sickness and death economic consequences and coping strategies of the urban poor in bangladesh summary we investigate the economic consequences of sickness and death and the manner in which poor urban households in bangladesh respond to such events based on panel data we assess the effects of morbidity and mortality episodes on household income medical spending labor supply and consumption we find that despite maintaining household labor supply serious illness exerts a negative effect on income for the poor however the estimates do not reject consumption smoothing the most prominent responses to finance current needs are increasing household debt through borrowing and depleting productive assets both of which have detrimental effects on future consumption

can capital scarcity help agency theory explain franchising revisiting the capital scarcity hypothesis we offer a rationale for a link between capital scarcity and franchising predictions respectively based on agency theory and the capital scarcity hypothesis were tested among 91 restaurant chains

gas release and transport capacity investment as instruments to foster competition in gas markets motivated by recent policy events experienced by the european natural gas industry this paper develops a simple model for analyzing the interaction between gas release and capacity investment programs as tools to improve the performance of imperfectly competitive markets we consider a regional market in which a measure that has an incumbent release part of its gas to a marketer complements a program of investment in transport capacity dedicated to imports by the marketer at a regulated transport charge of competitively priced gas first we examine the case where transport capacity is regulated while gas release is not i e the volume of gas released is determined by the incumbent we then analyze the effect of the artifcial duopoly created by the regulator when the latter regulates both gas release and transport capacity finally using information on the french industry we calibrate the basic demand and cost elements of the model and perform some simulations of these two scenarios besides allowing us to analyze the economic properties of these scenarios a policy implication that comes out of the empirical analysis is that when combined with network expansion investments gas release measures applied under regulatory control are indeed effective short term policies for promoting gas to gas competition

estimating households vulnerability to idiosyncratic and covariate shocks a novel method applied in madagascar households in developing countries are frequently hit by severe idiosyncratic and covariate shocks leading to high consumption volatility a household s currently observed poverty status might therefore not be a good indicator of the household s general vulnerability to poverty in the recent years there has been an emerging literature on the concept and empirical analysis of vulnerability but because of strong data requirements for vulnerability analysis and limited availability of panel and shock data for developing countries static poverty analysis still dominates empirical vulnerability studies in this paper we propose a simple method to empirically assess the impact of idiosyncratic and covariate shocks on households vulnerability which can be applied in a wide context as it relies on more commonly available cross sectional or short panel data we empirically illustrate our approach for madagascar we show that covariate shocks have a relatively higher impact on rural households whereas idiosyncratic shocks have a relatively higher impact on urban households vulnerability

antecedents of early terminations in franchising franchisor versus franchisee cancelations franchisors capitalize on franchisee entrepreneurial capacity to grow however enabling franchisees to develop their ventures may damage system consistency this dilemma makes conflict particularly prevalent in the field of franchising nevertheless prior research has reported an incomplete picture of factors leading to serious disagreement and premature termination in franchise partnerships we address this gap first by adding the entrepreneurial autonomy of franchisees as a relevant but underexplored source of conflict and second by providing a more fine grained analysis of franchisors versus franchisees drivers of termination specifically we focus on the controversial issues of pricing and local advertising policies and analyze how expanding franchisees entrepreneurial autonomy in these decision areas is related to contract terminations depending on who ended the relationship the franchisor or a franchisee the study also highlights less controversial requirements and conditions e g upfront investments franchisor experience that may reduce early terminations our empirical objectives are met by using survey data from a sample of franchisor companies the results show how the performance outcomes of entrepreneurial autonomy differ depending on the decision area in which it is exercised results also throw light on the consequences of various critical franchise policies that may be masked if both types of termination franchisors vs franchisees are considered together

consumption smoothing and the welfare consequences of social insurance in developing economies studies of risk in developing economies have focused on consumption fluctuations as a measure of the value of insurance a common view in the literature is that the welfare costs of risk and benefits of social insurance are small if income shocks do not cause large consumption fluctuations we present a simple model showing that this conclusion is incorrect if the consumption path is smooth because individuals are highly risk averse hence social safety nets could be valuable in low income economies even when consumption is not very sensitive to shocks

