sunk costs and the natural resource extraction sector analytical models and historical examples of hysteresis and strategic behavior in the americas sunk costs play a significant role in shaping industry conduct and development outcomes associated with the resource extraction sector their role is explored here by 1 developing analytical models that show specifically how sunk costs influence investment behavior and outcomes and 2 considering the historical experience during major epochs of two important extractive industries the models demonstrate how sunk costs in conjunction with uncertainty or strategic behavior can severely distort efficiency and equity outcomes the amazon rubber boom and bust and the pan american aluminum industry illustrate the significance of sunk costs in the extractive sector and beyond

national industrial structure and the global system various forms of participation in the global system have been hypothesized to distort the structure of industrialization in developing countries influencing the relations between industrial capital labor and output we operationalize kuznets s 1965 theoretical definition of industrialization utilizing energy consumption per capita percent of the labor force employed in industry and percent of gdp accountedfor by industry to test several predictions about the effects of a country s involvement in the global system on the structure of its industrialization we first estimate a measurement model for 1970 that includes these three basic indicators as influenced by the latent variable of industrialization elaborations of the basic model allow us to measure the influence of the world system on the structure of industrialization types of goods imported and exported affect the structure of industrialization position in the world system and direct foreign investment have no net direct effects a marxist leninist regime has an independent influence on the structure of industrialization in some years we replicate the model using data from 196s 1980 and 1986

breaking the wave the contested legitimation of an alien organizational form organizational forms imbued with values of modernity that is rationality efficiency and equity diffuse rapidly around the world nonetheless when sustained by beliefs norms and regulations contrasting with those prevalent in the receiving country their adoption may be delayed and within country legitimation may not proceed smoothly we study the diffusion of multiplex cinemas a form conceived in the us and attuned to the cinema as commerce logic across europe where the cinema as art logic prevails our findings reveal that the cultural meanings embodied by multiplexes shaped the founding rates of this organizational form in three ways first countries with larger normative and regulative distance from the us retarded the adoption of the first multiplex second camouflaged entries and at increasing density opposition from local interest groups were observed third the embodiment of global cultural scripts of progress and modernity allowed multiplexes to overcome local opposition the normative distance of the country from the us amplified the fluctuating dynamics of within country legitimacy a new specification of density dependent legitimation is presented to model the cultural cognitive legitimacy of rationalized but alien organizational forms

collective institutional entrepreneurship and contestations in wind energy in india with 21 136 mw of wind energy installed in 2014 india is considered a success story in terms of net installed capacity few existing studies on indian wind energy have highlighted the important role of institutions and how they stemmed from the work of advocacy groups studies also tend to focus on short time periods this paper uses the notion of collective institutional entrepreneurship to analyze indian wind energy across three time periods 1985 1995 1995 2003 and 2003 2013 the analysis shows that indian wind power development was driven by collective efforts of institutional entrepreneurs using two aggregated strategies that is supportive techno economic and socio political networks and an indigenous innovation infrastructure the paper highlights setbacks controversies and tensions between various entrepreneurship groups and argues that actions must be taken for including actors who have been marginalized

state responses to fiscal crises the effects of budgetary institutions and politics this paper explores the dynamics of state taxes and spending during the late 1980s when regional economic downturns and increased expenditure demands led to substantial state budget deficits more restrictive state fiscal institutions such as no deficit carryover rules and tax and expenditure limitations are correlated with more rapid fiscal adjustment to unexpected deficits political factors are also important when a single party controls the state house and the governorship deficit adjustment is much faster than when party control is divided in gubernatorial election years tax increases and spending cuts are both significantly smaller than at other times

fiscal institutions fiscal policy and sovereign risk premia in emu we investigate the effect of fiscal institutions such as the strength of the finance minister in the budget process and deficits on interest rate spreads of eurozone countries deficits significantly increase risk premia measured by relative swap spreads the effect of deficits is significantly lower under emu this effect partly results from neglecting the role of fiscal institutions after controlling for institutional changes fiscal policy remains a significant determinant of risk premia in emu better institutions are connected with lower risk premia furthermore deficits matter less for risk premia in countries with better institutions markets acknowledge that better institutions reduce fiscal difficulties rendering the monitoring of annual developments less important

