government education expenditures in early and late childhood human capital investment in early childhood can lead to large and persistent gains beyond this window of opportunity human capital accumulation is more costly despite compelling evidence in support of this notion government education spending is allocated disproportionately toward late childhood and young adulthood we consider the consequences of a reallocation using an overlapping generations model with private and public spending on early and late childhood education taking as given the higher returns to early childhood investment we find that the current allocation may nonetheless be appropriate when we consider a homogeneous population this can hold for moderate levels of government spending with heterogeneity this can hold for middle income workers lower income workers by contrast may benefi tf rom a reallocation

host country national networks and expatriate effectiveness a mixed methods study this paper integrates research on personality dissonance and social networks to explore how expatriate interactions with host country nationals hcns are associated with expatriate effectiveness a mixed methods study with expatriates working in china reveals that extraversion is positively related to overall performance a paradox is also noted whereas higher network ties with hcn colleagues are positively associated with performance they are negatively associated with adjustment interviews extend the survey results and highlight how the unclear boundaries between work and home impact on hcn network relationships

expatriate assignment adjustment and effectiveness an empirical examination of the big picture this study extends the international literature by empirically testing a model of expatriate adjustment that examines the relationships between organizational antecedents i e reasons for assignment a more comprehensive set of adjustment behaviors self reported performance and subordinate rated managerial effectiveness using data from 194 expatriate managers and 505 subordinates working in the multinational hotel industry structural equations modeling results supported the hypothesized model the conceptual and empirical contributions of this study as well as the managerial implications are discussed

work and family role adjustment of different types of global professionals scale development and validation although the original model of expatriate adjustment proposed by black and colleagues has received substantial empirical support it has come under increased academic scrutiny due to both the conceptual overlap among its dimensions and its limited applicability for global professionals who interact with individuals from diverse cultures drawing on role theory we conceptualize and develop a multidimensional scale of the work and family role adjustment of global professionals we assess this scale through five interlocking studies using data from a total of 1231 corporate and self initiated expatriates international business travelers and global domestics after confirming the scale s dimensionality we provide evidence for convergent discriminant nomological and predictive validity we also demonstrate differences in levels of adjustment and in relationships between work and family demands and resources and their respective forms of adjustment across various types of global professionals we contribute to international business research and the organizational behavior and work family literatures by offering a theoretically based scale that assesses adjustment to both work and family roles for a wide range of global employees our scale further lends itself as a diagnostic tool during the selection training and support of global professionals and their families

career management issues facing expatriates this research explores expatriate assignments from a career development perspective first the article examines the impact of five organization level career development programs and policies on expatriate effectiveness then it explores the impact of five individual level career management strategies on the success of expatriate transitions data from 118 expatriates in saudi arabia europe south america and japan are presented to examine these career development issues

expatriate performance appraisal in u s multinational firms this exploratory study examines empirically expatriate performance appraisal epa practices for u s multinational firms and assesses how such practices relate to the perceived accuracy of epas from a sample of u s multinationals the results suggest that a balanced set of raters from host and home countries and more frequent appraisals relate positively to perceived accuracy of epas the data suggest however that most respondent firms did not follow these practices in addition the use of standardized and customized epa evaluation forms relates negatively to perceived epa accuracy implications of these exploratory findings for research and practice are also discussed

public versus private investment in human capital endogenous growth and income inequality in this paper we present an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents in which human capital investment through formal schooling is the engine of growth we use simple functional forms for preferences technologies and income distribution to highlight the distinction between economies with public education and those with private education we find that income inequality declines more quickly under public education on the other hand private education yields greater per capita incomes unless the initial income inequality is sufficiently high we also find that societies will choose public education if a majority of agents have incomes below average

political economy of income distribution dynamics abstract income distribution varies considerably across countries it tends to become more equal with development in some countries but just the opposite occurs in other countries this paper provides a theoretical investigation of the persistent differences in income distribution across countries over time motivated by the relationship between income distribution and public spending at different school levels for a broad range of countries over the past 30 years the analysis centers on the role of public education where specific investments interact with political involvement by different socio economic groups socio economic groups may form lobbies to influence education policy making the formation of lobbies is endogenous persistent inequality is caused by persistent lobbying efforts of the wealthy that lead to an allocation of public education spending more biased toward them

inventories rational expectations and the business cycle abstract the simplest macroeconomic models in which markets clear instantaneously and expectations are rational preclude the existence of business cycles that is of serially correlated deviations of output from trend this paper studies one of several mechanisms that can be used to make these so called new classical models produce business cycles the mechanism is the gradual adjustment of inventory stocks two macroeconomic models of inventory holdings are formulated both imply first that current output should be a decreasing function of the stock of inventories and second that inventories once perturbed from equilibrium levels should adjust only gradually these two features are then embedded into an otherwise standard macroeconomic model in which markets clear instantaneously and expectations are rational two principal conclusions are reached first disturbances such as unanticipated changes in money will set in motion serially correlated deviations of output from trend second if desired inventories are sensitive to the real interest rate then even fully anticipated changes in money can affect real variables

