angel investors around the world we document that the choice between disintermediated individual angel investments and intermediated private equity and venture capital investments depends on legal economic and cultural differences we find evidence of this using pitchbook s comprehensive data on more than 5000 angel and 80 000 private equity and venture capital investments in 96 countries from 1977 to 2012 the data further indicate that investee firms funded by angels are less likely to successfully exit through either an ipo or an acquisition these findings are robust to propensity score matching methods as well as to clustering standard errors and excluding u s observations among other approaches

who appropriates centrality rents the role of institutions in regulating social networks in the global islamic finance industry this study explains and tests the effects of country level institutions on the distribution of centrality rents between two sets of actors in an interorganizational network building on the literature on corporate elites we propose that a cohesive elite following organizational logics other than profit maximization diverts centrality rents and induces costs on firms and that macro institutions act as external governance mechanisms to shape this relationship we develop our theory in the emerging islamic finance industry where shariah scholars connect firms and constitute a religious corporate elite while central scholars in this network create legitimacy for firms they also shirk and cause information leakage suggesting a negative centrality performance relationship for the firms country level institutions such as government regulation and democracy we argue ameliorate these effects by influencing this religious elite s institutional logic and restraining their actions while institutions developed from within the industry strengthen the power of the elite testing our theory in a network of 367 scholars and 396 institutions over 31 countries using multi level methods we indeed find a negative centrality performance relationship that is ameliorated by stronger government regulation but exacerbated by better developed industry specific institutions as well as a negative relationship between democratic and regulatory institutions and centrality

investor protection and equity markets we present a simple model of an entrepreneur going public in an environment with poor legal protection of outside shareholders the model incorporates elements of becker s j political econ 106 1968 172 crime and punishment framework into a corporate finance environment of jensen and meckling j financial econ 3 1976 305 we examine the entrepreneur s decision and the market equilibrium the model is consistent with a number of empirical regularities concerning the relation between investor protection and corporate finance it also sheds light on the patterns of capital flows between rich and poor countries and on the politics of reform of investor protection r 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

economic and other determinants of infant and child mortality in small developing countries the case of central america and the caribbean inter country differences in infant and child mortality are explained by looking at demographic economic health and educational factors a model is presented in which the infant mortality rate the child mortality rate and the birth rate are endogenous the model is tested using cross national multiple regression analysis and simulations the presence of simultaneity is confirmed introducing non economic factors transforms the character of the relationship between exogenous and endogenous variables from a diminishing returns to an increasing returns one the role played by public expenditure in education vaccination coverage low birth weight female schooling number of nurses access to safe water or malnutrition can be assessed as well as that played by structural adjustment variables such as the inflation rate or the external debt to gnp ratio infant and child mortality can be diminished everywhere in the region with relatively small amounts of expenditure disappointing outcomes in som

interpreting societal culture value dimensions societal cultural value dimension scholarship can both learn from and inform the family of interrelated approaches to culture research in ib that appear in recent commentaries it can exchange insights about societal values and meaning systems with neo institutional and institutional logics research it can also exchange insights with dual processing cognition theories that are used to understand individuals in an international context by treating societal culture values and institutional characteristics as essential to interpreting personal values and attitudes rather than merging them integrating culture related specialties by exchanging insights can promote the further development of research in each of these societal and individual level fields

determinants of child mortality health and nutrition in a developing country abstract child health and nutrition status are important determinants of adult productivities and earnings and thus are an important channel of intergenerational socioeconomic mobility building upon economic models of household behavior we investigate the determinants of child mortality and health and nutrition status in regions defined by the degree of urbanization in the developing country of nicaragua and offer some policy suggestions our estimates suggest that determinants differ significantly across regions income is not an important factor there is an inverse relation with number of siblings and there are positive associations with calorie intake schooling except in the relatively low income rural areas the availability of refrigeration and the quality of sewage systems

