The effects of entry in thin markets

We consider entry of additional firms into the market for a single commodity in which both sellers and buyers are permitted to interact strategically. We show that the market is quasi-competitive, in that the inclusion of an additional seller lowers the price and increases the volume of trade, as expected. However, whilst buyers benefit from this change under reasonable conditions on preferences, we cannot conclude that sellers are always made worse off in the face of more intense competition, contrary to the conventional wisdom. We characterize the conditions under which entry by new sellers may raise the equilibrium profit of existing sellers, which will depend in an intuitive way on the elasticity of a strategic analog of demand and the market share of existing sellers, and encompass completely standard economic environments.

Financial Distress in Chinese Industry: Microeconomic, Macroeconomic and Institutional Infuences

We study the impact of both microeconomic factors and the macroeconomy on the financial distress of Chinese listed companies over a period of massive economic transition, 1995 to 2006. Based on an economic model of financial distress under the institutional setting of state protection against exit, and using our own firm-level measure of distress, we find important impacts of firm characteristics, macroeconomic instability and institutional factors on the hazard rate of financial distress. The results are robust to unobserved heterogeneity at the firm level, as well as those shared by firms in similar macroeconomic founding conditions. Comparison with related studies for other economies highlights important policy implications.

The endodermis--development and differentiation of the plant's inner skin.

Controlling external compound entrance is essential for plant survival. To set up an efficient and selective sorting of nutrients, free diffusion via the apoplast in vascular plants is blocked at the level of the endodermis. Although we have learned a lot about endodermal specification in the last years, information regarding its differentiation is still very limited. A differentiated endodermal cell can be defined by the presence of the "Casparian strip" (CS), a cell wall modification described first by Robert Caspary in 1865. While the anatomical description of CS in many vascular plants has been very detailed, we still lack molecular information about the establishment of the Casparian strips and their actual function in roots. The recent isolation of a novel protein family, the CASPs, that localizes precisely to a domain of the plasma membrane underneath the CS represents an excellent point of entry to explore CS function and formation. In addition, it has been shown that the endodermis contains transporters that are localized to either the central (stele-facing) or peripheral (soil-facing) plasma membranes. These features suggest that the endodermis functions as a polar plant epithelium.

Union Mediation and Adaptation to Reciprocal Loyalty Arrangements

This study assesses the industrial relations application of the „loyalty-exit-voice‟ proposition. The loyalty concept is linked to reciprocal employer-employee arrangements and examined as a job attribute in a vignette questionnaire distributed to low and medium-skilled employees. The responses provided by employees in three European countries indicate that reciprocal loyalty arrangements, which involve the exchange of higher effort for job security, are one of the most desirable job attributes. This attribute exerts a higher impact on the job evaluations provided by unionised workers, compared to their non-union counterparts. This pattern is robust to a number of methodological considerations. It appears to be an outcome of adaptation to union mediated cooperation. Overall the evidence suggests that the loyalty-job evaluation profiles of unionised workers are receptive to repeated interaction and negative shocks, such as unemployment experience. This is not the case for the non-union workers. Finally, unionised workers appear to „voice‟ a lower job satisfaction, but exhibit low „exit‟ intentions, compared to the non-unionised labour.

Financial health, exports, and rm survival: Evidence from UK and French firms

We use firm level data to assess the role of exporting in the link between financial health and rm survival. The data are for the UK and France. We examine whether fi rms at diff erent stages of export activity (starters, exiters, continuers, switchers) react di fferently to changes in financial variables. In general, export starters and exiters experience much stronger adverse e ffects of fi nancial constraints for their survival prospects. By contrast, the exit probability of continuous exporters and export switchers is less negatively a ffected by financial characteristics. These relationships between exporting, finance and survival are broadly similar in the British and French sub-samples.