sunk costs and strategic commitment a proposed three stage equilibrium dixit s i980 paper in this journal the role of investment in entry deterrence has attracted considerable interest from economists concerned with constructing a modern theory of strategic behaviour towards entry in fact the paper has spawned quite an industry of commitment models in which the equilibrium payoffs in some final period game can be influenced by strategic commitments made by the players in an earlier period for similar models with important insights into strategic entry deterrence see eaton and lipsey i980 i98i schmalensee i98i the purpose of this note is to argue that when the instrument of stragetic commitment takes the form of sunk costs which both entrant and incumbent have to bear as it does in dixit s paper and in many other examples a three stage model rather than the two stage model presented by dixit is required although the proposed equilibrium differs from dixit s its qualitative features are the same it may or may not be profitable to deter entry and if it is the first mover may still prefer to play an accommodation strategy and allow entry to take place following dixit we restrict our attention to the asymmetric case in which one firm the incumbent makes the first move the two stage game involves the first mover sinking part of its costs in advance so that in the second stage equilibrium it will have a current cost advantage over the entrant which must incur the full cost of producing any desired output level the second period cost asymmetry ensures the incumbent a lar ger share of the post entry market which may be sufficient to deter entry altogether the problem with the two stage game lies in the nature of sunk costs sunk costs by definition are committed before the production period takes place if they were expended as a flow simultaneously with production they would not be sunk the installation of capacity is the natural example employed by dixit and well illustrates the point if installed capacity is a sunk cost which it must be for the incumbent to acquire any strategic advantage at all then the entrant s installed capacity is equally sunk and must also be committed before the production period takes place given this observation the post entry final period equilibrium should not be modelled as if the entrant were simultaneously incurring both variable and sunk costs but the incumbent only incurs variable costs this implies too great an asymmetry in favour of the incumbent the final period equilibrium should involve both firms incurring only variable

entry exit and farm size assessing an experiment in dairy price policy this article models and estimates the forces behind farm exits and changes in herd size among connecticut dairy farms under the new england dairy compact a model of sunk costs and farm capital investment is used to specify two econometric estimations a random effects probit model of farm entry and exit and an autocorrelated generalized least squares panel data model of farm size the dairy compact s price strategy reduced farm exits and moderately increased cow numbers in contrast development pressures and historically low unemployment rates increased farm exits

the impact of stakeholder power on corporate reputation a cross country corporate governance perspective corporate reputation has roots in national beliefs about the role of the business corporation in society these beliefs are constructed in accordance with the preferences of powerful stakeholders building on a stakeholder power approach to corporate governance we investigate whether differences in the legal rights and protections of shareholders creditors and workers across countries affect the general public s reputation assessments of business corporations using a sample of 593 of the largest publicly traded companies in the world from 32 countries during 2007 to 2011 we find that in societies where shareholders enjoy a high degree of legal rights the impact of stock market returns on corporate reputation becomes more positive likewise the negative relationship between earnings volatility and reputation becomes greater when creditor rights are stronger contrary to expectations we found no evidence of an interaction effect between labor rights and corporate social performance on corporate repu

the ricardian approach to budget deficits persistent budget deficits have increased economists interest in theories and evidence about fiscal policy this paper develops the ricardian approach and contrasts it with standard models the discussion considers from major theoretical objections to ricardian equivalence finite lifetimes imperfect capital markets uncertainty about future taxes and incomes and the distorting effects of taxation the paper then considers empirical evidence on interest rates consumption and saving and current account deficits the conclusion is that the ricardian approach is a useful first order approximation and that this approach will probably become the benchmark model for assessing fiscal policy this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the elusive costs and the immaterial gains of fiscal constraints we study whether fiscal restrictions affect volatilities and correlations of macrovariables and the probability of excessive debt for a sample of 48 us states fiscal constraints are characterized with a number of indicators and volatilities and correlations are computed in several ways the second moments of macroeconomic variables in states with different fiscal constraints are economically and statistically similar excessive debt and the mechanism linking budget deficit and excessive debts are independent of whether tight or loose fiscal constraints are in place creative budget accounting may account for the results

