|
on Investment |
| By: | Rose Murunzi |
| Abstract: | South Africa's real GDP expanded for the sixth consecutive quarter in 2026Q1. This is the longest expansion since 2017/18, partly because structural reforms are finally bearing fruit. But growth is still slow. After expanding last year, investment spending contracted again. The global environment is also very complicated. These factors make maintaining reform momentum urgent. |
| Keywords: | structural reform, South Africa, economic performance, growth, reform barometer |
| JEL: | O43 O55 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–06–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cxs:wpaper:202611 |
| By: | Arnaud WITTMER |
| Abstract: | This article examines wage inequalities induced by firm-level collective agreements. While European literature on firm-level collective bargaining often identifies a wage premium associated with firm-level agreements, we seek to go beyond this finding by studying the effects on the distribution of wages within and between firms. To do so, we use the AKM (Abowd-Kramarz-Margolis) estimation method, previously applied by Song et al. (2018) and Babet, Godechot, and Palladino (2025), who studied the variance of individual log hourly wages. Our indicator for firm-level agreement presence carries no direct explanatory power in the year the agreement is signed. However, wage inequalities are systematically higher in firms that have signed a wage agreement over the full sample period, reaching 0.0195 for firms with 50–99 employees, 0.0284 for firms with 100–249 employees, and 0.0487 for firms with 500 or more employees. This difference is driven primarily by the within-firm component of wage inequality, which is higher in firms signing FLAs (Firm-Level-Agreements) and increases further with firm size. These findings suggest that the culture of negotiation within companies, rather than the act of signing an agreement itself, can contribute to a raise of wage inequalities in companies signing FLAs. |
| Keywords: | labour market, collective bargaining, wage inequalities |
| JEL: | D30 D33 J31 J52 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2026-20 |
| By: | Mostapha Benhenda |
| Abstract: | Finance Agent v2 (by Vals AI) has emerged as the reference benchmark for evaluating both Anthropic Claude and OpenAI ChatGPT frontier language models on financial tasks. However, it narrowly deals with periodic reporting from publicly traded companies (SEC 10-K and 10-Q filings), and its agentic harness relies on naive, unenriched chunk retrieval. Neither the task design nor the retrieval approach addresses the distinct challenges of IPO due diligence. SEC S-1 filings combine historical financial statements, governance structures, pro forma and common-control accounting treatments, capital-formation narratives, and underwriting-sensitive risk disclosures within substantially longer documents than typical periodic filings. That is why we introduce IPO Finance Agent, which extends the Finance Agent v2 framework along two directions: task domain and retrieval architecture. During our experiments, the original Finance Agent v2 harness basically failed to deliver any output related to the SpaceX S-1 filing, due to document length. We therefore had to improve the agentic harness with contextual retrieval, a more realistic and industry-standard approach for long documents. We also built a dataset of 1, 000 IPO-diligence questions, and publicly release 70 questions on the SpaceX (SPCX) S-1 filing to support reproducibility, while the remainder are held private to guard against benchmark contamination. In addition, we introduce an evaluator-optimizer pipeline to automatically generate evaluation rubrics for the benchmark: candidate facts are extracted from model answers, consolidated into draft criteria, then automatically audited for omissions, hallucinations, mistiered items, and redundancy, with LLM feedback driving iterative repair, targeted enrichment, and deduplication. Human experts only review final rubrics before deployment. Results show that the best-performing evaluated model, Alibaba Qwen 3.7 Max, reaches 79.4% accuracy at 0.30 USD per query, and the most cost-efficient model on the resulting Pareto frontier, Xiaomi MiMo-2.5 Pro, reaches slightly lower accuracy (76.8%) at 0.05 USD per query. Both exceed the current Finance Agent v2 leaderboard ceiling-Google Gemini 3.5 Flash at 57.9% for 2.51 USD per querywhile undercutting even FABv2's cheapest entry (MiniMax M3: 48.3% at 0.32 USD) on cost-efficiency. Code and data are released on GitHub: https://github.com/benstaf/ipoagent |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2606.23032 |
| By: | Tonetto, Jorge Luis; de Moraes, Gustavo Inácio |
| Abstract: | Esta pesquisa insere-se no campo da economia da saúde e analisa se os gastos públicos municipais em saúde influenciam o indicador de Anos Potenciais de Vida Perdidos (APVP) nos municípios brasileiros. Os resultados indicam evidências de que os gastos municipais em saúde estão associados à melhoria do indicador APVP, com destaque para os gastos em atenção básica, que se mostraram estatisticamente significativos, enquanto os gastos em assistência hospitalar não apresentaram significância estatística. As estimativas também indicam relação não linear entre gasto e resultado em saúde, sugerindo oportunidade na elevação seletiva dos gastos que se mostraram abaixo do ponto estimado de maior eficiência, especialmente na atenção básica. A análise foi realizada para o período de 2005 a 2014, considerando os municípios brasileiros com dados disponíveis em bases administrativas