letter from the editor in chief real options and international business volume 40 3 consists of eight articles accepted for publication by former jibs editor in chief arie y lewin together with a letter from the editors and a research note accepted under my watch the letter from the editors student samples in international business research by bello leung radebaugh tung and van witteloostuijn discusses the pros and cons of student samples in international business ib research the jibs statement of editorial policy states that empirical submissions utilizing undergraduate student samples are usually discouraged this editorial is designed to provide ib researchers with guidelines as to when and what types of student samples are appropriate in ib research while each of the pieces in this issue makes important contributions to our knowledge of ib studies the articles using real options theory to analyze multinational enterprise mne decision making under uncertainty may be of particular interest to ib researchers

distribution of research gains in multistage production systems research irrespective of the incidence of the levy and benefits no longer is valid we have no disagreement with this important observation but we are concerned about the lack of reliable estimates of the elasticity of substitution building on muth s analysis for which we suggest some changes we explore further the sensitivity of the effects of the distribution of benefits of research to different ways in which research can impact on a multistage production system and to the effects of the elasticities

the nested piglog model an application to u s food demand a new demand system is introduced the nested piglog model nesting thirteen other demand systems including five that are also new this new model and its nested special cases are applied to models of u s food demand that include food at home fah food away from home fafh and alcoholic beverages although nested tests and out of sample forecasting performance favor generalizing models to a certain degree statistically insignificant improvements to in sample fit and even poorer out of sample forecast accuracy undermine further generalizations based on a subset of preferred models fafh is found to be price and income elastic compared to fah which is price and income

best of both worlds how embeddedness fit in the host unit and the headquarters improve repatriate knowledge transfer knowledge transfer within multinational enterprises is a source of competitive advantage however we know little about repatriates role in reverse knowledge transfer upon their return to headquarters hq using an organizational embeddedness perspective we conceptualized how embeddedness fit individuals perceived match between their knowledge and skills and the job requirements during the expatriation assignment and upon repatriation predicts repatriate knowledge transfer to test the hypotheses we collected multi wave survey data from 129 repatriates and their supervisors and developed a repatriate knowledge transfer scale the results show that perceived organizational support from hq positively influences embeddedness fit both in the host unit during expatriation and in the hq upon repatriation further embeddedness fit in the hq upon repatriation has a direct effect while embeddedness fit in the host unit during expatriation has an indirect effect on repatriate knowledge transfer via increased communication frequency with the former host unit in addition we found that knowledge transfer is particularly pronounced for repatriates with both high levels of embeddedness fit in the hq upon repatriation and frequent communication with colleagues in their former host unit our results highlight the critical importance of helping expatriates increase their perceived embeddedness fit for reverse knowledge transfer to occur

marginal analysis of welfare costs of environmental policies the case of pesticide regulation we present a methodology for estimating net social welfare costs and their distribution using only information on price quantities elasticities of supply and demand and estimates of cost and or yield effects of policies provided by natural scientists an application to a case of pesticide regulation demonstrates the importance of equity effects simulations show that redistribution of income among producers becomes the dominant effect of pesticide policies when supply elasticities are higher and demand elasticities are lower with changes in supply elasticity having a greater impact than changes in demand elasticity for crops with significant export markets foreign consumers are shown to bear much of the short run cost many cases now exist of legislation and executive orders mandating the use of benefit cost criteria in policy choice to be useful in policy assessments welfare methodologies must meet certain requirements first they must provide estimates of the efficiency impacts of alternative policies measured by changes in net social surplus second estimates of the

household composition income and food away from home expenditure in urban china abstract china has experienced dramatic economic growth and socio demographic changes in the last three decades including rapid urbanization and an aging society in the coming decades this paper analyses food away from home fafh consumption in urban china with respect to household composition income and other socio economic variables the data are from household surveys in six chinese cities i e beijing nanjing chengdu xi an shenyang and xiamen collected by the authors findings indicate that both household composition and income have significant effects on fafh participation and expenditures projections based upon our results suggest that fafh expenditures in urban china will continue to increase through 2050 the leading contributor to increased fafh expenditure is china s strong income growth followed by the expected rapid urbanization the aging society however will have a negative influence on fafh consumption

