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The economics of standards pertains to the investigation of economic problems related to standards. It was established as a field of research between 2000 and 2010 and has developed rapidly since. Focusing on the relevant theories, methods, and issues, this article systematically summarizes and evaluates the extant literature on the economics of standards. The theory section concentrates on the classification, supply–demand, and economic effects of standards. The method section expands on these theoretical and empirical dimensions, while the final issue section focuses on standards alongside economic growth, trade, and innovation. The study's findings have implications for promoting teaching and research on the economics of standards and improving the practice of standardization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A burgeoning literature in labor economics is focused on modeling employer labor market power, generally finding nontrivial estimates of monopsony power. A smaller literature also simultaneously incorporates product market power. Deb, Eeckhout, Patel, and Warren (2024) is an example of applying an oligopoly‐oligopsony model to the U.S. labor market, arguing for important effects on wage levels and inequality from rising market power. I support combining IO and labor as a fruitful way of studying wages and business dynamism, but argue for looking more broadly at (i) differential degrees of employer power in labor and product markets; (ii) investigating the dynamic sources of markups (e.g., through innovation), and (iii) considering wage bargaining models, not just wage posting models, which have some starkly different implications for wage setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce the rejection game, designed to formalize the interaction between interlocutors in a Stalnakerian conversation: a speaker who asserts something and a listener who may accept or reject. The rejection game is similar to other signalling games known to the literature in economics and biology. We point out similarities and differences, and propose an application in linguistics. We uncover basic conditions under which the Gricean maxim of quality emerges from incentives among the players, providing evidence for a functionalist understanding of the Gricean program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We survey the literature on preferences for redistribution. We discuss different ways the literature has measured these preferences and review literature on the different determinants of preferences for redistribution. These range from institutions and demographic factors to fairness views and social preferences. Income inequality is, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the most important determinants of preferences for redistribution. While our survey is largely focused on the economics literature, we also review some work from political science, sociology, and psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by the introduction of the UK Gender Pay Gap Reporting legislation to large firms, defined as over 250 employees, we use linked employee–employer panel data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings to explore pre‐legislation variation in the gender pay gap by firm size. In doing so, we contribute to the evidence on the relationship between two prominent empirical regularities in the labour economics literature, namely the gender pay gap and the firm‐size wage premium. We find that both the raw and adjusted gender pay gaps increase with firm size in the UK private sector, even after controlling for unobserved worker heterogeneity, consistent with the legislation being targeted effectively. However, this conclusion changes after accounting for unobserved firm‐level heterogeneity. Large firms have smaller within‐firm raw gender pay gaps and similar adjusted gender pay gaps when compared to smaller firms. Our findings are not specific to the current definition of large firms but hold more generally, including at alternative proposed size thresholds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the empirical economics literature on food safety, reputation, and regulation. Producers have strong private incentives to provide safe food, largely related to reputation, especially the negative demand effects seen in response to food‐safety problems. Mandatory disclosure of information about food safety can change demand and improve safety outcomes. Private incentives led producers and marketers to adopt private and collective standards for produce safety prior to the implementation of similar government regulations in the United States. Private and collective standards and government regulations all have distributional effects. The article concludes with some policy suggestions informed by the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic efficiency is the ultimate goal of all markets, including the electricity market. Several technical and pecuniary restrictions known as externalities in economics literature can significantly affect the economic efficiency of the electricity market. Negative externalities resulting from the operational restrictions of generation units are inherent to electricity markets. In this paper, after reviewing the effects of externalities on the day‐ahead electricity markets' economic efficiency using a unit commitment‐based model, an innovative and theoretically efficient service‐based procedure aimed at internalizing negative externalities in the day‐ahead electricity markets is presented. In this way, a new service procured by the energy storage system to provide energy interchange possibilities in the electricity market is introduced. The proposed service uses both price and quantity adjustment methods to internalize externalities. A new discriminatory method for pricing the service and a bi‐level optimization problem for determining the capacity of the energy storage system required to provide the service are considered. The consideration of the proposed method facilitates reaching the first‐best optimal market solution by alleviating negative externalities existing in the sub‐optimal second‐best solution in the presence of generation sector operational constraints. Numerical case studies demonstrate the functioning of the proposed externalities internalization scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice 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.)

