joint recreation choices and implied values of time a model of joint recreation quantity choices is developed individuals choose both total time spent at distant sites and the number of trips taken implicitly choosing average on site time the model permits nonzero marginal utility of travel makes on site time endogenous and is linear in the constraints the scarcity value of time is analyzed without assuming the marginal utility of work time is zero a partially testable assumption about relative marginal values of travel and on site time yields nonparametric calculations of the scarcity value of time and marginal values of trips and days on site from people s observed optimal quantity choices

the capital structure and investment decisions of the small owner managed firm some exploratory issues in the burgeoning literature on small firm financing the problem of underidentification in respect to the supply of and demand for capital has not been fully resolved in an attempt to progress this issue the current paper looks at some of the issues influencing the demand for finance in small firms which are owner managed the paper is primarily exploratory in nature and argues that a greater emphasis might usefully be placed on the cost of capital dimension in future research into small business financing in particular it is suggested that where the objective of an owner manager is to maintain control of the firm interdependent investment and financing strategies may be chosen to control the small firms cost of capital this in turn indicates that the tendency for some small firms to invest sub optimally and exhibit slower than average growth may not be primarily determined by limitations on their supplies of finance on the demand side it may well be that in addition to equity aversion a suboptimal capital structure decision is made in the form of a reduced demand for debt in other words given the level of equity that an owner manager chooses debt may not be fully expanded to the capacity limit consistent with value maximisation

rationing by waiting and the value of time results from a natural experiment the authors analyze data from a natural experiment with rationing by waiting in the situation motorists were confronted with a choice between waiting in line for low priced gasoline or purchasing at a higher price without waiting they view this as a revealed preference experiment and use their choices to estimate the value of time spent waiting as a function of individual characteristics in most cases the estimates of the value of time are quite similar to individuals after tax wages 13 references 7 tables

quality of available mates education and household labor supply we investigate the impact of sex ratios by education and metropolitan area on spouses bargaining power and labor supplies to capture the local and qualitative nature of mate availability using current population survey and census data for 2000 1990 and 1980 we estimate these effects in a collective household framework we find that a higher relative shortage of comparably educated women in the couple s metropolitan area reduces wives labor supply and increases their husbands the impact is stronger for couples in higher education groups but not significant for high school graduates results are similar across decades no such effects are found for unmarried individuals jel d1 j22 2008 western economic association international

how do sex ratios affect marriage and labor markets evidence from america s second generation sex ratios i e relative numbers of men and women can affect marriage prospects labor force participation and other social and economic variables but the observed association between sex ratios and social and economic conditions may be confounded by omitted variables and reverse causality this paper uses variation in immigrant flows as a natural experiment to study the effect of sex ratios on the children and grandchildren of immigrants the flow of immigrants affected the second generation marriage market because second generation marriages were mostly endogamous i e to members of the same ethnic group the empirical results suggest that high sex ratios had a large positive effect on the likelihood of female marriage and a large negative effect on female labor force participation perhaps surprisingly the marriage rates of second generation men appear to be a slightly increasing function of immigrant sex ratios higher sex ratios also appear to have raised male earnings and the incomes of parents with young children the empirical results are broadly consistent with theories where higher sex ratios increase female bargaining power in the marriage market

the economics of small business finance the roles of private equity and debt markets in the financial growth cycle abstract this article examines the economics of financing small business in private equity and debt markets firms are viewed through a financial growth cycle paradigm in which different capital structures are optimal at different points in the cycle we show the sources of small business finance and how capital structure varies with firm size and age the interconnectedness of small firm finance is discussed along with the impact of the macroeconomic environment we also analyze a number of research and policy issues review the literature and suggest topics for future research

equivalence scales a household production approach abstract the paper uses a cost minimization version of becker s household production analysis and microdata from household expenditure and time use surveys to estimate equivalence scales or relative costs for the intrafamily classes of adults and children in australia for the period 1975 1976 the findings set reference standards for further research with economic welfare policy applications in australia

women s labor supply and marital choice this paper hypothesizes that value of time and consequently labor force participation can vary with circumstances specific to a marriage or a marriage market wives traits valued in the marriage market are expected to be associated with lower labor force participation whereas husbands traits valued in the marriage market are expected to be associated with lower participation rates on the part of wives evidence for these hypotheses is found on the basis of regressions of labor force participation for a sample of israeli married women inclusion of traits valued in the marriage market and marital sorting patterns increases the explanatory power of the regressions

impact of ownership on the international involvement of smes this paper analyses the relationship between the internationalisation strategies of smes and types of ownership different types of ownership affect firms and this in turn will influence the internationalisation strategy adopted using a sample of spanish smes our results show that internationalisation is negatively related to family ownership and positively related to corporate ownership we have also observed that the presence of a corporate blockholder in family firms encourages internationalisation these results support the idea that ownership type influences the decision to internationalise

a test of the theory of reference dependent preferences eight alternative methods of eliciting preferences between money and a consumption good are identified two of these are standard willingness to accept and willingness to pay measures these methods differ with respect to the reference point used and the dimension in which responses are expressed the loss aversion hypothesis of tversky and kahneman s theory of reference dependent preferences predicts systematic differences between the preferences elicited by these methods these predictions are tested by eliciting individuals preferences for two private consumption goods the experimental design is incentive compatible and controls for income and substitution effects the theory s predictions are broadly confirmed

