tenure security and land related investment evidence from ethiopia the authors use a large data set from ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land related investment and its possible impact on productivity while they find some support for endogeneity of investment in trees this is not the case for terraces transfer rights are unambiguously investment enhancing the large productivity effect of terracing implies that even where households undertake investments to increase their tenure security this may not be socially efficient in ethiopia government action to increase tenure security and transferability of land rights can significantly enhance rural investment and productivity

the economic effects of land registration on smallholder farms in kenya evidence from nyeri and kakamega districts effects of land registration and title on security of tenure use of formal credit crop yields and land concentration are analyzed from household and plot data in four kenyan sites results indicate that the registration and titling program had a weak impact on perceived land rights of farmers credit use and terms crop yields or concentration of land holdings the conclusion is that titles are acquired for enhancing security of rights rather than for increasing agricultural production scarce government resources are best targeted towards providing better infrastructure and market opportunities which should also foster a greater demand for titling

internal capital markets and the competition for corporate resources this article examines the role of corporate headquarters in allocating scarce resources to competing projects in an internal capital market unlike a bank headquarters has control rights that enable it to engage in winner picking the practice of actively shifting funds from one project to another by doing a good job in the winner picking dimension headquarters can create value even when it cannot help at all to relax overall firm wide credit constraints the model implies that internal capital markets may sometimes function more efficiently when headquarters oversees a small and focused set of projects this article analyzes the process by which internal capital markets channel limited resources to different uses inside a company in so doing it seeks to address two related sets of questions first what is the fundamental economic rationale for creating an internal capital market that is under what circumstances can it make sense to combine several technologically distinct projects under one roof and have them seek funding from corporate headquarters as opposed to setting them up as stand alone companies that each raise external financing on their own second given this rationale what is the optimal size and scope of an internal capital market should headquarters be involved in funding a large number of projects or just a few and should these projects be unrelated to one another or in similar lines of business the answers to both sets of questions flow from the insight that in a credit constrained setting where not all positive npv projects can be financed headquarters can create value by actively reallocating scarce funds across projects for example the cash flow generated by one division s activities may be taken and spent on investment in another division where the returns are higher or alternatively one division s assets may be used as collateral to raise financing that is then diverted to the other division simply put individual projects must compete for the scarce funds and headquarters job is to pick the winners and losers in this competition

ownership concentration and firm performance in emerging markets a meta analysis the literature concerned with relations between ownership concentration and corporate performance in emerging markets presents conflicting theoretical predications and inconclusive empirical results we use meta analytical techniques to integrate the diverse empirical findings and investigate factors contribute to the inconsistencies in the empirical evidence using 419 correlations collected from 42 primary studies of listed corporations in 18 emerging markets heterogeneity tests show that only a small proportion of the variation in reported ownership concentration performance relations can be attributed to sampling error our meta regressions reveal how population differences researchers modeling choices and inadequate treatment of endogeneity explain a large portion of the true heterogeneity after adjusting for these effects we find ownership concentration has negative relation with firm performance across countries our results emphasize the importance of model specification and methods of addressing endogeneity and support further comparative study of the ownership concentration corporate performance relation between countries with seemingly similar corporate governance environments

sources of superior performance market share versus industry effects in the u s brewing industry using financial measures of performance we investigate the sources of value creation in the u s brewing industry between 1969 and 1979 we find that market share gains in this industry at this time are not correlated with changes in value and that the performance of individual leading firms is highly correlated our interpretation is that the success of market share building strategies depends critically on specific industry conditions specifically in the absence of fundamental shifts in the relative resource positions of individual firms share gains may come at too high a price in addition the research shows that intra industry correlations in returns may result from excessive competition rather than collusion

how much does country matter an analysis of firms growth options recent international strategy research emphasizes the importance of understanding the effects of geographic location on firms strategies and performance outcomes we contribute to this research by providing empirical evidence that the interplay of country and industry effects matters substantially in explaining the variation in the value of growth options of firms based in different countries our results show that country industry effects are the second largest source of variation following firm effects while industry and country effects are relatively small when considered in their own right that valuable growth options are tied to country and industry interactions has important implications for international strategy research and practice

small price incentives increase women s access to land titles in tanzania we present results from a field experiment using price incentives to address two obstacles to women s access to formal land ownership first the price of formal land titles is often prohibitive restricting access for both men and women second when formal titles are issued men are recorded as the sole owners of household land in the vast majority of cases in theory these problems may be in tension requirements to grant women equal ownership may reduce the overall household demand for titling in practice we find no such trade off when residents of low income unplanned settlements in dar es salaam were offered price discounts for formal land titles demand rose significantly price elasticity of demand was unchanged when price discounts were conditional on registering a woman as co owner of household land furthermore conditional price discounts achieved near gender parity in land ownership

information technology effects on firm performance as measured by tobin s q despite increasing anecdotal evidence that information technology it assets contribute to firm performance and future growth potential of firms the empirical results relating it investments to firm performance measures have been equivocal however the bulk of the studies have relied exclusively on accounting based measures of firm performance which largely tend to ignore it s contribution to performance dimensions such as strategic flexibility and intangible value in this paper we use tobin s q a financial market based measure of firm performance and examine the association between it investments and firm q values after controlling for a variety of industry factors and firm specific variables the results based on data from 1988 1993 indicate that in all of the five years the inclusion of the it expenditure variable in the model increased the variance explained in q significantly the results also showed that for all five years it investments had a significantly positive association with tobin s q value our results are consistent with the notion that it contributes to a firm s future performance potential which a forward looking measure such as the q is better able to capture