managerial cognition and the mimetic adoption of market positions what you see is what you do managers planning to abandon a market position need to find a promising alternative and face a choice of inventing a new market position or entering an existing one the great uncertainty on the consequences of different actions leads them to rely on other organizations for information on how to compete making adoption of existing market positions likely their wish to avoid direct rivalry and maximize growth leads them to seek out information on new market positions with few incumbents as a result recently innovated market positions are mimetically adopted by organizations that can easily observe previous adoptions and see them as relevant to their market situations increasing the market differentiation this theory is tested and supported by analysis of the spread of new radio formats in the united states 1998 john wiley sons ltd

policy as myth and ceremony the global spread of stock exchanges 1980 2005 we examine the antecedents and consequences in developing countries of creating a national stock exchange a core technology of financial globalization we study local conditions and global institutional pressures in the rapid spread of exchanges since the 1980s and examine how conditions at the point of adoption affected exchanges subsequent vibrancy little prior research connects the process of diffusion with the operational performance of adopted policies we find that international coercion was associated with more ceremonial adoption but that contrary to expectations common in institutional research contagion processes via peer groups and normative emulation of prestigious actors enhanced vibrancy economic globalization provides a generative context in which to consider the policy implications of organizational theory and research globalization creates both opportunities and challenges for countries on the periphery of the world economy the central question for policy makers is what structures and institutions they should adopt to promote economic and social vibrancy notably waves of alternative theories and associated packages of reforms have swept over the globe in recent decades observing this process of global diffusion and often abandonment of policies and practices meyer boli thomas and raminrez 1997 extended analyses of myth and ceremony at the organization level to the nation state in their world society approach a core idea in this work is that coercion and mimicry of peers or competitors typically based in a substrate of network ties often

political regimes and economic growth arguments that relate regimes to growth focus on property rights pressures for immediate consumption and the autonomy of dictators while everyone seems to agree that secure property rights foster growth it is controversial whether democracies or dictatorships better secure these rights the main mechanism by which democracy is thought to hinder growth is pressure for immediate consumption which reduces investment only states that are institutionally insulated from such pressures can resist them and democratic states are not the main argument against dictatorships is that authoritarian rulers have no interest in maximizing total output these views are summarized in turn

developing difference social organization and the rise of the auto industries of south korea taiwan spain and argentina theories of economic development as diverse as modernization dependency world system and market reform take a critical factor view proponents of each theory argue that countries fail to develop because of an obstacle to economic growth we argue instead that neither a critical factor nor a single path leads to economic development viable paths vary economic growth depends on linking a country s historically developed patterns of social organization to the opportunities of global markets we formulate a sociological theory of cross national comparative advantage including not only economic factor endowments but also institutionalized patterns of authority and organization such patterns legitimize certain actors and certain relationships among those actors which facilitate development success in some activities but not in others we illustrate this approach to understanding development outcomes with a comparative analysis of the difficult rise of the automobile assembly and components industries in south korea taiwan spain and argentina

do international commodity prices drive natural resource booms an empirical analysis of small scale gold mining in suriname abstract natural resource booms have been central to conservation and development in resource rich latin american countries yet the origin of these events remains poorly understood understanding the socioeconomic drivers of resource booms is important because such sudden increases in natural resources extraction are usually ecologically and economically unsustainable this paper analyzes the socioeconomic drivers of small scale gold mining which is degrading ecological resources and the health of people in the amazon region two conventional hypotheses are tested 1 international prices of gold drive the amazon gold rush and 2 national economic recession encourages small scale gold mining a simple empirical model is presented to link the gold mining histories of local miners to international and national trends the analysis indicates that theories that explain corporately driven resource extraction may not apply to the behavior of small scale producers it appears that extractive booms that are driven by local resource users can occur independently of global price markets the suriname case further suggests that inhibited national economic development can be the cause of a natural resource boom and not only a consequence as some researchers propose the author concludes that conservation policies for suriname should act to stabilize the national economy and to promote more sustainable mining methods