combining contingent valuation and travel cost data for the valuation of non market goods the travel cost method tcm has long been used to infer the economic value of nonmarket resources and public goods more recently contingent valuation cvm survey methods have gained popularity for eliciting these values here cvm survey responses are combined with tcm data on actual market behavior to estimate jointly both the parameters of the underlying utility function and its corresponding ordinary demand function this is a prototypical empirical example of a new modeling strategy variants of which should prove useful in many applications especially where reliance on a single valuation method is undesirable

estimating the cost of leisure time for recreation demand models abstract in this paper we propose a method of determining the opportunity cost of leisure time with an empirical recreation demand application typically the opportunity cost of leisure time is assumed to be some fraction of the wage rate this practice has limitations first it assumes that individuals can trade time for money at their wage second it offers no guidance about how to value the time of an individual who is not in the labor force this paper proposes a method of determining this cost that does not suffer from these drawbacks an empirical example is provided which demonstrates the proposed approach and contrasts it with commonly applied approaches

a theory of marriage formality the case of guatemala a theory of marriage formality which regards formality as an indication of commitment and loyalty is explained and tested using multiple regressions on data from the 1974 rand incap survey of 6 guatemalan ladino communities it is argued that a trade off exists between formality and the material benefits a woman receives in return for providing services to a man similar to the trade off between monetary returns and job stability found in the labor market the relations between husbands and wives are described in terms of the concepts of supply demand and market equilibrium and derived hypotheses concerning the factors leading to various combinations of marriage formality and material compensation for wife services are proposed 2 subsamples of women in the 6 guatemalan communities are compared for a range of socioeconomic indicators following which a series of regressions using formal marriage or informal unions as the dependent variable are carried out the major finding is that a marriage ceremony has tangible consequences in terms of material benefits a woman can obtain through marriage as predicted by the theory women with more physical and human assets and men with fewer such assets are more likely to marry formally rather than to live together informally

technology and regional policy a case study of northern ireland the importance of technical change through the innovative activity of industry has received a lot of attention in the regional economic literature regional policy has now begun to reflect the changing emphasis in the recent literature and especially the key role of inventive activity in achieving long run self sustaining regional growth this paper concentrates on research activities in terms of inventive inputs r d and innovative outputs especially patented innovations in general the results suggest that there is a low level of technological activity in northern ireland especially in industries that are characterized as being technologically advanced this is partly because external ownership reduces r d activity which in turn reduces innovation outputs but there is also a problem in that companies in northern ireland are relatively unsuccessful at producing new products and processes of the type and quality required in the market place the availability of government sponsored r d grants s

intergenerational succession in small family businesses borrowing constraints and optimal timing of succession small family businesses differ from non family businesses in that their functioning is not independent of the life cycle of the owner operator and in that other family considerations sometimes lead to sub optimal managerial decisions from the point of view of the business this is why a smooth intergenerational succession is essential to the profitability of the business and to the welfare of the family as a whole succession within the family involves first of all the choice of a successor the choice is affected by birth order age differentials and qualifications of potential successors choosing a successor means reaching an agreement about the timing of succession and income distribution before and after succession this paper focuses on the decision of the business operating family when to bring in the designated successor a utility maximizing time is shown to differ from the income maximizing time only in the presence of binding borrowing constraints such constraints are likely to enhance an earlier succession in order to use the successor s accumulated off business assets to ease the constraints and to increase future business income due to earlier accumulation of business specific human capital by the successor an additional model shows that the successor will not be willing to wait indefinitely for the formal ownership transfer of the business because of the risk of being disinherited in some future period the consequences of possible strategic behaviors of both the owner and potential successors on the results of these models is discussed informally

the opportunity cost of travel time in recreation demand models deciding how to allocate forage among animals is a fundamentally important process in range management the wisdom of these decisions can be enhanced by estimating the marginal value of forage needed by competing species we present a method for

a unified systems perspective of family firm performance abstract theory and practice indicate that in family influenced firms the interaction of the family unit the business entity and individual family members create unique systemic conditions and constituencies that impact the performance outcomes of the family business social system habbershon and williams fam bus rev 12 1999 1 have suggested that these unique systemic family influences can be captured through an analysis of the resources and capabilities of the organization in this paper we pursue their line of thinking and more specifically examine the systemic relationship of resources and capabilities as a source of advantage or constraint to the performance outcomes for family influenced firms the idiosyncratic firm level bundle of resources and capabilities resulting from the systems interactions are referred to as the familiness of the firm wealth creating performance for family influenced firms is a function of the distinctive familiness generated by the family business system the performance model focuses on a particular subset of family influenced firms whose performance goal is transgenerational wealth and wealth creation potential we refer to those families that meet this premise as enterprising families we develop a unified systems model of performance that links the resources and capabilities generated in the enterprising families system with their potential for transgenerational wealth creation

small firm growth access to capital markets and financial structure review of issues and an empirical investigation this article investigates the financial structure of small firms with an emphasis on growth and access to capital markets neo classical economic life cycle pecking order and agency theory perspectives are reviewed in order to formulate testable propositions concerning levels of long term short term and total debt and liquidity up to date financial data were collected from the u k private database for a large sample comprising of both listed and unlisted small firms regression results indicate significant relationships between financial structure and profitability asset structure size age and stock market flotation but not growth except when rapid and combined with lack of stock market flotation analysis of stock market flotation as an interactive dummy reveals major differences between listed and unlisted small firms the results indicate that the variety of financial structures observed in practice may reflect rational trade offs of various costs on the part of small firm owner managers but that the over reliance on internally available funds and the importance of collateral in the case of unlisted small firms are likely to be major constraints on economic growth