Since the introduction of the Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (ARCH) model, the literature on modeling the time‐varying second‐order conditional moment has become increasingly popular in the last four decades. Its popularity is partly due to its success in capturing volatility in financial time series, which is useful for modeling and predicting risk for financial assets. A natural extension of this is to model time variation in higher‐order conditional moments, such as the third and fourth moments, which are related to skewness and kurtosis (tail risk). This leads to an emerging literature on time‐varying higher‐order conditional moments in the last two decades. This paper outlines recent developments in modeling time‐varying higher‐order conditional moments in the economics and finance literature. Using the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) framework as a foundation, this paper provides an overview of the two most common approaches for modeling time‐varying higher‐order conditional moments: autoregressive conditional density (ARCD) and autoregressive conditional moment (ARCM). The discussion covers both the theoretical and empirical aspects of the literature. This includes the identification of the associated skewness–kurtosis domain by using the solutions to the classical moment problems, the structural and statistical properties of the models used to model the higher‐order conditional moments and the computational challenges in estimating these models. We also advocate the use of a maximum entropy density (MED) as an alternative method, which circumvents some of the issues prevalent in these common approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of English Premier League clubs' reliance on internal versus external sources for competitive game‐time opportunities to unproven players is motivated by relevant labour economics literature. Two uniquely created data sets are utilized to establish robust results supporting the notion that certain clubs' youth programmes provide greater first‐team playing time opportunities through internal sources. This information is further used to create a unique index for youth development reputation of the clubs. In addition to this index and the original data set, this paper creates a link between existing internal versus external hiring labour literature and a club's decision to give game‐time opportunities to new players externally or resort to their internal hiring. Foreign sourced players become more prevalent in the league after the Bosman ruling, and their probability of game‐time selection is positively correlated with club stature. Survival analysis results also establishes a presence of heterogeneity at the youth club level that signals differences in player career prospects generated by their youth training, which is supplementary to the number of opportunities given to youth players by these clubs. This model also shows that the Bosman ruling positively impacts the career duration of youth players as opposed to its negative effect on game‐time selection, which signals that even though competitive game‐time opportunities are more limited, the quality of internally sourced players is higher as a result of increased competitive pressures brought upon by the Bosman ruling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sufficientarianism is a prominent approach to distributive justice in political philosophy and in policy analyses. However, it is virtually absent from the formal normative economics literature. We analyze sufficientarianism axiomatically in the context of the allocation of 0–1 normalized well‐being in society. We present three characterizations of the core sufficientarian criterion, which counts the number of agents who attain a "good enough" level of well‐being. The main characterization captures the "hybrid" nature of the criterion, which embodies at the same time a threshold around which the worst off in society is prioritized, and an indifference to equality in other regions. The other two characterizations relate sufficientarianism, respectively, to a liberal principle of noninterference and to a classic neutrality property. [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.)

The role of the leader in economic development and in the formation of the developmental state is overlooked in the standard development economics literature. The developmental state is a state with adequate 'state capacity' to achieve successful policy design and implementation to reach developmental objectives. Developmental leaders have played an important role in the formation and administration of the developmental state, which has driven East Asian industrialisation and economic development. In contrast to standard political leaders, including populists, developmental leaders have envisioned, ignited and then administered successful economic development processes. In this study, we introduce and discuss the notion of the developmental leader (primarily in East Asia) through a selective theoretical and empirical analysis of developmental leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human beings have countless desires but bounded resources, and this limitation makes them choose between alternatives. Consumers are encouraged to be aware of the best alternative use of a resource (e.g., money and time), which is known as the opportunity cost of their choice. The current systematic review addresses existing debates and ambiguities surrounding opportunity cost consideration by consumers. We review the