consumer demand and household production the relationship between fertility and child mortality forces which link biological and behavioral factors to infant mortality and fertility in the united states are examined estimates can be arrived at if all of the important types of behavior affecting infant survival prices and income constraints facing households are diligently gathered using equations to determine the relationship between a family health endowment index in conjunction with a childs health information about optimal prenatal and postnatal behavior can be estimated and observed this estimate which is strongly a factor of parental and environmental health related factors attempts to characterize the biological effects of parents behavior on birthweight gestation and the rate of fetal growth another estimate presented is one which establishes a link between biological effects of birth order on infant mortality in this analysis factors such as medical care during pregnancy mothers rate of smoking mothers age duration of breastfeeding mothers race and childs sex were included household socioeconomic and health data were also estimated in order to understand state and county ability to provide adequate health facilities for pre and postnatal maternal care in particular results suggest that child mortality declines in developed countries and that mothers seek prenatal medical care in early stages of their pregnancy when risk is anticipated further study of the differential pattern of black and white fertility behavior in regard to seeking medical care is warranted

the nature and nurture of economic outcomes this paper uses data on adopted children to examine the relative importance of biology and environment in determining educational and labor market outcomes i employ three long term panel data sets which contain information on adopted children their adoptive parents and their biological parents in at least two of the three data sets the mechanism for assigning children to adoptive parents is fairly random and does not match children to adoptive parents based on health race or ability i find that adoptive parents education and income have a modest impact on child test scores but a large impact on college attendance marital status and earnings in contrast with existing work on iq scores i do not find that the influence of adoptive parents declines with child age this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a framework to update hofstede s cultural value indices economic dynamics and institutional stability this study offers an update of the hofstede cultural value dimensions we argue that changes in economic conditions are the source of cultural dynamics while the endurance of institutional characteristics provides the foundation for cultural stability it is found that national wealth measured by gdp per capita has a curvilinear relationship with individualism long term orientation and power distance scores relatively speaking uncertainty avoidance and masculinity mainly reflect some rather stable institutional traditions such as language religion climate ethnic homogeneity and legal origin and are less likely to change over time

towards a more balanced treatment of culture in international business studies the need for positive cross cultural scholarship the results of a content analysis of 1141 articles published in the journal of international business studies over a 24 year time period 1989 2012 reveal that a pervasive tendency exists in the international business ib literature towards emphasizing the adverse outcomes associated with cultural differences more than the positive effects we argue that this imbalance is not an accurate reflection of the reality of cross cultural contact in ib and that it has hindered our understanding of the processes and conditions that help organizations leverage the benefits of cultural differences in a wide range of contexts we offer several explanations for the predominance of the negative over the positive in theory and research on culture in ib and using a positive organizational scholarship lens couched in the context of march s 1991 exploration vs exploitation organizational learning framework highlight a complementary perspective namely the idea that cultural differences can be an asset not just a liability in a range of ib contexts we conclude by offering an integrative framework within which both positive and negative effects of cultural differences can be understood and provide a road map for future research on culture in ib

does increasing women s schooling raise the schooling of the next generation the positive cross sectional relationship between the schooling of mothers and their children is substantially biased upward due to correlations between schooling and heritable ability as well as assortative mating an increase in the schooling of women would not have beneficial effects in terms of the schooling of children increased maternal schooling leads to reduced home time for mothers anticipating the consequences of investing in women s schooling requires attention to the role that schooling plays in the marriage market as well as to opportunities in the labor market for women

national culture and corporate investment we explore the relation between individualism and horizons and types of corporate investment based on individualism s implications for risk taking we find that firms in individualistic countries invest more in long term risky than in short term safe assets moreover the effect of individualism on long term investment hinges on rd and 2 firms in individualistic countries invest more in r d because they have higher investment efficiency or pick less risky r d projects we further find that individualistic firms tend to employ excess cash to increase r d rather than increase dividends and r d decisions are less reliant on internal financing but more responsive to growth opportunities in individualistic countries

