forest incomes and rural livelihoods in chiradzulu district malawi abstract this paper examines forest income among rural dwellers in one of malawi s most densely populated districts chiradzulu 160 households were interviewed in two sites only 20 km apart purposely selected on the basis of access to a forest reserve people are extremely poor with 97 having incomes of less than 1 usd day forest income constitutes around 15 of total income only non farm income 47 and agriculture 28 rank higher the poorest segment depends more on forest income than the least poor group but the medium income group exhibits the highest dependence fuelwood constitutes the major source of such income followed by fodder the incomes mainly support current consumption people with better access to the forest reserve have higher total income forest income and relative forest income as revealed through a gini coefficient analysis forest resources have an important income equalizing effect across rural households a particular group of resource poor farmers 8 1 of sample with little access to agricultural land and a high representation of female heads derives an average of 65 of their income from the forest an important policy lesson is that restricting people s access to forest resources can have substantial effects on household livelihoods and welfare and would serve to increase income inequalities in the area livelihood researchers should now recognize the substantial income from forest resources

interpreting measures of economic loss evidence from contingent valuation and experimental studies abstract from the standpoint of conventional welfare theory it is surprising that responses to contingent valuation studies of environmental goods have shown a consistent difference between willingness to pay and compensation demanded measures of economic loss this paper examines these results in light of four reasons most often given as grounds for their dismissal new experimental evidence supports an interpretation of the observed disparity in payment and compensation based measures as both real and psychologically meaningful an alternative conceptual framework suggested by prospect theory is outlined and its relevance for economic assessments of potential environmental change is discussed briefly

modeling global spillover of new product takeoff abstract this article examines the global spillover of foreign product introductions and takeoffs on a focal country s time to takeoff using a novel data set of penetration data for eight high tech products across 55 countries it shows how foreign clout the susceptibility to foreign influences and intercountry distances affect global spillover patterns the authors find that foreign takeoffs but not foreign introductions accelerate a focal country s time to takeoff the larger the country the higher its economic wealth and the more it exports the more clout it has in the global spillover process in contrast the poorer the country the more tourists it receives and the higher its population density the more susceptible it is to global spillover effects cross country spillover effects are stronger the closer the countries are to one another both geographically and economically but not necessarily in terms of culture the model the authors develop also quantifies the spillover between each co

does trading non timber forest products drive specialisation in products gathered for consumption evidence from the brazilian amazon abstract diversification is a hallmark of family based rural production but what happens when autarkic rural communities integrate into markets economic theory predicts that households will maintain diversified strategies when faced with risk however many studies have claimed that openness to markets drives specialisation to enhance returns nevertheless there is little evidence about the association between trade in non timber forest products ntfps and the diversity of ntfps consumed relying on a household survey and systematic observations of brazilian amazonian caboclos we evaluated whether exposure to ntfp markets effort and cash income correlates with the diversity of ntfps consumed richness and simpson diversity the results were conflicting first there was variation across ntfp subtypes although the variety richness of terrestrial ntfps consumed vegetables and hunted animals was greater in households trading ntfps the richness of fish consumed was lower because fishing could not be pursued concurrently with activities related to ntfp trade second the observed effects differed across indicators of diversity which shows that intensification in the use of a few resources may occur third the associations with alternative definitions of exposure to the ntfp market also differed these results indicate that ntfp markets do not necessarily undermine local consumption diversity

option value empirical evidence from a case study of recreation and water quality a procedure for measuring option value and other preservation values of water quality is developed and applied to a case study area in the south platte river basin colorado benefits from water based recreation activities are the focus of the study the results provide an empirical test and confirmation of weisbrod s proposal that option value and other preservation values represent important social benefits and should be added to the aggregate consumer surplus of recreation activities to determine the total benefit of environmental amenities to society in the absence of such an estimate insufficient resources would be allocated by society to preservation of unique environments such as pristine mountain streams where mineral and energy development may irreversibly degrade water quality

marketing mix and brand sales in global markets examining the contingent role of country market characteristics marketing products globally is challenging due to the diverse nature of markets we use market heterogeneity unbranded competition resource and infrastructure availability and sociopolitical governance as country market characteristics that distinguish between developed and emerging countries we investigate their moderating role on the relationship between elements of the marketing mix and brand sales we provide evidence from a hierarchical linear model and a panel data set of brands from 14 emerging and developed markets that account for 62 of the global gdp that country market characteristics moderate the relationship between the complete set of marketing mix elements and brand sales performance asymmetrically while distribution and price have the largest impact in emerging and developed countries respectively product innovation and advertising have significantly larger impacts in emerging markets relative to developed countries these finding highlights the importance of contingency view of marketing strategy in global markets

cosmopolitan consumers as a target group for segmentation for international companies the literature recommends directing segmentation efforts at customer characteristics rather than country characteristics consumers degree of cosmopolitan orientation has been suggested as a powerful segmentation base as this characteristic is expected to drive consumers tastes and preferences to advance research on this segmentation base this article offers a conceptualization of the consumer cosmopolitanism construct by 1 delineating its conceptual domain 2 highlighting its key dimensions namely open mindedness diversity appreciation and consumption transcending borders and 3 examining its links with theoretically relevant variables specifically consumer ethnocentrism and global consumption orientation based on the aforementioned conceptualization a consumer research specific and psychometrically sound measurement instrument the c cosmo scale is subsequently developed and tested in a series of complementary studies finally empirically based insights into the characteristics of cosmopolitan consumers are offered by 1 profiling them on consumption relevant variables innovativeness risk aversion susceptibility to normative influence consumer ethnocentrism and demographic characteristics 2 examining the link between consumer cosmopolitanism and willingness to buy foreign products and 3 developing an empirically based typology of cosmopolitan local consumers using a cluster analysis approach from a managerial perspective findings suggest that the identification and subsequent targeting of cosmopolitan consumers may well represent an appropriate strategy for internationally active companies