Market Competition and Lower Tier Incentives

The relationship between competition and performance-related pay has been analyzed in single-principal-single-agent models. While this approach yields good predictions for managerial pay schemes, the predictions fail to apply for employees at lower tiers of a firm's hierarchy. In this paper, a principal-multi-agent model of incentive pay is developed which makes it possible to analyze the effect of changes in the competitiveness of markets on lower tier incentive payment schemes. The results explain why the payment schemes of agents located at low and mid tiers are less sensitive to changes in competition when aggregated firm data is used. Journal of Economic Literature classiffication numbers: D82, J21, L13, L22. Keywords: Cournot Competition, Contract Delegation, Moral Hazard, Entry, Market Size, Wage Cost.

The Black Box of Business Dynamics

Research in business dynamics has been advancing rapidly in the last years but the translation of the new knowledge to industrial policy design is slow. One striking aspect in the policy area is that although research and analysis do not identify the existence of an specific optimal rate of business creation and business exit, governments everywhere have adopted business start-up support programs with the implicit principle that the more the better. The purpose of this article is to contribute to understand the implications of the available research for policy design. Economic analysis has identified firm heterogeneity as being the most salient characteristic of industrial dynamics, and so a better knowledge of the different types of entrepreneur, their behavior and their specific contribution to innovation and growth would enable us to see into the ‘black box’ of business dynamics and improve the design of appropriate public policies. The empirical analysis performed here shows that not all new business have the same impact on relevant economic variables, and that self-employment is of quite a different economic nature to that of firms with employees. It is argued that public programs should not promote indiscriminate entry but rather give priority to able entrants with survival capacities. Survival of entrants is positively related to their size at birth. Innovation and investment improve the likelihood of survival of new manufacturing start-ups. Investment in R&D increases the risk of failure in new firms, although it improves the competitiveness of incumbents.

Trade, firm selection, and innovation: the competition channel

The availability of rich firm-level data sets has recently led researchers to uncover new evidence on the effects of trade liberalization. First, trade openness forces the least productive firms to exit the market. Secondly, it induces surviving firms to increase their innovation efforts and thirdly, it increases the degree of product market competition. In this paper we propose a model aimed at providing a coherent interpretation of these findings. We introducing firm heterogeneity into an innovation-driven growth model, where incumbent firms operating in oligopolistic industries perform cost-reducing innovations. In this framework, trade liberalization leads to higher product market competition, lower markups and higher quantity produced. These changes in markups and quantities, in turn, promote innovation and productivity growth through a direct competition effect, based on the increase in the size of the market, and a selection effect, produced by the reallocation of resources towards more productive firms. Calibrated to match US aggregate and firm-level statistics, the model predicts that a 10 percent reduction in variable trade costs reduces markups by 1:15 percent, firm surviving probabilities by 1 percent, and induces an increase in productivity growth of about 13 percent. More than 90 percent of the trade-induced growth increase can be attributed to the selection effect.

The InterPro database, an integrated documentation resource for protein families, domains and functional sites.

Signature databases are vital tools for identifying distant relationships in novel sequences and hence for inferring protein function. InterPro is an integrated documentation resource for protein families, domains and functional sites, which amalgamates the efforts of the PROSITE, PRINTS, Pfam and ProDom database projects. Each InterPro entry includes a functional description, annotation, literature references and links back to the relevant member database(s). Release 2.0 of InterPro (October 2000) contains over 3000 entries, representing families, domains, repeats and sites of post-translational modification encoded by a total of 6804 different regular expressions, profiles, fingerprints and Hidden Markov Models. Each InterPro entry lists all the matches against SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL (more than 1,000,000 hits from 462,500 proteins in SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL). The database is accessible for text- and sequence-based searches at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/. Questions can be emailed to interhelp@ebi.ac.uk.

Ocular distribution, spectrum of activity, and in vivo viral neutralization of a fully humanized anti-herpes simplex virus IgG Fab fragment following topical application.