origins, different definitions, antecedents, associated decisions, and outcomes of opportunity costs consideration through a detailed examination of the relevant literature from multiple disciplines such as marketing, psychology, and economics. The SPAR‐4‐SLR protocol is used to conduct the review and the ADO (Antecedents, Decisions, Outcomes) framework is used to organize our findings. We highlight and reconcile two different perspectives on the conceptualization of opportunity cost as the forgone value (by considering willingness to pay) versus the physical market value of the second‐best alternative. Different antecedents of opportunity cost consideration are categorized into three categories: individual differences, situational variables, and information processing method. We discuss when and why consumers tend to neglect the opportunity cost, in which situations they are more likely to overestimate the opportunity cost, and what is the difference between consideration of opportunity cost of time and money. Results show that despite what the economics literature suggests, opportunity cost consideration does not always lead to positive outcomes. Based on the literature of regret theory, and differences between maximizers and satisficers, we discuss how opportunity cost considerations might lead to choice discomfort, regret, and dissatisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with the recent assertion that institutional quality matters in the way financial development influences economic growth in financial economics literature, this study examines the moderating role of institutional quality in the finance‐growth nexus in Kenya for the period 1986–2015. A fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) estimator is adopted to take care of endogeneity problem inherent in the relationship among the variables while error‐correction version of autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique is adopted to take care of short‐ and long‐run effects. The research outputs reveal that in the short‐run institutions and finance complement and reinforce each other to enhance growth, while institutional framework in Kenya constitutes a drain that leaks out the growth benefits of financial development in the long run. It is also found that the country majorly operates below the threshold level of institutional quality required to maximize the growth benefits of financial development. This study, therefore, concludes that institutional framework guiding the operations of financial system in Kenya should be strengthened so as to block loopholes and lapses that leak out the growth benefits of finance. JEL CLASSIFICATION: D53; E02; N27; O43 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an emerging strand in the agricultural economics literature which examines the calibration of risk programming models using the principles of Positive Mathematical Programming (PMP). In a recent contribution to this journal, Liu et al. (2020) compare three different PMP approaches and attempt to find the 'most practical' method for calibrating risk programming models to be used in policy analysis. In this article, we argue that the comparison design by Liu et al. (2020) is problematic, as it is based on inappropriate metrics and it ignores recent advancements in PMP. This word of caution intends to provide constructive criticism and aims at contributing to the use of risk programming models in policy analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses agricultural economics literature on farmland prices and key determinants of these prices. The first section of the paper uses a basic capitalization model to organize a review of the literature and data. We then provide a focused assessment of five streams of literature examining farmland prices: (1) boom‐bust; (2) the capitalization effect of government agricultural subsidies on farmland prices; (3) agricultural zoning; (4) climate change; and (5) prohibitions against non‐local buyers of farmland. Our review highlights challenges to ongoing efforts to model changing farmland prices, the modern emphasis on econometric identification, important variation in the magnitude of estimated relationships across the literature, and the opportunity to expand research in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Day after day, social impact measurement is becoming preeminent in the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE). Against this background a multiplicity of methods of measuring social impact have emerged. Our aim is to shed some light on how to interpret this diversity of methods for measuring social impact by using the economics of conventions literature. This analytical approach leads us to regard the various methods of measuring social impact as evaluation conventions or "modes of coordination" between the agents involved. These conventions are based on representations of what is "good" and "fair", of what constitutes "good" and "bad" evaluations. More specifically this article identifies two distinct collective modes of coordination which we label the "managerial convention" and the "deliberative convention". The analysis of different possible articulations between these two conventions within the evaluations that were the subject of two case studies reveals, on the one hand, the existence of common characteristics within these methods, even though their originators describe and define them as singular or unique measures of social impact, on the other hand, the presence of distinctive element relating to the degree of belonging to the SSE of the social impact measurement's originators, the "identity dimension" of the SSE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are inconclusive findings on the causal effect of land reform and its crucial channels in the development economics literature. One challenge is to separate the channels, through which land rights operate. This study examines the impact of redistributive land reform in post–World War II Japan on agricultural productivity