organizational susceptibility to institutional complexity critical events driving the adoption and implementation of the ethics and compliance officer position the institutional environment is complex this complexity is characterized by forces that ebb and flow in wavelike patterns as societal expectations evolve with attention coalescing around specific events and then dissipating some of these critical events are broad and affect many firms whereas others are narrow and affect individual firms in either case when they occur these events elevate organizational susceptibility to societal demands but encourage different kinds of behavior in response this study seeks to model this complexity in an area of growing interest for organization scholars business ethics in particular i examine how firms respond to shifting societal pressures for greater ethical behavior by adopting and implementing the ethics and compliance officer position from 1990 to 2008 results demonstrate that although firms decide when to adopt in response to broad fieldwide critical events it is narrower firm specific critical events that determine resource commitments in implementation

internalizing sustainable practices a configurational approach on sustainable forest management of the dutch wood trade and timber industry a number of environmental labels and certificates have been developed to inform consumers of the environmental impacts this paper explored different configurations of institutional and organizational conditions for the internalization of sustainable practices for the institutional conditions the level of institutional pressures were considered for the organizational conditions the following elements were taken into account 1 the timing of adoption 2 the willingness to cannibalize existing capabilities and routines to incorporate institutional demands for sustainability 3 the degree of implementation of these demands 4 the internal representation of environmental concerns and 5 the type of organization the paper analyzed sustainable forestry practices in wood trade and timber factories in the netherlands using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis from the analysis three configurations were found 1 concerned internalization for early adopting wood trade companies 2 forced internalization for late adopting wood trade companies and 3 lagged internalization for late adopting timber factories the configurations revealed that important conditions for explaining internalization of sustainable practices are high levels of implementation and high levels of willingness to cannibalize the findings reaffirm the relevance of institutional and organizational conditions in explaining the internalization of environmental friendly practices they also showed that the interplay between a firm s internal and external environments influence the internalization of environmental practices the results imply that practice internalization is more subtle than previously understood in the literature

political instability uncertainty and economics this paper focuses on the relationship between political instability policy making and macroeconomic outcomes the theoretical section explores various models that explain the effect of instability and political uncertainty on growth budget formation inflation and monetary policy the empirical section discusses the evidence on the predictions generated by theoretical models preliminary to this discussion however is the analysis of a few general issues concerning the specification and estimation of econometric models with political variables some new results are then produced on the empirical relevance of theories of strategic use of fiscal deficit

age structure and the current account we adjust current account surpluses and deficits of 57 countries in the period 2005 2009 for differences in the age structure of their populations and find that these differences can account for a significant part of the variation in the data among the large countries we find that the adjustment increases the surpluses of germany and japan while the surpluses of china singapore hong kong korea thailand indonesia and malaysia are significantly diminished

investor protection and corporate governance recent research has documented large differences among countries in ownership concentration in publicly traded firms in the breadth and depth of capital markets in dividend policies and in the access of firms to external finance a common element to the explanations of these differences is how well investors both shareholders and creditors are protected by law from expropriation by the managers and controlling shareholders of firms we describe the differences in laws and the effectiveness of their enforcement across countries discuss the possible origins of these differences summarize their consequences and assess potential strategies of corporate governance reform we argue that the legal approach is a more fruitful way to understand corporate governance and its reform than the conventional distinction between bank centered and market centered financial systems

the globalization of liberalization policy diffusion in the international political economy one of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal economic ideas and policies throughout the world these policies have affected the lives of millions of people yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture influences on these policy choices evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially we hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion we think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces one in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting we develop arguments within these broad classes of mechanisms construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts and test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account the capital account and the exchange rate regime our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making are insufficient the evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic competition as well as the policies of a country s sociocultural peers we interpret the latter influence as a form of channeled learning reflecting governments search for appropriate models for economic policy