forest resource use change during early market integration in tropical rain forests the huaorani of upper amazonia abstract this paper examines the impact of early market integration on the extraction of forest resources by traditional forest based households with emphasis on the commercial subsistence dichotomy empirical analysis of resource use transition among the huaorani people of the ecuadorian amazon shows that as markets become more accessible production patterns change but do not seem to affect subsistence production huaoranis increase the production of animal resources from forests however the extraction of harvested and primarily of farmed commodities seems not to be affected data also suggest that trade relies on limited specialization trade among the huaorani communities studied depends on raising the production of some of the same commodities that are found in the subsistence basket these changes are clearly explained if a flexible labor theory of early market integration is used this period is characterized by labor and land abundance and a relative ease to move labor from low return to more productive activities under these conditions market participation need not be accompanied by a reduction in the production of subsistence commodities or commodity specialization high risks and uncertainty and high transportation costs keep poor forest households from shifting completely to commercial activities this contrasts with a long presumption that production of individual commodities responds quickly to price changes based on demand shifts between products but that total output is slow to respond only after all the surplus labor has been allocated to productive activities total output becomes less flexible at this point increased production requires commodity or technological specialization

nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural africa concepts dynamics and policy implications abstract asset activity and income diversification lie at the heart of livelihood strategies in rural africa this paper introduces a special issue on the topic income diversification and livelihoods in rural africa cause and consequence of change we concentrate on core conceptual issues that bedevil the literature on rural income diversification and the policy implications of the empirical evidence presented in this special issue

institutions infrastructure and economic growth abstract this paper develops a structural model of infrastructure and output growth that takes account of institutional and economic factors that mediate in the infrastructure gdp interactions cross country estimates of the model indicate that the contribution of infrastructure services to gdp is substantial and in general exceeds the cost of provision of those services the results also shed light on the factors that shape a country s response to its infrastructure needs and offer policy implications for facilitating the removal of infrastructure inadequacies

estimating recreation demand using the properties of the implied consumer surplus consumer surplus estimates are random variables while they are generally recognized as stochastic little attention was given to their properties prior to bockstael and strand s 1987 evaluation of conventional practices for using recreation demand models in benefit measurement their paper as well as all the research it stimulated adopted a similar strategy namely to judge the methods for estimating demand or random utility models based on the properties of their respective consumer surplus estimates this paper proposes a different strategy to define estimators based on the properties of their implied consumer surplus estimates this type of argument is not new and usually is associated with the rationale offered for bayesian estimators 2 however the motivation for the estimator proposed here can be based on minimizing the mean squared error of the consumer surplus estimates moreover it can be constructed from the statistics usually reported with ordinary least squares ols estimates

measuring the cost of time in recreation demand analysis comment in the february 1981 issue of the journal mcconnell and strand present a model of recreation demand in which the opportunity cost of an hour of travel to a recreation site is assumed not to equal the average hourly income of the recreating family they test the model with data from a 1978 survey of sportfishermen in the chesapeake bay region simply stated the model hypothesizes that the sportfishermen will behave as if the price of a recreational trip is the sum of cash costs and the opportunity cost of travel time this opportunity cost is hypothesized to be some ratio k of average family income per hour times the travel time mcconnell and strand estimate the value of k by regressing recreation days against cash costs and opportunity cost of time as separate variables the ratio of regression coefficients then is an estimate of k they go on to estimate the ratio k of the opportunity cost of travel to the average income for sportfishermen in the chesapeake bay region the authors hypothesize that the ratio k falls between 0 and 1 implying that sportfishermen value the time in transit lower than their average income when working sufficient conditions for k to equal one include a the tax rate is zero b marginal earnings are constant and c nonwork income equals zero this comment is written to point out certain aspects of the study which may have led to an underestimation of the value of k it is argued that mcconnell and strand have misspecified their demand equation in such a way that their estimate for k 612 is biased downward mcconnell and strand hypothesize the demand relation

the role of past performance in export ventures a short term reactive approach this paper employs organizational learning theory to examine the short term effect of past export performance and internal management and external market forces on marketing strategy adaptation and current export performance results from a survey of over 500 export managers indicate that current period performance improvement in terms of performance achievement export intensity and performance satisfaction in the current year is influenced by the firm s commitment to exporting further the authors found that while performance satisfaction feeds performance improvement in the following year both the previous year s export intensity and export performance achievement produce a negative impact on current period performance improvement more importantly the level of development in the export market facilitates marketing strategy adaptation in the short term as does export intensity in the previous year however satisfaction with previous year performance negatively influences the degree of distribution adaptation implications for international business researchers and practitioners are also discussed

foreign direct investment competition and industrial development in the host country this paper analyses the impact of foreign direct investment fdi on the development of local firms we focus on two likely effects of fdi a competition effect which deters entry of domestic firms and positive market externalities which foster the development of local industry using a simple theoretical model to illustrate how these forces work we show that the number of domestic firms follows a u shaped curve where the competition effect first dominates but is gradually outweighed by positive externalities evidence for ireland tends to support this result specifically applying semi parametric regression techniques on plant level panel data for the manufacturing sector we find that while the competition effect may have initially deterred local firms entry this initial effect has been outpaced by positive externalities making the overall impact of fdi largely positive for the domestic industry

consumer confidence and rational expectations are agents beliefs consistent with the theory consumer confidence is found to have predictive content for a wide range of macroeconomic variables including consumption growth contrary to standard repih we find that on uk data the repih is rejected due to the predictive content of consumer confidence and not labour income we explain this finding in terms of precautionary behaviour extending the hansen and singleton consumption capm model to allow a conditional variance we find a high level of confidence is associated with both greater optimism about the level of consumption and greater uncertainty about the forecaster variance once allowance is made for time aggregation the over identifying restrictions implied by this model are accepted we estimate a small but statistically significant intertemporal elasticity of substitution

consumption and vulnerability among foragers and horticulturalists in the rainforest of honduras abstract it is often said that poor rural households in developing countries remain inadequately insured against shocks using panel data from tawahka amerindians in the honduran rainforest a horticultural foraging society we estimate the consumption smoothing ability and vulnerability to risks of 32 households in two villages with varying degrees of market openness the information was collected using cultural anthropology methods and key variables were estimated through direct observations and physical measures to reduce measurement errors results suggest that household consumption is directly affected by income shocks despite the practice of partial insurance and risk sharing within communities in a comparison between the villages we find evidence that households practice distinctly different consumption smoothing behaviors partly driven by their gap in economic development