public funding of higher education abstract recent criticism from different sides has expressed the view that with scarce resources there is little justification for massive public funding of higher education central to the debate is the conjecture that colleges and universities use their resources inefficiently and focus insufficiently on their mission to expand students human potential our aim in this paper is to examine the theoretical premises of this conjecture in a small open economy and uncover the conditions under which public investment in higher education is efficient and desirable we analyze non stationary equilibria of an olg economy characterized by perfect capital mobility intergenerational transfers and a hierarchical education system the government uses income tax revenues to finance basic education and support higher education that generates skilled labor given this the following issues are considered a the impact of education and international markets on the equilibrium number of low skilled and skilled workers in each generation b the economic efficiency of public subsidies to higher education in generating skilled human capital c the endogenous support for a government s educational policies found in a political equilibrium

competition between private and public schools vouchers and peer group effects a theoretical and computational model with tax financed tuition free public schools and competitive tuition financed private schools is developed students differ by ability and income achievement depends on own ability and on peers abilities equilibrium has a strict hierarchy of school qualities and two dimensional student sorting with stratification by ability and income in private schools high ability low income students receive tuition discounts while low ability high income students pay tuition premia tuition vouchers increase the relative size of the private sector and the extent of student sorting and benefit high ability students relative to low ability students

organizational predictors of expatriate job satisfaction the study presented here attempted to identify the factors under the control of the organization that may predict expatriate job satisfaction the results indicate that both job task and organization characteristics are significantly related to both intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction the results appear to have both managerial and research implications

the u curve adjustment hypothesis revisited a review and theoretical framework the cross cultural adjustment research literature has largely been conducted from an atheoretical perspective when a theoretical framework is imposed the u curve adjustment theory has been the one most commonly used the lack of a comprehensive review of the empirical literature on the u curve adjustment theory has allowed scholars to accept or dismiss the theory on grounds other than that of empirical evidence this paper reviews the empirical literature and proposes a theoretical framework and research agenda for future research on cross cultural adjustment

a needs driven approach to expatriate adjustment and career development a multiple mentoring perspective although effective in improving socialization development and retention in the us domestic context mentoring would likely benefit expatriates and their firms but it remains theoretically underdeveloped in the international context we develop a theory of international mentoring by integrating current perspectives on protean and boundaryless careers with the literature on mentoring and expatriates expatriates need multiple mentors to assist their adjustment and development during the pre departure expatriation and repatriation stages of international assignments we discuss both hierarchical and peer and formal and informal mentoring relationships to delineate which relationships best address specific expatriate needs international mentoring may improve expatriate adjustment development and retention and thus may affect outcomes of international strategy we conclude by discussing implications and avenues for future research

repatriating knowledge variables influencing the transfer process because of the strategic importance of organizational learning in a global economy the knowledge that repatriates acquire during international assignments is a valuable resource few multinational enterprises however actively harvest this knowledge and little quantitative empirical research on this topic exists to date we propose an original model and propositions that delineate the facilitative and inhibiting factors affecting repatriate knowledge transfer to work units we conclude with suggestions for future research and practical implications

the allocation of public funds in a hierarchical educational system abstract this paper studies the dynamic effects of allocating public funds between basic and advanced education holding the size of total public education funds fixed i identify the effects of their composition on aggregate efficiency and in equality first since basic education is a prerequisite for attending advanced education there exists a lower bound on funding it allocation policies below this lower bound are strictly pareto dominated whether a corresponding lower bound on funding advanced education exists or not depends on the development stage of the economy and the size of total public funds secondly while an allocation policy favoring basic education generates the usual redistribution from top to bottom one favoring advanced education may result in reverse redistribution from bottom to top last through the inter generational link short run allocation policies may have long run effects a simple rule of thumb is that for an economy in its early development stage focusing on basic education for sufficiently long duration is the only way out of polarization and low aggregate efficiency contrary to the actual policies pursued by many of the less developed economies

inventories and price inflexibility a firm maximizing expected discounted profits taking account of the actions of its competitors choosing price and output before stochastic demand is known and holding inventories or unfilled orders to accommodate discrepancies between output and demand is shown to respond to a change in demand by changing its output whether the demand change is transitory or permanent but by changing the price it charges only if the demand change is permanent this proposition is shown to be consistent with german data the data are qualitative the empirical analysis uses the multivariate conditional logit model the empirical results are summarized by gamma coefficients

work role transitions a study of american expatriate managers in japan throughout the course of a career an individual must make numerous role transitions instigated through such events as overseas transfers domestic transfers promotions company reorganizations and inter company job changes this paper examines the relationships between several variables and work role transition in the case of an overseas assignment to japan role ambiguity and role discretion were found to influence work adjustment while predeparture knowledge association with local nationals and family s adjustment were found to correlate with general adjustment of american expatriate managers in japan