Herpes simplex ocular infection is a major cause of corneal blindness. Local antiviral treatments exist but are associated with corneal toxicity, and resistance has become an issue. We evaluated the biodistribution and efficacy of a humanized anti-herpes simplex virus (anti-HSV) IgG FAb fragment (AC-8; 53 kDa) following repeated topical administration. AC-8 was found in the corneal epithelium, anterior stroma, subepithelial stromal cells, and retinal glial cells, with preferential entry through the ocular limbus. AC-8 was active against 13 different strains of HSV-1, with 50% and 90% mean effective concentrations (MEC(50) and MEC(90), respectively) ranging from 0.03 to 0.13 μg/ml, indicating broad-spectrum activity. The in vivo efficacy of AC-8 was evaluated in a mouse model of herpes-induced ocular disease. Treatment with low-dose AC-8 (1 mg/ml) slightly reduced the ocular disease scores. A greater reduction of the disease scores was observed in the 10-mg/ml AC-8-treated group, but not as much as with trifluridine (TFT). AC-8 treatment reduced viral titers but less than trifluridine. AC-8 did not display any toxicity to the cornea or other structures in the eye. In summary, topical instillation of an anti-HSV FAb can be used on both intact and ulcerated corneas. It is well tolerated and does not alter reepithelialization. Further studies to improve the antiviral effect are needed for AC-8 to be considered for therapeutic use.

Staffing strategies in SME's: determinants of external recruitment and internal promotion

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of use internal or external labour market to fill a firm vacancy in SME’s taking into account the differences existing among blue and white collar jobs. Following different theories we can identify three main reasons for use internal candidates rather than external ones‐ firm specific knowledge, adverse selection problems and motivation‐. However, there are others factors that might affect this choice but the last theories don’t take into account. In this paper we try to shed some light on what are these other factors that may affect firm decision to use internal or external labour market. Particularly we analyses the relationship among new technologies, innovation activity and firm location on the staffing strategy. The results shows difference behaviour on the decision to fill a vacancy using internal or external labour markets between manufacturing and service firms, and this decision depends not only on firm internal characteristics, like technological complexity or innovation activity, but also on firm location. The results also support the hypothesis of ports of entry especially in the manufacturing sector.

Profitability, uncertainty and multi-product firm product proliferation: The Spanish car industry

This article studies how product introduction decisions relate to profitability and uncertainty in the context of multi-product firms and product differentiation. These two features, common to many modern industries, have not received much attention in the literature as compared to the classical problem of firm entry, even if the determinants of firm and product entry are quite different. The theoretical predictions about the sign of the impact of uncertainty on product entry are not conclusive. Therefore, an econometric model relating firms’ product introduction decisions with profitability and profit uncertainty is proposed. Firm’s estimated profits are obtained from a structural model of product demand and supply, and uncertainty is proxied by profits’ variance. The empirical analysis is carried out using data on the Spanish car industry for the period 1990-2000. The results show a positive relationship between product introduction and profitability, and a negative one with respect to profit variability. Interestingly, the degree of uncertainty appears to be a driving force of entry stronger than profitability, suggesting that the product proliferation process in the Spanish car market may have been mainly a consequence of lower uncertainty rather than the result of having a more profitable market. Keywords: Product introduction, entry, uncertainty, multiproduct firms, automobile JEL codes: L11, L13

Determinants of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) prevalence in homosexual and bisexual men screened for admission to a cohort study of HIV negatives in Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Project Horizonte

Project Horizonte, an open cohort of homosexual and bisexual human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) negative men, is a component of the AIDS Vaccine Program, in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The objective of this study was to compare volunteers testing HIV positive at cohort entry with a sample of those who tested HIV negative in order to identify risk factors for prevalent HIV infection, in a population being screened for enrollment at Project Horizonte. A nested case-control study was conducted. HIV positive volunteers at entry (cases) were matched by age and admission date to three HIV negative controls each. Selected variables used for the current analysis included demographic factors, sexual behavior and other risk factors for HIV infection. During the study period (1994-2001), among the 621 volunteers screened, 61 tested positive for HIV. Cases were matched to 183 HIV negative control subjects. After adjustments, the main risk factors associated with HIV infection were unprotected sex with an occasional partners, OR = 3.7 (CI 95% 1.3-10.6), receptive anal intercourse with an occasional partner, OR = 2.8 (95% CI 0.9-8.9) and belonging to the negro racial group, OR = 3.4 (CI 95% 1.1-11.9). These variables were associated with an increase in the risk of HIV infection among men who have sex with men at the screening for admission to an open HIV negative cohort.