nacionais. O APVP foi calculado para cada município e ano, adotando-se 70 anos como limite de vida potencial. Empregou-se modelo econométrico com dados em painel e estimativas robustas, utilizando duas especificações: uma baseada na função saúde e outra nas subfunções atenção básica e assistência hospitalar. Os resultados também indicam melhora gradual no desempenho dos municípios ao longo dos períodos de gestão e sugerem ganhos de escala associados ao tamanho populacional dos municípios. English This research is situated within the field of health economics and analyzes whether municipal public health expenditures influence the indicator of Potential Years of Life Lost (PYLL) in Brazilian municipalities. The results provide evidence that municipal health expenditures are associated with improvements in the PYLL indicator, with particular emphasis on primary health care expenditures, which were statistically significant, while hospital care expenditures did not show statistical significance. The estimates also indicate a nonlinear relationship between spending and health outcomes, suggesting opportunities for selective increases in expenditures that remain below the estimated point of greater efficiency, particularly in primary health care. The analysis covers the period from 2005 to 2014 and includes Brazilian municipalities with available data from national administrative databases. PYLL was calculated for each municipality and year, adopting 70 years as the potential life limit. An econometric panel data model with robust estimates was employed, using two specifications: one based on the health function and another based on the subfunctions of primary care and hospital care. The results also indicate gradual improvements in municipal performance over successive administrative periods and suggest economies of scale associated with municipal population size. |
| Date: | 2026–06–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:rzp9q_v1 |
| By: | Robeyns, Ingrid; Vaughan, Michael; Burchardt, Tania |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we lay out the foundations for an extreme wealth line, in both conceptual as well as motivational terms. An extreme wealth line is a social indicator that tries to capture the intuition that a person can have too much wealth, and is thus the opposite of a poverty line. An extreme wealth line is a novel proposal, that could play a crucial role in debates on high and rising levels of wealth inequality, in academia, policy-making and civil society. To conceptually develop the extreme wealth line, we first lay out the reasons to hold that one can have too much wealth. We argue that the most fruitful way to answer this question is to focus on the harms that excessive wealth causes to people, societies, economies, democracies and the planet. In this paper, we start by reviewing existing academic research on related but distinct efforts to identify 'the rich' and 'riches lines'. Next, we develop a notion of harm that is suitable for this purpose, and provide a brief survey of the different domains of harms. This allows us to develop a definition of the extreme wealth line, and also clarify what functions we believe an extreme wealth line can play and how it should be distinguished from related yet different claims. We conclude the paper by laying out an agenda for further research, that is needed to develop the extreme wealth line empirically. |
| JEL: | J1 E6 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138898 |
| By: | Eliaz, Kfir; Rubinstein, Ariel |
| Abstract: | We propose a model of electoral competition in which parties compete by making statements linking policies to outcomes. Voters assess these statements not by Bayesian updating, but by sequentially sampling past cases until they encounter evidence that confirms or refutes one of the two statements made by the incumbent and a challenger. The incumbent's policy determines the distribution of cases voters observe. We introduce equilibrium notions capturing stable regimes and cyclical competition over statements. Our analysis highlights several phenomena such as: logically equivalent statements may differ in effectiveness, parties with less successful policies may remain in power, society may become trapped in cycles of power change, and politicians may strategically deviate from their ideology to shape the evidence available to voters. |
| Keywords: | Electoral campaign |
| JEL: | D72 D91 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21491 |
| By: | Estrin, Saul; Nachum, Lilac; Hu, Yuan |
| Abstract: | Extant research offers inconclusive evidence on how firms’ export modes affect learning and innovation. Drawing on a Penrosian perspective, we argue that simultaneously pursuing direct and indirect exporting generates complementarities, as excess resources and experiential knowledge developed in one mode can be redeployed in the other. As a result, the combined export strategy yields stronger learning and innovation outcomes than either strategy pursued alone. We further theorize that these benefits depend on firm‑level resources and the characteristics of the learning environment. Using data on more than 4, 000 African exporters from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, we find robust evidence that firms combining direct and indirect exporting modes innovate more than single‑mode exporters across multiple specifications and estimation techniques. The African context allows us to highlight how institutional and resource constraints shape learning through exporting. |