modelling regional patterns of innovation diffusion in the uk metalworking industries alderman n and davies s 1990 modelling regional patterns of innovation diffusion in the uk metalworking industries reg studies 24 513 528 in this paper davies economic model of innovation diffusion is tested at the regional level using survey data on the adoption of a number of key manufacturing technologies based on microelectronics or new materials within nine industries engaged primarily in metalworking activities the results demonstrate that there are regional variations in the rates of diffusion along one or other of the two types of trajectory derived from the model and that these have been slower in some peripheral regions than elsewhere these variations may be partly but by no means entirely accounted for by regional differences in industrial structure and establishment size distributions it is suggested however that as diffusion approaches saturation level regional convergence will be observed alderman n et davies s 1990 la modelisation de la distribution regionale de la diff

variants of agency contracts in family financed ventures as a continuum of familial altruistic and market rationalities abstract funding is a critical dimension of new creation although instances of family involvement in new venture financing are common ironically their role has been largely ignored in much of the mainstream business and economics literature when family members invest in the ventures of other family members they must make many choices either explicitly or implicitly about organizational form and governance consequently the governance of these exchange relationships tends to be highly variable this paper explores the primary rationalities governing the exchange relationships in family investment decisions during the early stages of new venture creation it presents activities as variants of agency contracts occurring within a continuum of familial altruistic and business market rationalities existing venture capital theory is extended through the introduction of rationalities and more comprehensive models of decision making

discrimination in matchmaking evidence from the price policy of a french marriage bureau this article shows how a matchmaking agency may improve the quality of serious meetings between individuals seeking long term relationship thanks to a price discrimination policy its filtering is based on objective and official characteristics sex age and contract s environment and on implicit criteria the few asked characteristics by its clients

the time price of medical care an econometric mod el is used to impute the value of time in the demand for medical care for member s of a prepaid group practice medical care program separate estimates are obtai ned for 1 individuals who were employed full time 2 housewives and 3 ti me associated with taking children to a doctor for individuals who were employe d full time the estimate was close to the median wage rate sick leave was esti mated to substantially reduce the value of time it was concluded that ignoring the time price of medical care may result in misleading statistical analysis and mistaken policy recommendations copyright 1987 by mit press

capital structure and small public firms abstract most analyses of capital structure from both a theoretical and an empirical viewpoint focus on large corporations as a result of data availability problems empirical studies deal with large corporations theoretical frameworks typically use illustrations and casual empirical evidence involving large firms only limited amounts of research focus on small growing entrepreneurial corporations and the factors affecting the capital structures of these firms much of current theory in capital structure deals with factors that are not easily and objectively quantified by outside researchers these factors include items such as expected bankruptcy costs information asymmetries between management and the financial marketplace agency costs of monitoring management and managerial risk preferences this paper reports on a survey sent to over 400 small high growth corporations questions on the survey were derived from various strands of the theoretical financial literature on capital structure over 27 of the surveys were completed and returned and give insight into the motivations and preferences of chief financial officers from over 100 small high growth corporations examination of the responses shows that contrary to financial theory factors dealing with bankruptcy costs agency costs and information asymmetries play little if any major role in affecting capital structure policy rather the responding financial officers seem to follow a pecking order in financing their firm s needs use internal cash as much as possible issue debt if necessary issue equity only as a last resort while being concerned with market conditions and their own preferences the following are implications of these findings first financial theory which is more and more focusing on micro factors while still theorizing efficient macro markets may be incorrectly ignoring the effect that management risk perceptions and preferences play in making capital structure decisions thus additional work is necessary to include the management in theories of capital structure second this survey allows outsiders to peer inside the managerial black box and gain insight into the factors that motivate and impact capital structure decisions it provides an empirical basis to help determine which influences are important third managers of entrepreneurial firms and investors in venture capital can compare their own beliefs perceptions and motivations against the mean results obtained from our sample of high growth firms

urban rural variations in the structure of manufacturing production this paper demonstrates that recent attempts to explain manufacturing shifts to nonmetropolitan areas can be synthesised into a capital vintage model of production the result is a set of systematic differences between urban and rural production methods which are consistent with the locational implications of the manufacturing process cycle theory the model is supported by the first comprehensive estimation of separate production functions for smsas and nonmetropolitan areas using census data for the us from 1977 only smsas are shown to possess the significant agglomeration economies needed for product development and process innovation cost competitive nonmetropolitan areas show much greater variation in input proportions due to spatial factor price differentials

the role of foreign direct investment in the development of regional industrial systems current knowledge and suggestions for a future american research agenda o huallachain b 1985 the role of foreign direct investment in the development of regional industrial systems current knowledge and suggestions for a future american research agenda reg studies 20 151 162 the role of foreign direct investment in american regional industrial systems differs from the experiences found in other countries foreign investment in the us is increasing rapidly outside of the traditional industrial heartland it is highly integrated with the domestic economy and it does not seem to be developing the same truncated character found in other countries american research should concentrate on the impact increasing foreign investment is having on the technological makeup and total linkage structure of regional economies understanding these impacts will require a variety of research approaches ranging from sectoral studies to analysis of individual corporations this paper attempts to identify research priorities using the knowledge of foreign direct investment generated abroad