the forgotten property rights evidence on land use rights in vietnam summary studies of land property rights usually focus on tenure security and transfer rights rights to determine how to use the land are regularly ignored however user rights are often limited relying on a unique vietnamese panel data set at both household and plot levels we show that crop choice restrictions are widespread and prevent crop diversification restrictions do not decrease household income but restricted households work harder and there are indications that they are supplied with higher quality inputs our findings are consistent with the view that it is possible to intervene effectively in agricultural production to promote output and food security nevertheless potential benefits of a more diversified crop pattern must be carefully considered in a period where global food markets are in turmoil

impact of information technology capital on firm scope and performance the role of asset characteristics this research draws on transaction cost and resource based theory to examine how information technology it capital moderates the relationship between different types of assets and firm scope both vertical integration and diversification the analysis suggests that it capital enables firms with narrowly valuable assets to be less vertically integrated and less diversified and enables firms with broadly valuable assets to be more vertically integrated and more diversified the moderating influence of it capital on the relationship between different types of assets and firms vertical and product market scope is consistent with transaction cost as well as resource based traditions abstract from author

does corporate strategy matter a revisionist view that corporate strategy does not matter has gained considerable influence in recent years this view largely stems from empirical results of early variance decomposition studies that found negligible corporate effects associated with profitability differences between businesses our analysis of the variance decomposition literature shows this view to be incorrect not only do the studies as a group show that factors at the corporate level of organizations contribute to profitability differences but also evidence suggests that factors specifically associated with corporate strategy contribute to corporate effects corporate strategy in fact does matter copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

financial markets are markets in stories some possible advantages of using interviews to supplement existing economic data sources abstract fifty two research interviews were conducted with money managers controlling over 500 billion this paper presents detailed material from one interview to argue interviews usefully describe their shared reality and provide information about the conditions of action facing financial decision makers with implications for aggregate behaviour their shared reality was dominated by radical uncertainty and information ambiguity which severely limited the scope for fully rational decision making how they managed to commit to decisions was by creating narratives the study suggests it may be useful to reconsider prejudices against the usefulness of talking to individual economic agents about what they actually do

do overlapping property rights reduce agricultural investment evidence from uganda the need for land related investment to ensure sustainable land management and increase productivity of land use is widely recognized however there is little rigorous evidence on the effects of property rights for increasing agricultural productivity and contributing toward poverty reduction in africa whether and by how much overlapping property rights reduce investment incentives and the scope for policies to counter such disincentives are thus important policy issues using information on parcels under ownership and usufruct by the same household from a nationally representative survey in uganda the authors find significant disincentives associated with overlapping property rights on short and long term investments the paper combines this result with information on crop productivity to obtain a rough estimate of the magnitudes involved the authors make suggestions on ways to eliminate such inefficiencies

distinction between intermediate and finished products in intra firm trade abstract although intra firm trade has been viewed as associated with vertical integration which exploits opportunities for exchange between inherently dissimilar economies it is more common between developed countries where horizontal integration is expected to dominate using unique data from 1974 to 1990 on swedish firms application of a tobit model explains variations in majority owned manufacturing affiliates internal imports of intermediate and finished goods on the basis of firms international organization of production effects which are unobservable in aggregate figures show up only when finished and intermediate goods are separated

is tourism firm competitiveness driven by different internal or external specific factors new empirical evidence from spain abstract the quest to understand the multilevel antecedents of competitiveness has led to a separation of approaches on one side of the question are the environment theories that analyze the structural characteristics of the general and competitive environment on the other side are the resource based view and its extensions that highlight firm specific resources and capabilities as the main basis of firms competitiveness however in recent years the nature of competition and shifting economic conditions have given rise to new theoretical approaches that complement the assumptions underlying both environmental and firm theories specifically this study contributes by examining the regional environment effect the district effect and the strategic group effect through a study of 364 spanish tourism firms this research explores the relative importance of distinct external forces such as the general environment or country effect the regional effect the competitive environment or industry effect the district effect and internal factors such as the firm s tangible resources capabilities and strategy selection the results demonstrate that firms capabilities are more important than environment effects and tangible resources

diversification diseconomies of scope and vertical contracting evidence from the taxicab industry this paper studies how firms reorganize following diversification proposing that firms use outsourcing or vertical disintegration to manage diseconomies of scope we also consider the origins of scope diseconomies showing how different underlying mechanisms generate contrasting predictions about the link between within firm task heterogeneity and the incentive to outsource following diversification we test these propositions using microdata on taxicab and limousine fleets from the economic census the results show that taxicab firms outsource by shifting the composition of their fleets toward owner operator drivers when they diversify into the limousine business the magnitude of the shift toward driver ownership is larger in less urban markets where the tasks performed by taxicab and limousine drivers are more similar these findings suggest that 1 firms use outsourcing to manage diseconomies of scope at a particular point in the value chain and 2 interagent conflicts can be an important source of scope diseconomies