product and promotion adaptation in export ventures an empirical investigation while the desirability of marketing adaptation vs standardization has long been debated within both academic and business circles empirical studies investigating the conditions under which each strategy becomes appropriate have been rare this article provides a formal investigation of the correlates of product and promotion adaptation in export ventures a conceptual framework of product and promotion adaptation in export ventures is proposed to integrate the diverse perspectives on the issue of standardization versus adaptation the conceptual framework is further specified in a testable form and tested via data collected by a series of in depth personal interviews with export marketing managers the results support the contingency perspective recently emerging in the standardization literature and suggest that the degree of the various aspects of product adaptation i e upon and after entry and promotion adaptation i e positioning packaging labeling and promotional approach are significantly influenced by company product industry and export market characteristics however the profile of the correlates varies across the various aspects of product and promotion adaptation

marginal welfare measures for discrete choice models abstract this letter deals with the use of discrete choice models for applied welfare analysis an approximate formula is presented for the marginal willingness to pay for a change in the attributes of any of the discrete alternatives which is simple to calculate and has an intuitive interpretation

the influence of global and local iconic brand positioning on advertising persuasion in an emerging market setting this study explores how positioning a brand as global and or local iconic can moderate the impact of advertising frequency af on brand attitudes in an emerging market context we argue that brands may be seen as the source of an advertisement and that the positioning of a brand can thus enhance source attractiveness and or source credibility which in turn facilitate the impact of af on brand attitudes our results support that both a global and a local iconic positioning enhance the af brand image relationship but they do not have an effect on the af brand quality relationship additionally we examine whether source attractiveness and source credibility mediate these moderation effects and find that only source attractiveness is a significant mediator additionally we investigate whether a hybrid positioning strategy i e positioning as both global and local iconic is beneficial results indicate that a separate positioning i e global or local iconic is a better strategy to increase the attractiveness of the advertising source and in turn facilitate the effect of advertising frequency to create brand image

government policies market imperfections and foreign direct investment the internalization eclectic theory of foreign direct investment includes the important insight that government policies create market imperfections which make foreign direct investment an economically rational strategic alternative for firms this paper reexamines the effects of government policies on market imperfections and foreign direct investment fdi it broadens and refines the analysis of the impact of government policies by developing the following arguments 1 there is a wide range of government policies that affect firms fdi decisions via their effects on market imperfections 2 there are numerous dimensions of variability in government policies that need to be identified in order to understand fully the effects of government policies on market imperfections and hence fdi flows 3 some of the effects of government policies on market imperfections and fdi are the opposite of those previously noted in the fdi literature 4 the effects of government policies vary across the several individual components of fdi flows the paper thus examines the following variables and relationships more extensively and precisely than has the previous literature government policy variables as causal factors affecting fdi market imperfection variables as intervening factors in the causal connections between government policies and fdi and the multiple indicators of the various dimensions of fdi as dependent variables

how well does advertising work generalizations from meta analysis of brand advertising elasticities abstract the authors conduct a meta analysis of 751 short term and 402 long term direct to consumer brand advertising elasticities estimated in 56 studies published between 1960 and 2008 the study finds several new empirical generalizations about advertising elasticity the most important are as follows the average short term advertising elasticity is 12 which is substantially lower than the prior meta analytic mean of 22 there has been a decline in the advertising elasticity over time and advertising elasticity is higher 1 for durable goods than nondurable goods 2 in the early stage than the mature stage of the life cycle 3 for yearly data than quarterly data and 4 when advertising is measured in gross rating points than monetary terms the mean long term advertising elasticity is 24 which is much lower than the implied mean in the prior meta analysis 41 many of the results for short term elasticity hold for long term elasticity with some notable exceptions the authors discuss t

margins and market shares pharmacy incentives for generic substitution we study the impact of product margins on pharmacies incentive to promote generics instead of brand names first we construct a theoretical model where pharmacies can persuade patients with a brand name prescription to purchase a generic version instead we show that pharmacies substitution incentives are determined by relative margins and relative patient copayments second we exploit a unique product level panel data set which contains information on sales and prices at both producer and retail level in the empirical analysis we nd a strong relationship between the margins of brand names and generics and their market shares in terms of policy implications our results suggest that pharmacy incentives are crucial for promoting generic sales

does the nonfarm economy offer pathways for upward mobility evidence from a panel data study in ethiopia summary empirical studies across many developing countries routinely document a positive correlation between participation in rural nonfarm employment and households wealth or income this paper explores whether nonfarm employment leads to higher consumption expenditure growth in ethiopia we find that 1 households consumption expenditure growth is positively correlated with the initial share of nonfarm income 2 the growth elasticity of nonfarm income share is higher for wealthier households and 3 the main source of growth for nonfarm participants comes from the higher rates of return participants enjoy on their human and physical capital

validation of empirical measures of welfare change a comparison of nonmarket techniques since the passing of the flood control act of 1936 the attention of many resource economists has been directed towards measuring the benefits and costs of alternative uses of natural resources increasingly it has been recognized that the value of some of these uses is not explicitly determined through market transactions this has led to the focus of much attention upon the development of nonmarket methods to estimate the value of these uses in the 1940s the groundwork for the travel cost method was established by hotelling prewitt 1949 following this in the 1960s davis initiated the basic foundation for bidding methods davis 1963 which were later to be subsumed under the heading of contingent valuation methods brookshire randall and stoll 1980 schulze d arge and brookshire 1981 thayer 1981 both of these methods will be further discussed below in addition to these two methods a third approach the unit day value method has been recognized as acceptable but not preferred for the valuation of recreational uses of water and related land resources dwyer kelley and bowes 1977 u s water resources council 1979 given the existence of alternative methods of estimating the value of resource uses several obvious questions arise one of the first of these is under what circumstances is each method most appropriate existing literature has focussed sufficiently on this question and pointed out limitations of each especially the travel cost method and unit day value methods brookshire ives and schulze 1976 dwyer kelly and bowes 1977 freeman 1979 mcconnell 1975 randall ives and eastman 1977 schulze d arge and brook