weaving together the normative and regulative roles of government how the norwegian sovereign wealth fund s responsible conduct is shaping firms cross border investments based on institutional theory i extend research on the regulative role of national government in society and suggest that government exerts important influences on firms actions through the diffusion of norms i suggest that the norwegian government by instituting an ethical council that publicly censors and certifies the cross border investments of the norwegian sovereign wealth fund government pension fund global contributes to the professionalization of responsible investment principles and thus plays a normative role in shaping firms investments employing a quasi natural experiment i find that focal norwegian firms are more likely to make responsible cross border investments following the formation of the council on ethics in 2004 and its associated censorship announcements further i find that the normative pressure for responsible investments is mediated by firms imitation or overlap with the norwegian sovereign wealth fund s investments however the mediated effect of normative pressure on responsible investments becomes weaker for government owned firms these findings highlight the importance of normative mechanisms through which government can influence firms behavior especially in contexts where regulatory authority may not hold moreover these findings reveal the interplay among the normative mimetic and regulative pressures and the heterogeneity in the extent to which firms within the same country demonstrate institutional isomorphism

booming sector and de industrialisation in a small open economy this paper presents a theoretical analysis of the dutch disease the phenomenon whereby a boom in one traded goods sector squeezes porfitability in other traded goods sectors both by directly bi

fragmented fiscal policy abstract this paper explores on a panel of 19 oecd countries the role of fragmentation in determining fiscal outcomes over the 1970 95 period we first define the notion of fragmentation of fiscal policy making as the degree to which the costs of a dollar of aggregate expenditure are internalized by individual decision makers empirically this notion has two key logical components the number of decision makers and the rules of the game or the budget process in turn the number of decision makers can refer to the number of parties in a coalition or the number of ministers in the cabinet we test all these determinants against each other and against perhaps the oldest explanation of all ideology we show that cabinet size and to a lesser degree coalition size and ideology are significant and robust determinants of fiscal outcomes in particular transfers are the budget items most affected by these factors

is there convergence across countries a spatial approach we analyze convergence across countries over the last half century as a result of globalizing forces drawing on theories of modernization dependency the world system political trade blocs and the world society we consider economic demographic knowledge financial and political dimensions of convergence using a new methodology we calculate the minimum volume ellipsoid encompassing different groupings of countries finding that during the 1960 2009 period countries have not evolved significantly closer or similar to one another although groups of countries based on their core periphery status or membership in trade blocs exhibit increasing internal convergence and divergence between one another

composition of trade flows and the effectiveness of fiscal devaluation we empirically explore whether the magnitude of the effects of fiscal devaluation which consists of reducing the employers social security contribution rate and increasing the value added tax rate depends on the composition of trade flows our sample comprises data on bilateral balances of trade between 28 european union eu member states and their main eu trade partners over the 2000 14 period we use robust ordinary least squares regressions controlling for the country pair and time fixed effects to test whether there are differences in the sizes of relationships between these taxation forms and bilateral trade balances for different types of goods by distinguishing between i consumer intermediate and capital goods and ii labour and capital intensive goods our results show that the overall effectiveness of fiscal devaluation depends on the composition of trade flows value added tax is more strongly positively associated with bilateral balances of trade in consumer goods compared to balances of trade in capital and intermediate goods the employers contribution rate in contrast is more tightly negatively related to balances of trade in capital goods the latter finding also holds true for trade balances of labour intensive goods compared to balances of capital intensive goods

diffusion development and democracy 1800 1999 while a trend of growth in democratization over the past two centuries has been generally observed it is the remarkable growth in the democratization of the world over the past 30 years that has truly captured the imagination of social scientists policymakers and the general public alike two major sets of factors have dominated studies attempting to predict democratization one set characterizes endogenous or internal features of countries and may be referred to as socioeconomic development the other set less often tested characterizes exogenous variables that influence democratization via forces at work globally and within the region in which a country resides this set may be referred to as diffusion processes this study provides the first systematic comparison of these two sets of variables when assessed alone development indicators are robust predictors of democracy but their predictive power fades with the inclusion of diffusion variables in particular diffusion predictors of spatial pr