the relationship between spot and contract gas prices in europe abstract following deregulations in the european gas market spot trading of natural gas has been established in the uk belgium and the netherlands while long term contracts remain the dominant pricing process in continental europe in this paper we investigate the degree of market integration between the three spot markets the contract gas price in germany and the oil price the results indicate a highly integrated market and there is no evidence of an independent price determination process for natural gas

the economic consequences of health shocks evidence from vietnam this paper finds that the incomes of urban households are more vulnerable to health shocks than rural households that health shocks may precipitate increases in unearned income that partially offset reductions in earned income and large increases in medical spending even among insured households it also finds that households spend less on food following a health shock but more on budget items such as housing and electricity measures of household health shocks used include a recent death of a working age household member a long inpatient spell and a recent sizeable drop in the body mass index of the household head

franchising liquidity constraints and entry the short and long run incentives to franchise are considered while monitoring problems due to geographic dispersion ensure that franchising is an efficient organizational form in the long run entry costs suggest that franchising is an efficient solution to the formidable problems posed by entry in the short run this explains the intensive use of franchising in the early growth stages followed by a greater proportion of company owned outlets as the system matures

investments to create bargaining power the case of franchising hybrid organizational forms such as franchise systems join two or more independent parties under a contract the ability of each party to achieve its goals depend upon the relative bargaining power in the relationship established by the contract using transaction cost economics and porter s 1980 characterization of sources of bargaining power this paper argues that the franchisor can make investments in activities such as tapered integration and buyer selection to increase its bargaining power and decrease conflict and litigation in a franchise system specifically tapered integration owning some units while franchising others selecting inexperienced franchisees and employing a long training program are predicted to increase the franchisor s bargaining power and the franchisee s compliance with franchisor standards an empirical analysis of litigation in restaurant franchise systems supports the theoretical hypotheses copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

explaining interfirm cooperation and performance toward a reconciliation of predictions from the resource based view and organizational economics interfirm cooperation and its performance implications are examined in the context of two widely cited theoretical approaches to organizations broadly speaking the resource based view suggests that firms seek to capitalize on and increase their capabilities and endowments whereas organizational economics asserts that firms focus on minimizing the costs of organizing although these perspectives agree on managers likely actions in many areas their predictions diverge when interfirm cooperation is considered we take a step toward reconciling these differences by positing that firms place resource based concerns in front of considerations from organizational economics when deciding whether or not to engage in interfirm cooperation we examined this prediction using data from 94 publicly held restaurant chains the results support our integrated view but also suggest that giving primacy to resource concerns detracts from the performance of some firms we derive several implications of these findings in an effort to guide subsequent inquiry copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

risk sharing networks and insurance against illness most risk sharing tests on developing country data are conducted at the level of the village generally the full risk sharing hypothesis is rejected this paper uses detailed data on all insurance networks within a village in tanzania networks are not clustered but largely overlapping we test whether full risk sharing occurs within these networks while village level full insurance cannot be rejected for food consumption we find evidence consistent with at least partial insurance of non food consumption via networks

cointegration analysis of spot electricity prices insights on transmission efficiency in the western us abstract the us energy policy act of 1992 promoted the development of spot markets for electric power by requiring utilities to open their transmission systems to wholesale power sales in this paper we specify and estimate a vector error correction model using peak and off peak electricity spot prices during 1994 1996 covering 11 regional markets in the western united states and test these prices for evidence of market integration the results show evidence of an efficient and stable wholesale power market

too much ado about two part models and transformation comparing methods of modeling medicare expenditures many methods for modeling skewed health care cost and use data have been suggested in the literature this paper compares the performance of eight alternative estimators including ols and glm estimators and one and two part models in predicting medicare costs it finds that four of the alternatives produce very similar results in practice it then suggests an efficient method for researchers to use when selecting estimators of health care costs

