Modeling the Defense-Growth Nexus in a Post-Conflict Country - A Piecewise Linear Approach

The defense-growth nexus is investigated empirically using longitudinal data for Guatemala and allowing the effect of defense spending on growth to be nonlinear. Using recently developed econometric methods involving threshold regressions, evidence of a level-dependent effect of military expenditure on GDP growth is found: a positive and significant externality effect of defense spending prevails for relatively low levels of defense spending and becomes negative, albeit insignificant, for higher levels.Guatemala, defense expenditures, nonlinearity, economic growth, externality effect

Using projective techniques to further understanding of the RAPM-PEU relationship : evidence from the experience of marketing and sales managers

In an increasingly uncertain context, budgeting faces at least two categories of concerns : how should realistic objectives be set in a poorly predictable context? How should a fair year-end evaluation be performed when uncertainty has affected the results and their controllability? Since Hopwood's (1972) paper, performance evaluative styles have provided a rich vein for empirical behavioral studies in control, largely based on contingency approaches, and the Perceived Environmental Uncertainty (PEU) has been examined in many empirical studies. However, two decades of literature on the RAPM-PEU relationship have produced results that are best inconclusive. In our view, there is a need for better understanding of the constructs commonly used in RAPM research. To meet this need, we used a field-based study and projective techniques to interview fourteen senior marketing and sales managers in a variety of industries. The interviews were designed to capture the managers' perceptions relating to RAPM, and to uncertainty. Our results highlight an important practical and theoretical distinction between actionable and non-actionable sources of PEU, which is based on a manager's ability to improve the predictability of change, and/or to be able to react to changes in the environment with an additional effort. When PEU is high and perceived as non-actionable, the paper examines what kind of social and organizational adjustments take place that can avoid the potential negative behavioral consequences of RAPM. The results emphasize that budgeting and performance evaluation are a multiple-year game, where trust and knowledge of social rules build up over the years, and learning takes place - a picture left out of traditional RAPM literature.budgeting; RAPM; uncertainty; projective techniques; behavioral accounting; marketing and sales managers

Dual use of budgeting in uncertainty contexts: Explorative study of senior sales and marketing managers

Based on prior accounting literature and Simons’ framework (1990, 1995), the authors explore the use of budgets in PEU situations in a qualitative study. They conducted a field-based study and interviewed 14 senior sales and marketing managers from various industries, using projective techniques imported from psychological research.budgeting; uncertainty; perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU); interactive control system (ICS); sales and marketing managers

Economic Growth, Biodiversity Conservation, and the Formation of Human Capital in a Developing Country

Can education play a role in fostering economic growth and simultaneously decrease pressure on forests? The aim of this study is to show that it can. Human capital formation is a key element in a development strategy that includes natural resource conservation within the framework of sustained economic growth and poverty alleviation. Consequently, it is not by chance that Guatemala is experiencing both minimal per capital income growth and high deforestation while having one of the lowest educational levels in Latin America. However, since many assumptions about educational benefits are controversial and many aspects depend on broader issues, human capital formation can only be one piece in a multidimensional puzzle. This study is organized into three parts, each one of which can be read independently: first, a macroeconomic assessment of education and other factors involved in the country’s growth trajectory; second, a rural analysis indicating the root causes of deforestation and the role education can play to slow down habitat loss; third, the highlighting of some elements indispensable to reform and to subsequent improvement of the quality of rural schooling

Machine Learning with Time Series: A Taxonomy of Learning Tasks, Development of a Unified Framework, and Comparative Benchmarking of Algorithms

Time series data is ubiquitous in real-world applications. Such data gives rise to distinct but closely related learning tasks (e.g. time series classification, regression or forecasting). In contrast to the more traditional cross-sectional setting, these tasks are often not fully formalized. As a result, different tasks can become conflated under the same name, algorithms are often applied to the wrong task, and performance estimates are are potentially unreliable. In practice, software frameworks such as scikit-learn have become essential tools for data science. However, most existing frameworks focus on cross-sectional data. To our know- ledge, no comparable frameworks exist for temporal data. Moreover, despite the importance of these framework, their design principles have never been fully understood. Instead, discussions often concentrate on the usage and features, while almost completely ignoring the design. To address these issues, we develop in this thesis (i) a formal taxonomy of learning tasks, (ii) novel design principles for ML toolboxes and (iii) a new unified framework for ML with time series. The framework has been implemented in an open-source Python package called sktime. The design principles are derived from existing state-of-the-art toolboxes and classical software design practices, using a domain-driven approach and a novel scientific type system. We show that these principles cannot just explain key aspects of existing frameworks, but also guide the development of new ones like sktime. Finally, we use sktime to reproduce and extend the M4 competition, one of the major comparative benchmarking studies for forecasting. Reproducing the competition allows us to verify the published results and illustrate sktime’s effectiveness. Extending the competition enables us to explore the potential of previously unstudied ML models. We find that, on a subset of the M4 data, simple ML models implemented in sktime can match the state-of-the-art performance of the hand-crafted M4 winner models

Systèmes de contrôle marketing et stratégies de distribution : la mise en évidence du facteur environnemental par une étude exploratoire

Les différentes études portant sur les déterminants des systèmes de contrôle marketing restent parcellaires. Cet article présente les résultats d'une étude exploratoire visant à mettre à jour les éléments de l'environnement de l'entreprise qui peuvent influencer le système de contrôle adopté. Une vingtaine d'entretiens semi directifs auprès de directions marketing et commerciales ont permis d'identifier quatre catégories d'entreprises selon le système de contrôle mis en place. Ces quatre catégories suggèrent que la relation avec la distribution structure fortement le système de contrôle, qu'il s'agisse du rapport de force entre fabricant et distributeur ou du type de relation commerciale.systèmes de contrôle commercial et marketing; mécanismes de marché; contrôle social; réseaux de distribution; rapports de force; marketing relationnel

Uncovering Simons’ structuralism with cognitive theories: Interactive control systems and processes of learning

In this paper, the authors draw from theories of cognition, in particular Piaget (1930, 1931, 1934, 1935, 1949, 1966, 1968) and provide some content analysis of Simons’ writings (1987, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1995, 2000), based on four categories, which stem from our interpretation of Piaget’s thought : the role of MCS as a language, the interactive nature of MCS, the link between strategy and control and how MCS deal with uncertainty.Simons; Piaget; learning; cognition; interactive control systems