applied welfare economics with discrete choice models economists have been paying increasing attention to the study of situations in which consumers face a discrete rather than a continuous set of choices such models are potentially very important in evaluating the impact of government programs upon consumer welfare but very little has been said in general regarding the tools of applied welfare economics indiscrete choice situations this paper shows how the conventional methods of applied welfare economics can be modified to handle such cases it focuses on the computation of the excess burden of taxation and the evaluation of quality change the results are applied to stochastic utility models including the popular cases of probit and logit analysis throughout the emphasis is on providing rigorous guidelines for carrying out applied work this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

emerging themes in international business research this study is motivated by two research questions 1 which recent contributions have been driving the research agenda in international business 2 which emerging themes in the literature are likely to set the stage for future work to examine these questions the study examined scholarly work in international business over the time period 1996 2006 in six leading international business journals journal of international business studies management international review journal of world business international marketing review journal of international marketing and international business review next a delphi study of the most prolific authors in these journals over the same time period was conducted to delineate a future research agenda in international business addressing these two research questions provides us with a more complete understanding of the progress made to date in international business research and provides a glimpse of the future

the rural non farm economy prospects for growth and poverty reduction summary policy makers have high expectations for the rural non farm economy rnfe given high income shares growing employment and frequently low capital requirements they see the rnfe as a potential pathway out of poverty for their rural poor yet available evidence suggests that pro poor rural non farm growth does not occur automatically for the poor to benefit from rural non farm growth policy makers must stimulate buoyant rural economies with robust non farm income growth not simply low productivity employment moreover the poor must gain access to growing market niches fluid labor markets provide one important bridge linking the rural poor to growing non farm opportunities

the political and economic origins of consumer confidence economic conditions the story usually goes influence consumer confidence which in turn influences both political evaluations and votes but we have little sense of the origins of consumer confidence itself it is generally assumed that monthly reports of the nation s level of consumer confidence respond to objective economic conditions we argue that politics is important for understanding consumer sentiment beyond what we know from economic conditions specifically we demonstrate a direct effect of political evaluations of the president s management of the economy the party of the president extraordinary political events and monetary policy as well as an indirect effect of media coverage of the economy on consumer sentiment after controlling for economic conditions when news coverage is positive citizens give favorable evaluations leading to more positive sentiment our findings suggest that understanding the political economy requires an emphasis on the causal effect of politics as well as economics

dynamic measures of scope and scale economies an application to german agriculture static concepts of multiproduct economies of scale and scope are extended into a dynamic setting within the cost of adjustment framework important properties of the dynamic measures are developed and the foundations of a dynamic theory of the firm generalizing static neoclassical theory are presented dynamic measures of scope and scale as well as shadow costs are estimated empirically for multiple output multiple input german dairy farms operating under a production quota causes of scope economies are explored and a conceptual model to predict the evolution of the production structure of german farms is formulated

income smoothing and consumption smoothing one way that risk averse households protect consumption levels is to borrow and use insurance mechanisms another way common in low income economies is to diversify economic activities and make conservative production and employment choices households thus tend toward limiting exposure only to shocks that can be handled with available credit and insurance typically both types of mechanisms are studied independently but much more can be learned by studying them together first we obtain a more complete picture of risks costs and insurance possibilities second it opens the way to considering biases in standard tests of credit and insurance

commercial collection of ntfps and households living in or near the forests case study in que con cuong and ma tuong duong nghe an vietnam abstract in vietnam ntfps has become an important source of cash income for local people living in or near the forests the commercial collection of these products could reduce both the number of species and population of a species in the forests in order to keep the balance between biodiversity and commercial collection of ntfps this paper evaluates the dependence of forest dwellers on ntfps and identifies the relation between household characteristics and cash income generated by ntfp collection as a result commercial collection of ntfps is negatively correlated to dependency ratio poverty level and distance to the provincial city and positively correlated with female labors of households moreover ntfps are proved to be very important in poor households or in those who lack rice or high rate of female labor the households who have higher dependency ratio benefit less from ntfps sold while those who lack rice for their own consumption or have a higher rate of female labor depend more on ntfps poor households are more dependent on ntfp collection than other groups finally the result of this study highly recommends that the government of vietnam be aware of gender balance distance to provincial city poverty level and dependency ratio when applying a policy related to ntfp conservation an appropriate incentive policy for woman and poor households might be a possible solution for less commercial collection of ntfps the poor households who have low dependency ratio or high female labor rate should be encouraged to participate in the forest management system to control the balance between commercial collection of ntfp and conservation

ex ante willingness to pay with supply and demand uncertainty implications for valuing a sea turtle protection programme it is argued that ex antewillingness to pay is appropriately measured as a function of subjective supply and demand probabilities an exploratory case study of a loggerhead sea turtle protection programme is used to show how estimates of these probabilities can be obtained from a sample survey and how a change in probabilities determines contingent choice empirical results confirm that subjective probabilities are important when explaining ex antewillingness to pay attempts to estimate the determinants of ex antewillingness to pay without controlling for subjective probabilities will result in specification bias it is important that subjective probability information is gleaned from contingent valuation survey respondents and included in empirical models of contingent choice

fostering corporate entrepreneurship cross cultural comparisons of the importance of individualism versus collectivism this study reports on results of a cross cultural empirical investigation designed to assess the impact of individualism collectivism upon organizational entrepreneurship the findings indicate individualism collectivism is an important factor in understanding entrepreneurial behavior in the firm implications of these findings are discussed

new empirical generalizations on the determinants of price elasticity abstract the importance of pricing decisions for firms has fueled an extensive stream of research on price elasticities in an influential meta analytical study tellis 1988 summarized price elasticity research findings until 1986 however empirical generalizations on price elasticity require modifications because of 1 changes in market characteristics i e characteristics of brands product categories and economic conditions and 2 changes in the research methodology used to assess price elasticities therefore the authors present a meta analysis of price elasticity with new empirical generalizations on its determinants across a set of 1851 price elasticities based on 81 studies the average price elasticity is 2 62 a salient finding is that over the past four decades sales elasticities have significantly increased in magnitude whereas share and choice elasticities have remained fairly constant the authors find that accommodating price endogeneity has a strong magnitude increasing impa