a theory of allocation of time in markets for labour and marriage this paper analyzes the interdependence between labor and marriage markets it is argued that market conditions concerning marriage influence the value of time in the home according to this economic view marriage involves an exchange of household labor between individual men and women wages in labor markets affect marital behavior and conditions in the markets for household labor influence labor supply single persons must decide whether to marry and if so how much work to invest and employ in the framework of marriage in monogamous societies marriage tends to occur when a man demands the amount of household labor a woman wants to supply and a woman demands the amount of labor supplied by the man however changing outside factors can disrupt this equilibrium and produce changes in income redistribution between the spouse new marital labor relations or divorce this approach diverges from the traditional theory of labor supply in the way the value of time in the home is determined awareness that the supply of labor can shift following changes in a market determined wage for household labor opens new avenues for research in labor economics and studies of female labor supply a change in sex ratio is likely to increase the proportion of women who marry and decrease the number of hours women work outside the home group differences in patterns of division of household labor further influence the elasticity of female labor supply a positive correlation between achievements in markets for labor and household labor can provide an additional explanation for the backward bending supply of labor finally the relative position of husbands and wives in their respective marriage markets has implications for their consumption patterns and fertility this theory could provide a useful framework for analyzing the consequences of public policy for production reproduction and the distribution of wealth

r d and the growth of firms empirical analysis of a panel of italian firms abstract this paper deals with the growth of firms and with their innovative activities the main hypothesis of the paper maintains that firms with a strong commitment to r d have a higher rate of growth because they succeed in the product market after a review of the related literature the paper presents an econometric analysis of the r d growth of firms relation based on a database of italian firms data on a sample of 500 firms with time series in the range 1989 1997 were drawn from the mediocredito survey of italian manufacturing descriptive analysis shows that the sales growth rate of firms with r d is higher than that of firms without r d econometric analysis is performed in two steps first we apply a panel unit root test im k pesaran h shin y 1997 testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels dae university of cambridge mimeo to verify whether the firm size significantly affects firm growth the test confirms gibrat s law that firm size has a stochastic trend second we explore whether there are variables with stochastic trends that could account for firm size according to our estimates the growth rate of firms is positively correlated with research intensity in these estimates a further interesting result is that investment in ict is not significant or shows a parameter with negative sign

the influence of family ownership dispersion on debt level in privately held firms the aim of this article is to investigate the financing behavior of privately held firms along the dispersion of family ownership drawing on the socio emotional wealth perspective we argue that debt levels are contingent on the degree of ownership dispersion among family members based on a sample of 2451 observations in a 10 year time frame our results reveal the existence of an inverted u shaped relationship between debt level and intra family ownership dispersion we demonstrate that this relationship is moderated by the generational involvement that inverts it in later generations

estimating social welfare using count data models an application to long run recreation demand under conditions of endogenous stratification and truncation this paper develops a negative binomial model of recreation demand that corrects for both truncation and endogenous stratification this approach recovers the demand associated with the general population not just the users of the site this model demonstrates the importance of the joint nature of the population s latent demand for trips and the consumer surplus associated with those trips the empirical results provide an estimate of the willingness to pay by washington state residents for hiking opportunities in the cascade mountain range these results are used to forecast total trips and willingness to pay over the next forty years copyright 1995 by mit press

financing new venture exporters this paper investigates the demand for and access to financing for young small and medium sized enterprises smes the work compares theoretically and empirically two sets of new firms those that export and those that do not export as to the frequency with which they seek and obtain external financing the work hypothesizes that new growth firms and new exporter firms are especially likely to seek external financing yet less likely to obtain financing empirical findings confirm these expectations demonstrating that young growth firms were more likely than non growth firms to seek all forms of capital and exporters were particularly likely to apply for equity and trade credit commercial lenders were less likely to approve loan applications from early stage growth firms and especially so for applications from young growth oriented sme exporters the implications of these results for research and public policy are discussed

on the existence of an optimal capital structure theory and evidence one of the most contentious issues in the theory of finance during the past quarter century has been the theory of capital structure the geneses of this controversy were the seminal contributions by modigliani and miller 18 19 the general academic view by the mid 1970s although not a consensus was that the optimal capital structure involves balancing the tax advantage of debt against the present value of bankruptcy costs no sooner did this general view become prevalent in the profession than miller 16 presented a new challenge by showing that under certain conditions the tax advantage of debt financing at the firm level is exactly offset by the tax disadvantage of debt at the personal level since then there has developed a burgeoning theoretical literature attempting to reconcile miller s model with the balancing theory of optimal capital structure e g deangelo and masulis 5 kim 12 and modigliani 17 the general result of this work is that if there are significant leverage related costs such as bankruptcy costs agency costs of debt and loss of non debt tax shields and if the income from equity is untaxed then the marginal bondholder s tax rate will be less than the corporate rate and there will be a positive net tax advantage to corporate debt financing the firm s optimal capital structure will involve the trade off between the tax advantage of debt and various leverage related costs the upshot of these extensions of miller s model is the recognition that the existence of an optimal capital structure is essentially an empirical issue as to whether or not the various leverage related costs are economically significant enough to influence the costs of corporate borrowing the miller model and its theoretical extensions have inspired several timeseries studies which provide evidence on the existence of leverage related costs trczinka 28 reports that from examining differences in average yields between taxable corporate bonds and tax exempt municipal bonds one cannot reject the miller hypothesis that the marginal bondholder s tax rate is not different from the corporate tax rate however trczinka is careful to point out that this finding does not necessarily imply that there is no tax advantage of corporate debt if the personal tax rate on equity is positive indeed buser and hess 1 using a longer time series of data and more sophisticated econometric techniques estimate that the average effective personal tax rate on equity is statistically positive and is not of a trivial magnitude more importantly they document evidence that is consistent with the existence of significant leverage related costs in the economy