and investments. This reform imposed a ceiling on landholdings, redistributed above‐ceiling farmland from landlords to tenants, and severely restricted the transferability of redistributed farmland. Thus, we can focus on the tenure security effect (not the tradability and pledgeability effects) as one probable channel. Using rice‐farm panel data before and after the reform (i.e., 1947 and 1948), we exploit the variation in the reform implementation across tenants. The land reform had little effect on total factor productivity and investment in the subsequent season. Our results suggest that the security dimension of land rights alone does not increase short‐run agricultural productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large economics literature has debated the best formula to estimate a cost‐of‐living index (COLI). This study shows that formula does not matter for many purposes for an index chained at a monthly frequency once chain drift has been removed. Spurious chain drift is removed with a new method revealing the large majority of the difference between the CPI‐U and the C‐CPI‐U (a COLI) is due to the CPI‐U weights effectively chaining at the biennial frequency, rather than the difference in formula assumptions. This sufficiently justifies the C‐CPI‐U and similar chained indexes while also showing their assumptions are not critical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the effect of rainfall on agricultural output and democratization in the world's most agricultural countries. As in the agricultural economics literature, we find that the relationship between rainfall and agricultural output has an inverted U‐shape, as agriculture is harmed by both droughts and very wet conditions. We also find the effect of rainfall on agricultural output to be transitory. The relationship between rainfall and democratization is U‐shaped in the short run, and this effect persists in the long run. Hence democratic transitions outlast the (transitory) rainfall shocks that started the democratization process. The U‐shaped relationship between rainfall and democratization is consistent with rainfall affecting democratization through its (inverted‐U‐shaped) effect on agricultural output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vast majority of the wildlife valuation literature focuses on entire populations or substantial changes in those populations (e.g., 25% or more). The policy questions that motivated these existing studies differ considerably from the question of values for individual animals. Compensation for poaching incidents or accidental death of individual animals, as well as analyses of regulatory actions affecting a small number of animals, require economic value estimates for individual animals that are almost entirely missing from the economics literature. In the absence of value estimates for individual animals, wildlife managers are forced to rely on proxy measures that have little to no basis in economic valuation. This study presents one of the first applications of contingent valuation focused on the total economic value of an individual animal. In contrast to the existing literature on preservation values, this involves a unique study design to focus the scenario on animals at the individual level. Our valuation study takes place in the novel setting of "virtual tourists" who watch live animal webcams and interact and connect with the good in question. Results suggest that preservation values for individual animals can be quite high. The range of preservation values for one brown bear is estimated at $70–$140 per person based on a parametric spike model and non‐parametric Turnbull and Kristrӧm estimators. The valuation approach illustrated in this article can be useful for collecting compensation for incidents of poaching, destruction of habitat, or evaluating the costs and benefits of regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We survey the recent economics and history literature on the Chinese state to investigate its role in China's long‐term socioeconomic development. We highlight three insights. First, unlike in Europe, where interstate competition helped give rise to capitalist states with high capacity, the Chinese state emerged from a different historical context. Second, the 18th‐ and 19th‐century Chinese state does not fit into the mould of a strong and extractive Oriental despotic state as once commonly believed. By conventional measures, early modern China had a weak state. Third, state building and centre‐local relations are two useful dimensions to understand development and change in China's recent history and political economy. To adapt China to a changing world, Chinese state builders embarked on a long process of state building from the late‐19th century through the Republican and Communist eras. Facilitated partly by regional decentralisation, the process now sees the Chinese state playing a substantially larger role in the economy and everyday life than any previous time in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional economics literature equates welfare with consumption‐based utility, neglecting the psychological effects of uncertainty and fear of the future on well‐being. In this study, we examine how food insecurity relates to changes in subjective well‐being within a comparative analysis across different country groups between 2005 and 2018 and find that food insecurity matters to well‐being. We also examine the relationship between experienced food insecurity and well‐being, taking into account any potential endogeneity. In low‐income, food‐deficient, food‐importing and drought‐affected countries, changes in the prevalence of undernourishment explain a great deal of the variation in subjective well‐being over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this piece is to survey the developing and rapidly growing literature on the economic consequences of COVID‐19 and the governmental responses, and to synthetize the insights emerging from a very large number of