defining the value of a statistical life reply abstract in general empirical estimates of the value of a statistical life vsl are biased however as pointed out by blomqvist 2001 a true blip in the hazard rate can be used to obtain an exact estimate of the vsl the question remains whether individuals and markets are able to value such short drops in the hazard rate

three lenses on the multinational enterprise politics corruption and corporate social responsibility scholars who analyze multinational enterprises mnes recognize the complex relationship between international business ib and society however compared with other ib topics research on politics corruption and corporate social responsibility three lenses on the mne remains somewhat embryonic with unresolved issues regarding frameworks measurement methods and theory this presents unique opportunities for integration and extension of disciplinary perspectives which we explore in this article we provide an introduction to potential linkages across these three lenses an agenda for additional theoretical and empirical research and a review of the papers in the jibs focused issue

the gains from agricultural research under distorted trade abstract this paper explores the gains from research issue within the framework of a product which is traded with the aid of export subsidies because of the taxpayer burden associated with increased exports it is quite possible for the returns to research to be negative a decline in the rate of protection through a rising world market leads to a linear increase in the gains from research while a rise in the internal support price will cause a non linear and negative response if the supply shift is pivotal and a linear and negative response if it is parallel finally global returns to research will be higher than individual country returns and will always be positive in a free trade environment

corruption and the role of information several studies have explored how certain economic and cultural variables affect a country s corruption level this study extends previous research by not only considering these variables but also taking into account the impact that information and communication technology can have on corruption the results indicate that the greater the access to information the lower the corruption levels therefore bridging the digital disparity across countries can also serve to lessen national corruption levels

returns from research in economies with policy distortions hybrid sorghum in sudan conventional estimates of the economic return to agricultural research use market prices for the values of products and inputs on this basis economic rates of return are typically well above the cost of capital suggesting that more investment in research would be socially desirable but these estimates may be incorrect if as is often the case market prices are distorted by market failures or government policies and hence do not reflect social values this paper presents a simple partial equilibrium methodology with which to improve the measurement of social returns to research by taking account of multiple distortions in the market prices of products inputs and foreign exchange the method also takes account of variation in domestic and world prices making a product tradable in some years and nontradable in others the method is applied to the case of hageen dura 1 hd 1 sub saharan africa s first commercially successful hybrid sorghum hd 1 was released in the sudan in 1983 from the start of research in 1979 to 1992 the hd 1 breeding program had an estimated irr of 97 when all major policies in the sorghum market the fertilizer market and the exchange rate are taken into account the high rate of return to hd 1 research was due to the program s low cost and rapid payoff pointing to the potential value of small adaptive research programs taking full advantage of foreign technology and genetic material to produce locally appropriate crosses in a short period of time even in the highly distorted economies of africa such programs can yield very high payoffs

returns to policy oriented agricultural research the case of barley fertilization in syria summary in 1984 icarda and its syrian partners initiated farming systems research that led to a change in national fertilizer allocation policy evidence is assessed on the policy influence of the fertilizer response research and on the impact of switching to a more inclusive policy that relaxed the government s probation of fertilizer allocation to barley interviews with key informants make a persuasive case for attribution estimates from economic surplus models are consistent with a high rate of return on investment in the policy oriented research this case study provides a contribution to the limited empirical literature on returns to research under policy distortions

the determination of technology and commodity policy in the us dairy industry united states dairy policy includes both predatory and productive components the milk price support program is designed to transfer income to dairy farmers while research and extension expenditures are designed to increase social welfare the purpose of this chapter is to provide an empirical example of the theory developed in chapter 4

understanding corruption and firm responses in cross national firm level surveys the issue of corruption is important to politicians citizens and firms since the early 1990s a large number of studies have sought to understand the causes and consequences of corruption employing firm level survey data from various countries while insightful these analyses have largely ignored two important potential problems nonresponse and potential false response by the firms we argue that in politically repressive environments firms use nonresponse and potential false response as self protection mechanisms corruption is likely understated in such countries we test our argument using the world bank enterprise survey data of more than 44 000 firms in 72 countries for the period 2000 2005 we find that firms in countries with less press freedom are more likely to provide nonresponse and false response on the issue of corruption therefore ignoring these systematic biases in firms responses could result in serious underestimation of the severity of corruption in politically repressive countries more important these biases are a rich and underutilized source of information on the political constraints faced by the firms firm managers can better evaluate levels of corruption not only by truthful answers to corruption questions but also by nonresponses and false responses to such questions

