and at what cost i then statistically examine my claims using national data on small business lending at the level of dyadic ties i find that firms that embed their commercial transactions with their lender in social attachments receive lower interest rates on loans at the network level firms are more likely to get loans and to receive lower interest rates on loans if their network of bank ties has a mix of embedded ties and arm s length ties these network effects arise because embedded ties motivate network partners to share private resources while arm s length ties facilitate access to public information on market prices and loan opportunities so that the benefits of different types of ties are optimized within one network i conclude with a discussion of how the value produced by a network is at a premium when it creates a bridge that links the public information of markets with the private resources of relationships

intellectual capital configurations and organizational capability an empirical examination of human resource subunits in the multinational enterprise building on the organizational capabilities literature and theories of the multinational enterprise this paper develops and tests a framework that examines the relationship between intellectual capital configurations and organizational capabilities in human resource hr subunits looking at 187 subunits from 20 mnes findings show that intellectual capital dimensions vary in their usefulness for generating sharing and implementing hr management practices in particular while certain resources may help in the development of one capability they may harm the development of another implications are that an organization s intellectual capital investments will differ depending on the desired capability

preferences identity and competition predicting tie strength from demographic data this research examines the combined influence of three causal mechanisms shaping interpersonal dynamics sharing a demographic characteristic has been shown to strengthen a relationship between people the initial explanation for this positive effect emphasized the importance of individual preferences for social contact similar people share common interests which makes them more attractive as exchange partners more recent explanations have highlighted the important role of identification and competition identification increases the tendency for strong ties to develop among similar people while competition reduces that tendency i argue that tie strength is a function of all three mechanisms a baseline level of interpersonal attraction a positive identification effect and a negative competition adjustment identification and competition vary with the number of people sharing the focal attribute to define a predictable association between sharing the focal attribute and the strength of a network connection predictions are tested with tenure and tie strength data from a small research and development firm analysis indicates that having the same tenure has the predicted effect on communication frequency the implications of the findings are discussed for homophily research in particular and demography research in general

the paradox of redistribution and strategies of equality welfare state institutions inequality and poverty in the western countries the structure of welfare state institutions 2 a trade off exists between the degree of low income targeting and the size of redistributive budgets 3 outcomes of market based distribution are often more unequal than those of earnings related social insurance programs we argue that social insurance institutions are of central importance for redistributive outcomes using new data our comparative analyses of the effects of different institutional types of welfare states on poverty and inequality indicate that institutional differences lead to unexpected outcomes and generate the paradox of redistribution the more we target benefits at the poor and the more concerned we are with creating equality via equal public transfers to all the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality social scientists and social reformers have long debated how the welfare state and social policies should be designed so as to best reduce poverty and inequality this debate involves two different issues one question concerns whether social policies should be targeted or universal that is should they be organized for the poor only or should the welfare state include all citizens in the context of nontargeted programs another question concerns the level of benefits should benefits be equal for all or should they be related to previous earnings and in

supplying crop biotechnology to the poor opportunities and constraints abstract unlike the public sector research that launched the green revolution private firms based in industrialised countries have done the majority of agricultural biotechnology research and almost all commercialisation of genetically modified gm crops this paper examines consequences of the emergence of a few large companies as leaders in the commercialisation of biotechnology by addressing issues of access to technology costs of conducting research and distribution of economic benefits to provide context we first review the status of crop biotechnology research globally who is benefiting from the technology we then analyse the role of intellectual property rights market access and industry concentration public sector research and gm crop biosafety regulations in determining observed r d by firms the paper recommends policy measures that allow transfer of current technology to the poor and generate more biotechnology research focused on problems of the poor

plant breeding and poverty can transgenic seeds replicate the green revolution as a source of gains for the poor 1 abstract improved farm technology helps all main groups of the poor small farmers farmworkers other low wage labour when it raises labour value productivity but raises land and or water value productivity faster and cuts staples prices but raises smallholders total factor productivity faster from 1965 the green revolution walked these two tightropes largely by luck though targeting bigger piles of rice and wheat it cut poverty through consumption nutrition smallholder income employment risk reduction and ecological sustainability yet large areas were left out and from 1985 progress slowed in the new environment for research and agriculture how can transgenics revive and spread poverty reduction what has been the evidence so far what determines whether new varieties have traits conducive to poverty reduction who owns the research or what crop science is

the spread of illegal transgenic cotton varieties in india biosafety regulation monopoly and enforcement summary plantings of unapproved genetically modified seeds gm happen in many developing countries including brazil china and india even though the law does not permit it is regulation impossible and what does that imply for safe use of gm seeds this paper examines these questions in the case of unapproved gm cotton plantings in gujarat india we find that enforcement was possible and that there are no obvious bio safety implications the popularity of unapproved seeds confirmed by contingent valuations the de facto intellectual property of legal seeds and the federal polity of india contributed to non compliance this could matter for future innovations