managerial metric use in marketing decisions across 16 countries a cultural perspective research on metrics is consistently designated a priority by academics and practitioners however less is known about how culture and cross national differences can potentially impact metric use which is theoretically and managerially limiting this work develops a model that examines national and organizational cultural antecedents while controlling for the decision setting testing the model on data collected from 4384 managerial decisions from 1637 firms in 16 countries reveals that both levels of culture are associated with metric use but each has varying effects our results enable multinational executives to better understand and increase managerial metric use across different cultures and settings

explaining top management turnover in private corporations the role of cross country legal institutions and capital market forces we investigate private firms ability to identify and replace poorly performing managers across countries we document three main findings first private firms are more likely to retain poorly performing managers in countries where legal institutions that protect minority investors are weak second private firms are more likely to retain poorly performing managers than public firms only in countries where governance mechanisms inherent in public equity markets limit managerial entrenchment in public firms third private firm managers are less likely to be replaced even when poor performance continues for relatively long horizons overall our findings provide new evidence on the potential vulnerability of minority shareholders in private firms

national culture and dividend policy this interdisciplinary study examines how national culture affects corporate dividend policies the dividend puzzle is one of the most studied yet unresolved issues in financial economics prior theoretical and empirical research has suggested several explanations of the dividend puzzle that are rooted mainly in agency asymmetric information bird in hand and pecking order theories the main intuition behind our analysis is that dividend policy may be determined not only by an objective assessment of the severity of agency and asymmetric information problems within a firm but also by management s and investors subjective perceptions of these problems which hinge on their national culture using schwartz s national culture dimensions conservatism and mastery we find that conservatism is positively related and mastery negatively related to dividend payouts for a sample of 27 462 firm years from 21 countries between 1995 and 2007 these effects are robust to controls for a wide variety of other determinants of dividend policy including investor protection stock market performance financial system configuration tax advantage economic development and dividend catering premium and to alternative culture proxies and sub period windows our findings that national culture affects perceptions of and responses to agency and information asymmetry have important implications for policymakers and multinational enterprises

disease and development the effect of life expectancy on economic growth we exploit the major international health improvements from the 1940s to estimate the effect of life expectancy on economic performance we construct predicted mortality using preintervention mortality rates from various diseases and dates of global interventions predicted mortality has a large impact on changes in life expectancy starting in 1940 but no effect before 1940 using predicted mortality as an instrument we find that a 1 percent increase in life expectancy leads to a 1 7 2 percent increase in population life expectancy has a much smaller effect on total gdp however consequently there is no evidence that the large increase in life expectancy raised income per capita

client profitability of diffusion segments across countries for multi generational innovations the influence of firm market and cross national differences there is scant research on the important managerial question of how to maximize returns on investments in either international business or international marketing literature we propose and test a conceptual framework using data from a large technology manufacturer service provider despite early adoption by innovators and early adopters the early majority segment is most profitable however the late majority segment and the early adopters segment are the next most profitable in the developed and emerging countries respectively we propose a decision support framework incorporating cross national distances on single generation and multi generation profitability for mnes offering multi generational products in multinational markets to be more profitable

individualism and stock price crash risk employing a sample of 26 473 firms across 42 countries from 1990 to 2013 we find that firms located in countries with higher individualism have higher stock price crash risk furthermore individualism can be transmitted by foreign investors from overseas markets to influence local firms crash risk and can exacerbate the impact of firm risk taking and earnings management on crash risk moreover the positive relation between individualism and crash risk is amplified during the global financial crisis and attenuated by enhanced country level financial information transparency and the adoption of international financial reporting standards

the endogeneity between language and earnings international analyses this study is concerned with the determinants of dominant language fluency its effects on earnings and its endogeneity with earnings among immigrants dominant language fluency is hypothesized to

understanding compensation practice variations across firms the impact of national culture with operations spread worldwide firms that find themselves competing in a global marketplace are looking at the implications of the admonition when in rome this raises the question do cultures of countries have an impact on the generally accepted methods of managing human resources the answer to this question is the focus of this article by developing culture specific propositions for four categories of compensation practices based on status performance social benefits and programs and employee ownership plans we seek to determine the extent to which hofstede s four dimensions of culture are associated with specific compensation practices support is found for most of the propositions the implications of the finding for the management of human resources by multinational firms are discussed