competing for capital the diffusion of bilateral investment treaties 1960 2000 over the past forty five years bilateral investment treaties bits have become the most important international legal mechanism for the encouragement and governance of foreign direct investment the proliferation of bits during the past two decades in particular has been phenomenal these intergovernmental treaties typically grant extensive rights to foreign investors including protection of contractual rights and the right to international arbitration in the event of an investment dispute how can we explain the widespread adoption of bits we argue that the spread of bits is driven by international competition among potential host countries typically developing countries for foreign direct investment we propose a set of hypotheses that derive from such an explanation and develop a set of empirical tests that rely on network measures of economic competition as well as more indirect evidence of competitive pressures on the host to sign bits the evidence suggests that potential hosts are more likely to sign bits when their competitors have done so we find some evidence that coercion and learning play a role but less support for cultural explanations based on emulation our main finding is that the diffusion of bits is associated with competitive economic pressures among developing countries to capture a share of foreign investment we are agnostic at this point about the benefits of this competition for development for useful comments on earlier drafts of this article we thank bill bernhard bear braumoeller frank dobbin robert franzese jeffry frieden geoffrey garrett tom ginsburg jude hays lisa martin bob pahre mark ramsayer steven ratner susan rose ackerman and john sides for research assistance we thank elizabeth burden raechel groom and alexander noonan

political bias in policy convergence privatization choices in latin america since the early 1980s privatization has spread in latin america under both right wing rulers and populist presidents this regional convergence toward privatization seemed to announce the end of partisan policy making however not all governments implement privatization in the same way even in the context of policy convergence technocrats propose similar policy options in countries where capital dearth creates pressures for convergence yet politicians build the electoral and government coalitions that make these policies possible and their preferences shape the institutions chosen at implementation the bias introduced by politicians depends on their prior beliefs and constituencies which shape their institutional preferences beliefs about economic nationalism and state intervention influence the selection of regulations at the time of privatization whereas coalition building with political constituencies shapes the definition of selling conditions in privatized companies this political bias which is contingent on the privatizing government explains that the regional policy convergence toward privatization did not extend to its implementation that is although politicians may be losing influence about whether to privatize they still have a say in the choice of how to privatize this article analyzes the impact of this political bias by focusing on the choice of regulatory institutions and selling conditions in five cases of privatization of electricity and telecommunications in latin america

external adjustment and the global crisis abstract the period preceding the global financial crisis was characterized by a substantial widening of current account imbalances across the world since the onset of the crisis these imbalances have contracted to a significant extent in this paper we analyze the ongoing process of external adjustment in advanced economies and emerging markets we find that countries whose pre crisis current account balances were in excess of what could be explained by standard economic fundamentals have experienced the largest contractions in their external balance we subsequently examine the contributions of real exchange rates domestic demand and domestic output to the adjustment process allowing for differences across exchange rate regimes and find that external adjustment in deficit countries was achieved primarily through demand compression rather than expenditure switching finally we show that changes in other investment flows were the main channel of financial account adjustment with official external assistance and ecb liquidity cushioning the exit of private capital flows for some countries

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

globalization pressures and the state the worldwide spread of central bank independence the authors examine the impact of globalization on state structures in the specific instance of the central bank following the world system world society and neoinstitutional perspectives in sociology they assume that states are in cultural political and economic competition with each other thereby seeking to maintain their position and status frequently by adopting organizational forms or practices that make them isomorphic with their environment the authors predict that countries boost the independence of their central bank from the political power as their exposure to foreign trade investment and multilateral lending increases they also model the cross national dynamic process of diffusion of central bank independence by examining the impact of cohesive and role equivalent trade relationships between countries they find support for their hypotheses with information on 71 countries between 1990 and 2000