| Keywords: | direct and indirect exporting simultaneously; learning; innovation; theory of the growth of the firm; African firms; emerging market firms |
| JEL: | J50 |
| Date: | 2026–05–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138306 |
| By: | Sadri, Mohammad; Mohammadi, Ali; Khashabi, Pooyan |
| Abstract: | Secondary stakeholders increasingly seek to discipline firms by attacking morally contested corporate actions. In this paper, we focus on a specific and consequential outcome of their attacks: shaping financial analysts’ recommendations. Drawing on research on moral evaluations and political ideology, we theorize that secondary stakeholder attacks increase analysts’ likelihood of issuing ‘sell’ recommendations, but that this effect is stronger among liberal analysts compared to their conservative peers. We further argue that this ideological divergence is amplified when analysts have greater reputational discretion to issue recommendations based on moral values, and when attacks concern violations that are less intrinsic to the firm’s core business and therefore more unexpected. We test these arguments using a novel dataset combining hand-collected information on analysts’ political ideology with data on secondary stakeholder attacks targeting publicly traded defense firms in the U.S. from 1998 to 2017. Our results support the theoretical predictions and further show that liberal analysts’ stronger responses to SSAs do not translate into superior returns. These findings also help explain the heterogeneous effectiveness of SSAs in capital markets. |
| Keywords: | Analyst recommendations |
| JEL: | G14 G24 D91 M14 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21427 |
| By: | Jain, Aditya; Peled, Gil; Obradović, Filip; Crippa, Federico; Nussbaum, Yeshaya; Gmeiner, Michael; Ladner, Daniela P.; Manski, Charles F. |
| Abstract: | Even though data on hospital admissions are widely used in health research, hospitalization‐related estimands measured using these data are not always clearly conceptualized. Consequently, estimators of these quantities can have unclear rationales and undesirable properties. We evaluate three “rate” estimators for measuring hospitalization‐related estimands. Using the Gross-man human capital model, we motivate the importance of measuring healthy time. We show that an upper bound on healthytime can be calculated using lengths of hospital stay without assumptions about health status outside the hospital. We illustratethe empirical value of these bounds. Next, we find that an admission rate conventionally used in clinical research is a patient follow‐up time weighted average that lacks a clear basis for the weights. We propose an alternative estimator with more desirable properties and weaker assumptions. We assess its performance using a model of hospital admissions and death. Finally, we evaluate the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) use of risk‐standardized readmission rates to penalize hospitals by showing that risk‐standardized rates can be sensitive to patient case mix, potentially leading to hospital rankings that do not reflect hospital quality. We propose treating hospital specific intercepts in the CMS risk‐standardization model as a measure of quality. |
| Keywords: | healthcare; health data; hospitalization; household production; medicare |
| JEL: | D13 I10 |
| Date: | 2026–06–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138904 |
| By: | Junghun Kim |
| Abstract: | This paper asks how local tax revenues should be attributed when tax rates, tax bases or tax-sharing arrangements are shaped by higher-level governments. To address this question, it combines tax attribution criteria from the System of National Accounts (SNA) with a historical and institutional analysis of key country cases that exemplify tax sharing and centrally determined local taxation, notably Germany and Japan. This framework contrasts with approaches that apply standard fiscal federalism models without fully accounting for country-specific legal and institutional arrangements. Applying it suggests that, in some countries, revenues reported as local taxes may instead reflect centrally determined tax-sharing arrangements or centrally determined local taxes as defined under SNA 2008 criteria. Where such revenues are reported as local taxes, reported figures may diverge from international attribution criteria, including in national accounts and submissions to international organisations. These findings suggest that local tax shares should be interpreted in light of institutional context, including the degree of central-local integration of public finance in unitary countries and cooperative federal systems, rather than as a simple measure of local fiscal autonomy in empirical studies of fiscal decentralisation and economic growth. They also indicate that, in many countries, local tax shares are relatively small, reinforcing the need to distinguish between revenue attribution and effective local taxing power. |
| Keywords: | centrally determined local taxes, fiscal decentralisation, local tax autonomy, tax attribution, tax-sharing arrangements |
| JEL: | H71 H77 H20 |
| Date: | 2026–06–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ctpaab:55-en |
| By: | Okuda, Tatsushi; Tsuruga, Tomohiro; Zanetti, Francesco |