actual averting expenditure versus stated willingness to pay the purpose of this study is to perform a complete comparison of actual averting expenditure and stated willingness to pay measures and to determine if the averting expenditure is a lower bound of the willingness to pay measured from contingent valuation experiment as suggested by literature in addition to the single value comparison bootstrap krinsky and robb jackknife and cameron are four simulation methods used to calculate confidence intervals for response function sample sizes of 100 200 and 1000 are simulated 100 and 200 times respectively a set of data with 540 households from a contingent policy referendum survey is employed for our purpose under a specific level of bod improvement a one to one single mean value comparison of the actual averting expenditure is greater than the mean willingness to pay from utility difference model the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical expectation for expenditure difference that averting expenditure is a lower bound of willingness to

willingness to pay measures and expectations an experiment in studies of the willingness to pay for various environmental commodities services it is typically explicitly or implicitly assumed that the respondent has perfect has perfect foresight this paper which is based on a questionnaire completed by examining if and how the value of a hunting permit is affected by the hunter s expectations regarding the outcome of the hunting in particular the willingness to pay is estimated as a function of expected values as well as variances of different variables using a question which reflects an extension of jensen s inequality to the multivariate case as well as measures of downside risk it is shown that risk attitudes are important determinants of the willingness to pay for a hunting permit

economic shocks diversification and forest use in uganda we investigate household outcomes arising from economic shocks in rural uganda focusing on patterns of income diversification and forest use and the role of assets in shaping ex post response to shocks income poor households and those with below average landholdings are observed to have more diversified income portfolios than their cohorts households encountering above average losses tend to have more diversified income portfolios subsequent to the losses larger negative shocks are associated with greater use of the forest in subsequent periods especially among asset poor households findings suggest that development of better safety nets would reduce both vulnerability and forest pressure

the performance implications of relationship banking during macroeconomic expansion and contraction a study of japanese banks social relationships and overseas expansion we propose a social perspective emphasizing the opportunities and constraints of bank firm relationships to understand the determinants of relationship banks performance using japanese banks to test our theory using social exchange and role theories we found banks that have strong social relationships performed differently during japan s macroeconomic expansion and contraction cycles however our results indicate that social exchange and role relationships are context specific banks benefited from internationalization during a domestic macroeconomic expansion as a result of their home country social relationships but they were less constrained by the same social relationships in their international operations during a domestic macroeconomic contraction

can consumer confidence forecast household spending evidence from the european commission business and consumer surveys 1 introductionthe analysis of the impact of consumer attitudes on consumer spending has been an area of sustained interest in the macroeconomics literature this interest in consumer attitudes reflects a popular belief that macroeconomic outcomes depend heavily on consumers expectations of future economic conditions reinforcing this belief is the fact that consumer spending accounts for 60 to 70 of the gross domestic product of highly industrialized countries such as the g 7 during the past few decades a number of single country investigations have attempted to assess the predictive power of consumer confidence in forecasting household spending for example in the united states mishkin 1978 reports that the index of consumer sentiment ics published by the university of michigan possesses good explanatory power for changes in durable goods carroll fuhrer and wilcox 1994 also find that the michigan ics has good predictive capability with regard to household expenditure but that its forecasting power decreases considerably when the index is used along with other macroeconomic variables 1 kwan and cotsomitis 2004 examine the robustness of carroll fuhrer and wilcox s 1994 findings when alternative measures of consumer confidence are used in their prediction equations they report that use of the michigan index of consumer expectations improves on the estimation results of carroll fuhrer and wilcox 1994 bram and ludvigson 1998 and ludvigson 2004 compare the forecasting performance of the michigan ics and the u s conference board s index of consumer confidence icc their findings indicate that the conference board s index provides additional information about future consumer consumption that is not captured by the michigan index however chopin and darrat 2000 utilizing a multivariate causality framework report that the conference board s icc is an unreliable predictor of u s retail sales as regards other studies using non u s data acemoglu and scott 1994 employ granger causality and regression analyses to determine if consumer confidence as measured by the gallup poll in the united kingdom can predict future consumption they find that consumer confidence is a leading indicator of future consumption growth in a subsequent study delorme kamerschen and voeks 2002 examine whether consumer confidence and rational expectations are the same in the united kingdom as they are in the united states they report that the predictive ability of the u k consumer confidence index is greater than that of the united states belessiotis 1996 using french data also reports that the consumer confidence index provides decent explanatory power for future consumer spending in canada kwan and cotsomitis 2005 find that although consumer sentiment is a reliable predictor of consumer expenditures at the national level results obtained using regional data are quite mixed fan and wong 1998 find that unlike the case in the united states or the united kingdom confidence indicators in hong kong have little or no explanatory power in forecasting household spending the existing studies on the ability of consumer confidence to predict household spending have produced mixed results the results vary depending on the sample period chosen the frequency of observations monthly or quarterly and the different survey methodologies employed to gauge consumer attitudes moreover most of these studies confine their attention to single country investigations given the diversity of results it is important to investigate the predictive power of consumer confidence on the basis of comparable time series data for as many countries as possible this paper presents a first formal attempt to study the ability of consumer confidence to forecast household spending within a multicountry framework to this end we use two confidence indices namely the consumer confidence indicator cci and the economic sentiment indicator esi both of which are derived from the european commission business and consumer survey ecbcs

global takeoff of new products culture wealth or vanishing differences the authors study the takeoff of 16 new products across 31 countries 430 categories to analyze how and why takeoff varies across products and countries they test the effect of 12 hypothesized drivers of takeoff using a parametric hazard model the authors find that the average time to takeoff varies substantially between developed and developing countries between work and fun products across cultural clusters and over calendar time products take off fastest in japan and norway followed by other nordic countries the united states and some countries of midwestern europe takeoff is driven by culture and wealth plus product class product vintage and prior takeoff most importantly time to takeoff is shortening over time and takeoff is converging across countries the authors discuss the implications of these findings