Gender differences in HIV progression to AIDS and death in industrialized countries: slower disease progression following HIV seroconversion in women.

To evaluate sex differences in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease progression before (pre-1997) and after (1997-2006) introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy, the authors used data from a collaboration of 23 HIV seroconverter cohort studies from Europe, Australia, and Canada restricted to the 6,923 seroconverters infected through injecting drug use and sex between men and women. Within a competing risk framework, they used Cox proportional hazards models allowing for late entry to evaluate sex differences in time from HIV seroconversion to death, to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and to each first AIDS-defining disease and death without AIDS. While no significant sex differences were found before 1997, from 1997 onward, women had a lower risk of AIDS (adjusted cumulative relative risk (aCRR) = 0.76, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.63, 0.90) and death (adjusted hazard ratio = 0.68, 95% CI: 0.56, 0.82) than men did. Compared with men, women also had lower risks of AIDS dementia complex (aCRR = 0.23, 95% CI: 0.07, 0.74), tuberculosis (aCRR = 0.60, 95% CI: 0.39, 0.92), Kaposi's sarcoma (aCRR = 0.27, 95% CI: 0.07, 0.99), lymphomas (aCRR = 0.47, 95% CI: 0.23, 0.96), and death without AIDS (aCRR = 0.74, 95% CI: 0.56, 0.98). Sex differences in HIV disease progression have become larger and statistically significant in the era of highly active antiretroviral therapy, supporting a stronger impact of health interventions among women.

Tacrolimus and cyclosporine have differential effects on the risk of development of bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome: results of a prospective, randomized international trial in lung transplantation.

BACKGROUND: Chronic lung allograft dysfunction, which manifests as bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS), is recognized as the primary cause of morbidity and mortality after lung transplantation. In this study we assessed the efficacy and safety of two de novo immunosuppression protocols to prevent BOS. METHODS: Our study approach was a multicenter, prospective, randomized (1:1) open-label superiority investigation of de novo tacrolimus vs cyclosporine, with both study arms given mycophenolate mofetil and prednisolone after lung transplantation. Cytolytic induction therapy was not employed. Patients were stratified at entry for cystic fibrosis. Primary outcome was incidence of BOS 3 years after transplant (intention-to-treat analysis). Secondary outcomes were survival and incidence of acute rejection, infection and other adverse events. RESULTS: Group demographic data were well matched: 110 of 124 tacrolimus vs 74 of 125 cyclosporine patients were treated per protocol (p < 0.01 by chi-square test). Cumulative incidence of BOS Grade ≥1 at 3 years was 11.6% (tacrolimus) vs 21.3% (cyclosporine) (cumulative incidence curves, p = 0.037 by Gray's test, pooled over strata). Univariate proportional sub-distribution hazards regression confirmed cyclosporine as a risk for BOS (HR 1.97, 95% CI 1.04 to 3.77, p = 0.039). Three-year cumulative incidence of acute rejection was 67.4% (tacrolimus) vs 74.9% (cyclosporine) (p = 0.118 by Gray's test). One- and 3-year survival rates were 84.6% and 78.7% (tacrolimus) vs 88.6% and 82.8% (cyclosporine) (p = 0.382 by log-rank test). Cumulative infection rates were similar (p = 0.91), but there was a trend toward new-onset renal failure with tacrolimus (p = 0.09). CONCLUSIONS: Compared with cyclosporine, de novo tacrolimus use was found to be associated with a significantly reduced risk for BOS Grade ≥1 at 3 years despite a similar rate of acute rejection. However, no survival advantage was detected.