studies. This survey: (i) provides an overview of the data sets and the techniques employed to measure social distancing and COVID‐19 cases and deaths; (ii) reviews the literature on the determinants of compliance with and the effectiveness of social distancing; (iii) mentions the macroeconomic and financial impacts including the modelling of plausible mechanisms; (iv) summarizes the literature on the socioeconomic consequences of COVID‐19, focusing on those aspects related to labor, health, gender, discrimination, and the environment; and (v) summarizes the literature on public policy responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical analyses of multinationals from emerging economies (EMNCs) have been a challenge because of the absence of systematic and consistent data. This study focuses on the impacts of patent examiner added citations on citation‐based measures of EMNC subsidiary knowledge inflows. The US patents of leading innovation‐oriented EMNCs from China and India between 2002 and 2014 are analyzed, with their major competitors from mature industrialized countries as a benchmark group. We find that, subsidiary knowledge inflow variables in the current study are not significantly distorted by examiner added citations. This study offers the validity evidence of employing the US patent and citation data in studying EMNCs. The results also contribute to patent economics literature in general by testing the impacts of examiner added citations on citation‐based measures of knowledge flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the determining factors of South to Center‐North migration flows in Italy for five different educational groups. We find strong support for the paramount role of total and education‐specific migration networks. Furthermore, we unveil an inverse relationship between the magnitude of the response of migration flows by educational level and the regional endowment of human capital. More generally, it emerges that once migrants educational attainment is explicitly considered, the reaction of migration flows is highly heterogeneous with respect to the push and pull factors that usually determine them. In the economics of migration literature, these results have not yet been documented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article utilizes a political economy framework to examine how FDA regulations impacted the U.S. healthcare sector's ability to address COVID‐19. I specifically examine the developing COVID‐19 testing, the approval of the medication remdesivir, and COVID‐19 vaccines. By examining periods before and after the FDA issued Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs), my analysis finds that the FDA's regulations enacted before the COVID‐19 pandemic began strongly restricted clinician and patient access to COVID‐19 testing, remdesivir treatment, and approving vaccines. After the FDA issued EUAs, the healthcare sector quickly adopted COVID‐19 testing and remdesivir with little evidence of negative consequences. These findings contribute to the economics literature examining the FDA and contemporary COVID‐19 policy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether individuals' cultural background affects their housing investment decisions, drawing inferences from property location choices, and transaction prices in Australia. We propose a novel measure of cultural distance for each homebuyer–neighborhood pair, adopting the six‐dimensional cultural framework of Hofstede. Our measure captures interethnicity similarity and thus measures the cultural similarity of each buyer and neighborhood pair at a more granular level. Utilizing housing transaction data of a culturally diverse city Sydney, Australia, we find that buyers are more likely to buy properties in neighborhoods with a shorter cultural distance to their culture of origin and are willing to pay a premium for properties in those locations, consistent with buyers' preference for cultural proximity. Further, we show that cultural proximity preference is stronger for ethnicities from recent migration waves, particularly Asia. Our findings are generalizable to other regions with ethnic aggregations and offer new insights into the growing literature on culture and household finance as well as the urban economics literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographical indications (GI) certify the geographical origins of a product and delineate the specific area in which the certified product must be produced. Despite a large literature on the economics of GIs, few papers have explored the question of the optimal size of GI regions. This note presents a flexible conceptual framework to explore the economics and politics of the delimitation of a GI. The general framework describes the efficiency and distributional effects of the size of a GI and shows how this affects interest groups' incentives to influence government decision‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews experimental studies on the so‐called "hold‐up problem." Common features in the experimental design and results are summarized. Most experimental studies show evidence of the hold‐up problem, but to an extent less severe than what standard self‐interest model predicts. Hold‐up occurs at the individual level, but exhibits a less severe pattern than theoretically predicted at the aggregate level. A positive correlation is found between the investment stage decisions and subsequent bargaining behavior. Social preferences largely influence the results in hold‐up games. Remedies that enhance the effect of social preferences can effectively alleviate the hold‐up problem. These laboratory findings are also relevant to real‐life hold‐up situations, but differences in the specific institution and environment may require more variations in the experimental design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State support remains a leading cause of tension in international commercial relations. Governments see trade distortions that look like they were