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The purpose of the chapter is to test the hypothesis that food safety (chemical) standards act as barriers to international seafood imports. We use zero-accounting gravity models to test the hypothesis that food safety (chemical) standards act as barriers to international seafood imports. The chemical standards on which we focus include chloramphenicol required performance limit, oxytetracycline maximum residue limit, fluoro-quinolones maximum residue limit, and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) pesticide residue limit. The study focuses on the three most important seafood markets: the European Union’s 15 members, Japan, and North America.Our empirical results confirm the hypothesis and are robust to the OLS as well as alternative zero-accounting gravity models such as the Heckman estimation and the Poisson family regressions. For the choice of the best model specification to account for zero trade and heteroskedastic issues, it is inconclusive to base on formal statistical tests; however, the Heckman sample selection and zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) models provide the most reliable parameter estimates based on the statistical tests, magnitude of coefficients, economic implications, and the literature findings. Our findings suggest that continually tightening of seafood safety standards has had a negative impact on exporting countries. Increasing the stringency of regulations by reducing analytical limits or maximum residue limits in seafood in developed countries has negative impacts on their bilateral seafood imports. The chapter furthers the literature on food safety standards on international trade. We show competing gravity model specifications and provide additional evidence that no one gravity model is superior.

Using a large sample of diversified firms from 38 countries we investigate the influence of several national-level institutional factors or “institutional voids” on the value of corporate diversification. Specifically, we explore whether the presence of frictions in a country’s capital markets, labor markets, and product markets, affects the excess value of diversified firms. We find that the value of diversified firms relative to their single-segment peers is higher in countries with less-efficient capital and labor markets, but find no evidence that product market efficiency affects the relative value of diversification. These results provide support for the theory of internal capital markets that argues that internal capital allocation would be relatively more beneficial in the presence of frictions in the external capital markets. In addition, the results show that diversification can be beneficial in the presence of frictions in the labor market.

The purpose of this paper is to study an innovative rice value chain financing system (VCFS) established in Benin, to identify the determinants of producers and processors access to formal credit, both at intensive and extensive margins. It focuses on multi-stakeholder platforms (MSP) which connect producers and processors in need of credit to potential financial lenders.

The empirical analysis uses rich cross-sectional survey data collected in Northern Benin in 2018. The sample consists of 215 rice producers and 217 rice processors randomly selected through a multi-stage sampling and interviewed with structured questionnaires. The empirical models analyze the determinants of the likelihood to receive a credit and the amount of credit received. To account for the sample selection and censored nature of the main outcome variable, the study considers a Heckman two-stage model coupled with a Tobit model for robustness checks.

The study finds that the MSP are effective in increasing access to formal credit and the amount borrowed. Producers and processors who are members of the MSP are more likely to receive credit and, conditional on being approved for credit borrower, a larger amount. Other key factors that significantly explain access to credit include the use of soft guarantee for securing a loan, the degree of participation in the platform and demographic characteristics. These findings are consistent across the Heckman and Tobit models.

The study attempts to rigorously analyze the factors explaining producers and processors access to credit using cross-sectional survey data. But it has some limitations. The main limitation is the type of data used. Ideally, one would like to run a randomized control trial (RCT) to randomly assign participation in the MSP to causally estimate its impact of access to credit. The second-best option would be to have a panel data covering the period before and after the establishment of the platform. However, in the absence of an RCT or panel data, the study resorts to cross-sectional data and empirical models that account for sample selection bias and the censored nature of the credit received.

One of the key findings of the study is that participation in the MSP (through different value chain stages associations) increases access to formal credit. This highlights an important and effective mechanism, a well-coordinated value chains that integrated lenders, that policymakers can leverage to facilitate access to credit in the agricultural sector.

Access to credit is important to boost agricultural productivity and income. Hence, the findings of the study have social implications in terms of poverty reduction in rural areas.

