David M. McEvoy

Ethnic Minority Business: Theoretical Discourse in Britain and North America

One of the most novel features of recent labour market change in Europe and North America has been the increasing prominence of ethnic minority self-employment. Two decades of radical economic restructuring have brought about a marked shift away from employment in large ® rms to selfemployment in small ones; and, somewhat paradoxically, this trend has been most marked among members of certain migrant groups, often originating in the post-colonial Third World. At the most super® cial level this is evident in the increasingly high visibility, especially in the largest urban centres, of shops and services owned by immigrant-origin entrepreneurs. The South Asian and Chinese-owned small ® rms now so familiar a feature of the British urban scene have their counterparts in the North African and Asian businesses proliferating in parts of France (Dreyfus, 1992; Ma Mung and Simon, 1990), the Surinamese enterprises of Amsterdam (Boissevain, 1992), the Turkish enterprises of Germany (Blaschke and Ersoz, 1986) and above all the multitudinous polytechnic small business economy of North America, where well over 1m ® rms are classed as minority-owned (Light et al., 1994). In quantitative terms at least spectacle is borne out by statistics. In Britain the self-employment rate for people of Chinese ethnicity was recorded as 14.9 per cent of all economically active Chinese as opposed to 7 per cent for whites, while for Indians and Pakistanis the equivalent ® gures were 11.4 and 8.3 (OPCS, 1993). Comparisons with earlier benchmarks reveal these ® gures to be the product of two decades of rapid, sometimes breath-taking, growth (Table 1). Note here that the 1991 Census appears to underplay ethnic minority self-employment in comparison with other earlier or contemporaneous estimates. (See Blackburn, 1994; Curran and Burrows, 1988.) For the US, Light (1984) cites a dozen or so ethnic minorities as overrepresented in self-employment, with Jews (almost the stereotypical case), Chinese, Japanese and Koreans in the vanguard (see also Aldrich and Waldinger, 1990). In France too immigrant minorities are similarly prominent (Ma Mung, 1994; Boissevain, 1984). The overall impression is that ethnic minority capitalism is now virtually a standard feature of advanced urban economies and that, notwithstanding recession and economic crisis, it is waxing rather than waning (Ward, 1987a; Blaschke et al., 1990). Almost inevitably, the scholarly literature on ethnic minority business ownership has multiplied almost as rapidly as its subject

Socio-economic and policy dimensions of the mixed embeddedness of ethnic minority business in Britain

Ethnic minority businesses in Britain are examined in relation to the concept of mixed embeddedness. Earlier intellectual approaches emphasising cultural factors, urban and economic contexts, and public policy are identified. Ethnic minority businesses are shown to be typically small, to compete in saturated spatial markets and to be concentrated in economically vulnerable sectors. Moreover their fragile position has been further destabilised by the effects of government policy. Special attention is given to the repeal of the Shops Act, which limited the opening hours of shops. We conclude that an unintended outcome was the entry of large-scale chains into the formerly protected niches of South Asian-owned businesses. This represents a catastrophic occurrence for some ethnic minority firms. Meanwhile, public policy related to enterprise support and the regeneration of the urban fabric has been largely ineffective in the arena of ethnic minority business. The whole picture is complicated by generational differences in minority communities and by continuing restrictions on immigration.

Market Potential as a Decisive Influence on the Performance of Ethnic Minority Business

Since the dawn of the 1980s much scholarly energy has been devoted to understanding the remarkable against-the-tide rise of ethnic business. Throughout virtually the entire advanced capitalist realm, members of disadvantaged racialised minorities have been in the vanguard of the entrepreneurial explosion that has come to be seen as a hallmark feature of the age. An acutely paradoxical development defying easy explanation, the development of minority-owned business — ‘development’ here being understood as emergence, numerical growth, expansion and, above all, commercial performance and earning capacity — has been addressed in a voluminous, proliferating and somewhat confusing literature (Barrett et al., 1996; Ram and Jones, forthcoming). At the extremes, explanations range from the entreprogenic properties of traditional religious beliefs imported by migrants into modern society as part of their cultural baggage (Werbner, 1984);1 to self-employment as a last-ditch survival option in the face of what Parker (1994) calls ‘the twin perils of racism and recession’ (Jones, 1989).

Consumer Valuation of Food Safety: The Case of Postharvest Processed Oysters

Consumers’ willingness to pay for postharvest-processed (PHP) raw oysters—oysters without health risks—is studied in experimental auction markets. The experimental design decomposes the effects of taste, objective risk information, and information on four PHP technologies on consumer valuations. Results show that relatively uninformed consumers are willing to pay equivalent amounts for PHP and traditional raw oysters. However, after a blind taste test, consumers are willing to pay a significant premium for traditional raw oysters, and the premium persists after objective information on risk and processing technologies is provided. The results are robust across PHP technologies.