implementing advanced manufacturing technologies in mature industrial regions towards a social model of technology production gertler m s 1993 implementing advanced manufacturing technologies in mature industrial regions towards a social model of technology production reg studies 27 665 680 industrial surveys reveal that manufacturers in mature industrial regions of canada the united states and the united kingdom have been adopting advanced process technologies at reasonable rates during the 1980s however the expected improvements in productivity growth have failed to materialize and case study evidence suggests that such manufacturers are indeed encountering considerable difficulty in utilizing such technologies effectively increasingly such regions share a common characteristic that they are geographically removed from the now dominant sources of production of advanced industrial machinery based on a critical review of recent theoretical contributions from geography regional development economic history management studies and the economics of technological change this paper explores the implications of spa

combining revealed and stated data to examine housing decisions using discrete choice analysis abstract this paper uses stated preference and revealed preference data separately and jointly to examine individuals housing choices in particular it combines an established revealed preference approach discrete choice analysis of actual housing purchases and a relatively new stated preference approach choice based conjoint analysis of hypothetical housing purchases to provide us with a better understanding of the factors driving housing decisions these methods are appropriately combined since they reflect the same decision process households select the dwelling that provides the best combination of attributes from the feasible set of alternatives in total this paper analyzes three data sets only actual housing purchases only hypothetical housing purchases and both types of purchases combined analysis finds that actual and hypothetical housing purchases are similar decision processes with respect to some attributes yet are dissimilar with respect to other attributes nevertheless combining the two types of data improves identification of both categories of attributes journal of economic literature classification number r21

external ownership of industry and government policy some further evidence for northern ireland harris r i d 1990 external ownership of industry and government policy some further evidence for northern ireland reg studies 25 45 62 this paper considers the causes and consequences of external ownership and control of manufacturing in northern ireland the province is an interesting example of a branch plant economy since government regional policy has been particularly responsible for encouraging inward investment the effect of external control on occupational structures inter firm linkages technological development and plant closures is assessed using various and often unique databases the results obtained suggest that high levels of external ownership in northern ireland lead to proportionately more unskilled as opposed to skilled manual workers linkages tend to be truncated leading to generally lower levels of integration into the local economy rd and there appears to have been a higher propensity for closure if the plant w

perceptions versus objective measures of environmental quality in combined revealed and stated preference models of environmental valuation abstract this study examines perceptions and objective attribute measures in discrete choice models of recreation site choice behavior these forms of attribute measurement are examined in individual and combined revealed preference stated preference models our results suggest that the model based on perceptions slightly outperforms the models based on objective attribute measures however issues such as the definition of the choice set and the measurement of welfare present significant challenges when using perceptions data

augmenting travel cost models with contingent behavior data this paper proposes contingent behavior survey questions as a valuable supplement to observed data in travel cost models of non market demand for recreational resources a set of observed and contingent behavior results for each survey respondent allows the researcher to control for individual heterogeneity by taking advantage of panel data methods when exploring the nature of respondent demands the contingent scenarios also provide opportunities to a test for differences between observed and contingent preferences and or b assess likely demands under conditionsbeyond the domain of observed variation in costs or resource attributes most importantly contingent scenarios allow the researcher to imposeexogenously varying travel costs exogenous imposition of travel costs together with panel methods reduces the omitted variables bias that plagues observed data travel cost models of recreational demand using a convenience sample of data for illustrative purposes we show how to estimate the demand for recreational angling by combining observed and contingent behavior data we begin with simple naive pooled poisson models and progress to more theoretically appropriate fixed effects panel poisson specifications

static and intertemporal household decisions we discuss the most popular static and dynamic models of household behavior our main objective is to explain which aspects of household decisions different models can account for using this insight we describe testable implications identification results and estimation findings obtained in the literature particular attention is given to the ability of different models to answer various types of policy questions

who holds the purse strings within the household the determinants of intra family decision making abstract we study the determinants of intra household decision making responsibility over economic and financial choices using a direct measure provided in the 1989 2010 bank of italy survey of household income and wealth we find that the probability that the wife is responsible for decisions increases as the wife s characteristics in terms of age education and income become closer or even higher than those of her husband s thus consistently with a bargaining approach decision making responsibility is associated with marriage heterogamy and not only along strictly economic dimensions however in support of an alternative household production approach we also find that the probability that the wife is responsible is lower when she is employed which suggests the presence of a specialization pattern assigning responsibility to the spouse with more available time our results are robust to additional controls and alternative samples

time is money improved valuation of time and transportation costs the proper valuation of time isimportant for estimating the demand for severaleconomic goods this paper explores the propervaluation of time when estimating recreationaldemand where time costs represent asubstantial portion of the purchase price toestimate demand this paper uses a travel costframework to analyze actual behavior revealedpreference data and hypothetical behavior stated preference data which is induced byhypothetical increases in access fees traveltime and travel distance by comparing theresponses to these three contingencies theanalysis adjusts and improves the valuation oftime costs as evidence of this improvement this analysis demonstrates a great increase inthe consistency between the revealed and stateddata similarly this paper improves thevaluation of transportation related costs

scale economies the value of time and the demand for money longitudinal evidence from firms compustat data on 12 000 firms for the years 1961 92 indicate that large firms hold less cash as a percentage of sale than small ones whether comparisons are made within or across industries the clasticity of cash balance with respect to sales is about 0 8 firms headquartered in counties with high wages hold more money for a given level of sales a finding consistent with the idea that time can substitute for mony in the provision of transactions services the estimates are consistent with both scale economies in the holding of money and secular declines in velocity