a double hurdle model of irish household expenditure on prepared meals in this paper irish households expenditure on prepared meals for home consumption is analysed using the 1987 and 1994 irish household budget survey datasets the aim of the paper is to analyse the factors influencing irish households decisions to purchase prepared meals and how much to spend on these food items this is done using the double hurdle methodology adjusted for the problems of heteroscedasticity and non normality income elasticities are estimated for household expenditure on prepared meals in both years and significant socioeconomic influences are identified these socioeconomic factors are assumed to underpin the tastes and preferences of irish households with convenience identified as a significant preference of many household groups

distribution of research gains in multistage production systems comment in a recent paper freebairn davis and edwards hereafter fde have examined an interesting and neglected aspect of the distribution of benefits from research agricultural production is seen to comprise three stages input supply farm production and farm to retail marketing fde have explored the distribution of the benefit stemming from a downwards shift in the supply function at any one of the stages they conclude these benefits are distributed according to the elasticities of consumer demand and supply facing each stage furthermore under the special assumptions they employ this distribution is independent of which of the three supply functions is shifted by research they conclude albeit with due caution that the choice of agricultural research projects should not be limited to farm production research alone especially in view of the cost shares of purchased inputs and marketing services in the retail value of food in fact they argue they farmers may receive greater benefits from off farm oriented research than from farm oriented research p 39 this finding has potentially important implications for agricultural research policy it immediately spurs one to ask whether research funded by the farmer or the fisc might have neglected opportunities for research related to farm inputs or marketing to reach their result fde assume a all supply and demand curves are linear b research induces parallel shifts in supply curves c farmers cannot substitute nonfarm inputs for inputs supplied by farmers in production of the farm product and d marketing firms cannot substitute marketing inputs for raw farm products in the production of retail commodities the purpose of this note is to emphasize the importance of these elasticities of factor substitution in determining the distribution of research benefits between the three stages to do this we use a simple but general two factor model in which we focus attention on the elasticity of factor substitution between marketing services and raw farm products in the third stage marketing this model is not restricted to linear supply and demand curves nor to an elasticity of substitution of zero we maintain the assumptions of parallel shifts of supply curves induced by research and a perfectly elastic supply of marketing services in a revision of fde s application to the u s hog industry the distribution of research benefits is shown to depend crucially on the elasticity of factor substitution their result that such distribution is independent of the stage in which research shifts the supply curve downwards follows only for the special case in which that elasticity is zero this is clearly a restrictive assumption a reexamination of some of the policy issues raised by fde once the assumption is relaxed would seem to be warranted

market based systems for reducing chemical use in agriculture in the united states this study uses a computable general equilibrium cge model of the u s economy to estimate the economic effects of agricultural fertilizer and pesticide input reductions on individual farm sectors and on the economy as a whole the costs of reducing agricultural chemicals using a market based approach and a command and control approach are compared the real cost to society of restrictng fertilizer and pesticide use by 20 percent across all uses is estimated to be 2 3 billion a market based approach that would provide incentives to reduce chemical use in the most cost efficient manner would be about 10 percent less costly

cost efficient pesticide reductions a study of sweden the minimum cost for reducing the farmers use of pesticides is calculated the measures include are i a decrease in use of inputs ii an improvement of the insurance system and iii application of an ecotechnology where 5 10 meters along the borders of the fields are left untreated with pesticides the cost of reducing the use of pesticides is measured by means of pesticide demand functions and the cost for improving an insurance system is measured as the risk premium the empirical results indicate that the minimum cost for reducing the use of pesticides by 50 in sweden corresponds to about 6 per cent of farmers incomes from crop production a simple comparison of policy instruments shows that the cost of a quota system is about 40 per cent higher than the costs of the charge and permit market systems the farmers decreases in incomes under a charge system are twice as high as under the other two policy instruments the results are however sensitive to the levels of the pesticide price elasticities

household demand for convenience and nonconvenience foods states the budget shares are generally more responsive to prices than to real total expenditure additionally the quantities demanded of convenience and nonconvenience foods are generally more sensitive to changes in income and own prices than to changes in cross prices with regard to demographic variates primary users of convenience foods are white households with employed household managers less than 35 years of age

