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This paper analyses the influence of agglomeration and spatial sorting on wages in Brazilian cities. The empirical strategy is based on a two‐step estimation. The first step estimates a wage equation with the observed characteristics of workers and firms and location effects. The second step decomposes the location effects into employment density and fixed effects of firm and worker. We estimate an urban wage premium for a developing country with the simultaneous inclusion of worker and firm fixed effects, instrumental variables, and nighttime lights. We find agglomeration effects of 4.3–5.7%, which are larger than those obtained for developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper I discuss three aspects of the experience of the LDCs since the advent of the new exchange rate regime. These aspects are the short-term variabilities of (1) exchange rates, (2) real exchange rates, and (3) reserve use. The results are interesting only in that they confirm expectations based on conventional theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the change in the financial and operating performance of 79 companies from 21 developing countries that experienced full or partial privatization during the period from 1980 to 1992. We use accounting performance measures adjusted for market effects in addition to unadjusted accounting performance measures. Both unadjusted and market-adjusted results show significant increases in profitability, operating efficiency, capital investment spending, output, employment level, and dividends. We also find a decline in leverage following privatization but this change is significant only for unadjusted leverage ratios. Our results are generally robust when we partition our data into various subsamples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Papers in Regional Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent work is reconceptualizing global poverty as an attractive growth opportunity for firms, that can simultaneously alleviate the problem of poverty. This notion has major implications for the sustainability of global society in general, and for the concepts and practice of marketing in particular. It is the purpose of this paper to explore, and bring attention to, these important implications, and to offer conceptual and practical suggestions for a sustainability marketing for the poor. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greater availability of firm‐level surveys in developing countries has enabled researchers to consider the effects of corruption at the firm level. One often overlooked issue with these surveys is nonresponse by firms. We examine the impact of corruption on firm investment and demonstrate that failing to account for nonresponse leads to an overestimation of the impact of corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have found a relationship between corporate social and environmental disclosure and firm value (FV) or accounting profitability. Where environmental disclosure has been the focus, though, only single‐country studies have been published, and most of the previous research concerns the developed world. This study examines the association between corporate environmental disclosure (CED) and FV in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, where CED has been increasing from its previous low base. Findings from a multicountry sample of 500 firm‐year observations using a 55‐item unweighted environmental disclosure index suggest that CED is significantly and positively related to FV as measured by Tobin's Q (TBQ). The relationship is robust to using a weighted version of the disclosure index, individual countries and environmental disclosure subindices. Some evidence of a positive relationship between CED and return on assets is also found, but even where statistically significant, the relationship is much weaker than in the case of TBQ. For empirical and theoretical reasons, we recommend that future studies pay greater attention to market‐based proxies, if possible, when investigating the value relevance of CED in both developed and developing countries. Our results suggest that both managers and policymakers in GCC countries should take a positive view of expanded CED. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus disease‐2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic has disrupted many activities along agri‐food supply chains in developing countries and posed unprecedented challenges in particular to small and medium agri‐food enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on a survey of 166 Egyptian agri‐food SMEs, this study investigates differences in‐ and determinants of COVID‐19 business risk perception among these enterprises. The empirical results showed that risk perception was highly asymmetric across geographical regions. Enterprises with longer cash flow coverage periods and higher values of total assets perceived significantly lower risk levels, as cash and assets functioned as a buffer against the impact of COVID‐19. The findings of the study imply that the "just‐in‐time" approach and the absence of a proactive and preventative stance to risk management reduced the resilience of agri‐food SMEs to the risks presented by the pandemic. Generally, enterprises that operate both in domestic and export markets perceived lower COVID‐19 risks. Finally, the main export destination to which the surveyed enterprises export was a significant determinant of their risk perception. These findings could be useful to managers of agri‐food businesses in terms of better understanding of risks and promotion of risk management practices. More so, they can help design effective policy interventions to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on Egyptian agri‐food SMEs and build up their resilience to future pandemics and shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By drawing a theoretical distinction between the persistence of superior and poor performance, we reconcile the conflicting predictions of the 'revisionist' and accepted views on the persistence of firm performance in emerging economies. Using a sample of manufacturing firms in the United States and India, we show that superior firm performance in emerging economies persists only as much as developed economies in line with the revisionist argument. We also provide evidence consistent with the accepted view that poor firm performance persists longer in emerging economies compared to developed economies. Further exploration of the latter shows that, contrary to predictions of extant theories, firms in emerging economies that are affiliated with an MNC or a business group have a greater persistence of poor performance than firms that are unaffiliated with these intermediate governance structures, and hence would be better off operating at arm's length. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the value creating effect of firm restructuring which results in a reduction of internal markets (including spin-offs, carve-outs and other divestitures) is generally well accepted for U.S. firms, there is little evidence on the extent to which such arguments can be extended to firms in emerging economies. This study addresses this void in the literature by examining the issue of restructuring in the newly emerging economy of the Czech Republic. Several hypotheses relating to internal and external markets in emerging institutional environments are developed and tested using a large database of original and restructured Czech firms undergoing privatization. After controlling for factors such as size and performance, it is found that restructuring significantly reduced the value of firms, despite the general belief that Czech firms emerging from the communist era were highly overdiversified. This finding, while contradicting a majority of the work on restructured firms in the United States, nonetheless supports the notion that sizeable internal markets play an enhanced role in underdeveloped institutional environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We partition the variances of profits of the companies associated with Korean business groups into business group-specific effects, industry effects, and affiliate company-specific effects, which roughly match corporate-parent effects, industry effects and business unit effects, respectively, in the extant literature. We find substantial corporate-parent effects (here, business group effects) along with industry effects and business unit effects (here, affiliate company-specific effects). This finding may indicate that business groups play an important role in developing countries by circumventing market inefficiencies. Our results also suggest that these effects tend to be smaller in large business groups and to decrease over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines corporate governance principles in the developed world. The United States modifies legal constraints to shepherd business conduct back toward shareholder primacy. The developing world relies more on extra-legal constraints than on the law to channel the behavior of managers. The underlying definition of corporate social responsibility is more obviously influenced by cultural norms. Law has social influence chiefly to the extent that it becomes a virtual forum for the discussion of socio-legal norms and a vehicle for reinforcing professionalism.