productivity net returns and efficiency land and market reform in vietnamese rice production extensive land and market reform in vietnam has resulted in dramatic increases in rice output over the past thirty years the land and market reforms in agriculture were pervasive moving the system of rice production from commune based public ownership and control to one with effective private property rights over land and farm assets competitive domestic markets and individual decision making over a wide range of agricultural activities the effect of this reform period and beyond is detailed with measures of total factor productivity tfp terms of trade and net returns in rice production in vietnam from 1985 to 2006 results show that tfp rises considerably in the major rice growing areas the mekong and red river delta areas during the early years of reform and beyond but also that there is clear evidence of a productivity slow down since 2000 the differences over time and by region speak directly to existing land use regulations and practices suggesting calls for further land and market reform to illustrate this additional frontier and efficiency model estimates detail the effects of remaining institutional and policy constraints including existing restrictions on land consolidation and conversion and poorly developed markets for land and capital estimates show that larger and less land fragmented farms farms in the major rice growing areas and those farms that are better irrigated have a greater proportion of capital per unit of cultivated land a clear property right or land use certificate and access to agricultural extension services are more efficient

international organization of production and variation in exports from affiliates there is no simple relationship between internationalization of firms operations and expanding trade the variation in exports from swedish affiliates is here shown to be influenced by properties related to their degree of vertical and horizontal integration affiliates propensity to export is positively affected by production in few countries intermediate imports from the parent plant size income level of the host country and a location in the european community and is negatively affected by r d intensity and the size of the host country market

the effects of firm size and industry on corporate giving recent downward trends in corporate giving have renewed interest in the factors that shape corporate philanthropy this paper examines the relationships between charitable contributions firm size and industry improvements over previous studies include an irs data base that covers a much broader range of firm sizes and industries as compared to previous studies and estimation using an instrumental variable technique that explicitly addresses potential simultaneity between charitable contributions and profitability important findings provide evidence of a cubic relationship between charitable giving and firm size and evidence of strong industry effects the plus minus plus regression coefficient sign pattern for the cubic firm size model suggests that small and large firms give more relative to total receipts with lower giving ratios among medium size firms one interpretation for this finding is that small firms are close to the communities they serve while high visibility creates a need for large firm philanthropy strong industry effects provide evidence of inter industry differences in giving culture and or different public relations requirements across industries

women empowerment and economic development women empowerment and economic development are closely related in one direction development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women in the other direction empowering women may benefit development does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion this paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment development nexus and argues that the interrelationships are probably too weak to be self sustaining and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women

intra household inequality fairness and productivity evidence from a real effort experiment abstract this paper investigates experimentally how changes in wage rates and entitlements affect individual productivity in lab in the field experiments run with married couples from rural regions in uganda we design a game in which the production task itself is straightforward but where the rules governing payment vary across subjects and between rounds in some cases all the value of output goes to the husband in other cases all goes to the wife in other cases the value of output is shared equally and finally in some cases each spouse receives income according to only their own output to consider the effects of wage inequality we vary the price paid for each completed item so that the ratio of male to female wages varies from 0 5 to 2 all this is done transparently so that both partners know the rules of the game the results generally indicate that a rise in relative wages lowers relative effort a result that is contrary to the most straightforward interpretation of standard models of the household but compatible with some models of fairness men do not generally respond strongly to treatment in contrast women s labor supply is strongly backward bending when all income goes to the husband but effort rises with wages when each spouse gets to keep their own earnings the results therefore suggest that the effects of reforming or removing one inequality may depend critically on the existence of other inequalities

knowledge sources patent protection and commercialization of pharmaceutical innovations abstract this paper investigates different types of innovations from radical to incremental in the pharmaceutical industry by studying bibliometric data of drugs approved by the united states food and drug administration fda looking at time to market aspects knowledge sources of these innovations and protection strategies scientific knowledge stemming from the public sector is found to be important for all innovations nevertheless radical innovations build on a higher degree on basic research and they build on a significantly higher share of own prior scientific research than do incremental innovations furthermore each drug is shown to be accompanied by on average about 19 journal publications and 23 additional patents additional patent filings peak when the commercialization of the drug is in reach firms do not differ among the various types of innovations regarding the amount of additional patent filings but rather with the speed of filing these patents finally this work contributes to the improvement of future econometric analyses that aim to link bibliometric indicators such as patent or publication counts to firm success

gender gaps in landownership across and within households in four asian countries using nationally representative data from bangladesh tajikistan timor leste and vietnam this paper investigates which individual and household characteristics influence men s and women s landownership across and within households often neglected in household level statistics married women in all countries are landowners across different household structures women own less land than men and less land relative to the household average as household landholdings increase increasing gender inequality with household wealth cannot be consistently explained by an increasing share of household land devoted to crops findings support the need to strengthen women s land rights within marriage and to protect them should the marriage dissolve

land tenure and productivity farm level evidence from papua new guinea does land tenure form affect farm level productivity the answer from farm level data for an oil palm project in papua new guinea is in the affirmative analysis of farm level output controlling for all measured inputs shows systematic differences in productivity across three land tenure types namely farms under customary purchase agreements those under the land settlement scheme and those under village owned land schemes the empirics suggest that the higher productivity is due to benefits from economies of scale and absence of income sharing enjoyed by farms with improved tenure security