The Effects of ITQ Management on Fishermen’s Welfare When the Processing Sector is Imperfectly Competitive

In this paper we use a general model of imperfect competition to predict welfare changes within an open-access fishery after it transitions to individual transferable quota (ITQ) management. Although related research has explored the effects of market power in the harvesting sector on ITQ performance, none has considered the implications of an imperfectly competitive processing sector. Addressing this question, we find that although fishermen should expect to gain from ITQs under perfect competition, they may suffer welfare losses if the processing sector is imperfectly competitive.

Enforcing compliance with international environmental agreements using a deposit-refund system

Whether nations are able to cooperatively manage shared resources through international environmental agreements (IEAs) depends on whether compliance with voluntary commitments can be enforced. Given that nations are sovereign enforcing compliance with IEAs cannot rely on the presence of a strong sanctioning body. Nonetheless, enforcement provisions must be effective in the sense that they will deter non-compliance and credible in the sense that they will actually be imposed. In this paper, we address the problem of enforcing compliance with IEAs by examining one promising mechanism—a deposit-refund system—that exhibits the necessary features for effective enforcement. We analyze a simple model to demonstrate the desirable properties of the mechanism and then consider the effects of imperfect monitoring, uncertainty, partial participation and reputation on the effectiveness of a deposit-refund system.

The Endogenous Formation of Coalitions to Provide Public Goods: Theory and Experimental Evidence

This paper examines the endogenous formation of coalitions that provide public goods in which players implement a minimum participation requirement before deciding whether to join. We demonstrate theoretically that payoff-maximizing players will vote to implement efficient participation requirements and these coalitions will form. However, we also demonstrate that if some players are averse to inequality they can cause inefficient outcomes. Inequality-averse players can limit free riding by implementing larger than efficient coalitions or by blocking efficient coalitions from forming. We test the theory with experimental methods and observe individual behavior and coalition formation consistent with a model of inequality-averse players.

Paying to Punish on a free ride: member and nonmember punishments in voluntary coalitions

We explore public good experiments in which players have the opportunity to form cooperative coalitions. The decision to join a coalition is voluntary as is a members decision to comply with the terms of the coalition. An informal enforcement mechanism is examined in which coalition members and nonmembers can impose costly punishments on one another. We find that when punishments are purely voluntary, coalition members and free-riding nonmembers are equally likely to punish noncompliant coalition members. Moreover, the extent to which nonmembers punish noncompliance does not change regardless of whether the members can credibly enforce compliance within their coalition.

Enforcing 'Self-Enforcing' International Environmental Agreements

Theoretical analyses of international environmental agreements (IEAs) have typically employed the concept of self-enforcing agreements to predict the number of parties to such an agreement. The term self-enforcing, however, is a bit misleading. The concept refers to the stability of cooperative agreements, not to enforcing these agreements once they are in place. Most analyses of IEAs simply ignore the issue of enforcing compliance by parties to the terms of an agreement. In this paper we analyze an IEA game in which parties to an agreement finance an independent enforcement body with the power to monitor the parties’ compliance to the terms of the IEA and impose penalties in cases of noncompliance. This approach is broadly consistent with the enforcement mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol under the Marrakesh Accords. We find that costly enforcement limits the circumstances under which international cooperation to protect the environment is worthwhile, but when IEAs do form they will involve greater participation than IEAs that do not require costly enforcement. Consequently, costly enforcement of IEAs is associated with higher international environmental quality. Moreover, under certain conditions, aggregate welfare is higher when IEAs require costly enforcement. These conclusions are accentuated when monitoring for compliance to IEAs is inaccurate.

Refundable Deposits as Enforcement Mechanisms in Cooperative Agreements: Experimental Evidence with Uncertainty and Non-deterrent Sanctions

Managing global-scale threats such as climate change, loss of biological diversity and pandemics each constitute a global social dilemma, in which collectively countries are better off cooperating but individually they are better off free riding on the cooperative effort of others. Effective international institutions, or agreements, are required to better align the collective and individual incentives, but sovereignty demands that countries voluntarily agree to take action and then voluntarily comply with their commitments. Here we use experimental methods to test an agreement structure that, in theory, encourages meaningful participation and compliance. One of the defining features of the agreement is that it requires members to pay refundable deposits upon ratification. Our results show that this agreement structure can be successful at increasing the provision of public goods in the absence of a strong regulatory body. Most importantly, the agreement remains highly effective even in the face of uncertainty regarding the benefits from public good provision. Our results suggest that making ex ante deposits, even non-deterrent ones, serves as a coordination device that allows countries to achieve meaningful international cooperation.