quick service expenditure in ireland parametric vs semiparametric analysis the aim of this study is to identify the economic and socio economic factors influencing irish households expenditure on quick service meals a particularly dynamic component of the foodservice industry and to determine the extent to which these factors have changed over the course of the 1990s maximum likelihood estimation and semiparametric alternatives are considered with the conclusion that in this instance semiparametric techniques do not offer a viable alternative to maximum likelihood estimation of tobit models even in the presence of heteroscedasticity and non normality the results revel that household income place of residence commuters and household size have significant and positive influences on quick service expenditure older families single households and married couples together with homeowners display reduced expenditure the opportunity cost of time is positively related to quick service expenditure consistent with theory while health knowledge has a negative impact on quick

distributional welfare implications of an irrigation water subsidy the distributional welfare implications of a subsidy for irrigation water for california rice producers are analyzed a more general equilibrium approach than that used in previous studies is taken in order to determine the effects of subsidy on consumers subsidized producers and unsubsidized producers the two important policy conclusions of the results are that unsubsidized producers bear part of the cost of a subsidy through lower prices and that consumers taxpayers may gain by sponsoring increased production through a selective subsidy

the effect of farm supply shifts on concentration and market power in the food processing sector in this paper we examine the marginal impact of changing farm supply on the market structure of the downstream food processing sector we develop a theoretical model that allows for cost differences among processors and endogenizes downstream entry and exit comparative statics results are consistent with several well established trends in the food processing sector in particular the analysis demonstrates that increasing concentration in the food processing sector is consistent with decreasing market power indeed we find that when the farm supply curve shifts outward an increase in concentration can only occur when there is a decrease in market power

global strategy implementation at the business unit level operational capabilities and administrative mechanisms the study examines the impact of internationally strategy on organizational design and the influence of the organizational design on effectiveness at the business unit level the empirical findings are based on survey responses from eighty two business units competing in global industries the findings are supportive of the contingency notion which suggests that business unit effectiveness is a function of the fit between the international strategy and the organizational design

the effect of epa enforcement funding on private sector pollution control investment the paper estimates the effects of the us environmental protection agency epa enforcement budget upon the demand for pollution control equipment in the private sector there are two possible effects a direct effect occurs when the enforcement budget is used for inspections that result in enforced compliance requiring additional pollution control equipment a second effect is anticipatory and arises from the private sector s objective of minimizing expected costs due to fines imposed by the epa for infractions of pollution control requirements this component of demand depends in part on the epa enforcement budget we find that increases in the epa budget increase the demand for pollution abatement equipment this in turn implies that increases in the epa enforcement budget have been effective in mitigating pollution

household consumption of food away from home total expenditure and by type of food facility consistent with prior expectations based on household production theory household income time value size and composition and the environment in which production and consumption occurred were all important determinants of total household expenditures on food away from home however the importance of these factors varied by type of food facility conventional restaurants fast food facilities and other commercial establishments decomposition of the tobit elasticities indicated the differential importance of market participation effects of household size income and time value by level of the variable and by type of food facility

semiparametric censored regression models aregression model is censored when the recorded data on the dependent variable cuts off outside a certain range with multiple observations at the endpoints of that range when the data are censored variation in the observed dependent variable will understate the effect of the regressors on the true dependent variable as a result standard ordinary least squares regression using censored data will typically result in coefficient estimates that are biased toward zero traditional statistical analysis uses maximum likelihood or related procedures to deal with the problem of censored data however the validity of such methods requires correct specification of the error distribution which can be problematic in practice in the past two decades a number of semiparametric alternatives for dealing with censored data have been proposed in a semiparametric approach part of the functional form of the model usually the regression function is parametrically specified by the researcher based upon plausible assumptions while the rest of the model is not parameterized 1 while the theoretical literature has produced several semiparametric estimators for the censored data model published applications of these estimators to empirical problems in economics have lagged far behind this paper reviews the intuition and computation of a handful of semiparametric estimators proposed for the censored regression model the various estimators are used to examine changes in black white earnings inequality during the

managing the learning and transfer of global management competence antecedents and outcomes of japanese repatriation effectiveness this study examines predictors that lead to effective individual learning of global management competencies on expatriate assignments and the transfer i e the application of those competencies in new assignments upon repatriation a structural equation model based on data from 305 japanese repatriates identifies linkages from organizational support intercultural personality characteristics self adjustment and repatriation policies to outcomes of global competency learning and transfer which in turn lead to heightened job motivation and performance