| Abstract: | We study why inflation responds differently to economic activity over time. Using survey data covering the universe of Japanese firms, we show that firms are unable to perfectly distinguish aggregate from sector-specific demand changes, leading to positively correlated expectations about these two components. We develop a model with imperfect information that reproduces this pattern and predicts that higher relative volatility of sector-specific demand reduces the sensitivity of inflation to changes in aggregate demand, thus flattening the Phillips curve. Testing this prediction with Japanese data from 1976 to 2022, we find that increases in the volatility of sectoral demand shocks explain significant changes in the Phillips curve slope over the sample period. Our results provide a novel explanation for the flattening of the Phillips curve: the composition of shocks — not just their magnitude — critically affects the sensitivity of inflation to aggregate demand. |
| Keywords: | Imperfect information; Phillips curve; Survey data; Japanese firms |
| JEL: | E31 D82 C72 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21389 |
| By: | Raphaël Mathevet (CEFE - Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive - EPHE - École Pratique des Hautes Études - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - IRD [Occitanie] - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - délégation Occitanie - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement - UM - Université de Montpellier - UMPV - Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry); Marjorie Tendero (ESSCA School of Management Angers); Cécile Bazart (CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement - UM - Université de Montpellier); Aurélien Allouche (RESSOURCE, LTSER-ZACAM - Zone Atelier Santé Environnement Camargue - RZA - LTSER Réseau des Zones Ateliers - INEE-CNRS - Institut Ecologie et Environnement - CNRS Ecologie et Environnement - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Chloé Delomel (HSM - Hydrosciences Montpellier - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - INSU - CNRS - Institut national des sciences de l'Univers - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UM - Université de Montpellier, ERT - IMT Mines Alès - ERT - IMT MINES ALÈS - IMT - Institut Mines-Télécom [Paris] - HSM - Hydrosciences Montpellier - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - INSU - CNRS - Institut national des sciences de l'Univers - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UM - Université de Montpellier) |
| Abstract: | La Camargue est un territoire côtier qui incarne la vulnérabilité sociale et écologique contemporaine. Elle se trouve au cœur de tensions croissantes liées à la gestion des changements climatiques et des évolutions socioéconomiques. Cet article invite à considérer ces tensions non pas seulement comme des conflits d'intérêts mais comme des confrontations entre différentes perspectives et valeurs. En se basant sur une vaste enquête par questionnaire (856 répondants), menée auprès des résidents et usagers du delta du Rhône et en utilisant une analyse de données textuelles mixte, cette étude cartographie les perceptions sociales de la région. Le cadre théorique associe les représentations sociales, la sociologie et la géographie du risque et une approche philosophique et sociologique de l'attachement au territoire. Les conclusions mettent en lumière trois discours clés : un discours sur la Camargue en tant que patrimoine écologique et culturel, un autre sur la Camargue iconique et touristique et un troisième décrivant une Camargue populaire et festive. Les différentes perspectives sur le monde portées par divers groupes sociaux trouvent leurs fondements dans des liens d'attachements qui influencent la perception du risque chez les individus concernés. Il ressort de cette enquête que la résistance aux initiatives d'adaptation aux changements climatiques ne relève pas de l'irrationalité mais plutôt d'une volonté de protéger ses racines face à une menace existentielle. Pour finir, cette recherche argumente en faveur d'une gouvernance axée sur une adaptation transformatrice qui va au-delà de l'approche purement technique pour se plonger dans une réelle négociation sociale des significations afin de co-construire un futur territorial commun. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05657000 |
| By: | Nicola Borri; Yukun Liu; Aleh Tsyvinski; Xi Wu |
| Abstract: | We develop a dynamic stochastic model of markets with an externality and multiple trading frictions, and cap-and-trade as the leading application. Slow participation, limited intermediation, and heterogeneous information interact in equilibrium: agents choose costly market access, access determines residual compliance demand, intermediary constraints translate residual demand into a surrender-month premium, and the premium feeds back into access incentives. These interactions shape how effectively the market corrects the externality. We characterize access choices in closed form, prove that the equilibrium premium is unique, and show that endogenous access dampens the response to each friction in isolation, while the interaction of multiple frictions is non-additive and can amplify the price response. We quantify the model using 2.7 million EU ETS registry transactions and compliance records from 2005–2021. About 40% of operators do not trade annually, purchases concentrate in April when returns are systematically high, and operator flow predicts future returns. |
| JEL: | H0 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35356 |
| By: | Riley K. Acton; Camila Morales; Julia A. Turner; Lois Miller; Kalena Cortes |