ideological purity vs hybridization trade off when do islamic banks hire managers from conventional banking organizations that compete in institutional environments in which oppositional logics compete for dominance face a risk return trade off between maintaining ideological purity versus pragmatism by borrowing template elements from the rival ideology deviating from ideological purity might improve a firm s competitive strength however at the same time it might also undermine its very identity and legitimacy although such decisions are of strategic importance research about why how and where these trade offs are made is still limited we develop the argument that organizations will be more likely to deviate from ideological purity when the potential return of borrowing from the oppositional template exceeds the perceived risk of doing so the more organizations aspire to be ideologically pure the more they are constrained by the moral codes that define the category and therefore the higher the risk associated with deviating from purity however given the potential benefits of pragmatism pure or

interdependence in comparative politics substance theory empirics substance interdependence is ubiquitous and often central across comparative politics indeed as the authors show first theoretically any situation involving externalities from one unit s actions on others implies interdependence positive or negative externalities induce negative or positive interdependence which spurs competitive races or free riding with corresponding early or late mover advantages and thus strategic rush to act or delay and inaction the authors show next how to model interdependent processes empirically how not doing so risks omitted variable biases favoring domestic and exogenous external accounts over interdependence but how doing so naively risks simultaneity biases with the opposite substantive implications they then discuss how to estimate properly specified interdependence models and finally how to interpret and present estimated spatio temporally dynamic effects response paths and long run steady states with associated standard errors they illustrate by replicating a not

geology or economics testing models of irreversible investment using north sea oil data this paper tests the main implications of models of irreversible investment using data from operations in the oil fields in the north sea discrete time hazard regression models are used to ascertain the influence of economic variables the expected price of oil the variance of the price of oil and the level of reserves on the lag between the discovery of a field and the decision to develop the field we are able to control for heterogeneity in the data by incorporating variables which account for both the geological features of each field and individual operator characteristics the results indicate that the expected price of oil and the level of reserves are important in influencing the appraisal duration but that the variance of the oil price is not variables capturing the non economic features of the individual fields are also found to be significant factors affecting the appraisal lag copyright 1994 by royal economic society

estimating monopoly behavior with competitive recycling an application to alcoa this article develops a structural model of the aluminum industry during the period between world war i and world war ii it takes into account both the intertemporal nature of alcoa s cost minimization problem and the competitive recycling sector the model enables estimation of alcoa s degree of market power while allowing for the effect of competition from recycled aluminum previous work has emphasized alcoa s control over the size of the secondary sector in the long run as a source of market power for alcoa the results here indicate that alcoa could exert little influence in this regard but nonetheless had substantial market power

mnes location strategies and labor standards the role of operating and reputational considerations across industries we investigate the role of local labor standards on mnes location decisions across different sectors and sub national regions within a developing country we suggest that foreign investors adopt selective location strategies in connection with specific labor standards as a result of reputational and operating considerations foreign firms in more hazardous sectors prefer locations with higher occupational health and safety standards because they are more exposed to reputational risks those in sectors with less reversible investments prefer locations with lower degrees of unionization because their lower bargaining power increases their sensitivity to operating costs we test our arguments across 26 sub national turkish regions over the period 2005 2011

oppositional logics and the antecedents of hybridization a country level study of the diffusion of islamic banking windows 1975 2017 little is known about when and where hybrid organizations diffuse we argue that neo institutional perspectives which stress the constraining role of market categories and institutional logics ha

fiscal rules and twin deficits the link between fiscal and external balances this paper investigates the relationship between countries fiscal balances and current accounts with an emphasis on the role of fiscal rules the direct effect of fiscal policy on the current account via aggregate import demand is potentially amplified by indirect effects materializing through interest rate effects and inter generational transfers that reduce savings on the other hand the implied positive relation between fiscal and external balances is potentially attenuated by offsetting changes in savings through ricardian equivalence considerations we expect this attenuation effect to be stronger in countries with more stringent fiscal rules and test this hypothesis using a panel of 73 countries over the period 1985 2012 as previous studies we find a positive effect of fiscal balances on the current account supporting the twin deficit hypothesis however the effect of fiscal balances on the current account depends on the stringency of fiscal budget balance or debt rules in place it is reduced by one third on average and virtually eliminated for countries with the most stringent fiscal rules authors abstract