economic and mechanical models of intergenerational transmission the author critically examines gary beckers attempt to integrate the theory of income distribution intragenerational differences with the theory of mobility intergenerational differences in an economic model of the family he assesses beckers claims of distinctiveness integration explanatory power and surprise and arrives at a rather skeptical view of the contribution that the core of microeconomics has made to this study of the family a reply by becker is included pp 514 8 excerpt

does organizational formalization facilitate voice and helping organizational citizenship behaviors it depends on national uncertainty norms prosocial work behaviors in a globalized environment do not operate in a cultural vacuum we assess to what extent voice and helping organizational citizenship behaviors ocbs vary across cultures depending on employees perceived level of organizational formalization and national uncertainty we predict that in contexts of uncertainty cognitive resources are engaged in coping with this uncertainty organizational formalization can provide structure that frees up cognitive resources to engage in ocb in contrast in contexts of low uncertainty organizational formalization is not necessary for providing structure and may increase constraints on discretionary behavior a three level hierarchical linear modeling analysis of data from 7 537 employees in 267 organizations across 17 countries provides broad support for our hypothesis perceived organizational formalization is weakly related to ocb but where uncertainty is high formalization facilitates voice significantly helping ocb to a lesser extent our findings contribute to clarifying the dynamics between perceptions of norms at organizational and national levels for understanding when employees may engage in helping and voice behaviors the key implication is that managers can foster ocb through organizational formalization interventions in uncertain environments that are cognitively demanding

human capital and economic development abstract this paper develops a general equilibrium model of fertility and human capital investment with young adult mortality because young adult mortality is negatively related to average young adult human capital human capital accumulation lowers mortality inducing demographic transition and industrial revolution data confirm that young adult mortality is related negatively to schooling and the rate of return to schooling and positively to fertility the data indicate a negative relationship between tfp growth and schooling accumulation the model fits the data on country populations per capita incomes human capital total fertility rates infant mortality life expectancy and conditional life expectancy

religion and economy religion has a two way interaction with political economy with religion viewed as a dependent variable a central question is how economic development and political institutions affect religious participation and beliefs with religion viewed as an independent variable a key issue is how religiosity affects individual characteristics such as work ethic honesty and thrift and thereby influences economic performance in this paper we sketch previous studies of this two way interaction but focus on our ongoing quantitative research with international data

human capital spillovers in families do parents learn from or lean on their children i model how children s acquisition of a given form of human capital incentivizes adults in their household to either learn from them if children can teach the skill to adults adults cost of learning falls or lean on them if children s human capital substitutes for that of adults in household production adults benefit from learning falls using variation in compliance with an english immersion mandate in california schools i find that english instruction improved immigrant children s english proficiency but discouraged adults living with them from acquiring the language whether family members learn or lean affects the externalities associated with education policies

intergenerational trade longevity and economic growth we develop an overlapping generations model of endogenous growth in which human capital is the engine of growth and the generations are linked through material and emotional interdependencies within the family parents invest in their children to achieve both old age support care and emotional gratification and material support from children is determined through self enforcing implicit contracts we show that optimal intergenerational trade can then lead to maximization of growth opportunities our model produces a theory of the demographic transition linking longevity fertility and economic growth we also show that while population aging may raise the growth rate an increase in young age longevity is likely to produce a greater increase in the growth rate and a reduction in the fertility rate in a growth equilibrium these predictions and the model s implications concerning the behavior of private savings during the takeoff period appear consistent with empirical evidence

intergenerational transmission of human capital is it a one way street studies on the intergenerational transmission of human capital usually assume a one way spillover from parents to children however children may also affect their parents human capital using exogenous variation in education arising from a swedish compulsory schooling reform in the 1950s and 1960s we address this question by studying the causal effect of children s schooling on their parents longevity we first replicate previous findings of a positive and significant cross sectional relationship between children s education and their parents longevity our instrumental variables estimates are not statistically different from zero however they hide substantial heterogeneity by the gender of the child and the parent female schooling is found to affect longevity of fathers and especially those from low socio economic background taken together our results point to the importance of daughters schooling for parental health and to the importance of considering heterogeneous impacts