The study contributes to earlier theories and empirical studies on the demand for credit. It focuses on an innovative VCFS, increasingly adopted in many developing countries, adds originality and value to the understanding of mechanisms to unlock agricultural actors’ access to credit in low-income countries.

The purpose of this paper is to seek a clearer understanding of how firms involved in power intensive industries participate in foreign direct investment. The paper asks the following questions: how skilled are the employees available for hire? What kind of pollution restrictions will be applied to the plant? Is the infrastructure in place to enable free transport of the necessary materials? All of these are factors that can be analyzed on a national level, and are major factors in government policy.

The research is designated to explain how macro policy can be directed towards firms in the power intensive industry, to impact the competitiveness within the industry. Skilled labor differences is reflecting governmental policy in its willingness to contribute to education. Infrastructure can be viewed as an indicator for long‐term policy planning by the government. The pollution variable reflects on macro policy emphasis by governments, by presenting their emission targets. Investment cost variable gives indication of government policy concerning the ease with which foreign investors can enter into and invest in a particular country. The case country is Iceland, an isolated island that is unable to export its abundance directly and therefore must do so through foreign direct investment.

The findings indicate that source countries are attracted by the level of skill in Iceland at the beginning stage of operations when faced with fixed threshold cost. Once the plants have overcome fixed costs, there are positive impacts on marginal investment, the more skilled the source country is compared to the host. Other factors that proved to be important in this case study are distance, infrastructure, government stability, pollution quotas, and the fishing resource.

The relative friendliness a country's policies display towards an industry can make a huge difference when it comes to how successful a business can be, so studying these national‐level policies can help an individual determine what kind of direction to take on the day‐to‐day operational decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how the extent of religion in a firm’s social environment affects corporate innovation and innovation efficiency from the perspectives of religion-related risk aversion and religion-based social norms.

Using a sample of 8,601 Chinese firm-year observations from 2007 to 2012, this paper examines the relationship between religion and innovation intensity, as well as innovation efficiency. A battery of checks, that is, adopting Heckman selection model, using a province-level measure of religiosity and an alternative measure of innovation intensity, and taking the stochastic frontier analysis method to capture corporate innovation efficiency, are conducted to alleviate the concern of self-selection and to guarantee the robustness of the findings of this paper.

This paper finds strong evidence that firms registered in more religious regions, that is, regions with more Buddhist monasteries within a certain radius, undertake fewer innovation activities as measured by the ratio of R&D investment over total sales income but achieve higher innovation efficiency reflected by the value-relevance of R&D investment.

This paper complements the existing literature by suggesting that religion can serve as an informal social mechanism and performs a “less is more” effect in disciplining corporate innovation activities.

As a coastal emerging country, export-led marine economy has been the development model of Vietnam over the past decades since The Renovation 1986. Given the rise of globalization, regional economic integration and logistics enhancement have been identified as key engines for economic sustainability by Vietnamese government. Nevertheless, little sectoral and sub-sectoral evidence has been given for the platform shaped by policies relevant to export, logistics performance and regional economic integration. The paper employs the trade gravity model to study the relationship between seafood export, logistics performance and regional economic integration in the case of Vietnam. Sectoral and sub-sectoral trade gravity models are employed. Logistics performance from the exporter-side and importer-side is included in the estimations. Membership to effective regional trade agreements of Vietnam are proxies for regional economic integration. Zero trade issue is resolved by the Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (POLS), Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML) and Heckman Sample Selection estimations, while endogeneity is tackled by the difference and system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) models. Findings vary by estimation methods, data levels, product groups, and whether which side is considered. In addition, theoretical contributions and some seafood export-driving policy recommendations relevant to regional economic integration and logistics performance development are discussed.

This study aims to examine the impact of signaling through social media (SM) on funding achieved by start-ups.

This study follows a causal research design and is based on unique data set compiled from Crunchbase-Pro and Twitter. The sample size is 1,672 Indian start-ups. Heckman’s model and ordinary least squares regression is used to test the hypothesis.