the diversification and financial performance of us credit unions abstract for us credit unions revenue from non interest sources has increased significantly in recent years we investigate the impact of revenue diversification on financial performance for the period 1993 2004 the impact of a change in strategy that alters the share of non interest income is decomposed into a direct exposure effect reflecting the difference between interest and non interest bearing activities and an indirect exposure effect which reflects the effect of the institution s own degree of diversification on both risk adjusted and unadjusted returns measures a positive direct exposure effect is outweighed by a negative indirect exposure effect for all but the largest credit unions this may imply that similar diversification strategies are not appropriate for large and small credit unions small credit unions should eschew diversification and continue to operate as simple savings and loan institutions while large credit unions should be encouraged to exploit new product opportunities around their core expertise

retail philanthropy firm size industry and business cycle this article investigates the effects of firm size profitability industry affiliation and the business cycle on retailer philanthropy the importance of industry and firm effects on giving was analyzed with regression models using industry fixed effects as well as firm strategy variables the analysis included instrumental variables methodology to account for simultaneity in the charitable giving profits relationship data were gathered from the irs corporate statistics of income sourcebook data that provide firm size class measures covering the entire firm size distribution ranging from small retailers up to large multi national retail firms retailer philanthropy was measured as the ratio of charitable contributions to total receipts important findings include a cubic relationship between retailer philanthropy and firm size industry effects stronger than those observed for retail profit and the absence of business cycle effects the empirical research relating retail charitable giving to firm attributes including firm size and advertising industry and business cycle factors are unique in the business ethics literature prior studies regarding the importance of industry on charitable giving utilized data across broad sectors of the economy firms from different sectors could be expected to differ in philanthropic approach due to differences in public contact as well as differences in public relations exposure the strong industry effects reported for this sample of exclusively retail firms with similar public contact provide strong evidence for the importance of industry in determining firms charitable strategies

tenure security investment and productivity in gambian agriculture a generalized probit analysis the determinants of investment input use and productivity are investigated under customary tenure in peri urban areas of the gambia a structural model is specified to investigate the role of tenure security on farm investments and input use and thereby on yield testing of the structural form hypotheses requires simultaneous equation estimation containing both continuous and discrete endogenous variables the model is estimated as a feasible generalized least squares amemiya s generalized probit some of the positive relationships hypothesized between tenure security investment and yields are corroborated in particular tenure security is found to enhance long term investments which in turn enhance yields

impacts of low cost land certification on investment and productivity new land reforms are again high on the policy agenda and low cost propoor reforms are being tested in poor countries this article assesses the investment and productivity impacts of the recent low cost land certification implemented in the tigray region of ethiopia using a unique household and farm plot level panel data set with data from before and up to eight years after the reform alternative econometric methods were used to test and control for endogeneity of certification and for unobserved household heterogeneity significant positive impacts were found including effects on the maintenance of soil conservation structures investment in trees and land productivity copyright 2007 oxford university press

the profits of power land rights and agricultural investment in ghana we examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in akwapim ghana we show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output the intensity of investments on different plots cultivated by a given individual corresponds to that individual s security of tenure over those specific plots and in turn to the individual s position in the political hierarchy relevant to those specific plots

new ways to assess and enhance land registry sustainability evidence from rwanda summary rwanda has recently implemented a nation wide program of first time land regularization ltr that many believe set new standards for the region we use administrative data combined with household survey and program rollout information to explore sustainability of the infrastructure created in this process including the impact of public efforts to increase registration of subsequent transactions we find that the program provided significant benefits in terms of gender equality and credit access while opening up new opportunities in terms of land taxation or land use planning but that high level of rural informality may undermine these in the medium to long term while public efforts to decentralize service provision helped to significantly reduce informality additional efforts are likely to be needed to ensure sustainability of the registry we discuss how rwanda can further move in this direction and draw out implications for other countries considering first time adjudication and registration of property rights

productivity effects of land rental market operation in ethiopia evidence from a matched tenant landlord sample as countries increasingly strive to transform their economies from agriculture based into a diversified one land rental will become of greater importance it will thus be critical to complement research on the efficiency of specific land rental arrangements such as sharecropping with an inquiry into the broader productivity impacts of the land rental market plot level data for a matched landlord tenant sample in an environment where sharecropping dominates allow us to explore both issues the author fined that pure output sharing leads to significantly lower levels of efficiency that can be attenuated by monitoring while the inefficiency disappears if inputs are shared as well rentals transfer land to more productive producers but realization of this productivity advantage is prevented by the inefficiency of contractual arrangements suggesting changes that would prompt adoption of different contractual arrangements could have significant benefits

tobin s q and the importance of focus in firm performance using tobin s q as a measure of performance we seek to estimate the relative importance of industry focus and share effects in determining firm performance our methods are analogous to those of richard schmalensee and like him we find that industry effects account for the majority of the explained variance however we also find that firm effects exist in the form of focus effects that is narrowly diversified firms do better than widely diversified firms we interpret this finding as consistent with profit maximization by firms with different factor endowments