minority entrepreneurship in twenty first century america prior to the 1970s minority owned small businesses were small in size and scope and common in only a few industry niches business owners were severely capital constrained lacking in higher education and training in skilled occupations the median owner today in contrast is college educated access to financing has expanded and opportunities to serve corporate and public sector clients are commonplace nearly 40 of all new firms created nationwide in 2015 were minority owned changing attitudes in mainstream society reduced traditional barriers true equality of opportunity among small minority and white owned firms of similar size and scope has nonetheless not been achieved this issue of small business economics examines lingering barriers impeding the development of a more vibrant minority business community focusing on access to financing and government procurement markets articles in this issue offer explicit analyses of enduring barriers along with explanations of adoptive strategic firm behavior appropriate for reducing those barriers

an empirical study of age discrimination in norway and germany using a questionnaire and a sample of students and personnel managers we establish the existence of age discrimination in the hiring process in germany and norway as expected age discrimination is more prominent in germany where the hiring probability of equally qualified applicants is reduced by about 22 percentage points due to an age differential of 14 years as opposed to only 12 percentage points in norway within both countries the tendency to discriminate does not differ between students and personnel managers and does not depend on the age of the decision maker the phenomenon of unemployment among older workers is characterized less by the risk of becoming unemployed than by the problem of remaining unemployed and failing to find new work frerichs and naegele 1998 p 59

business groups networks and embeddedness innovation and implementation alliances in japanese electronics 1985 1998 author s lincoln james r guillot didier sargent matthew abstract this paper examines the changing process of strategic alliance formation in the japanese electronics industry between 1985 and 1998 with data on 123 135 japanese electronics electrical machinery makers we use a dyad panel regression methodology to address hypotheses drawn largely from embeddedness theory on how the firms horizontal and vertical keiretsu business group affiliations and prior alliance networks supported and constrained partner choice in new rad innovation and nonrad implementation domestic economy alliances we find that in the first half of our series 1985 1991 the preburst period keiretsu served as infrastructure for new strategic alliances that had both innovation rad and implementation nonrad goals in the second half of our series 1992 1998 the postbubble period the keiretsu effects on rad alliance formation were gone but the groups role in nonrad alliances had magnified moreover as the keiretsu effect on new alliances fell or rose those of prior direct and indirect alliance ties moved in the opposite direction we conclude with some discussion of whether these period shifts in the embeddedness of the electronics industry alliance formation process were or were not effective adaptations to the turbulence and uncertainty of the postbubble japanese economy

social comparisons status and driving behavior abstract the establishment of desirable social norms is an integral part of a well functioning civil society while recent evidence has demonstrated that social comparison can affect behavior in a variety of contexts it is not clear what type of comparative social information is most effective using a large scale field experiment to study driving practices we sent text messages containing different types of social information to drivers in tsingtao china we find two types of social information to be particularly effective in reducing traffic violations the driving behavior of those similar to oneself and the driving behavior of those with high status cars our results indicate that the combination of descriptive norms with social status is a cost effective yet powerful intervention for establishing better driving behavior in emerging markets

education and labor market discrimination using a model of statistical discrimination and educational sorting we explain why blacks get more education than whites of similar cognitive ability and we explore how the armed forces qualification test afqt wages and education are related the model suggests that one should control for both afqt and education when compar ing the earnings of blacks and whites in which case a substantial black white wage differential emerges we reject the hypothesis that differences in school quality between blacks and whites explain the wage and education differentials our findings support the view that some of the black white wage differential reflects the operation of the

testing for racial discrimination in the labour market racial discrimination in selection for job interview was measured directly by the experimental technique of corresponding testing carefully matched pairs of written job applications were sent in response to advertised vacancies in victoria a state of australia one letter was from an applicant with an anglo celtic name and the other was from an applicant with a greek or vietnamese name statistically significant discrimination was found against both vietnamese named and greek named applicants there was no relationship between the incidence of discrimination and the competitive structure of the employer s product market copyright 1991 by oxford university press

the role of relative performance in inter firm mobility of inventors abstract prior research has emphasized the influence of inter firm mobility on knowledge flows and innovation yet we have an incomplete picture of the antecedents of inventor mobility building on theoretical traditions related to decision making based on limited asymmetric bounded information and economic and other incentives our paper suggests that after controlling for individual performance and other variables previously shown to affect inter organizational mobility an inventor s performance relative to his co patenting group alters his likelihood of mobility our analysis of 2648 inventors in the pharmaceutical industry shows that for those performing above their reference group of past and current co inventors in patenting an increase in relative performance decreases the likelihood of mobility and for those performing below the reference group a decrease in relative performance decreases the likelihood of mobility we also find that when inventors have more external scientific collaborations their likelihood of mobility increases and this variable moderates the relationship between the performance gap and mobility but only for those performing above their peers