does inequality lead to greater efficiency in the use of local commons the role of strategic investments in capacity abstract this paper examines how inequality in access to credit affects the strategic behavior of users of a common resource in their investment and extraction decisions a dynamic two stage game is developed in which agents choose the level of sunk investment in capacity and the consequent extraction path the results show that agents invest in excess capacity except when inequality is very high the relation between inequality and efficiency in resource extraction is found to be non monotonic with the steady state resource stock being closest to the optimal level when either inequality is very high or very low

what do we know about investment under uncertainty recent theoretical developments relating to investment under uncertainty have highlighted the importance of irreversibility for the timing of investment expenditures and their expected returns this has subsequently stimulated a growing empirical literature which examines uncertainty and threshold effects on investment behaviour this paper presents a review of this literature a variety of methods have been used to investigate the empirical implication of irreversibility in investment the majority focusing on the relationship between investment flows and proxy measures of uncertainty a general conclusion is that increased uncertainty at both aggregate and disaggregate levels leads to lower investment rates this suggests that there is an irreversibility effect under which greater uncertainty raises the value of the call option to delay a commitment to investment this effect appears to dominate any positive impact on investment arising from the fact that greater uncertability under certain circumstances increases the marginal profitability of capital the methods used raise a number of issues which call into question the reliability of the findings and these are addressed in the paper however if such irreversibility effects are present then their omission from traditional investment models casts doubt on the efficacy of such specifications jel classification d81 d92 e22

the international diffusion of public sector downsizing network emulation and theory driven learning we examine change in the size of the public sector between 1980 and 1997 across twenty six organization for economic cooperation and development oecd member nations with particular attention to diffusion dynamics general method of moments gmm analyses demonstrate imitation of shifts in government employment within the united states and mutual influence among nations that are geographically proximate and that trade extensively disaggregated analyses show that downsizing is contagious while upsizing is not proximate downsizers but not upsizers are imitated and states act on evidence that downsizing is economically beneficial while ignoring evidence that it is harmful we argue that these asymme tries in emulation and learning are a product of the dominance of neoliberal and managerialist discourses that legitimate and theorize shrinking the public sector the twentieth century as a whole and particularly the three decades after world war ii witnessed steady growth in government size and responsibility states devel oped extensive social safety nets actively managed aggregate demand and regu lated a widening swath of economic and social life this trajectory of expansion was linked to powerful forces of economic development and demographic change and anchored in a broad political consensus 1 the 1980s and 1990s saw a sea change in the rate of public sector growth brit ish prime minister margaret thatcher and u s president ronald reagan led the way with privatization outsourcing and load shedding of public responsibilities but the shift in direction was not limited to radicals on the right country reports

trade globalization since 1795 waves of integration in the world system the term globalization as used by social scientists and in popular discourse has many meanings we contend that it is important to distinguish between globalization as a contemporary political ideology and what we call structural globalization the increasing worldwide density of large scale interaction networks relative to the density of smaller networks we study one type of economic globalization over the past two centuries the trajectory of international trade as a proportion of global production is trade globalization a recent phenomenon a long term upward trend or a cyclical process using an improved measure of trade globalization we find that there have been three waves since 1795 we discuss the possible causes of these pulsations of global integration and their implications for the early decades of the twenty first century

the economic aftermath of resource booms evidence from boomtowns in the american west the current us oil and gas boom is injecting labour capital and revenue into communities near reserves will these communities be cursed with lower long run incomes in the wake of the boom we study the oil boom and bust cycle of the 1970s and 1980s to gain insights using annual data on drilling to identify western boom and bust counties we find substantial positive local employment and income effects during the boom in the aftermath of the bust however we find that incomes per capita decreased and unemployment compensation payments increased relative to what they would have been if the boom had not occurred