caused by industrial subsidies, but lack data to illuminate that state support. In the 1980s, the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) developed an index that helped countries to see the overall incidence of agricultural subsidies, initially called the Producer Subsidy Equivalent (PSE) and the Consumer Subsidy Equivalent (CSE). Are there lessons for today in the PSE approach? I try to answer that question from the standpoint of economics: how did the PSE evolve, what is it, is the concept relevant to industrial subsidies? And of politics: how was OECD able to create the tool, and do present conditions permit something similar? The PSE was a response to a shared perception of crisis. It drew on well‐established concepts in the agricultural economics and trade literatures. And it works best in a context where market power is sufficiently diffuse that a price gap between domestic and world prices can be calculated. Only some of those conditions can be met when applying the approach to concentrated industries dominated by large firms that operate in multi‐country supply chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zero‐inflated ordered probit (ZIOP) and middle‐inflated ordered probit (MIOP) models are finding increasing favour in the discrete choice literature. We propose generalizations to these models – which collapse to their ZIOP/MIOP counterparts under a set of simple parameter restrictions – with respect to the inflation process. These generalizations form the basis of a new specification test of the inflation process in ZIOP and MIOP models. Support for our generalization framework is principally demonstrated by revisiting a key ZIOP application from the economics literature, and reinforced by the reassessment of an important MIOP application from political science. Our specification test supports the generalized models over the original ZIOP/MIOP ones, suggesting an important role for it in modelling zero‐ and middle‐inflation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which is more innovative: the decentralized, diversified firm, or the centralized, more narrowly focused firm? The economics and finance literatures argue that diversified firms have innovation advantages as their operating units have access to an internal capital market. In contrast, the strategy and entrepreneurship literatures argue that managers of these firms suffer from "managerial myopia," discouraging them from investing in projects with long‐term, uncertain payoffs. We take a fresh look at the relationship between innovation and diversification using a comprehensive sample of diversified and nondiversified firms and a novel approach that teases out the mechanisms influencing the relationship between diversification and innovation. Consistent with conceptual and empirical work in strategy, we find a robust negative correlation between diversification and R&D intensity, suggesting that diversification reduces innovation by discouraging investment. However, our analysis suggests that internal capital market inefficiencies, rather than managerial myopia, is responsible for this observed negative relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following implementation of the Agricultural Cooperative Law in July 2007, the number of cooperatives increased dramatically, as did the related research in China. The objective of this paper is to describe articles written in Chinese and published in the top six Chinese Agricultural Economics journals between 2007 and 2017, identify research trends and issues, generate observations, and provide insights for future research. A secondary objective is to introduce to the non‐Chinese speaking world a literature written by Chinese scholars as they view the emergence of this new organizational form in the agricultural sector. Our interest is to illustrate Chinese cooperative literature within two general approaches: articles which address agricultural cooperatives' inter‐firm coordination issues and articles which study the mechanism design which we call intra‐firm coordination. A total of 443 articles were reviewed, 163 dealing with inter‐firm coordination and 280 with intra‐firm coordination. The inter‐firm coordination articles focused on firm coordination mechanisms and formal institutions such as cooperative law, accounting rules, financial markets, and government support. Intra‐firm coordination articles focused on organization design, cooperative governance, relationships between members and cooperative, property rights, and hierarchical structures with embedded principal–agent issues. We conclude with observations about trends, quality, and the cooperative future and also propose useful research fields for Chinese scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider discrete‐time dynamic principal–agent problems with continuous choice sets and potentially multiple agents. We prove the existence of a unique solution for the principal's value function only assuming continuity of the functions and compactness of the choice sets. We do this by a contraction mapping theorem and so also obtain a convergence result for the value function iteration. To numerically compute a solution for the problem, we have to solve a collection of static principal–agent problems at each iteration. As a result, in the discrete‐time setting solving the static problem is the difficult step. If the agent's expected utility is a rational function of his action, then we can transform the bi‐level optimization problem into a standard nonlinear program. The final results of our solution method are numerical approximations of the policy and value functions for the dynamic principal–agent model. We illustrate our solution method by solving variations of two prominent social planning models from the economics literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hypothetical bias is tested based on inter‐ and intra‐respondent comparisons of choice behavior, applying a hypothetical and real choice experiment. The inter‐respondent