why do international assignees stay an organizational embeddedness perspective we apply an organizational embeddedness perspective to examine international assignees retention with the organization specifically we hypothesize that assignees social ties within and their perceived fit with the host unit positively relate to two sacrifices on leaving the organization their firm specific learning during the assignment and their perceived career prospects in the organization perceived career prospects are expected to predict subsequent retention moderated by firm specific learning these hypotheses are tested using a sample of 143 inpatriates in 10 german multinationals with retention measured 2 and 4 years later we show that inpatriates trusting ties with hq staff and their fit with the hq positively relate to their firm specific learning and their perceived career prospects and that the latter predicts their retention 2 and 4 years later perceived career prospects mediate the direct relationship between inpatriates fit with the hq and inpatriate retention and the indirect relationship between inpatriates trusting ties with hq staff and their retention furthermore inpatriates firm specific learning mitigates the effect of perceived career prospects on retention decisions 2 years later we contribute to the organizational embeddedness careers and international business literatures by explaining when and how facets of organizational embeddedness relate to assignee retention

welfare effects of the national pseudorabies eradication program a welfare methodology is adapted to evaluate market and distributional effects of a completed pseudorabies eradication effort in the u s the model predicts small market effects from pseudorabies eradication welfare analysis suggests that in states generating relatively large hog numbers producers will experience a net gain from eradication in all scenarios considered yet in smaller hog producing areas individual hog operations may lose producer surplus consumer surplus changes vary by scenario but are always positive in general the national pseudorabies eradication program is shown to be economically efficient

working wives and the marginal propensity to consume food away from home contrary to predictions from the new household economics theory and heuristic thought income earned by wives working full time did not increase the marginal propensity to consume food away from home tobit estimates of the same propensity from other income sources in married u s households in 1978 showed that income earned by part time working wives and children asset income and transfer payments increased this propensity above that from husband s labor income whites had higher expenditures higher marginal propensities to consume and lower income elasticities for food away from home than nonwhites

when yankee comes home factors related to expatriate and spouse repatriation adjustment this study examined anticipatory and in country individual job organizational and non work variables and their relationship with work interaction and general repatriation adjustment for u s managers the study also examined anticipatory and in country individual and non work variables and their relationship with interaction and general repatriation adjustment for the spouses of the managers who were married age total time overseas social status and housing conditions were generally related to all facets of repatriation adjustment for both expatriates and spouses practical and research implications are explored

internationalization tacit knowledge and the top management teams of mncs this study investigates the effects of several dimensions of internationalization on the behavior of mncs top management teams the effects include top executives personal presence in foreign markets their participation in meetings about international strategic issues and their tacit knowledge of the firms international business activities

what you do depends on where you are understanding how domestic and expatriate work requirements depend upon the cultural context to empirically address the importance of the cultural context for successful assignments we conducted two studies using a large sample of public sector us professionals working in comparable jobs in 156 different countries the results provided direct evidence that social and perceptual skill reasoning ability and adjustment and achievement orientation personality requirements are higher in expatriate assignments which has implications for pre departure selection also the results partly supported the hypothesis that expatriates are required to adjust their behavior to be consistent with the local cultural values which has implications for post arrival behavioral training

repatriation of corporate executives an empirical study the effective management of corporate executives returning from foreign assignments has received little attention from academic researchers this study is based on questionnaires completed by members of the american society of personnel administration international aspi the focus of the study was directed at problems that occurred in repatriating executives programs used by corporations to repatriate returning executives and examines why programs have not been instituted by multinational corporations

environmental and agricultural policy linkages and reforms in the united states under the gatt the initial design of the uruguay round of the gatt negotiations was laudable in many respects the round has been unique in its concentration on agriculture and its attempt to focus on internal distorting policies agricultural tradedistorting policies were recognized by the initial designers as a means for rationalizing internal policies that support domestic agricultural sectors as a result it should be no surprise that the negotiating performance thus far during the uruguay round can be traced largely to the conflict over internal agricultural policies