adaptation and performance in foreign markets evidence of systematic under adaptation past empirical studies have yielded no consistent relationship between strategy adaptation and firm performance these inconclusive results may be partially due to a bias amongt managers to under adapt their host market strategies this paper presents the results of the second stage of a longitudinal study identifying a potential status quo bias among exporters leading to systematic under adaptation

telecommunications infrastructure and economic development a simultaneous approach in diesem beitrag wird untersucht welchen einflus die telekommunikations infrastruktur auf die wirtschaftliche entwicklung ausubt diese wichtige frage hat im zusammenhang mit der diskussion um informationsautobahnen aktualitat erlangt in der vorliegenden studie wird der einflus der telekommunikations infrastruktur fur 21 oecdlander fur die vergangenen 20 jahre analysiert es wird ein strukturgleichungsmodell geschatzt in dem investitionen in die telekommunikations infrastruktur als endogene variable erfast werden und in einem mikromodell angebot und nachfrage nach telekommunikations investitionen spezifiziert werden das mikromodell wird dann zusammen mit der makro wachstumsgleichung geschatzt als ergebnis stellen die autoren dann eine positive kausalbeziehung zwischen telekommunikations investitionen und wirtschaftlicher entwicklung fest wenn eine kritische masse an telekommunikations infrastruktur existiert

can income programs reduce tropical forest pressure income shocks and forest use in malawi summary seasonal household data from malawi are used to study links between income shocks and forest use a tobit model is estimated to examine whether household forest use responds to receipt of a positive income shock delivered as a technology assistance package and the characteristics of households reliant on forests for shock coping results show households experiencing an income boost had lower forest extraction compared to households that did not receive such a shock ceteris paribus we find households most dependent on forests for natural insurance are those located near woodlands and headed by an individual who is relatively young and male 2005 published by elsevier ltd

price and advertising effectiveness over the business cycle abstract firms are under increasing pressure to justify their marketing expenditures this evolution toward greater accountability is reinforced in harsh economic times when marketing budgets are among the first to be reconsidered to make such decisions managers must know whether and to what extent marketing s effectiveness varies with the economic tide however surprisingly little research addresses this issue therefore the authors conduct a systematic investigation of the business cycle s impact on the effectiveness of two important marketing instruments price and advertising to do so they estimate time varying short and long term advertising and price elasticities for 150 brands across 36 consumer packaged goods categories using 18 years of monthly u k data from 1993 to 2010 the long term price sensitivity tends to decrease during economic expansions whereas long term advertising elasticities increase during contractions the long term own and cross price elasticities increase moreover

land use and income diversification comparing traditional and colonist populations in the brazilian amazon this article compares and analyzes land use and income diversification among two distinct groups of farmers in the brazilian amazon recent colonists in ouro preto do oeste rondonia and traditional long term residents along the tapajos river para we investigate the hypothesis that farmers who diversify their cash income sources clear less forest on an annual basis and we compare these livelihood choices across colonist and traditional populations in particular we develop a conceptual model based on the household production framework and use econometric models to identify determinants of diversification and forest clearing we find that diversification of agricultural cash crops is negatively correlated with forest clearing by colonists providing limited evidence for the hypothesis other significant covariates of diversification and forest clearing include cash income levels stage in family life cycle cattle ownership and chemical inputs differences in these variables and differences in household response to these variables explain variation in diversification and forest clearing across the two populations

how dynamic consumer response competitor response company support and company inertia shape long term marketing effectiveness long term marketing effectiveness is a high priority research topic for managers and emerges from the complex interplay among dynamic reactions of several market players this paper introduces restricted policy simulations to distinguish four dynamic forces consumer response competitor response company inertia and company support a rich marketing dataset allows the analysis of price display feature advertising and product line extensions the first finding is that consumer response differs significantly from the net effectiveness of product line extensions price feature and advertising in particular net sales effects are up to five times stronger and longer lasting than consumer response second this difference is not due to competitor response but to company action for tactical actions price and feature it takes the form of inertia as promotions last for several weeks for strategic actions advertising and product line extensions support by other marketing instruments greatly enhances dynamic consumer response this company action negates the postpromotion dip in consumer response and enhances the long term sales benefits of product line extensions feature and advertising therefore managers are urged to evaluate company decision rules for inertia and support when assessing long term marketing effectiveness

normative observations on the international value added chain and strategic groups the formulation of strategy can be fruitfully viewed as placing bets on certain markets and on certain links of the value added chain the key to understanding a global strategy is to locate how competitive positions in one national market change the economics for entry into other countries and into other product lines this article argues that global strategies succeed by creating certain economies along and the between value added chains and by designing marketing programs that adapt products to national needs and yet exploit these upstream economies two major conclusions are that a company can compete in different strategic groups across countries and that a hallmark feature of a global strategy is the creation of operational flexibility to benefit from uncertainty

getting to global an evolutionary perspective of brand expansion in international markets the globalization of brands is an evolutionary process that is determined by environmental and firm level factors including a brand s position in the firm s global brand architecture a framework is developed incorporating aspects of environmental uncertainty mimetic behavior and experiential learning as they relate to the globalization of brands global brand architecture is introduced as an important strategic consideration of a brand s position and stage of internationalization the hypotheses are tested within the context of the global automotive industry employing an event history analysis with time varying covariates the results reveal complex effects with respect to the role of market attractiveness experiential learning and mimetic behavior in globalization patterns overall this study suggests that firms can accelerate the process of creating global brands if they enter the three major continents in the early stages of international expansion

strategic pricing and detailing behavior in international markets we study three determinants of the levels of price and detailing effort across geographic markets the within market response to each variable the nature of interfirm strategic interactions both within that market and across markets we empirically examine the interactions of prozac zoloft and paxil across the united states the united kingdom germany france and italy our results indicate that all three factors driving marketing mix interactions are at play in this product category the u s market is less price sensitive than the european markets detailing elasticities are comparable across the united states germany and italy while the united kingdom and france show greater elasticity for the u s market we find that almost all deviations from nash pricing and detailing levels are due to within market interactions in the u k market deviations from nash prices come about due mostly to across market interactions both with the united states as well as the rest of europe whereas deviations from nash detailing levels are mainly due to across market interactions with the united states for italy we observe that both within and across market interactions affect price and detailing levels overall the pattern of interactions makes observed prices more similar across countries than prices implied by the estimated elasticities this underscores the importance of considering within and across market interactions in developing multimarket strategy