| Abstract: | Community colleges are more financially, academically, and geographically accessible than four-year institutions. Yet despite most community college students intending to earn a bachelor’s degree, few successfully transfer and complete one. Community College Baccalaureate (CCB) programs have emerged as an alternative pathway, allowing community colleges to confer bachelor’s degrees directly. However, little is known about how employers value these credentials in the labor market. To address this question, we conduct the first resume audit study of CCB degrees, submitting fictitious applications to real job vacancies while experimentally varying applicants’ educational credentials, degree-granting institutions, and demographic signals. In this pilot study, we focus on the early childhood education (ECE) labor market, a rapidly growing CCB field characterized by labor shortages and increasing educational requirements. We find that employers view CCB degrees similarly to both traditional bachelor’s and associate degrees, with statistically indistinguishable interview-request rates across degree types. A text analysis of employer callback messages reveals little evidence that employers communicate differently with CCB applicants, while a net-price simulation suggests that sticker-price comparisons substantially overstate the affordability advantage of CCB programs. Together, these findings provide new evidence on the labor market value and affordability of CCB degrees and inform an ongoing large-scale audit study across additional fields and labor markets. |
| JEL: | I21 I23 I24 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35404 |
| By: | Giacomo di Tollo; Massimiliano Kaucic; Filippo Piccotto |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a two-stage decision support system for long-short portfolio optimization under environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations. In the first stage, assets are evaluated using a multi-criteria procedure based on TODIMSort, with criterion weights derived using the MEREC (Removal Effects of Criteria) method. This allows assets to be assigned to classes ordered according to preferences that respond to market conditions and investor priorities, thus generating sets of long and short opportunities that dynamically adapt to the prevailing regime. In the second stage, we formulate a non-convex portfolio optimization problem that maximizes the Omega ratio while respecting budget, bound and leverage constraints. To solve it, we introduce an adaptive particle swarm solver equipped with a controller that selects, at each iteration, the most suitable recombination operator from a diverse pool of operators and combines it with a projection-based repair mechanism for constraint management. The empirical study, conducted on 421 stocks in the STOXX Europe 600 index, examines both the exploration capabilities and solution quality of the proposed solver compared to state-of-the-art benchmarks, as well as the ex post profitability of the resulting portfolio strategies. The results show that ESG-enhanced long-short portfolios offer competitive and often superior performance compared to their non-ESG counterparts and the market-value-weighted benchmark. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2606.25696 |
| By: | Garnett Picot, Max Stick; Feng Hou |
| Abstract: | This article examines the occupational outcomes of recent provincial nominees (PNs) who obtained permanent residence in Canada one to five years prior to the 2021 Census. Recent PNs—including principal applicants (PAs), spouses and dependants—were less likely to be employed in technical and skilled trades jobs and more likely to work in lower-skilled or labourer jobs than Canadian-born workers. Both groups were equally likely to hold professional jobs. At a more detailed level, PNs were significantly more likely to be employed as computer and information systems professionals and less likely to work in nursing, other professional health occupations and skilled trades compared with Canadian-born workers. There was significant variation by province. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and British Columbia were more likely to select PAs who worked in professional jobs than other provinces. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta had a greater percentage of PN PAs in lower-skilled and labourer jobs than other provinces. At the aggregate level, there was little occupational mobility among PN PAs. The occupations they held 10 to 15 years after admission closely resembled those held during their first 5 years in Canada. However, there was a substantial cross-cohort change in occupational patterns. In 2021, recent PN PAs were significantly more likely to be employed in higher-skilled occupations—particularly as computer and information systems professionals—and less likely to be in medium-skilled occupations—especially the skilled trades—compared with their counterparts in 2011. |
| Keywords: | occupational, outcomes of provincial nominees |
| JEL: | J23 M21 |
| Date: | 2025–08–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp8e:202500800004e |
| By: | Ahmed, Guleid Ibrahim |