an evolutionary pattern of innovation diffusion the case of flexible automation abstract the aim of this paper is to provide evidence supporting an evolutionary model of the process of innovation diffusion relying on an extensive field study the paper analyses the pattern of adoption of the entire set of innovations deriving from the flexible automation paradigm on the part of a large sample of italian metalworking firms owing to the relevance of the technology examined and to the size of the sample the case illustrates quite representatively the dynamics of the early stage of development of radical and complex innovations the main results of the paper confirm the importance of firm size and market structure to explain the characteristics of the innovation diffusion process at the same time they emphasize that the localized search procedures on the part of potential users involve a step by step approach to adoption namely the technological and organizational profile of firms turns out to play a decisive role in favouring diffusion moreover empirical support is provided for the existence of persistent market disequilibria along the diffusion paths witnessed by the extent of the retrofitting phenomenon

multi family households in a labour supply model a calibration method with application to poland models of cooperative and noncooperative behaviour opened the household black box and allowed for individual treatment of partners in couples however labour supply literature has so far largely ignored a broader issue the distinction of single versus multi family complex households we propose a method to account for multi family household structure by borrowing from recent applications of the collective model to identify the degree of sharing we assume that each household is characterized by a between family sharing parameter which is calibrated on estimated preferences observed labour market status and other characteristics we apply the method to polish labour market data

succession financing in family firms business succession is one of the primary management challenges for family firms however many family firms fail at this task because of financial issues although a vast number of studies have investigated the succession process research thus far has failed to determine how and why family firms select particular forms of financing for succession related expenditures accordingly this study conceptually and empirically investigates succession financing we introduce a conceptual framework that investigates the reasons behind an owner manager s intent to use debt for succession financing specifically our model accounts for general and succession related personal factors however we also include a set of firm specific financing behavioral controls in our research the empirical results are derived from a sample of 187 german family firms and the results highlight financial knowledge attitudes succession experience and succession planning as significant determinants of the owner managers debt usage intentions the implications and avenues for future research are discussed

estimation and welfare calculations in a generalized corner solution model with an application to recreation demand the kuhn tucker model of wales and woodland 1983 provides a utility theoretic framework for estimating preferences over commodities for which individuals choose not to consume one or more of the goods due to the complexity of the model however there have been few applications in the literature and little attention has been paid to the problems of welfare analysis within the kuhn tucker framework this paper provides an application of the model to the problem of recreation demand in addition we develop and apply a methodology for estimating compensating variation relying on monte carlo integration to derive expected welfare changes

bootstrapping in small firms an empirical analysis of change over time abstract while bootstrapping is widely utilized as a strategic practice of small firms and has been regarded in the entrepreneurship literature as an important topic of study little has been done to link bootstrapping to organizational theory this paper presents hypotheses and an empirical study regarding bootstrapping and organizational development for small firms the results of the study indicate that different types of bootstrapping are utilized at different periods in the life of a small firm and that the methods utilized coincide to some extent with organizational theory predictions

capital structure decision making a model for family business abstract most theoretical and empirical studies of capital structure focus on public corporations only a limited number of studies on capital structure have been conducted on small to medium size enterprises smes and this deficiency is particularly evident in investigations into factors that influence funding decisions of family business owners theory indicates that there is a complex array of factors that influence sme owner managers financing decisions recent family business literature suggests that these processes are influenced by firm owners attitudes toward the utility of debt as a form of funding as moderated by external environmental conditions e g financial and market considerations a number of other factors have been shown to influence financing decisions including culture entrepreneurial characteristics entrepreneurs prior experiences in capital structure business goals business life cycle issues preferred ownership structures views regarding control debt equity ratios and short vs long term debt age and size of the firm sources of funding for growth attitudes toward debt financing issues relating to independence and control and perceived risk and attitudes toward personal risk although these factors have been identified until now there does not appear to have been any attempts to develop empirically based models that show relationships between these factors and family business owners financing decisions utilizing theories derived from divergent disciplines this study develops an empirically tested structural equation model of financing antecedents of family businesses participants of our study involved a random sample of 5000 business owners who were mailed a 250 item australian family and private business questionnaire developed specifically for this investigation notably our findings reveal that firm size family control business planning and business objectives are significantly associated with debt small family businesses and owners who do not have formal planning processes in place tend to rely on family loans as a source of finance however family businesses in the service industry e g retailers and wholesalers are less likely to use family loans as are those owners who are planning to achieve growth through new products or process development use of capital and retained profits is likely for family businesses planning to achieve growth through an increase in sales but less is likely for family businesses in the manufacturing sector and lifestyle firms in addition debt and family loans are negatively related to capital and retained profits equity is a consideration for owners of large businesses young firms and owners who plan to achieve growth through increasing profit margins however equity is less likely to be a consideration for older family business owners and owners who have a preference for retaining family control our findings suggest that the interplay between multiple social family and financial factors is complex in addition our findings indicate the importance of utilizing theories that also help to explain behavioral factors e g owners needs to be in control that affect financial structure decision making processes practitioners and researchers should consider the dynamic interplay among business characteristics e g size or industry behavioral aspects of business financing e g business objectives and financial factors e g gearing levels when working with and researching family enterprises

time and the recreational demand model in this paper a theoretically consistent approach to including time costs in recreational demand models is developed the demand model is conditional on the recreationist s labor market situation for individuals at corner solutions in the labor market utility maximization is subject to two constraints leading to a demand function with travel costs and travel time as independent variables with interior solutions in the labor market time is valued at the wage rate and combined with travel costs to produce one full cost variable in an illustration welfare measures based on the new model are estimated for a sample of sportfishermen

