Search results

Suggests an alternative and computationally simpler approach of non‐random sampling of labour economics and represents an observed outcome of an individual female′s choice of whether or not to participate in the labour market. Concludes that there is an alternative to the Heckman two‐step estimator.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the determinants, transactional alignment and performance outcomes of franchise contract length using transaction costs theory (TCT) and resource-based theory (RBT).

The author hypothesizes that franchisors choose contract length according to TCT and RBT arguments. TCT explains the safeguarding function of contracts: the franchisors will offer longer contracts when franchisees’ specific investments are high and environmental uncertainty is low. RBT highlights the knowledge leverage function of contracts: the franchisors will offer longer contracts when the brand name and intangible knowledge assets are high. Franchise companies that design contract length aligned with transactional attributes will perform better. The author tests the misalignment hypothesis and comparative performance of franchise contracts by estimating two-stage least squares regression and Heckman two-stage procedure that control for endogeneity and self-selection.

Empirical data from the German franchise sector support the hypotheses. In addition to the safeguarding function, franchise contracts have an important knowledge leverage function. Longer contracts perform better due to the development of relational strategic assets and stronger commitment.

Franchisors must offer longer contracts when specific investments of franchisees, brand name, intangible knowledge assets are high, and environmental uncertainty is low. Franchisors should invest in the development of relational strategic assets and offer longer contracts for the benefit of superior performance.

The study addresses the significant question of transactional alignment and comparative performance of franchise contracts. It empirically confirms the importance of RBT in explaining contractual choices and performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of education on migration decisions focusing on rural and urban in-migrants by comparing the 2005/2006 and 2012/2013 rounds of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS5 and GLSS6). After correcting for selectivity bias, the authors observed that anticipated welfare gain and socio-economic variables such as sector of employment, sex, experience, age, educational level and marital status significantly affect an individual’s migration decision.

The authors made use of Sjaastad’s (1962) human capital framework as a basis for examining the impact of education on migration. The migration decision equation was based on the Heckman two stage procedure.

While educational attainment is observed to have a positive effect on migration decision in the period 2005/2006, the authors find a negative effect of educational attainment on migration decision in the period 2012/2013. The effect of educational attainment on migration decision in 2005/2006 for urban in-migrant is higher than the effect for rural in-migrant, with its significance varying for the different stages of educational attainment. In absolute terms, whereas the effect of secondary educational attainment on migration decisions for urban in-migrant is higher than that of rural in-migrant, the reverse holds for higher educational attainment during the period 2012/2013.

Based on the mixed effect of education on migration decision as evident from the study, policies to enhance the educational system in Ghana should be complemented with job creations in the entire country. Moreover, special attention should be given to the rural sector in such a way that the jobs to be created in the sector do not require skilled workers. With quality education and job creation, the welfare of individuals living in urban and rural areas will be enhanced.

In spite of the importance of education in migration decisions, there is scanty literature on the rural-urban dimension. To the best of the author’s knowledge there is no literature in the Ghanaian context which examines the rural and urban perspective of the impact of education on migration with a much recent data. Further, the author consider how the determinants of migration decision have changed over time focusing on rural and urban perspectives.

Understanding the drivers of corruption involvement is critical for the design of interventions aimed at reducing the incidence of corruption and easing the process of obtaining services. In many developing countries particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, traditional cultures dictate that women are responsible for performing physically demanding household chores such as fetching water, collecting and carrying firewood over long distances. This paper aims to examine the implications of these social norms on bribe involvements in sub-Saharan Africa.

This study uses micro-level data on bribe involvement across 20 sub-Saharan African countries. It also applies multiple estimation approaches to correct for differences in exposure to government officials, which then allows for estimating the gender differences in bribe involvement. Probit, Heckman selectivity and Lee bound estimation approaches are adopted for the purpose.

The author find that social norms impact bribe involvement of men and women in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, the author find lower involvement of men in bribery in sub-Saharan when household services, are at stake compared to other services. In effect the gender differences in bribe involvement, even though robust for other services that are not household related, disappears when household services are at stake. The author shed light on how social and cultural norms could impact bribery outcomes.

Findings from this study shows that inefficiencies in public utility delivery in sub-Sahran Africa can create antisocial behavior and that interventions geared toward improvement access to utility can reduced inequality in access to services.

The objective of this study is to investigate the simultaneity between farm couples’ decisions on labor allocation and production efficiency. Using an unbalanced panel data set of Norwegian farm households (1989–2008), we estimate off-farm labor supply of married farm couples and farm efficiency in a three-equation system of jointly determined endogenous variables. We address the issue of latent heterogeneity between households. We solve the problem by two-stage OLS and GLS estimation where state dependence is accounted for in the reduced form equations. We compare the results against simpler model specifications where we suppress censoring of off-farm labor hours and endogeneity of regressors, respectively. In the reduced form specification, a considerably large number of parameters are statistically significant. Davidson–McKinnon test of exogeneity confirms that both operator and spouse's off-farm labor supply should be treated as endogenous in estimating farming efficiency. The parameter estimates seem robust across model specifications. Off-farm labor supply of farm operators and spouses is jointly determined. Off-farm work by farm operator and spouses positively affects farming efficiency. Farming efficiency increases with operator's age, farm size, agricultural subsidises, and share of current investment to total farm capital stock.