canadian dairy policy and the returns to federal dairy cattle research abstract the economic surplus approach is used to estimate the returns to federal investments in dairy cattle research in canada a national supply function is estimated using time series data lagged research expenditures are included as explanatory variables in the model facilitating the calculation of marginal as well as average benefits from research simulation analysis is used to study the effects of product market distortions associated with canadian dairy policy as well as of the marginal excess burden on the rates of return to research and on the distribution of research benefits returns were found to be high at the margin distortions in the product market had a small effect on the overall returns to dairy cattle research but had a large impact on the distribution of research benefits rate of return estimates were found to be indicative of underinvestment even when the marginal excess burden was taken into account

measuring research benefits in an imperfect market voon 1994 recently analyzed the benefits of research in an imperfectly competitive market for an agricultural input studies of this type are important because the agricultural industries are becoming more concentrated and agricultural economists have begun to focus more attention on the implications of imperfect competition in the food and fiber sector the magnitude and distribution of research benefits under alternative market structures are important from both the perspective of agents incentives to undertake investments in research and allocating public monies to support research voon specifically compared the welfare benefit from a cost reducing innovation for an agricultural input under conditions of monopoly to perfect competition in the supply of the input the analysis was based on a framework of linear farm demand for the input and linear and rising marginal cost of supplying the input the key result based on simulations of the market equilibrium under alternative demand and cost elasticity configurations was that research benefits were greater under monopoly than under perfect competition this result is wrong specifically for

profitability of incremental generic promotion of australian dairy products the motivation for this study rests on two factors first australian dairy farmers spend around 20 million annually on generic promotion and estimates of the returns from this expenditure are required to facilitate efficient investment decisions second while the australian dairy industry has been highly regulated there has been a substantial reduction in assistance over the past decade and farm gate milk prices were deregulated on 1 july 2000 the profit potential of promotion may vary with the degree of regulation so past estimates of the returns from promotion may not hold in the competitive environment of the future hence the aim of this study is to examine the effects of government intervention on the profitability for dairy farmers of incremental changes in generic dairy promotion expenditure using a perfectly competitive market as a reference point competitive market price and quantity outcomes for the australian dairy industry are estimated the impacts of increments in dairy product and competing product generic promotion expenditures on dairy farmers profits are assessed using equilibrium displacement modelling finally graphical procedures are used to examine the effects of dairy industry regulation on the profitability of dairy promotion

cross border takeovers corruption and related aspects of governance we use a panel of 4979 cross border and domestic takeovers to test the relation between host country corruption and premiums paid for local targets host country corruption is negatively associated with target premiums after correcting for other governance related factors such as political stability legal systems and financial disclosure standards we estimate that deterioration in the corruption index by one point on a 10 point scale is on average associated with a reduction of 21 of local targets premiums our results do not support the notion that local corruption constitutes a significant market barrier to foreign investors rather it represents a discount on local takeover synergies which affects foreign and domestic acquirers alike however we find that the major effects of corruption can alternatively be explained by government effectiveness pointing towards an endogenous relationship between bribery and bureaucracy

measuring research benefits in an imperfect market second reply in a recent comment on voon 1994 holloway 1999 has made the following conclusions under conditions that are almost identical to ones considered by voon 1994 and by sexton and sexton 1996 pivotal shifts in marginal costs generate strictly greater benefits under monopoly this paper reconsiders the above conclusion a simple geometric approach similar to alston et al 1988 and voon and edwards 1991 is used for the reassessment the analysis shows that a pivotal shift in the marginal costs generates greater benefits under perfect competition than it does under monopoly this is opposite to holloway s finding the model is depicted in fig 1 instead of a parallel shift in the mc curve as in voon 1994 a pivotal shift above the origin is assumed this implies that the supply price elasticity is greater than unity e 1 see voon and edwards 1991 under monopoly

corruption and development a review of issues in this paper we start with a discussion of some of the different denotations of the problem of corruption we then consider the ways in which the damaging consequences of corruption operate in a developing economy while not ignoring its possible redeeming features in some cases we pursue the question of why corruption is perceptibly so different in different societies and also persistent finally we examine the feasible policy issues that arise in this context

impacts of foreign policies on the gains from research and promotion abstract this paper compares the direct and indirect effects of rest of the world row policy on welfare in country a the direct effect due to the change in world price caused by the policy in the absence of research promotion induced shifts in supply demand and the additional or indirect effect of the policy on the welfare gain to country a from its investment in research and promotion the results showed that the reduction in aggregate economic benefits from research promotion due to a world price reducing policy in row could be in the range of 25 50 of the direct reduction in social welfare due to the row policy in the case of australian beef veal it is possible for the welfare impact of the row policy via research payoff in country a to exceed the direct welfare cost