the value of economic research economic research generates a wide array of benefits these include information technological change and improved policy there are few quantitative studies of the benefits of economic research and some benefits may be misattributed to biological and physical research to be productive economic research must be transmitted and the user must be able to use it therefore investment in extension outreach and economic literacy are important to improve its impact even casual observation suggests that economic research is valuable but noneconomists must be convinced of this since benefits are likely to be concentrated in a small number of successful projects a useful approach to the assessment of the benefits of research is to identify these projects and their results the analysis must recognize that the accuracy of any estimates of benefits is uncertain in addition the argument behind the estimates should be transparent relying on documentation and testimony from users policymakers and noneconomists assessments of the benefits of economic research provide information that can be used both to justify support for economic research and to allocate monies among lines of research this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

toward a theoretical framework of repatriation adjustment although the increased internationalization of business has brought greater scholarly attention to the issue of adjustment to overseas assignments comparatively little research activity has been paid to the topic of adjustment back to the home country and home office repatriation adjustment in this article we argue that repatriation adjustment is sufficiently different from other forms of work adjustment e g domestic relocation and expatriate assignments to warrant separate theoretical and empirical investigation to facilitate this we propose an initial theoretical framework and set of derived propositions to guide and spark future research on this topic

measuring the marginal cost of nonuniform environmental regulations a method is presented for measuring the marginal welfare cost of environmental regulations affecting agriculture the method incorporates output market effects and recognizes diversity in production conditions among crops regions and seasons an important advantage of the method is that only regional outputs and changes in regional production costs are needed to calculate deadweight loss thus simplifying the measurement of welfare changes this feature of the model is significant since the complexity and substantial data requirements of most existing impact models cause many environmental regulations to be enacted with inadequate analysis of their economic impacts the method also disaggregates welfare impacts by crop place and time thus encouraging the implementation of nonuniform interventions that achieve a given level of environmental quality more efficiently than uniform policies

cigarette demand and tax policy for race groups in south africa this paper calculates cigarette demand for race groups in south africa elasticities are the most important information a tax policy analyst can have elasticities determine how the tax base will change with a change in the tax rate and thus how government revenues will respond to the tax elasticities also determine the excess burden that consumers will bear as a result of the tax as such own price crossprice and expenditure elasticities are calculated along with government revenue maximizing tax rates and total and excess burdens parametric and semiparametric estimation techniques are used and compared results show that a tax on cigarettes will discourage nonsmokers from starting to smoke and mainly raise revenue from current smokers furthermore it is found that consumption behaviours between groups are different implying different government revenue maximizing tax rates for each group affecting the distribution of income

international knowledge brokerage and returnees entrepreneurial decisions based on the knowledge brokerage literature and the international entrepreneurship literature we investigate whether returnees international knowledge transfer affects their entrepreneurial decisions and the extent to which this relationship is contingent on perceived supportive policies for returnee entrepreneurship and returnees difficulties with cross cultural readjustment in their home countries analyzing first hand survey data we find a positive relationship between international knowledge transfer and returnees decisions to become entrepreneurs this positive relationship is strengthened by the perception of the home country s supportive policies for returnee entrepreneurship but is weakened by returnees perceived difficulties in readjusting to the local norms and culture in their home countries

uniform and non uniform second best input taxes we investigate second best input based taxes foragricultural nonpoint pollution control when marketprices are endogenous and production isheterogeneous theoretically we derive the optimalforms of taxes which take account of heterogeneity non uniform taxes and a tax which does not auniform tax empirically we use a multi factor market equilibrium simulation model to determineoptimal tax rates and associated equity effects particularly differences in landowner gains lossesacross a heterogeneous region when market prices areendogenous second best tax policies result inpecuniary externalities that affect existingenvironmental externalities in particular thepecuniary externalities amplify the effect of producerheterogeneity on determination of sub regionaldifferences in tax rates and returns to land particularly for the uniform policy with endogenousprices the uniform tax rate is considerably higherthan any of the non uniform rates and ironically thenon uniform taxes result in less dispersion oflandowner gains across sub regions than the uniformtax

when do international human capital enhancing practices benefit the bottom line an ability motivation and opportunity perspective we study the conditions under which firms can capitalize on their international human capital ihc using the ability motivation opportunity amo perspective we conceptualize ihc as ability collaborative climate as motivation and the firm s level of internationalization as opportunity we test three alternative amo models the additive model main effect the combinative model two way interactions and the multiplicative model a three way interaction using a cross industry sample of south korean firms we find support for the multiplicative model specifically the relationship between ihc enhancement practices and firm performance is significant and positive only when both collaborative climate and internationalization are high