neoliberal economic policies and infant and child mortality simulation analysis of a chilean paradox abstract the paradox of deteriorating living standards for the poorest coexisting with declining infant and child mortality rates during the 1970s is explained by a simultaneous model where these rates and the birth rate are endogenous partial and general equilibrium results conflict some apparently satisfactory policy tools have counterproductive impacts action on small groups of selected policy variables is more effective than overall economic and social welfare expansion and policy effects differ according to social class the role of midwife visits average real earnings and cheap energy for poor urban households are emphasized perversely high unemployment also contributed to the actual mortality decline during the period

national culture the missing country level determinant of corporate governance it is well known that firm level corporate governance practices vary mainly between rather than within countries but country level factors such as legal and financial institutions explain less than 50 of this cross country variation in this article we show that two dimensions of national culture individualism and uncertainty avoidance capture about 90 of the country fixed effects and outperform the country level explanatory variables used in prior literature we argue that culture works through a tradeoff between managerial expertise and certainty of control a tradeoff largely overlooked by prior literature that captures a country s preference for the anglo saxon approach versus the direct control approach for governance consistent with this argument we find that the effect of culture on corporate governance varies across firms with different needs for managerial expertise and certainty of control we also find that culture interacts with other factors to determine firm level governance

a meta analysis of the exchange hazards interfirm governance relationship an informal institutions perspective the existing literature is ambiguous on how exchange hazards influence interfirm governance drawing on institutional theory this study revisits this relationship by examining the moderating effects of national culture by meta analyzing 167 articles involving 38 183 interfirm relationships in 35 countries we found support for the moderating effects of three facets of national culture collectivism power distance and uncertainty avoidance we discuss the implications of the findings for theory and practice

national culture and the choice of exchange rate regime abstract based on the social analysis framework of williamson we argue that national culture especially the individualism collectivism dimension located in the social embeddedness level can guide behaviors and decisions in a country including the choice of exchange rate regime we argue that individualistic societies are more likely to choose floating regimes because their economic agents are independent overconfident and have higher levels of risk tolerance individualistic societies are also associated with better financial development fewer capital controls and more democratic institutions which are all tied to a higher probability of choosing a floating exchange rate regime we use data on 78 countries over the 1976 2014 period and we control for common determinants of exchange rate regimes we find that individualistic countries have a significantly higher probability of implementing a floating regime than a fixed regime our evidence is robust to using an instrumental variables approach an alternative estimation technique an alternative regime classification alternative proxies for culture a subsample analysis and additional controls we also find that other cultural dimensions uncertainty avoidance power distance and masculinity can influence the choice of exchange rate regime but their effect is weaker than that of individualism

perceived organizational support pos across 54 nations a cross cultural meta analysis of pos effects the authors meta analyze relationships of perceived organizational support pos with attitudinal and behavioral outcomes in western i e horizontal individualistic and eastern i e vertical collectivistic cultures the social exchange perspective suggests that pos effects are stronger in western cultures because employees are more likely to see the self as independent and understand their relationship with the organization in terms of reciprocity however the social identity perspective suggests that pos effects are stronger in eastern cultures because employees are more likely to see the self as interdependent and are more attuned to organizational support as an identity related cue addressing these competing hypotheses meta analytic results from 827 independent samples n 332 277 across 54 countries show support for both perspectives in the west pos was more strongly associated with social exchange processes than organizational identification processes in contrast in the east pos was more strongly associated with organizational identification processes than social exchange processes overall pos was more strongly related to job attitudes and performance in the east than in the west cultural differences in pos effects on attitudinal outcomes were found to be increasing over time we discuss the implications of these findings for organizational support theory and research

mortality decline in the low income world causes and consequences the causes and consequences of the mortality decline that has occurred in developing countries over the course of the twentieth century are reviewed influential factors identified include female education and improved nutrition annotation