land tenure and property rights theory and implications for development policy this article explores the nature of property rights systems their evolution and their effect on resource allocation it is argued that certain institutional arrangements for land rights have evolved in order to reduce uncertainty and increase efficiency in credit as well as in land markets of particular relevance to developing countries the article emphasizes the contribution of public sector infrastructure to effective land rights systems an appendix to the article presents a formal model analyzing the effects of security of land rights on land prices the intensity of cultivation and the use of credit empirical evidence from thailand supports several of the propositions derived from the model

land reallocation in an agrarian transition liberalising key factor markets is a crucial step in the transition from a socialist control economy to a market economy however the process can be stalled by imperfect information high transaction costs and covert resistance from entrenched interests the article studies agricultural land reallocation in the wake of vietnam s efforts to establish a free market in land use rights following de collectivisation inefficiencies in the initial administrative allocation are measured against an explicit counterfactual land allocation responded positively but slowly to the initial inefficiencies there is no sign that the transition favoured the land rich or that it was thwarted by local officials vietnam s agrarian transition has closely followed a now classic policy scenario for economies in transition first one privatises the main productive assets in this case agricultural land use rights then one legalises their free exchange in the first step the de collectivisation of vietnam s agriculture meant that the land that had previously been farmed collectively was to be allocated by administrative means across households within each commune without a market mechanism to guide the process it can be expected that inefficiencies in land allocation would remain with some households having too much land relative to a competitive market allocation and some too little ravallion and van de walle 2004 document evidence of such inefficiencies in the initial administrative allocation at the time of de collectivisation

estimating the performance effects of business groups in emerging markets business groups confederations of legally independent firms are ubiquitous in emerging economies yet very little is known about their effects on the performance of affiliated firms we conceive of business groups as responses to market failures and high transaction costs in doing so we develop hypotheses about the effects of group affiliation on firm profitability affiliation could either boost or depress firm profitability and members of a group are likely to earn rates of return similar to other members of the same group using a unique data set compiled largely from local sources we test for these effects in 14 emerging markets argentina brazil chile india indonesia israel mexico peru the philippines south africa south korea taiwan thailand and turkey we find evidence that business groups indeed affect the broad patterns of economic performance in 12 of the markets we examine group affiliation appears to have as profound an effect on profitability as does industry membership yet strategy scholars have a much clearer grasp of industries than of groups moreover membership in a group raises the profitability of the average group member in several of the markets we examine this runs contrary to the wisdom conventional in advanced economies that unrelated diversification depresses profitability overall our findings suggest that the roots of sustained differences in profitability may vary across institutional contexts conclusions drawn in one context may well not apply to another copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

the productivity impacts of formal and informal land rights evidence from madagascar this paper studies the relationship between land rights and agricultural productivity whereas previous studies used proxies for soil quality and instrumental variables to control for the endogeneity of land titles the data used here include precise soil quality measurements which in principle allow controlling for the unobserved heterogeneity between plots empirical results suggest that formal land rights i e land titles have no impact on productivity but that informal land rights i e landowners subjective perceptions of what they can and cannot do with their plots have heterogeneous impacts on productivity

the persistence of shocks to profitability in this study we use data for 1981 through 1994 on a large sample of u s companies to examine the persistence of incremental industry corporate parent and business specific effects on profitability our results indicate that the incremental effects of industry on profitability persist longer than the incremental effects of the corporate parent and of the specific business changes in industry structure have a more persistent impact on profitability than do changes in firm structure

q and the tax bias theory abstract a growing body of literature analyzes the variation in q the ratio of financial market value to asset current replacement cost and makes inferences about attributes such as monopoly power profitability managerial performance etc these studies ignore potential biases embedded in q that result from non neutral tax policies this study examines the association between q and tax biases and establishes that differences in accumulated depreciation tax shields explain significant variation in q the implication that q should be adjusted for tax biases before use in empirical research is examined further adjusting q for tax biases at least with the factors herein leads only to minor changes in econometric analyses

competencies and firm performance examining the causal ambiguity paradox resource based theory argues that resources must be valuable rare inimitable and lack substitutes to confer competitive advantage inimitability is a lynchpin of resource based theory and central to understanding the sustainability of competitive advantage although scholars recognize a positive relationship between causal ambiguity and inimitability the relationship among critical resources called competencies causal ambiguity and firm performance remains an unresolved conundrum one perspective suggests that causal ambiguity regarding competencies and performance is necessary among internal and external managers for sustainable competitive advantage because it severely limits imitation causal ambiguity therefore enhances firm performance another view holds that causal ambiguity places a constraint on the transfer and leveraging of these competencies within a firm in this case causal ambiguity may adversely influence firm performance this paper takes a resource based view to develop and test hypotheses that relate managers perceptions of causal ambiguity to their firm s performance the hypotheses examine relationships between firm performance and 1 causal ambiguity regarding the link between competencies and competitive advantage and 2 causally ambiguous characteristics of competencies research involving 224 executives in 17 organizations provides valuable insights into the relationships between causal ambiguity and firm performance a model is then developed based on these findings particular consideration is given to the differing ways top and middle managers in a firm may experience causal ambiguity and to how these differences may be understood and managed copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