elasticities of demand and willingness to pay for environmental services in sweden are environmental services luxuriesor necessities are low income groupsrelatively more willing to pay forenvironmental improvements than high incomegroups the discussion on the shape of theenvironmental kuznets curve and environmentaljustice call for analyses that approach thesequestions following a survey based approachfor modelling the demand for public goods thispaper provides estimates of income and priceelasticities of demand for reduced marineeutrophication effects in the case of thebaltic sea using data from five swedishcontingent valuation studies point estimatesindicate that reduced marine eutrophicationeffects can be classified as a necessity and anordinary and price elastic service confidenceintervals show however that the classificationas a necessity is not statisticallysignificant income elasticities of willingnessto pay not to be confused with incomeelasticities of demand are estimated for abroad range of environmental services insweden a basic finding is that income tends toinfluence willingness to pay positively andsignificantly the elasticity estimates are inmost cases greater than zero but less thanunity indicating that the benefits ofenvironmental improvements tend to beregressively distributed in a cost benefitanalysis of a project suggesting environmentalimprovements distributional concerns thereforecall for an introduction of weights or at leasta sensitivity analysis of how weighting wouldchange decisions about the project s socialprofitability

a retrospective on mnc knowledge transfer subsidiary absorptive capacity and hrm in this retrospective we revisit the goals of the original paper and we review the studies that have used our paper to discuss the concept and the development of absorptive capacity we also propose directions for future research stressing the need to develop thorough theoretical and empirical models of absorptive capacity as a multi level and dynamic construct that is contingent on the context in which it is embedded

turns in consumer confidence an information advantage linked to manufacturing this research shows that the manufacturing sector contains private information advantages for consumer confidence it examines the consumer confidence manufacturing link by comparing the u s national level index of consumer sentiment with identically constructed confidence indices from a key manufacturing state and a nonmanufacturing state granger causality analysis shows that the manufacturing state s confidence index leads the national index whereas the nonmanufacturing state s confidence index lags it factors influencing confidence include percentage manufacturing employment equity markets indicators and disposable income fitting a consumption function to confidence measures for the three confidence indices shows the strongest relationship to be in the manufacturing state jel d12 copyright 2006 oxford university press

the effect of common sources of regression error on benefit estimates discussions of the sources of error in recreation demand analysis are common in the existing literature the most traditional line of thought e g gum and martin considers the error component in predicting the individual s recreation behavior to arise from unmeasured socioeconomic factors others e g hanemann attribute at least some of this error to fundamental randomness in human behavior applied statisticians e g hiett and worrall on the other hand suggest that recall of annual number of recreational trips i e the quantity demanded is subject to substantial error still others e g brown et al have argued that recall of explanatory variables such as travel expenses contains error despite the discussion of potential error sources there is no work which relates the sources of error in the demand relationship with benefit measurement 1 of practical importance in recreational demand estimation is whether error assumptions have an influence on welfare measures since it is for public policy decision purposes that recreational demand estimation is usually undertaken will the estimated consumer surplus derived from demand analysis be independent of the assumed source of the error in the regression the purpose of this paper is to explore how the assumptions about sources of error influence estimates of recreation benefits a discussion of the various sources of error in de

a producer s willingness to pay for information under price uncertainty theory and application the central focus of this paper is the development of an easily computable money metric of an agent s willingness to pay for information under risk empirical estimates of the value of information are important for obtaining insights into issues such as the informational efficiency of alternative market structures the effects of the quality of agent s conditional forecasts of market prices on the efficiency of resource use and the social profitability of information supplied by private enterprise and public agencies the paper draws on previous contributions to the theory of competitive firm under price uncertainty namely rothschild and stiglitz 8 sandmo 9 and more recently pope 5 6 and pope chavas and just 7 the latter contribution provides insight into the econometric application of the theory and into the validity of producer surplus measures of firm welfare under risk in these models the production decision is made given the producer s subjective distribution of output price the value of information in this context can be formulated using the bayesian approach which amounts to a comparison of expected utility levels from choices based on prior information with choices based on additional information contributions in this area are numerous and include those of lindley 4 winkler 10 and more recently gould 2 and hess 3 who focused on the effects of risk preferences and the nature of the distribution of random events on the value of information however the literature has given little attention to the question of deriving a money metric of an agent s willingness to pay for information under risk that can be applied to an econometric analysis of observed behavior in part the problem lies with the empirical application of bayes theorem to explain the observed behavior of risk averse agents while estimates of the agent s prior distribution of uncertain events may be obtained from observed choices or in some cases elicited directly the content of additional information the process by which additional information becomes available and whether the agent behaves

identifying generalizable effects of strategic actions on firm performance the case of demand side returns to r d spending this paper provides an approach for assessing generalizable effects of strategic actions on firm performance we identify five key issues that need to be addressed before one can have confidence in the obtained strategic generalization in addition we suggest a methodology for attacking each of these five issues we then illustrate this framework using the example of demand side returns to r d spending we document two empirical generalizations in this research first and foremost we show that demand returns to r d spending depend on whether the firm has ability and motivation to take advantage of the r d investment thus only firms with high ability and motivation leverage the r d investment into monopoly rents in the form of subsequent price increases second we show that the concept of a firm needing both ability and motivation to sustain returns from a strategic action generalizes across strategic actions we make two other conclusions about empirical approaches to strategy research first to pro

a semiparametric smooth coefficient estimator for recreation demand we introduce a semiparametric smooth coefficient estimator for recreation demand data that allows more flexible modeling of preference heterogeneity we show that our sample of visitors each has an individual statistically significant price coefficient estimate leading to clearly nonparametric consumer surplus and willingness to pay wtp distributions we also show mean wtp estimates that are different in economically meaningful ways for every demographic variable we have for our sample of beach visitors this flexibility is valuable for future researchers who can include any variables of interest beyond the standard demographic variables we have included here and the richer results price elasticities consumer surplus and wtp estimates are valuable to planners and policymakers who can easily see how all these estimates vary with characteristics of the population of interest