in country we trust national trust and the governance of international r d alliances drawing on a cognitive perspective of trust we propose that the trust towards an alliance partner s country which we call national trust will affect the governance structure used to organize the alliance between the partners we further argue that this effect of national trust is moderated by improved information on the partner firm using a sample of international alliances among firms based in western european countries we find support for the main effect of national trust on alliance governance decisions as well as partial support for an information based moderation

income distribution and infant mortality comparing two countries in which the poor have equal real incomes the one in which the rich are wealthier is likely to have a higher infant mortality rate this anomalous result does not appear to spring from measurement error in estimating the income of the poor and the association between high infant mortality and income inequality is still present after controlling for other factors such as education medical personnel and fertility the positive association of infant mortality and the income of the rich suggests that measured real incomes may be a poor measure of social welfare this paper considers and tests several possible explanations such as the provision of medical services the degree of urbanization the extent of female literacy and differences in the composition of births among different income groups none of these factors adequately accounts for the positive association between the incomes of the rich and infant mortality the geographical scope is worldwide excerpt

national culture and financial systems countries differ in the way their financial activities are organized in anglo saxon countries such as the us and the uk financial systems are dominated by stock markets whereas in continental europe and japan banks play a predominant role why do countries differ in the configuration of their financial systems we argue that national culture plays a significant role we find that countries characterized by higher uncertainty avoidance are more likely to have a bank based system

to steal or not to steal firm attributes legal environment and valuation data on corporate governance and disclosure practices reveal wide within country variation that decreases with the strength of investors legal protection a simple model identifies three firm attributes related to that variation investment opportunities external financing and ownership structure using firm level governance and transparency data from 27 countries we find that all three firm attributes are related to the quality of governance and disclosure practices and firms with higher governance and transparency rankings are valued higher in stock markets all relations are stronger in less investor friendly countries demonstrating that firms adapt to poor legal environments to establish efficient governance practices

presidential address institutions and culture how and why does distant political and economic history shape the functioning of current institutions this paper argues that individual values and convictions about the scope of application of norms of good conduct provide the missing link evidence from a variety of sources points to two main findings first individual values consistent with generalized as opposed to limited morality are widespread in societies that were ruled by non despotic political institutions in the distant past second well functioning institutions are often observed in countries or regions where individual values are consistent with generalized morality and under different identifying assumptions this suggests a causal effect from values to institutional outcomes the paper ends with a discussion of the implications for future research jel a10 d7 e00

collectivism and corruption in bank lending this paper examines how national culture and collectivism in particular influences corruption in bank lending we hypothesize that interdependent self construal and particularist norms in collectivist countries lead to a higher level of lending corruption through their influence both on the interactions between bank officers and bank customers and on the dynamics among bank colleagues using a sample covering 3835 firms across 38 countries we find strong evidence that firms domiciled in collectivist countries perceive a higher level of lending corruption than firms domiciled in individualist countries in terms of economic magnitude the effect of collectivism is substantially larger than the effects of other cultural dimensions uncertainty avoidance masculinity and power distance and institutional factors identified in prior studies bank supervision bank competition information sharing and media monitoring we further find that the positive relationship between collectivism and lending corruption is not driven by endogeneity and that it is robust to different measures of bank corruption different measures of collectivism and different estimation methods finally we find that the link between collectivism and lending corruption cannot be explained by the role of the government in the economy political connections biased responses from disgruntled borrowers or relationship lending

evolution of infant and child mortality in chile a model a model in which the birth rate and the infant and child mortality rates are jointly determined is used to explain the coexistence of declining infant and child mortality with increasing unemployment and falling living standards for at least part of the population the causes of the mortality decline are complex and include economic health care welfare urbanization and other aspects unemployment affected the birth rate and therefore the child mortality rate but the fall in infant mortality obeyed different factors such as midwife visits health expenditure and access to cheap energy policies require careful designing since often there is a trade off between infant and child mortality specially if the birth rate is high progress in one of these areas may prove counterproductive in the other if choices along the economy s phillips curve are possible solely on infant and child mortality grounds higher earnings should be preferred to lower unemployment