gender diversity in the boardroom and firm financial performance the monitoring role performed by the board of directors is an important corporate governance control mechanism especially in countries where external mechanisms are less well developed the gender composition of the board can affect the quality of this monitoring role and thus the financial performance of the firm this is part of the business case for female participation on boards though arguments may also be framed in terms of ethical considerations while the issue of board gender diversity has attracted growing research interest in recent years most empirical results are based on u s data this article adds to a growing number of non u s studies by investigating the link between the gender diversity of the board and firm financial performance in spain a country which historically has had minimal female participation in the workforce but which has now introduced legislation to improve equality of opportunities we investigate the topic using panel data analysis and find that gender diversity as measured by the percentage of women on the board and by the blau and shannon indices has a positive effect on firm value and that the opposite causal relationship is not significant our study suggests that investors in spain do not penalise firms which increase their female board membership and that greater gender diversity may generate economic gains

investment in soil conservation in northern ethiopia the role of land tenure security and public programs abstract a double hurdle statistical analysis of 250 farms in the tigray region of ethiopia reveals different causal factors for soil conservation adoption versus intensity of use farmers reasons for adopting soil conservation measures vary sharply between stone terraces and soil bunds long term investments in stone terraces were associated with secure land tenure labour availability proximity to the farmstead and learning opportunities via the existence of local food for work ffw projects by contrast short term investments in soil bunds were strongly linked to insecure land tenure and the absence of local food for work projects public conservation campaigns on private plots reduced adoption of both stone terraces and soil bunds whereas capacity factors largely influenced the adoption decision expected returns carried more influence for the intensity of stone terrace adoption measured as metres of terrace per hectare more stone terracing was built where fertile but erodible silty soils in higher rainfall areas offered valuable yield benefits intensity of terracing was also greater in remote villages where limited off farm employment opportunities reduced construction costs these results highlight the importance of the right kind of public interventions direct public involvement in constructing soil conservation structures on private lands appears to undermine incentives for private conservation investments when done on public lands however public conservation activities may encourage private soil conservation by example secure land tenure rights clearly reinforce private incentives to make long term investments in soil conservation

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

economic fluctuations market power and returns to scale evidence from firm level data recent research on aggregate fluctuations coupled with ongoing work in industrial organization has renewed interest in the existence magnitude and cyclical pattern of market power and the extent of increasing returns to scale by exploiting restrictions from dynamic theory and information from financial markets we present a framework for generating quantitative evidence on market power and returns to scale tailoring the econometric model to firm level panel data we calculate the percentage differential between price and marginal cost the lerner index in terms of the parameters from the econometric system results for firms in eleven industries indicate that there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the extent of market power industries with significantly positive lerner indices tend to have substantial increasing returns in the production technology we find that there is only a modest relation between our estimated lerner indices and traditional measures of market power and that when market power varies temporally it is usually procyclical thus variations in the markup of price over marginal cost may help dampen aggregate economic fluctuations

corporate and industry effects on business unit competitive position we partition the variances of market shares which we use as surrogates for competitive position of the business units of all public manufacturing companies available in the trinet data base into industry factors corporate parent specific factors and business unit specific factors our results differ somewhat from rumelt s 1991 which decomposed variances in profitability we find that corporate parent effects on market share are considerably greater than zero when lines of business are defined more narrowly when small business units are included and when firms are medium sized our results suggest that the relative importance of corporate industry and business unit effects depends on the types of criteria such as the level of industry aggregation whether small business units are included and firm size that are used to construct samples copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

land tenure security and investment incentives puzzling evidence from burkina faso abstract the commonsense logic associating higher land security and higher incentives to invest has been recently called into question in the case of african agriculture to be meaningful empirical tests have to be carefully designed so as to take account of the possible endogeneity of the land rights variable this is done in this paper by applying suitable econometric methods to the original data collected in burkina faso the results obtained cast doubt on the existence of a systematic influence of land tenure security on investment by reviewing the justifications for scepticism in the recent literature we are able to conclude that the traditional village order where it exists provides the basic land rights required to stimulate small scale investment

a capability based view of competitive heterogeneity the question of how firms differ is paramount to strategy scholars this question has motivated empirical research on the factors influencing performance differences among close competitors it also has motivated work on factors that increase or decrease the mean performance of firms in an industry theories about resources and capabilities tend to dominate discussions of heterogeneity in performance and superior performance yet the strategy field lacks a cumulative body of empirical work showing how firms differ this article derives conclusions and questions from empirical work on capabilities we then discuss work that complements but lies beyond the boundaries of traditional capabilities research we conclude by suggesting approaches to and areas of future work

risk coping land tenure and land markets an overview of the literature over the last decades a significant amount of literature has been published on informal risk coping in developing countries in this paper we review how informal risk coping has been addressed in the land tenure literature from two main perspectives a first stream of research looks at how customary tenure and communal property perform key informal risk coping functions a second subset of this literature analyses how informal risk coping creates land market imperfections through sharecropping or distress sales the segmentation of the literature results from the demsetzian property rights framework further research on risk coping and land tenure would benefit from examining recent work on property regimes