some evidence of regional variations in the introduction and diffusion of industrial products and processes within british manufacturing industry thwaites a t 1982 some evidence of regional variations in the introduction and diffusion of industrial products and processes within british manufacturing industry reg studies 16 371 81 in the present economic circumstances the traditional instruments of regional aid public expenditure job transfer and mobile industry are greatly constrained which thrusts greater responsibility upon industry indigenous to each area to preserve and to create employment self sustained economic growth any concept of the mobilization of this regional potential must incorporate a technological dimension if any region lags in the production or adoption of new technology within its manufacturing industries then in the longer term it must face industrial decline evidence of regional performance in the production and adoption of new products and processes together with research and development effort is provided from two establishment based surveys of manufacturing industry in great britain the conclusion is reached

capital structure decisions during a firm s life cycle the study reported here examines the financing choices of small and medium sized firms i e those most vulnerable to information and incentive problems through the lens of the business life cycle we argue that the controversy in the empirical literature regarding the determinants of capital structure decisions is based on a failure to take into account the different degrees of information opacity and consequently firms characteristics and needs at specific stages of their life cycles the results show that in a bank oriented country firms tend to adopt specific financing strategies and a different hierarchy of financial decision making as they progress through the phases of their business life cycle contrary to conventional wisdom debt is shown to be fundamental to business activities in the early stages representing the first choice by contrast in the maturity stage firms re balance their capital structure gradually substituting debt for internal capital and for firms that have consolidated their business the pecking order theory shows a high degree of application this financial life cycle pattern seems to be homogeneous for different industries and consistent over time

dressing a ghost size and value of unpaid family care unpaid family care work encompasses care and assistance provided by members of a household to other members it is not considered to be a productive activity and its exclusion from national accoun

family ownership altruism and agency costs in australian small and medium sized enterprises given the continuing uncertainty about whether family firms enjoy lower agency costs this article hypothesizes that a combination of the effects of family ownership altruism and self control is instead at play to begin with family ownership can indeed reduce agency costs through better aligning the interests of owners and managers this is a determining effect in that it independently mitigates one source of agency problems however altruism combined with self control problems arising from the highly concentrated ownership often found in family firms can also increase agency costs this is an embedding effect as it is rooted in the personal relationships within the family firm using the business longitudinal database compiled by the australian bureau of statistics on small and medium sized enterprises smes we find that for larger smes those with 20 200 employees the gains in lower agency costs arising from family ownership are almost completely offset by the losses from altruism and the l

it s raining men hallelujah the long run consequences of male biased sex ratios we document the short and long run effects of male biased sex ratios we exploit a natural historical experiment where large numbers of male convicts and far fewer female convicts were sent to australia in the 18th and 19th centuries in areas with more male biased sex ratios women were historically more likely to get married and less likely to work outside the home in these areas today both men and women continue to have more conservative attitudes towards women working and women work fewer hours outside the home while these women enjoy more leisure they are also less likely to work in high ranking occupations we demonstrate that the consequences of uneven sex ratios on cultural attitudes labour supply decisions and occupational choices can persist in the long run well after sex ratios are back to the natural rate we document the roles of vertical cultural transmission and marriage homogamy in sustaining this cultural persistence

new process technology and the regeneration of the manufacturing sector of an urban economy local economic development strategies for the manufacturing sectors of urban areas have tended to focus on either inward investment or the stimulation of new firms this paper argues more attention should be focused upon existing large manufacturing operations the introduction of new process technologies into existing establishments may enhance the competitiveness of an urban economy using data from a new survey of the larger metal using establishments in the sheffield economy the empirical work highlights the difficulties that can be encountered in the introduction of new process technology the concluding section outlines a number of policy considerations which may indicate a way forward for local administrations seeking to encourage the introduction of new process technology into large plants in traditional manufacturing sectors

the latent demand for bank debt characterizing discouraged borrowers concerns that small firms encounter credit constraints are well entrenched in the literature despite widespread empirical evidence that a relatively small proportion of small firms have their loan applications rejected however many firms may be discouraged from applying for fear of rejection these businesses are the focus of this paper based on responses to a large scale postal survey of uk small and medium sized enterprises smes we find that twice as many businesses were discouraged from applying for a bank loan than had their loan request denied more particularly we observe a number of distinguishing characteristics of discouraged borrowers relative to applicants these include strategy sector prior entrepreneurial experience and banking relationships the implications of our findings for policy and future research are briefly discussed

willingness to pay for quality improvements should revealed and stated preference data be combined abstract in this article we propose theoretically consistent welfare measurement of use and nonuse values for an improvement in environmental quality with revealed and stated preference data an analytical model based on the comparative static analysis of the variation function that describes the relationship between recreation demand and dichotomous choice contingent valuation models is estimated our results show that revealed and stated data should not be combined under the same assumed preference structure unless the two decisions imply the same change in behavior induced by the quality change in addition our results indicate scope effects in willingness to pay measures estimated with stated preference data

the value of automobile travel time implications for congestion policy abstract public policy has remained stoutly resistant to the economic profession s call to use congestion tolls to minimize the social costs from automobile congestion this paper explores this issue by using stated preference models to estimate the value that commuters are willing to pay to save travel time we find that this value is low and surprisingly insensitive to travel conditions and how toll revenues are used it appears that even high income commuters having adjusted to congestion through their modal residential workplace and departure time choices simply do not value travel time savings enough to benefit substantially from tolls

modeling recreation demand in the presence of unobservable travel costs toward a travel price model an important issue in the application of travel cost models is the construction of a travel cost variable this paper develops an econometric approach that views travel costs as an unobserved latent variable the latent variable approach utilizes indicators to capture the role of individual travel costs in recreational demand models the latent variables approach has at least two advantages over conventional approaches one the indicators can include both traditional components such as time and distance and non traditional components such as the scenic beauty second the estimation procedure results in each indicator being valued in dollar terms