financial and legal constraints to growth does firm size matter using a unique firm level survey database covering 54 countries we investigate the effect of financial legal and corruption problems on firms growth rates whether these factors constrain growth depends on firm size it is consistently the smallest firms that are most constrained financial and institutional development weakens the constraining effects of financial legal and corruption obstacles and it is again the small firms that benefit the most there is only a weak relation between firms perception of the quality of the courts in their country and firm growth we also provide evidence that the corruption of bank officials constrains firm growth

the political economy of public research investment and commodity policies in agriculture an empirical study the paper tests a political economy theory of simultaneous government decision making on income redistribution through commodity policies and on public research investment in agriculture we use data from 37 countries on agricultural protection and public agricultural research expenditures pari the empirical results are consistent with the political economy hypotheses the analysis suggest that structural changes in the economy have important effects on the political incentives for governments not only to subsidize or tax farmers but also to invest in public agricultural research furthermore the analysis supports the hypotheses that the impact of such structural changes on government decision making on pari is non linear and conditional on other factors regarding the impact of political institutions the results suggest that more democracy neither leads to more distortionary transfers agricultural protection nor to lower investment in public goods pari

the world trade organisation s doha cotton initiative a tale of two issues four west african nations have demanded that the world trade organization s doha development agenda include a cotton initiative that involves two issues cutting cotton subsidies and tariffs and assisting farm productivity growth in africa the authors provide estimates of the potential economic impacts of 1 complete or partial removal of cotton subsidies and import tariffs globally and 2 cotton productivity growth through the adoption of genetically modified gm cotton varieties they use the latest version of the gtap database and model their results confirm that unlike for other agricultural subsidies and tariffs for cotton it is subsidy reductions rather than tariff cuts that would make by far the largest impact for sub saharan africa the potential gains are huge relative to the effects on that region of reforming other merchandise trade policies and they could be more than doubled if that reform provided the cash for farmers to take advantage of the biotechnology revolution and adopt gm cotton varieties but those potential gains and the affordability of switching to costly gm seed depend crucially on the extent to which high income countries are willing to lower domestic support to their cotton farmers

the rate of return to public sector agricultural r d in the uk 1965 80 1989 the rate of return to public sector agricultural r d in the uk 1965 80 applied economics vol 21 no 8 pp 1063 1086

the gains from research into tradable commodities this paper develops a model for assessing the aggregate level and distribution of the benefits of reseach into tradable commodities it estimates gains to australia and to the rest of the world from research into the wool and wheat industries

the mnc as an agent of change for host country institutions fdi and corruption most empirical research examines how the institutional environment of corruption shapes the behavior of multinational corporations mncs in this study we would like to highlight the other side of the picture how the presence of mncs may shape the institutional environment of corruption over time we propose three avenues through which the mncs may have an impact on its host institutions regulatory pressure effect demonstration effect and professionalization effect based on extensive data on foreign direct investment and corruption for a large sample of countries over the last 30 years the empirical results are generally consistent with our hypothesis such findings provide a glimmer of hope for the future of the host country where corruption is prevalent

market distortions and benefits from research the benefits from cost reducing research and their distribution under a range of price policies are compared with those that would arise in the absence of the policies while any price policy affects the distribution of research benefits the net national or world benefits may be reduced lef unchanged or increased depending on the nature of the policy and the significance of the country in the world market for the commodity some implications for decisions on price policies and for distortions in incentives for the allocation of resources to research are raised

recent and prospective adoption of genetically modified cotton a global computable general equilibrium analysis of economic impacts abstract this article provides estimates of the economic impact of initial adoption of genetically modified gm cotton and of its potential impacts beyond the few countries where it is currently common use is made of the latest version of the gtap database and model our results suggest that if other developing countries especially in sub saharan africa were to follow the lead of china south africa and most recently india adoption of gm cotton varieties could provide even larger proportionate gains to farmer and national welfare than in those early adopting countries furthermore those estimated gains are shown to exceed and reinforce those from a successful campaign under the wto s doha development agenda to reduce remove cotton subsidies and import tariffs globally