the validity of profits structure studies with particular reference to the ftc s line of business data the simple proposition that consumerdamaging collusion is more likely to occur when there are fewer competitors has given rise not only to legal restrictions of economic activity thought to restrict output but also to an enormous amount of empirical work attempting to relate market concentration to the exercise of monopoly power most such studies measured market structure by an index of concentration for example four firm concentration or herfindahl and performance by accounting profit for example net profit divided by assets or price cost margins sales less direct costs divided by sales from the positive statistically significant correlations often found between greater concentration and profit with other factors presumably accounted for some researchers conclude that increases in concentration are anticompetitive and that concentration therefore is bad the concentration profits studies have been criticized essentially on two grounds one is that the positive relationship is not indicative of collusive behavior in particular oliver williamson 1968 john mcgee 1971 harold demsetz 1973 1974 and sam peltzman 1977 point out that higher profits could result from efficiencies experienced by large firms which resulted both in greater market shares and high levels of concentration analytical arguments show that higher profits logically follow as much from lower costs that are associated with higher levels of concentration as from collusion determined higher prices some empirical evidence that supports this belief is presented by demsetz peltzman and bradley gale and ben branch 1982 however their findings have been contested on the grounds that the data used are biased or inadequate or that the researchers have not demonstrated that the observed higher profits greater concentration relationship was caused by lower costs 2 the second criticism is that available data provide an inadequate basis for such conclusions the concentration numbers are based usually on industries defined by the commerce department s standard industrial classifications sic the sic definitions tend to be supply production rather than demand determined include nonhomogeneous products and exclude sales of similar products that are included in different sic groups or are imported the profit data are taken from accounting reports that provide poor measures of economic values weiss 1974 describes many of these problems however he does not believe that these shortcomings invalidate the studies as weiss 1979 concludes

land redistribution tenure insecurity and intensity of production a study of farm households in southern ethiopia this study analyzes the determinants of land tenure insecurity and its impact on intensity of use of purchased farm inputs among households in southern ethiopia seventeen percent of the households stated that they were tenure insecure the feeling of tenure insecurity could be caused by the land redistribution policy in ethiopia where household size has been the main criterion used for land allocation after the land reform in 1975 this would imply that land rich households should be more tenure insecure alternatively the local power structure may be strong enough to counter this and cause the land rich who are also likely to be influential to be able to protect their land rights the analysis revealed that in the overall sample relative farm size was not significantly correlated with tenure insecurity when testing for each site however we found that in four of the sites per capita farm size was positively associated with tenure insecurity while in five other sites it had a significant negative association this may be due to local historical cultural and demographic differences giving way to differences in the effects of the redistribution policy and the local power structure on tenure insecurity we assessed the impact of tenure insecurity on the intensity of use of purchased farm inputs the tenure insecurity variable was insignificant farmers in areas with a positive correlation between farm size and tenure insecurity were more likely to purchase farm inputs larger farms were more likely to use purchased inputs but this effect was lower in areas with a positive correlation between farm size and tenure insecurity poverty and subsistence constraints may explain this absence of higher intensity of use of purchased inputs on small farms by contrast the land redistribution policy may have improved small farms access to purchased farm inputs text of abstract

success in high technology markets is marketing capability critical we propose a conceptual framework with the resource based view rbv of the firm as its theoretical underpinning to explain interfirm differences in firms profitability in high technology markets in terms of differences in their functional capabilities specifically we suggest that marketing r d and operations capabilities along with interactions among these capabilities are important determinants of relative financial performance within the industry this paper contributes to the rbv literature by proposing the input output perspective to conceptualize the notion of capabilities specifically this approach entails modeling a firm s functional activities viz marketing r d and operations as transformation functions that relate the productive factors resources to its functional objectives if the firm were to deploy these resources most efficiently any underattainment of the functional objective then is attributable to functional inefficiency or equivalently to a lower functional capability of the firm the input output conceptualization of a firm s capabilities is then estimated using the stochastic frontier estimation sfe methodology sfe provides the appropriate econometric technique to empirically estimate the efficient frontier and hence the level of efficiency achieved by the various firms our study contributes to a number of literatures both methodologically and substantively first it contributes both conceptually and methodologically to the rbv literature conceptually our study suggests that firm capabilities can be viewed in an input output framework methodologically the study suggests the use of stochastic frontier estimation to operationalize and estimate firm capabilities this methodology is to the best of our knowledge the first to allow the researcher manager to infer capabilities from archival data substantively our study contributes to the literature on market orientation by suggesting that a stronger market orientation of a firm should be reflected in a higher marketing capability it also adds to the literature on design for manufacturability by explicating the complementarity among the various functional capabilities and offering empirical evidence on their relative importance in influencing a firm s performance finally our study builds on prior literature that has highlighted the importance of marketing r d coordination as important determinants of new product development and success we highlight below some of our main findings 1 a strong base of innovative technologies enhances a firm s sales by favorably influencing consumers expectations about the externality benefits associated with its product this suggests that a past track record of consistent innovation is a credible signal to current and potential customers of the firm s continued excellence in a technologically evolving market given the importance of influencing customers managers need to tailor their marketing activities around the need to inform customers of the technological excellence of their firm thus customers need to be informed of the innovative technologies that the firm possesses and of the future r d initiatives undertaken by it similarly any potential applications of innovative technology developed by the firm and of technologies under development should be emphasized 2 marketing capability has its greatest impact on the quality adjusted innovative output for firms that have a strong technological base in other words firms with a strong r d base are the ones with the most to gain from a strong marketing capability 3 marketing capability strongly influences the width of applicability of innovations i e a firm s marketing capability enhances its ability to generate innovative technologies that have applications across a range of industries this result carries a strong message for managers a strong market orientation is one of the most fertile sources of ideas for innovation thus marketing needs to be involved from the beginning of the innovation process namely right at the stage when technological ideas are being generated 5 the most important determinant of a firm s performance is the interaction of marketing and r d capabilities this supports the assertion that firms in high technology markets need to excel at two things the ability to come up with innovations constantly and the ability to commercialize these innovations into the kinds of products that capture consumer needs and preferences this finding offers further evidence on the importance of coordination between r d and marketing as suggested in the extant marketing literature finally using archival data our methodology can be used to benchmark a firm s capabilities with other firms in the industry along various functional dimensions this would be an important step in making more informed resource allocation decisions thus the firm can spend more money on those capabilities where it most lags the competition or on those capabilities that are shown to have the maximum impact on firm performance