comparison commonly applied in the environmental and agricultural economics literature consists of a control group of buyers who are asked to hypothetically choose between conventional and organic beans and an experimental group of buyers who are endowed to purchase the same beans using an identical experimental design. Hypothetical bias is tested by comparing inter‐ and intra‐respondents' (i) hypothetical and real choices, (ii) preference parameters of the estimated choice models related to hypothetical and real choices, and (iii) hypothetical and real willingness to pay (WTP). Choices in the experimental group are highly consistent when switching from hypothetical to real choices for this study's homegrown goods. However, after being endowed, the price sensitivity of lower income households drops, suggesting a house money effect. WTP derived from actual purchases is higher than WTP based on hypothetical choices, indicating a negative hypothetical bias, but differences are only significant in the case of the inter‐respondent comparison. Actual prices paid by respondents in the field experiment appear to be considerably lower than the estimated WTP values and yield a mixed picture of hypothetical bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of country‐level environmental performance and national culture on the stock price crash risk of renewable energy firms. Employing a large sample of 626 renewable energy firms across 31 countries, we find a significant nonlinear relationship between country‐level environmental performance and crash risk. National culture dimensions are found to strongly predict the crash risk of renewable energy firms, particularly after the global financial crisis. On the contrary, national culture dimensions and environmental policies are observed to not exert any significance in explaining the crash risk of fossil fuel firms. Our results are robust with respect to alternative measures of stock price crash risk and the endogeneity of national culture dimensions. Overall, the findings of this paper contribute to the environmental economics literature by providing new evidence regarding the role of societal and environmental factors in explaining the stock price crash risk of energy firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Porter model of economic development links the phases of development with national competitiveness. His model lies at the heart of the Global Competitiveness Index. It appears, curiously enough, that there is nowhere in the economics literature a concise explanation of the Porter model of economic development. This paper not only fills this gap but also draws the line of separation between formal economic models and narrative economic models; provides a rigorous presentation of Porter model of economic development; distinguishes between the Porter development path and Porter's law of economic development; strips Porter model to its bare essentials in a single picture; and finally, shows that the Porter model satisfies the condition known as the way the world works (www. constraint. [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.)

This keynote address provides a foundation that incorporates decision‐theory methods for integrating uncertainty into the decision‐making process for patient care in the health care system. The article provides linkages between the medical economics literature, health care analysis, and quantitative methods to help improve the outcomes for patients in the health care system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of life expectancy is recognised in the development economics literature because of its increasing effects on labour productivity and economic growth in long‐run. However, no published study to date empirically examines the nonlinear relationships between globalisation, financial development, economic growth and life expectancy in sub‐Saharan African (SSA) countries. Therefore, our study intends to fill this gap by using non‐parametric cointegration test and multivariate Granger causality test towards a non‐linear empirical understanding of the factors affecting the life expectancy. We consider the case of 16 sub‐Saharan African economies using annual data over the period 1970–2012. The empirical analysis indicates that financial development, globalisation and economic growth appear to have a positive impact upon life expectancy in sub‐Saharan African economies, except for Gabon and Togo. Our empirical findings may provide insightful policy implications towards improving population health conditions which are vital for promoting the productivity of labour force and long‐run economic growth in sub‐Saharan African countries. In light of these policy implications, governments should incorporate globalisation, financial development and economic growth as key economic instruments in formulating sustainable developmental policy to promote life expectancy for the people in sub‐Saharan African countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the economic literature, studies in identity economics, peer effects, and skill development have all suggested that social influences have an important role in determining choices. In this review, I draw on lessons learned from the identity economics literature to examine implications from the peer effects and skill development literature. I focus on the role of social identity in generating social group effects from peers and what role identity may have in shaping the development of skills from broader environments, parents and peers during childhood and adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intrinsic motivation of a firm's management for engaging in prosocial behavior is an important determinant of a firm's social conduct. I provide the first model in which firms run by morally motivated managers engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a competitive setting. Moral management crowds out a competitor's strategic CSR, increasing profitability and leading shareholders to strategically