| Abstract: | The automotive industry in Somaliland was highly dependent on complex international supply chains, making it vulnerable to various procurement risks. This study examined the impact of a Procurement Risk Management Framework (PRMF) on the organisational performance of MATCO Motors in Hargeisa. The study aimed to achieve three specific objectives: to examine the effect of risk identification on operational performance, to analyse the influence of risk assessment on financial performance, and to determine the impact of risk mitigation on customer satisfaction. Adopting a positivist research philosophy, the study utilized a sequential explanatory mixedmethods research design. The target population consisted of 41 employees from the procurement, sales & marketing, finance, and other departments of MATCO Motors. A sample size of 38 respondents was determined using Slovin’s formula. Quantitative data was collected via structured questionnaires and analysed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis via Jamovi. Qualitative data was gathered through purposive interviews with management and analysed via thematic analysis. The outcome of this research was a validated framework that identified critical risk factors within the Berbera Corridor and their direct correlation to MATCO’s performance. The study contributed to the Resource-Based View of the firm by demonstrating how internal risk management capabilities served as a strategic resource in emerging economies. Practically, it provided a blueprint for reducing lead times and financial leakage in the Somaliland automotive sector. |
| Date: | 2026–06–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:thesis:sj72e_v2 |
| By: | Della Lena, Sebastiano; Sato, Yasuhiro; Zenou, Yves |
| Abstract: | We develop a dynamic model in which individuals allocate time between work and religious activities, and parents invest in their children's human capital and religious belief. The model delivers, in a unified framework, the two empirical regularities documented by Barro and McCleary (2003) and McCleary and Barro (2019): controlling for religious activities, stronger belief raises economic growth because it raises human capital investment; controlling for belief, more time spent on religious activities lowers growth by crowding out labor supply. While the labor-supply margin is individually optimal, the human-capital margin is not: parents do not internalize that greater human-capital investment crowds out future religious transmission through the socialization channel, leading to inefficiently high human capital in equilibrium under strong socialization externality. We extend this baseline framework in three directions. First, introducing a complementarity between religious belief and human capital–capturing the Protestant-ethic channel of Weber (1930)–we show that the efficiency of equilibrium depends non-monotonically on the strength of this complementarity. Second, allowing for cultural conflict between two religious groups à la Bisin and Verdier (2000), , we show that cultural intolerance depresses human capital investment and, if human capital raises labor productivity, reduces economic growth. Third, embedding the model in a system of cities, we show that larger, more productive cities endogenously attract workers who invest more in human capital and spend less time on religious activities, generating a negative cross-city relationship between city size and religiosity that is consistent with the empirical evidence in McCleary and Barro (2019). |
| Keywords: | Religion; Human capital; Cultural transmission; Economic growth; Cities |
| JEL: | O40 Z12 J24 R11 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21514 |
| By: | Roy, Tirthankar |
| Abstract: | The paper reinterprets the East India Company’s state-building effort in late eighteenth‑century Bengal by foregrounding the intertwined evolution of fiscal capacity and institutional reform. It argues that the Permanent Settlement of 1793 emerged not from a desire to follow Indian or English precedent, but from the Company’s struggle to concentrate fiscal powers. A debate on the need to obtain information on taxpayers, which delayed the reform, reveals this struggle. Repeated failures in data collection pushed the state to anchor the reform in an expanding judicial system capable of producing actionable information. The Settlement strengthened revenue flows, enabling the financing of a centrally controlled army and contributing to Britain’s wider imperial expansion. However, its long-term rigidity limited fiscal flexibility and impeded broader developmental outcomes. |
| Keywords: | British Empire; Permanent Settlement; fiscal state; property rights; zamindar; colonial law |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2026–06–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138689 |
| By: | Lamia Mountassir (Université Hassan 1er [Settat]); Firdaous Gmira (Université Hassan 1er [Settat]); Samah Ibnou-Laaroussi (Cardiff University); Fatima Ezzahra Khtabe (Coventry University) |
| Abstract: | Gen Z (ages 15 to 24) in Morocco makes up 16.2% of the population and exhibits behaviors distinct from older generations. They are highly tech-savvy, using the internet for work, dating, and socializing. Social media plays a central role in their lives, with 43% spending 3 to 5 hours daily on these platforms. The rise of advanced technologies has also transformed experiential marketing, which traditionally engages consumers through experiences that evoke emotions, perceptions, and thoughts. This has led to the evolution of Digital Experiential Marketing, which uses technology to create unique, interactive experiences. The question is: how can this digital integration enhance repurchase intentions among Gen Z in Morocco? This paper will explore this question through a literature review of relevant concepts and a survey of 117 Gen Z individuals living in Morocco. |
| Keywords: | Experiential marketing, Emotional connections, Interactivity, Consumer behavior, Purchase intentions, Digital experiential marketing, Morocco, GenZ, GenZ Morocco Digital experiential marketing Purchase intentions Experiential marketing Emotional connections Interactivity Consumer behavior |
| Date: | 2026–04–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05585869 |