are internal capital markets efficient using segment information from compustat we find that the investment by a segment of a diversified firm depends on the cash flow of the firm s other segments but significantly less than it depends on its own cash flow the investment by segments of highly diversified firms is less sensitive to their cash flow than the investment of comparable single segment firms the sensitivity of a segment s investment to the cash flow of other segments does not depend on whether its investment opportunities are better than those of the firm s other segments

property rights and productivity the case of joint land titling in vietnam this paper explores the effect of land titling on agricultural productivity in vietnam and the productivity effects of single versus joint titling for husband and wife using a plot fixed effects approach our results show that obtaining a land title is associated with higher yields for both individually and jointly held titles we conclude that there is no tradeoff between joint titling and productivity and so joint titles are potentially an effective way to improve women s bargaining power within the household with no associated efficiency losses

do markets differ much this essay reports the results of a crosssection study of differences in accounting profitability that sheds light on some basic controversies in industrial economics most previous cross section studies in this field have been concerned with testing hypotheses about structural coefficients in models meant to apply to essentially all markets as we have learned more about the difficulties of constructing such general models and of performing tests on their structural parameters properly structural cross section analysis has fallen out of fashion in contrast to most of the cross section literature the analysis reported here is fundamentally descriptive it does not attempt directly to estimate or to test hypotheses about structural parameters i hope to show by example that one can perform illuminating analysis of cross section data without a host of controversial maintained hypotheses cross section data can yield interesting stylized facts to guide both general theorizing and empirical analysis of specific industries even if they cannot easily support full blown structural estimation one can view the sort of search for stylized facts conducted here as either a replacement for or an input to interindustry structural estimation depending on one s feeling about the long run potential of that research approach this study also departs from much of the cross section literature by being fundamentally concerned with the importance of various effects not just with coefficient signs and t statistics in particular this essay provides estimates of the relative importance of firm market and market share differences in the determination of business unit divisional profitability in u s manufacturing using 1975 data from the line of business program of the u s federal trade commission ftc i find support neither for the existence of firm effects nor for the importance of market share effects moreover while industry effects apparently exist and are important they appear to be negatively correlated with seller concentration in these data section i relates firm market and share effects to current issues and controversies in industrial economics and thus supplies the motivation for our empirical analysis the remainder of the essay treats the data and

towards an economic theory of the multiproduct firm this paper outlines a theory of the multiproduct firm important building blocks include excess capacity and its creation market imperfections and the peculiarities of organizational knowledge including its fungible and taut character a framework is adopted in which profit seeking firms are seen to diversify in order to avoid the high transactions costs associated with using various markets to trade the services of various specialized assets neoclassical explanations of the multiproduct firm are shown to be seriously deficient

diversification ricardian rents and tobin s q according to prevailing theory firms diversify in response to excess capacity of factors that are subject to market failure by probing into the heterogeneity of these factors we develop the corollary that firms that elect to diversify most widely should expect the lowest average rents an empirical test with tobin s q as the measure of rents is consistent with this theory

insecure land rights and share tenancy evidence from madagascar most studies of tenurial insecurity focus on its effects on investment this paper studies the hitherto unexplored relationship between tenurial insecurity and land tenancy contracts based on distinct features of formal law and customary rights in madagascar this paper augments the canonical model of sharecropping by making the strength of the landlord s property right increasing in the amount of risk she bears within the contract using data on landlords subjective perceptions in rural madagascar empirical tests support the hypothesis that insecure property rights drive contract choice but offer little support in favor of the canonical risk sharing hypothesis

formal and informal rural credit in four provinces of vietnam abstract this paper uses a survey of 932 rural households to uncover how the rural credit market operates in vietnam households obtain credit through formal and informal lenders formal loans are almost entirely for production and asset accumulation while informal loans are used for consumption smoothening the determinants of formal and informal credit demand are distinct while credit rationing depends on education and credit history in particular regional differences in the demand for credit are striking a one size fits all approach to credit policy in vietnam would be inappropriate