a dual approach to evaluating research benefits in the presence of trade distortions we present a new approach for evaluating the welfare consequences of technical change a major feature is its ability to incorporate multiple distortions and multiple sources of technical change in interrelated markets a modified balance of trade function provides money measures of welfare change in terms of producer profits consumer expenditures and tax revenues alternative specifications of technical change are presented to capture the effects of differences in the form of technical change in an illustrative numerical example the approach is applied to a case involving two distortions and technical changes in two related markets the example shows that the approach is reasonably easy to use and that accounting correctly for price distortions can have important implications for research benefit measures

genetic improvements in major us crops the size and distribution of benefits the distribution of welfare gains of genetic improvements in major us crops is estimated using a world agricultural trade model multi market welfare estimates were 75 larger than estimates based on the price exogenous change in revenue method frequently used by plant breeders annual benefits of these genetic improvements range from us 400 600 million depending on the supply shift specification of this 44 60 accrues to the us 24 34 accrues to other developed countries developing and transitional economies capture 16 22 of the welfare gain the global benefits of a one time permanent increase in us yields are us 8 1 billion discounted at 10 and us 15 4 billion discounted at 5 gains to consumers in developing and transitional economies range from us 6 1 billion 10 discount rate to us 11 6 billion 5 discount rate

the calculation of returns to research in distorted markets reply abstract most of the emperical literature calculating rates of return to publicly sponsored research assumes that research is the only relevant government intervention for most countries this assumption is untenable this paper shows that improperly measuring government inducedmarket distortions can severely bias research rate of return calculations if the interaction between successful research and other government interventions increases the cost of the other interventions then neglecting market distortions unambigously increases the calculated rate of return three examples of government induced distortions show that the magnitude of the upward bias in calculated rates of return can be extremely large in some cases more than 100 percentage points a normative implication is that governments should account for interactions between research and price interventions when determining research support levels a positive implication is that existing government research funding patterns are more readily explainable as reasonable behavior by a government that accounts for these interactions

the calculation of returns to research in distorted markets comment abstract in a recent article oehmke reported that a high internal rate of return for investment in research when the interaction between research and price policy costs was disregarded could become very low or even negative when the effects of research on the costs of price policy were considered in this paper the social returns from research in the presence of the price policies considered by oehmke are reexamined using a simple geometric approach the analysis suggests that an output subsidy in a small importing economy an output subsidy in a closed economy and a target price in a large exporting economy will on oehmke s assumptions cause only small reductions in the internal rate of return from investment in research this implies that the apparent underinvestment by governments in agricultural research cannot be explained away by a large upward bias known to governments in measured rates of return due to failure to account for interactions between research and the costs of price policy measures

measuring returns to an innovation in an imperfectly competitive market application to mechanical harvesting of processing tomatoes in taiwan in this paper we develop and apply a general imperfect competition model to evaluate returns to a cost reducing innovation most related work has applied models of perfect competition results demonstrate that welfare estimates derived from a model of perfect competition may be seriously distorted when the relevant market is imperfectly competitive application to mechanical harvesting of processing tomatoes in taiwan reveals the potential for significant benefits to adoption of mechanical harvesting in taiwan however farmers incentives to adopt the harvester are attenuated because total benefits are reduced by oligopsony power in tomato procurement and imperfectly competitive processors will capture a large share of the benefits that remain in this paper we analyze the welfare impacts of mechanical harvesting of processing tomatoes in taiwan a key distinguishing feature of the study relative to previous empirical work on returns to innovations is that it permits market power to be exhibited in both the markets for the raw agricultural product and the processed product outputs indeed the empirical results find significant processor market power in taiwan in both the procurement of raw tomatoes and the sale of processed products in the domestic market the study demonstrates that welfare estimates derived from a model of perfect competition may be seriously distorted when in fact the relevant markets are imper

political behavior social responsibility and perceived corruption a structuration perspective this study unites the three lenses political behavior corporate social responsibility and corruption and evaluates the way in which multinational enterprises mnes manage political and social forces in a foreign emerging market using the theory of structuration as the conceptual foundation we propose that an mne s propensity to cooperate with the host government is positively related to its philanthropic contribution and resource accommodation whereas its propensity to be assertive with the host government is positively associated with its emphasis on ethics and organizational credibility we argue that when perceived corruption in the business segment increases an mne s propensity to cooperate and be assertive with the government decreases its focus on ethics heightens and its philanthropic contribution diminishes as to the three way interactions when perceived corruption in the business segment increases mnes that focus more on ethics have a greater propensity to use arm s length bargaining to deal with the government whereas those focusing less on ethics have a greater propensity to use social connections to deal with the government our analysis of sample mnes in china generally supports these propositions