growing growing gone cascades diffusion and turning points in the product life cycle research on the product life cycle plc has focused primarily on the role of diffusion this study takes a broader theoretical perspective on the plc by incorporating informational cascades and developing and testing many new hypotheses based on this theory on average across 30 product categories the authors find that i new consumer durables have a typical pattern of rapid growth of 45 per year over 8 years ii this period of growth is followed by a slowdown when sales decline by 15 and stay below those of the previous peak for 5 years iii slowdown occurs at 34 population penetration and about 50 of ultimate market penetration iv products with large sales increases at takeoff tend to have larger sales declines at slowdown v leisure enhancing products tend to have higher growth rates and shorter growth stages than nonleisure enhancing products time saving products tend to have lower growth rates and longer growth stages than nontime saving products vi lower probability of slowdown is associated with steeper price reductions lower penetration and higher economic growth vii a hazard model can provide reasonable predictions of the slowdown as early as the takeoff the authors discuss the implications of these findings

governance infrastructure and us foreign direct investment this paper examines the statistical importance of governance infrastructure as a determinant of us foreign direct investment fdi in broad terms governance infrastructure represents attributes of legislation regulation and legal systems that condition freedom of transacting security of property rights and transparency of government and legal processes our econometric analysis uses a two stage estimation procedure in the first stage the probability that a country is an fdi recipient is estimated the results indicate that countries that fail to achieve a minimum threshold of effective governance are unlikely to receive any us fdi countries that receive no us fdi are typically countries that do not promote free and transparent markets that have ineffective governments and that often have legal systems that are not rooted in english common law in the second stage the analysis is restricted to those countries that did receive fdi flows the estimated equations focus on the determinants of the amount of fdi received given that a country is a recipient of us fdi governance infrastructure including the nature of the legal system is an important determinant of the amount received

policy and non policy determinants of u s equity foreign direct investment this study examined the effects of policy and non policy variables on the location of new u s direct investment abroad as distinct from reinvested earnings of existing affiliates using 1977 and 1982 benchmark data the data revealed statistically significant effects for investment incentives positive performance requirements negative and host country effective tax rates negative with interesting differences between the two time periods and between developed versus developing countries significance was also found for non policy variables such as political stability cultural distance gdp per capita and infrastructure

multilevel models in international business research multiple level or mixed linear modeling mlm can simultaneously test hypotheses at several levels of analysis usually two or three or control for confounding effects at one level while testing hypotheses at others advances in multi level modeling allow increased precision in quantitative international business ib research and open up new methodological and conceptual possibilities however they create new challenges and they are still not frequently used in ib research in this editorial we outline some key methodological issues for the uses of mlm in ib including criteria sample size and measure equivalence issues we then examine promising directions for future multilevel ib research considering comparative opportunities at nation multiple nation cluster and within nation region levels including large multilevel databases we also consider its promise for mne research about semi globalization interorganizational effects across nations clusters within nations and teams and subsidiaries within mnes

politics economics and investment abstract few economists or laypeople would deny that political events can have an important sometimes even overwhelming impact on economic decisions in general and investment decisions in particular the first goal of this paper is to integrate a number of political and non traditional economic variables into the standard theory of investment based on the maximization of the expected value of the firm the second goal is to test this generalized investment theory on a particularly fertile field for gauging the interaction of political and economic factors the plant and equipment spending of foreign manufacturing affiliates of us multinationals in argentina brazil and mexico the results of these tests show that the generalized theory is far superior to the traditional alternatives in explaining the real investment of the sample for the 1958 1989 period

constrained choices under risk there has recently been a revival of interest in the implications of rationing for economic theory extending the work of samuelson 21 tobin and houthakker 24 and pollak 16 recent papers by bruno 3 howard 8 latham 13 and neary and roberts 15 have explored the theory of producer and consumer behavior under quantity rationing these developments have provided useful hypotheses in the investigation of economic behavior for example they have stimulated a reexamination of macroeconomic disequilibrium however previous work seems to have focused on economic models in the absence of uncertainty yet given that production decisions are often made before output prices are known and in the absence of complete contingent markets sandmo 22 batra and ullah 2 and others have developed the theory of the competitive firm under price uncertainty under the expected utility maximization hypothesis such a theory provides useful information about the influence of changing economic conditions or of risk behavior on production decisions but because of the presence of short run adjustment costs leading to short run input fixity or because of regulatory or institutional constraints quantity rationing often influences production decisions in order to evaluate how rationing influences such decisions there is a need to develop a conceptual model of constrained choices of the firm under risk the objective of this paper is to explore the implications of quantity rationing in the context of production theory under price uncertainty by introducing risk and risk behavior it extends the classical analysis of quantity constrained production decisions 3 21 the implications of quantity constraints for risk responsive choice functions are derived using the concepts of compensated choice functions and virtual prices it is shown that expected price effects can be decomposed into substitution effects and wealth effects the substitution effects measure the effects of a change in expected price on the compensated choice functions the compensation being made through a change in initial wealth holding expected utility constant the wealth effects characterize risk preferences since a non zero wealth effect reflects a departure from an arrow pratt constant absolute risk aversion utility function the influence of rationing on the properties of ordinary as well as compensated choice functions is analyzed in details by deriving the implications of quantity constraints for firm behavior under uncertainty the paper presents a number of useful results concerning the influence of risk or technology on economic behavior under rationing for example a

foreign counterfeiting of status goods we study the positive and normative effects of counterfeiting i e trademark infringement in markets where consumers are not deceived by forgeries consumers are willing to pay more for counterfeits than for generic merchandise of similar quality because they value the prestige associated with brand name trademarks counterfeiters of status goods impose a negative externality on consumers of genuine items as fakes degrade the status associated with a given label but counterfeits allow consumers to unbundle the status and quality attributes of the brand name products and alter the competition among oligopolistic trademark owners we analyze two policies designed to combat counterfeiting enforcement policy which increases the likelihood of confiscation of illegal items and the imposition of a tariff on low quality imports

the effects of culture and socioeconomics on the performance of global brand image strategies developing and managing brand image is an important part of a firm s marketing program however little research has been done 1 on linking the use of brand image strategies to product performanc