Devising a thoughtful SM strategy, should be an integral part of the overall strategy of the start-ups looking out for funds. LinkedIn presence is in itself a positive signal. Active usage of Twitter and feedback from other Twitter users has a positive impact on funds raised by the start-up. Posting retweets and repetitive usage of URLs and media is not a predictor of funds raised by the start-up.

An early-stage strategy on SM adoption, especially Twitter can play an important role in attracting interest and attention of stakeholders. To capitalize SM, entrepreneurs should maintain an active SM account of the start-up.

India has emerged as one of the start-up hubs of the world. However, there is a dearth of literature on SM usage by start-ups in India. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is first of its kind and establishes the results empirically based on more than 100k tweets for a large pool of Indian start-ups.

The changes in women’s and men’s work lives have been considerable in recent decades. Yet much of the recent research on gender differences in employment and earnings has been of a more snapshot nature rather than taking a longer comparative look at evolving patterns. In this paper, we use 50 years (1964–2013) of US Census Annual Demographic Files (March Current Population Survey) to track the changing returns to human capital (measured as both educational attainment and potential work experience), estimating comparable earnings equations by gender at each point in time. We consider the effects of sample selection over time for both women and men and show the rising effect of selection for women in recent years. Returns to education diverge for women and men over this period in the selection-adjusted results but converge in the OLS results, while returns to potential experience converge in both sets of results. We also create annual calculations of synthetic lifetime labor force participation, hours, and earnings that indicate convergence by gender in worklife patterns, but less convergence in recent years in lifetime earnings. Thus, while some convergence has indeed occurred, the underlying mechanisms causing convergence differ for women and men, reflecting continued fundamental differences in women’s and men’s life experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine urban households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for milk safety and to analyze the factors affecting WTP premiums using data obtained from surveys conducted in Samsun and Trabzon provinces, Turkey.

Contingent valuation and censoring methods including the error-dependent bivariate Heckman SS model were used for estimating WTP for milk safety and its effective factors, respectively.

The study indicates that 68 percent of the households were willing to pay 0.35 per liter for improving the safety of milk. The model results show that satisfaction with food safety standards, being married and full-time employment have statistically significant positive effects on the WTP for ISO-certified milk. However, purchasing milk from farmers or open-air markets, age, having a child six-year old or younger, and high school or higher education have statistically significant negative effects on the WTP for ISO-certified milk.

The main limitation of the current study is that only urban consumers’ WTP and effective factors for milk safety were examined in two provinces of Turkey.

More rigorous implementations of food safety standards, traceability systems and effective educational campaigns could promote households’ food safety awareness and increase their demand for milk safety.

Knowing what factors are involved in consumer WTP is extremely important for decision makers to create new social policies in the region or country.

A similar study has not been conducted in Turkey. The novelty of this study is the specification and robust estimation of three different but competing models to reveal the wide range of WTP amounts for safe milk.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impacts of differences in sanitary and phytosanitary measures as non-tariff measures (NTMs) in the tea trade between importing and exporting countries. With the progress of trade liberalization, there has been a shift of focus to NTMs as alternative or potential trade barriers.

In order to quantify an NTM on tea trade and implement its empirical application, this study designed an index of differences in maximum residue levels (MRLs) for the pesticide endosulfan and introduced it into a gravity trade model. The estimation challenges in the presence of heteroscedasticity and many zero-trade flows are resolved by taking the Heckman and Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimators.

This study found that differences in MRLs, arising from the stricter standards in importing countries lead to a significant decrease in tea trade value. This negative impact of differences in MRLs is found to be slightly less than that of tariffs, implying that in this case, the NTM acts as a policy substitute for import tariffs in the global tea trade.

The main contribution of this study is to suggest and quantify the differences in MRLs across countries as a substantial NTM on the global tea trade and provide its empirical application.