agency theory and franchising some empirical results this article provides an empirical assessment of various agency theoretic explanations for franchising including risk sharing one sided moral hazard and two sided moral hazard the empirical models use proxies for factors such as risk moral hazard and franchisors need for capital to explain both franchisors decisions about the terms of their contracts royalty rates and up front franchise fees and the extent to which they use franchising in this article i exploit several new sources of data on franchising to construct a cross section of 548 franchisors involved in various business activities in the united states in 1986 the data are most consistent with a model based on two sided moral hazard the empirical models are also more successful at explaining the extent to which franchisors choose to franchise stores than at explaining the terms of franchise contracts finally contrary to the predictions of several theoretical models i find that royalty rates and franchise fees are not negatively related

improving channel coordination through franchising in this paper we explore the role of franchising arrangements in improving coordination between channel members in particular we focus on two elements of the franchising contract namely the royalty structure and the monitoring technology we begin with a simple analysis where a manufacturer distributes its product through a retailer and the retail demand is affected by the retail price and the service provided by the retailer in this context we show that neither royalty payments nor monitoring are needed for full coordination we then extend the model to allow for free riding by franchisees and show that although monitoring helps affect the behavior of the franchisees royalty payments are still unnecessary to coordinate the activities of the franchisor and the franchisees finally we show that in environments where factors affecting retail sales are controlled by both the franchisor and the franchisee royalty payments provide the necessary incentives for the franchisor while monitoring systems are used to ensure that franchisees also behave in the best interest of the channel our general results are found to be consistent with those in brickley and dark 1987 and norton 1988 who conclude that franchising is affected by principal agent problems our theory finds special support in the work of lafontaine 1988 where it is concluded that the incidence of franchising is related to cost of monitoring and the importance of franchisor investments

consumption insurance an evaluation of risk bearing systems in low income economies the hypothesis of full risk sharing can be taken to data from low income countries and evaluate formal and informal financial systems in many contexts idiosyncratic risks are high so credit insurance arrangements could be beneficial statistical tests reveal that households in southern india take advantage of these possibilities villages in cote d ivoire and countries in thailand do not do as well the paper includes an empirical description of the devices used to smooth consumption and a theoretical discussion of private information and incentives on ideal operating systems the full information and mechanism design frameworks provide benchmarks for policy analysis

scott a shane winner of the global award for entrepreneurship research scott a shane is the 2009 winner of the global award for entrepreneurship research in this article we discuss and analyze shane s most important contributions to the field of entrepreneurship his contribution is extraordinarily broad in scope which makes it difficult to pinpoint one or a few specifics that we associate with shane s scholarship instead they can be summarized in the following three points first he has influenced what we view as central aspects of entrepreneurship shane has been a leading figure in redirecting the focus on entrepreneurship research itself second he has influenced how we view entrepreneurship shane s research is arguably theory driven and it applies and develops theoretical lenses that greatly improve our understanding of entrepreneurship third he has contributed to how we conduct entrepreneurship research shane has been a forerunner in examining relevant units of analysis that are difficult to sample research designs and databases specifically designed for studying entrepreneurial processes and sophisticated analytical methods this has contributed to advancing the methodological rigor of the field summing them up the contributions are very impressive indeed

making new franchise systems work this paper argues that new franchise systems are more likely to survive if they are structured to economize on agency costs after controlling for industry effects and firm age and size this paper shows empirical support for six of nine hypotheses about the linkage between mechanisms for economizing on agency costs and the survival of new franchise systems 1998 by john wiley sons ltd