The article examines corporate social responsibility (CSR) in developing countries. Two different CSR conceptualizations is reviewed. The findings of a study undertaken in the Lebanese context, illustrating the prevalence of altruistic CSR in developing countries is presented. CSR is one of the earliest and key conceptions in the academic study of business and society relations. The rise of CSR coincided with postulations on the role of businesspeople as stewards not only of their personal resources but also of societal resources.

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first objective should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. —Thomas Jefferson, 1787 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many developing country small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that are exporters see themselves facing a dilemma. They do not know how to respond to the rising social and environmental requirements of global buyers and supply chains and fear that were they to do so they would lose their competitive edge. However, they are aware that if they do not meet these requirements, they will not be able to access new foreign markets and may lose the contracts they already have. To investigate whether practical methods exist for resolving this dilemma, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) carried out a one year project with 22 SMEs in four Asian countries. The results suggest that well targeted, enterprise-specific efforts to meet corporate social responsibility (CSR) requirements can make a positive contribution to both short-term profitability and longer-term competitiveness. The ‘business case’ for CSR appears strongest in the environmental area, but measures in that area can act as a ‘starter motor’ for tackling more systemic ‘social’ problems. Furthermore, tackling social issues at the workplace can feed back positively to improve the sustainability of the environmental improvement measures. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article briefly examines: first, the implications for management of the current period of global social transformation, second, the emergence of the strategic organizational form among the largest and most successful corporate enterprises, third, parallel advances in the theoretical and methodological bases of management for Third World development and fourth, the growing challenge within the broader field of public administration to conventional theory and organizational models. Management is a process of mobilizing resources toward a purpose. The strategic organization represents at once a response to necessity, and a proactive commitment to the ideal that the purpose of organization is to serve the needs of people, while facilitating the human growth of all participants. As major firms came to terms with the new reality, they began to experiment with a new management concept, strategic planning. Generally, this took the form of adding a special staff unit, responsible for providing top management with thorough situation analyses and competitive assessments intended not only to anticipate future threats, but also to identify new opportunities which might be matched with existing internal capabilities.

The article explores the process of subcontracting between small-scale enterprises in developing countries. The development of sub-contracting practices is often referred to as one of the ways to stimulate the growth of small-scale enterprises and the creation of employment opportunities. However, in most of the writings proposing such sub-contracting practices, the kind of sub-contracting patterns aimed at relate in most cases implicitly or explicitly to situations in which the sub-contracting firm is of a relatively larger size than the sub-contractor. Small-scale firms, particularly in developing countries, frequently suffer from lack of financial resources, for which reason it may not be possible to purchase all the equipment needed for carrying out the various stages of the production process. It may be deduced that various situations can be hypothesized in which sub-contracting relationships between small-scale enterprises would develop which are of a more than incidental nature, while moreover such relationships may be beneficial, at least in principle, to both the contractor and the sub-contractor, and in addition may have certain positive aspects from a socio-economic point of view.