the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior in households whose allocation decisions can be represented as nash bargained household decisions extrahousehold environmental parameters eeps serve as pure shifters of the threat points the comparative statics of changes in demands due to changes in these eeps are given these are incorporated into a comprehensive statement of the empirical content of nash bargained household behavior including a nash generalization of barten s 1966 fundamental matrix equation of the theory of consumer demand estimation and data requirements are discussed along with nested testing of the following structure the neoclassical model is nested in the nash bargained model which in turn is nested in an unrestricted model of household demands emphasized throughout is the enriched menu of explanatory variables for demand analysis provided by the nash model as well as the model s ability to jointly analyze i household formation and ii intrahousehold allocation decisions

reasons for the development of islands of innovation evidence from hertfordshire this paper analyses why innovations often cluster in a few metropolitan islands of innovation the reason for this interest is that a growing body of neo schumpeterian economic theory argues that economic recovery after periods of economic recession and depression such as we have seen during the 1980s and early 1990s is driven by innovations these do not spring up all over the country but are spatially concentrated in a small number of metropolitan regions it is therefore important to know why this is so in order to evaluate the effectiveness of various uk and eu public policies whose specific objectives are to stimulate local and regional economic development agglomeration theory is used in order to understand the driving forces behind the spatial clustering of new innovations this leads to four explanatory hypotheses these are that innovation is facilitated by agglomeration in order to reduce distance transaction costs between firms in different spaces or by local factor conditions which provide

economic behavior marriage and fertility two lessons from polygyny abstract this paper derives and estimates an index of the relative importance of children in marriage by comparing the effect of husband s income on the actual number of wives in the household with the demand for wives derived from the number of children in the household moreover the paper presents the monogamy bias as a possible explanation for often observed low or negative income effects on fertility

the adoption of new technology in the american machinery industry rees j briggs r and oakey r 1984 the adoption of new technology in the american machinery industry reg studies 18 489 504 this study examines the spread of a number of key production technologies among machinery manufacturers across the united states based on a mail and interview survey of over 600 industrial plants across the country it was found that adoption rates for these innovations varied by industrial sector organizational status of plants age and size of plants as well as by region and metropolitan characteristics of plants the findings suggest that policy makers interested in nurturing small businesses should consider technical assistance strategies that encourage the spread of innovation among firms and that high priority be given to labour training programmes in local economic development strategies at the federal level this study also suggests that the innovation potential of manufacturing belt companies should not be overlooked in any new initiatives to encourage economic re

measuring the cost of time in recreation demand analysis an application to sportfishing since the work of cesario and knetsch economists have recognized that the opportunity cost of time plays an important role in determining the demand for outdoor recreation the opportunities one has for spare time are more significant for consumption of time intensive outdoor recreation activities than for other commodities especially nondurables bishop and heberlein illustrate the overwhelming importance of time costs to final recreational values total consumer surplus is nearly four times as large when time costs are added at half the income rate as when time costs were set at zero p 21 despite the recognition economists have neither successfully integrated the costs of time with the methods of recreational demand analysis nor reached a consensus on how it should be measured brown charbonneau and hay state finally the apparently crucial importance of how opportunity cost of time is handled needs further work while we are convinced it is an appropriate concept exactly how it should be included and measured s remains to be determined p 24 several approaches have been taken to include it in the travel cost method one approach brown and nawas gum and martin suggests that time in transit be considered as a separate independent variable another approach bishop and heberlein brown charbonneau hay nicols bowes dwyer cesario and knetsch measures the cost of time and adds it to other costs several approaches have been suggested to measure time costs one approach is simply to choose an hourly wage e g 2 00 per hour or perhaps the minimum wage rate a more flexible but still ad hoc approach is to use some proportion of the individual s wage rate as the opportunity cost of time nichols bowes dwyer the proportion is usually taken from independent studies and used to value the travel time this approach is better than using a constant opportunity cost of time because it allows variation across individuals it suffers because the choice of the percentage of the wage rate is arbitrary independent of the sampled population cesario has discussed the consequences of ignoring time costs and the differences in values arising from alternative measurement approaches in this paper we argue that the opportunity cost of time is some proportion of the individual s market wage rate or income per hour and that this proportion can be determined from sample data this method permits the proportion to vary from one study to another rather than imposing either an arbitrary estimate or one from a sample different from the study s sample

having it all for all child care subsidies and income distribution reconciled abstract we study the design of child care policies when redistribution matters traditional mothers provide some informal child care whereas career mothers purchase full time formal care the sorting of women across career paths is endogenous and shaped by a social norm about gender roles in the family via this social norm traditional mothers informal child care imposes an externality on career mothers so that the market outcome is inefficient informal care is too large and the group of career mothers is too small so that inefficiency and gender inequality go hand in hand in a first best world redistribution across couples and efficiency are separable redistribution is performed via lump sum transfers and taxes which are designed to equalize utilities across all couples the efficient allocation of child care is obtained by subsidizing formal care at a pigouvian rate however in a second best setting a trade off between efficiency and redistribution emerges the optimal uniform subsidy is lower than the pigouvian level conversely under a nonlinear policy the first best pigouvian rule for the marginal subsidy on informal care is reestablished while the share of high career mothers continues to be distorted downward for incentive reasons this policy is effective in reconciling the objectives of reducing the child care related inefficiency and achieving a more equal income distribution across couples our results continue to hold when the norm is defined within the mothers social group rather than being based on the entire population