fuel switching and climate and energy policies in the european power generation sector a generalized leontief model abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyze a the role and the nature of price induced switching behavior between fossil fuels i e coal oil and natural gas in the western european power sector as well as b the fuel choice impacts of a number of public policies implemented in this sector during the last 20 years the analysis is conducted within a generalized leontief cost function framework and employs pooled data across eight countries over the time period 1978 2004 we present short run own and cross price elasticities of fossil fuel demand and assess the impacts of a set of government policies implemented over this time period the empirical results show evidence of notable short run interfuel substitution between oil and gas and particularly in countries where fossil fuels are used extensively for both base and peak load purposes these findings support the notion that ex post fossil fuel substitution takes place in dual and multi fired plants by switching load between different single fuel fired plants as well as through the conversion of power plants to be able to burn alternate fuels the results also illustrate that different public policies i e removal of coal subsidies electricity market liberalization etc have had profound impacts on fossil fuel choices and have in particular favored power generation gas use at the expense of coal finally the paper makes use of the empirical results to simulate the fuel switching impacts of different carbon prices within the european emissions trading scheme eu ets

causal effects of health shocks on consumption and debt quasi experimental evidence from bus accident injuries abstract endogeneity between health and wealth presents a challenge for estimating causal effects of health shocks using a quasi experimental design comprising exogenous shocks sustained as bus accident injuries in india with controls drawn from travelers on the same bus routes one year later i present new evidence of causal effects on consumption and debt using primary household survey data i find that households faced with shock related expenditures are able to smooth consumption on food housing and festivals with small reductions in educational spending debt was the principal mitigating mechanism households used leading to significantly larger levels of indebtedness

quality signaling through ex ante voluntary information disclosure in entrepreneurial networks evidence from franchising this paper examines antecedents of ex ante voluntary information disclosures for standardized contracts in entrepreneurial networks entrepreneurs e g franchisors may make such disclosures to prospective business partners in order to signal profitability of partnering attract financial and managerial resources and develop their entrepreneurial networks in practice only a fraction of franchisors make financial performance representations fprs an ex ante voluntary information disclosure to prospective franchisees we address gaps in the signaling voluntary information disclosure franchising entrepreneurship and small and medium enterprise sme literatures we draw on signaling theory to develop a theoretical framework and investigate factors that influence a franchisor s disclosure decision we evaluate hypotheses from our theoretical framework through econometric analyses of multi sector panel data for the us franchising industry we estimate a logit model and use lagged independent variables to address our dichotomous independent variable and potential endogeneity respectively our results support the view that firms signal their quality through fprs to attract potential business partners and expand their entrepreneurial networks beyond the extant literature we find that rigorous partner qualification is another driver of voluntary information disclosure in franchising our findings also provide empirical support for the complementary role played by multiple quality signaling mechanisms used by franchisors and yield public policy implications for franchising

is consumption insured against illness evidence on vulnerability of households to health shocks in rural ethiopia abstract low and volatile incomes and absence of well developed financial markets make consumption smoothing an important issue in low income countries based on the theory of full insurance and using 2 years of panel data this study examines the impact of illness on the consumption of rural households and the capacity of existing risk sharing mechanisms in insuring consumption against health shocks in the rural areas of ethiopia the results show that illness has a statistically significant negative impact on the stability of consumption and the capacity of households or existing intra and interhousehold risk sharing arrangements in insuring consumption against illness varies across different consumption items the regression results show that the hypothesis of consumption insurance cannot be rejected in the case of total food consumption implying that basic items that come from own production and from external sources gifts are better insured and insensitive to the illness of the head however the

new firm survival institutional explanations for new franchisor mortality why do some new firms succeed and others fail economists argue that new firms fail because entrepreneurs inefficiently manage production and organizational design williamson 1985 sociologists e g granovetter 1985 have typically viewed this explanation as undersocialized and argue that institutional legitimacy must also be considered to explain the survival of new firms this paper examines the survival of 1292 new franchisors established in the united states from 1979 1996 the results show that institutional legitimacy adds to economic explanations for the survival of new franchisors and suggests the importance of a properly socialized explanation