delegate moral managers, although necessary for socially optimal CSR is that shareholders be morally motivated as well. Shareholders appoint managers that engage in a socially excessive amount of CSR, counter to existing literature, whenever product‐market competition is sufficiently intense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Venture Capital (VC) was born and has flourished in the United States, yet it has only modestly developed in other geographical areas. A vast body of research has been carried out to investigate the factors which are conducive to VC activity, and that may better explain the differences in the degree of development and performance of VC industry across different geographical contexts. However, there has only been a limited effort in the literature to systematize what we know (and what we do not know) about the institutional factors that spur VC activity. This paper tries to close that gap, through a systematic survey of the existing literature on the institutional and related determinants of VC activity. Grounding on the seminal work of North (1990), we consider formal (e.g. laws and formal rules) and informal (e.g. cultural norms and tacit codes of behaviour) institutions which are found in the extant empirical economics and management literature to affect the development of the VC industry. Building on this careful review, our paper aims to propose interesting avenues for future research in this domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do firms concomitantly rely on more than one organizational arrangement to procure/distribute a given input/product? In this paper, we systematically review and discuss the extensive path undergone by the literature exploring this issue: the so‐called plural forms. We address two main questions: how to explain the coexistence (and often the prevalence) of plural forms in many types of businesses? Are plural forms stable or a transitory phenomenon? We describe the most prominent motivations identified in the economics and management literature that drive firms to adopt plural forms and show that their vast majority are related to the mitigation of various types of agency/transaction costs. We also demonstrate that most of the available pieces of empirical evidence suggest the stability of plural forms over time. We conclude by demonstrating the path that has been trailed by the most recent developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the conventional wisdom that poverty and associated income shocks are the fundamental causes of child labour, from a policy perspective, there is a perception that social safety net programmes can play a vital role in reducing child labour. While there is extensive evidence that shows the prevalence of child labour is low among beneficiaries of conditional cash transfer programmes, the impact of workfare programs on child labour has been rarely investigated in the economics literature. This paper addresses the issue by evaluating the impact of the public works component of the Productive Safety Net Programme implemented in Ethiopia in 2005. The programme aims to help poor households to build assets and develop resilience to shocks through employment in public projects. Results from child fixed effects estimations show that children in programme beneficiary households are significantly less likely than their counterparts in non‐beneficiary households to be involved in child labour. The findings suggest that, if well targeted, even safety net programmes that do not primarily target child outcomes can be useful in addressing child labour problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature on monetary economics, there is the 'inflationary bias' result which predicts that the rate of inflation will be biased towards a higher level under discretionary monetary policy than under a rule‐based policy regime. It is established that a credible nominal target can eliminate this 'inflationary bias'. In this paper, we examine the case of nominal GDP targeting, which is a rule‐based monetary regime. Depending on the degree of conservativeness by the central bank, we show in a stylized model the choice of different combination of inflation and real GDP targets can still result in an 'inflationary bias', and there also exists the possibility of a 'dis‐inflationary bias'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we connect two lines of research in the development economics literature: the analysis of the effect and transmission channels of inequality on economic development and the discussion about the necessity for a broader measure for development. We estimate the association between income inequality and the Human Development Index and its components in a panel of 117 countries over the period of 1970 to 2010. In doing so, we find evidence for (a) a negative long‐run association between inequality and human development and (b) different short‐run associations between inequality and different dimensions of human development: a positive one with economic development but a negative one with educational outcomes, hinting at particular transmission channels. In addition, we detect (c) that those associations can be even more pronounced in countries with low levels of development, reconciling seemingly conflicting findings in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examines the roles of three psychological variables, job satisfaction, positive attitude and self‐satisfaction, in the determination of the worker's wage. Using two samples from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youths, 1979 (NLSY79), the study for the first time models a possible simultaneous relationship among these four variables and estimates these equations by an appropriate two‐stage procedure. Our results indicate that the worker's wage is positively related to these psychological variables. This finding has important policy implications and thus it calls for future research in this direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]