This study uses the notions of institutional harshness and uncertainty avoidance in the home country to explain the choice between direct and indirect exporting strategies by emerging market firms.

This study is based on a dataset of 23,256 observations on firms from 32 countries spread over 11 years (2006–2016). Since only some firms undertake exports, the Heckman procedure is used to control for sample self-selection. In the first stage, we predict which firms will choose to export, and, in the second stage, we examine the factors driving the choice made by firms involved in exports between direct and indirect exports strategies.

The analyses reveal that firms are more likely to choose direct exports when institutional harshness is high and when they are from countries with low uncertainty avoidance. We also find that the strength of the relationship between institutional harshness and the choice of direct exports is moderated at high levels of uncertainty avoidance.

While this study's empirical models account for many firm-level factors as well as home country differences discussed in the literature, we acknowledge there could be other temporal, firm or country idiosyncratic factors not included in our analysis driving the key choices examined in the paper.

This study makes three contributions to exporting literature. First, it highlights the drivers of the choice between direct and indirect exports. This choice is an important facet of exporting strategy and has received scant attention in prior IB research. Second, it demonstrates how the choice between direct and indirect exports is impacted by the degree of the home country's institutional harshness and uncertainty avoidance. Third, it offers insights on how the interaction of formal and informal home market institutional factors influences export strategy.

Within the context of mergers and acquisitions, the purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between the deal initiator and various outcomes of the deal, particularly in consideration of the cash position of the acquiring firm.

Using hand-collected deal initiation data from various filings on the Securities Exchange Commission EDGAR online database, this paper performs a series of event study analyses, multivariate analyses, a Heckman two-step estimation procedure, and an instrumental variable approach to examine merger outcomes.

This paper finds that many merger and acquisition (M&A) outcomes (target and acquirer announcement returns, acquirer long-run returns, premiums, and the method of payment) are significantly related to deal initiation, particularly in consideration of the cash position of the acquiring firm. Overall, evidence is seen as consistent with the theory that “lemons” selectively approach cash-rich acquirers, often to the acquirers’ detriment.

This paper finds that target-initiated deals are not necessarily associated with poorer transaction outcomes for targets as contemporaneous studies suggest, and presents the first empirical evidence of M&A outcomes related to the deal initiator which are dependent on the cash position of the acquiring firm.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the rural credit demand by providing a theoretical and econometric framework which controls the problem of selection bias.

The study is conducted in Assam, India, and uses a quasi-experiment design to gather primary data. Heckman two-stage procedure and type 3 Tobit model are used to evaluate the rural credit demand.

It is observed that, in general, rural households’ credit demand is influenced by the ability and capacity to work, the value of physical assets of the borrowers as well as some other lenders’ and borrowers’ specific factors. But, the direction of causality of the factors influencing borrowers’ credit demand is remarkably different across credit sources.

The study recommends that it is possible to provide an efficient credit demand estimate through a correct theoretical and econometric framework. The possible limitation of the study can be due to the exclusion of the role of “traditional community based organizations” in rural Assam while evaluating the credit demand, and therefore, this limitation is left to future research.

The study contributes to the literature by assessing the probable differences among formal, semiformal and informal credit sources with respect to rural credit demand.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between environmental disclosure quality (EDQ) and risk and to further examine whether corporate governance (CG) practices moderate this relationship.

This study uses a set of unique, hand collected data (from 2011 to 2016) to measure EDQ for a sample of 762 firm-years Iranian listed companies. Ordinary least squares regression analysis is performed in testing hypotheses after controlling for a variety of firm, industry and year effects. Moreover, several analyses are performed to establish the robustness of the findings.

The results indicate a negative association between EDQ and firm risk. While board independence moderates this relationship, other CG practices such as CEO duality and board size do not show any effects on the relationship between EDQ and risk. The results remain robust after performing sensitivity tests and under various specifications, including the fixed-effects panel data and Heckman two-stage regressions.

Results are from a sample of firms from one country.

The results have implications for policymakers, legislators and corporate executives, as environmental initiatives are gaining more attention worldwide.

Sustainability initiatives in the areas of environmental and social performance and disclosure are gaining global attention. This study addresses the link between firm risk and EDQ.

This study contributes to the literature by shedding light on the relationship between corporate risk-taking and EDQ in the context of a developing economy.

Existing research has demonstrated that the innovation implications of structural holes are inconsistent. The diverse and broad resources associated with structural holes facilitate innovation. On the contrary, brokerage will also hinder trust and increase the opportunism behaviors among partners, which will damage innovation. Inspired by the conflicting conclusions, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the roles of structural holes on exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation.

To test the model, the paper used a panel of 305 US computer focal firms and 6,894 alliances from the period spanning 1993 to 2004, and adopted the Heckman two-stage selection procedure in predicting the results.

The results show that structural holes help firms to develop exploratory innovation while negatively impacting exploitative innovation.

This study offers precise insights on inconsistent understandings between structural holes and innovation by differentiating exploratory innovation from exploitative innovation. Furthermore, it contributes to the burgeoning literature on exploration and exploitation from the network perspective.