the effects of new franchisor partnering strategies on franchise system size many young firms use strategic actions to attract partners who help them increase the size of their operations quickly this article examines the use of strategic actions to attract partners and increase system size in the context of franchising we build on research in entrepreneurship marketing organization theory strategic management and finance to develop specific hypotheses about the influences of franchisor pricing policy and strategic control decisions on system size we test these hypotheses empirically using panel data on a sample of 1 292 business format franchise systems from 152 industries that were established in the united states between 1979 and 1996 and followed from their inception forward in time our model accounts for the endogeneity of strategic decisions controls for unobserved firm and industry factors and accounts for selection effects due to system failure the results show that franchisors that grow larger 1 lower royalty rates as the systems age 2 have low up front franchise fees that rise over time 3 own a small proportion of outlets and lower that percentage over time 4 keep franchisees initial investment low and 5 finance their franchisees

international market integration for natural gas a cointegration analysis of prices in europe north america and japan this paper investigates the degree of integration of natural gas markets in europe north america and japan in the time period between the early 1990s and 2004 the relationship between international gas market prices and their relation to the oil price are explored through principal components analysis and johansen likelihood based cointegration procedure both of them show a high level of natural gas market integration within europe between the european and japanese markets as well as within the north american market at the same time the obtained results suggest that the european respectively japanese and the north american markets were not integrated

intra household resource allocation under negative income shock a natural experiment summary using households from coastal districts in bangladesh as a case and applying the difference in difference estimation method this paper demonstrates a gender differentiated outcome of negative income shocks for education expenditures of households the cyclonic disaster that reduced crop income substantially increased the demand for labor as well as wages for rebuilding damaged farms this in turn increased the opportunity costs of boys schooling as reconstruction is a male friendly sector consequently parents withdrew their sons from school and engaged them in their households repair work and or in wage earning activities however girls schooling expenditure was unchanged in the affected farm and non farm households

health shocks and consumption smoothing evidence from indonesia abstractepisodes of uninsured illness can seriously compromise a household s well being this article provides further evidence on the consequences of illness episodes on earnings and consumption in indonesia we exploit a rich panel data set that allows us to combine fixed effects and instrumental variables to address biases associated with the endogeneity of illness using deteriorations in physical functioning to measure illness for a sample of prime age individuals we find that earnings are significantly reduced however the effects on consumption are relatively small and statistically insignificant in addition we explore informal mechanisms that households may be using to smooth out the consequences of these episodes in particular we study whether households deplete liquid assets or receive transfers from noncoresident kin transfers are responsive to illness but there is no evidence of asset depletions overall our findings suggest some ability to smooth the income effects of illness on aver

the choice of organizational form the case of franchising abstract we examine companies that franchise some units and centrally operate own others the agency problems confronting these two organizational forms are analyzed testable hypotheses are developed the empirical results support the notion that owning versus franchising reflects a trade off among agency related problems the cost of monitoring store managers appears to be especially important in the own franchise decision the level of repeat business and initial investment requirements per unit also appear to be important

to franchise or not to franchise an analysis of decision rights and organizational form shares abstract for innovators and entrepreneurs in service businesses franchising is frequently suggested as a way to succeed and grow academic research has provided little guidance for potential franchisors however this article provides a model to guide that choice of organizational form using results from agency theory analytically franchising is a way to allocate decisions within the franchise system between the franchisor and the franchisee in order to promote efficiency and provide incentives franchisees make decisions regarding local operations such as hours prices and locations because they have the knowledge about local trading conditions franchisors make decisions regarding the product its production and associated marketing efforts that together create the standardization that the trademark signals the revenue of franchise systems is divided to provide incentives to each party to support the allocation of decisions franchisors receive a percentage of gross sales typically 5 to compensate them for use of the trademark and associated services franchisees keep the unit s profits after paying royalties these profits motivate the franchisee to make the good decisions that operate the unit efficiently but franchising has limitations as well first by making franchisees invest in a unit in a specific geographic area the franchise system exposes the franchisees to business risk it consists of local economic conditions beyond franchisees control that could reduce or eliminate their capital that risk could be eliminated by owning a geographically diversified portfolio of shares of units in different places but then incentives are weakened second the requirements of standardization under the common trademark constrain franchisees from the full use of their human capital including their knowledge of local conditions some adaptations to the local market are prohibited by the requirement of standardization so high levels of either business risk or human capital in an industry make franchising a less desirable choice of organizational form these ideas are tested with interindustry data using an econometric discrete choice model on the share of sales through franchise systems termed organizational form share the methodology is identical to market share models used in economics and marketing business risk as measured by percent of units that have failed in the industry in the last 3 years and human capital required in the industry as measured by average wages paid both negatively influence the share of sales through franchise systems the model can be applied by entrepreneurs considering franchising especially in industries not traditionally associated with franchising using public data sources identified in the study a prospective franchisor can research the industry to determine if industry conditions support franchising as the optimal choice of organizational form the empirical texts also suggest a second managerially relevant conclusion the decision of should we franchise can be and should be separated from the decision of how do we implement franchising factors previously shown to influence the implementation of franchising the degree of ownership of units within the system do not influence organizational form share thus suggesting that the strategic decision of whether to franchise is distinct from the operating decision of how to implement franchising

organizational incentives and organizational mortality despite a long tradition of research on organizational mortality organizational theorists have not examined the effect of incentive contracting on firm survival this paper fills this gap by examining the effect of incentive contracting on the survival of u s business format franchise systems over the period 1984 1996 the paper finds empirical support for several hypotheses derived from efficient contracting theory in general large firms that adopt policies which screen agents signal quality and control agents free riding are more likely to survive than large firms which do not adopt these policies

insuring consumption against illness one of the most sizable and least predictable shocks to economic opportunities in developing countries is major illness we investigate the extent to which families are able to insure consumption against major illness using a unique panel data set from indonesia that combines excellent measures of health status with consumption information we find that there are significant economic costs associated with major illness and that there is very imperfect insurance of consumption over illness episodes these estimates suggest that public disability insurance or subsidies for medical care may improve welfare by providing consumption insurance

the social value of health insurance results from ghana this paper uses the roll out of the national health insurance in ghana to assess the cushioning effect of coverage on the financial consequences of health shocks and resulting changes in coping behaviors the analysis finds a strong reduction in medical expenditures preventing households from cutting non food consumption and causing a decrease in the volume of received remittances as well as the labor supply of healthy adult household members moreover the paper presents evidence that the insurance scheme reduced the likelihood that households experiencing a health shock pulled their children out of school to put them to work avoidance of such costly coping mechanisms is potentially an important part of the social value of formal health insurance

are remittances a substitute for credit carrying the financial burden of health shocks in national and transnational households summary this paper tests for the assumption that remittances are a substitute for credit by comparing the response to health related shocks among national and transnational households using mexican household panel data while the occurrence of serious health shocks that required hospital treatment doubled the average debt burden of exposed households compared to the control group households with nuclear family members a parent child or spouse in the us did not increase their debts due to health shocks this finding is consistent with the view that remittances respond to households demand for financing emergencies and make them less reliant on debt financing

the message in north american energy prices how similar is the price behavior of north american natural gas fuel oil and power prices using current state of the art econometric methodology we explore the degree of shared trends across north american energy markets across these markets there appear to be effective arbitraging mechanisms for the price of natural gas and fuel oil but not for the price of electricity

health shocks and consumption smoothing in rural households does microcredit have a role to play abstract this paper estimates using a large panel data set from rural bangladesh the effects of health shocks on household consumption and how access to microcredit affects households response to such shocks households appear to be fairly well insured against health shocks our results suggest that households sell livestock in response to health shocks and short term insurance is therefore attained at a significant long term cost however microcredit has a significant mitigating effect households that have access to microcredit do not need to sell livestock in order to insure consumption microcredit organizations and microcredit therefore have an insurance role to play an aspect that has not been analyzed previously