dual career expatriates expectations adjustment and satisfaction with international relocation dual career expatriate couples present a challenging set of problems for international human resource managers the results of a survey of husbands and wives in expatriate dual career couples are analyzed relative to 1 differences between the expatriates and their trailing spouses 2 differences between male and female led dual career couples 3 differences between dual career couples opinions prior to expatriation and upon repatriation the results of the study indicate dual career couples have relatively consistent concerns and expectations prior to expatriation and upon repatriation to their home country the significant differences observed were between male led dual career couples prior to expatriation when compared to male led dual career couples upon repatriation in addition the dual career expatriate respondents did not feel the mnc that transferred them overseas provided adequate training or social support during the international assignment

political equilibrium income distribution and growth this paper analyzes the impact of income distribution on growth when investment in human capital is the source of growth and individuals vote over the degree of redistribution in the economy the model has three main features first very different patterns of income distribution are conducive to high growth at different levels of per capita income second growth is associated with an externality whereby investment in human capital by one group increases the productivity of other groups thus potentially enabling them to invest in human capital third the initial pattern of income distribution and the resulting political equilibrium are crucial in determining whether the transmission of this externality is promoted in which case growth is enhanced or prevented in which case growth is stopped using a non overlapping generations model with voting i derive several empirical implications in particular the model implies an inverted u relation between levels of inequality and levels of income in cross sections but not necessarily in time series a result that seems consistent with a number of empirical studies

expatriate assignments and intra organizational career success implications for individuals and organizations anecdotal accounts and reports in the popular press often suggest that international assignments are critical for employees who seek to move up the career ladder more quickly nevertheless previous research on repatriation indicates that many former expatriates feel that their overseas assignments have harmed rather than helped their careers relatively little research though has sought to understand how expatriate assignments might be related to career success this paper then presents a conceptual model describing the relationship between expatriate assignments and intra organizational career success specifically theories of career mobility are used to develop a framework for outlining the factors likely to determine whether expatriate assignments help or hinder the advancement of employees who have worked as international assignees the model also indicates that repatriate career success influences an organization s ability to retain its current repatriates and recruit future expatriates some implications of this research and directions for future research are discussed as well

educational vouchers when there are peer group effects size matters in this article i study the effects various educational voucher policies have on the sorting of children across schools and the per student expenditure levels at these schools when a child s peer group matters and students differ over income and ability i find that depending on the magnitude of the voucher switching from a public system to a voucher system could entail either welfare gains or losses all voucher policies under consideration lead to greater inequality than the public system however these increases are not monotone in the voucher size several states are considering enacting or have enacted educational voucher plans which entail giving parents money to send their children to private schools both the cities of milwaukee and cleveland have started educational voucher programs during the 1996 1997 school year around 1650 students in milwaukee received vouchers worth 4400 at a total cost of over 7 million in the same year cleveland spent 6 4 million distributing an average voucher of around 2000 to 1996 students other smaller scale voucher plans have sprouted up in school districts around the country proponents claim vouchers give poor parents educational choice for their children and give poor children a chance to succeed where the public schools fail them opponents argue that by funding vouchers resources will be funneled out of the public schools to a small number of students and that the majority of students who are left behind in the public schools will suffer in order to evaluate these proposals a framework is needed that incorporates the factors important to educational outcomes along with family background and educational expenditure many empirical studies have shown that the peer group plays a significant role in educational achievement consider a change in educational policy for example adopting a voucher system such a switch will affect not only

the impact of journals and authors on international business research a citational analysis of jibs articles in this paper we use citational analysis to examine the influence of individuals and disciplines on international business research we collected citational data over the ten year period 1984 to 1993 from every issue of the journal of international business studies we found that management economics marketing and finance disciplines have had significant influence on international business research and identified researchers such as dunning porter vernon casson rugman and hofstede as having made significant contributions to international business research

dimensions determinants and differences in the expatriate adjustment process we comprehensively test the black mendenhall and oddou 1991 model of the dimensions and determinants of adjustment to international assignments we also expand the model to examine two individual factors i e previous assignments and language fluency and three positional factors i e hierarchical level functional area and assignment vector as moderators of adjustment determinants surveys were completed by 452 expatriates from 29 different countries assigned to 45 host countries by large multinational firms the multi dimensionality of adjustment was investigated and confirmed support for the expanded black et al 1991 model was found several significant moderating effects emerged showing different patterns of adjustment for those with different amounts of previous expatriate experience and levels of host country language fluency hierarchical level and assignment vector were also important moderators but the effects for functional area were generally weak

motives of non american firms investing in the united states non american firms have recently begun investing larger sums of money in the u s such increased activity has created a great deal of interest and concern the growth in foreign direct investment and findings of a mailed questionnaire will be reviewed in this article factor analysis was utilized to help isolate the salient motives for these investment activities although the size of the u s market and the attractiveness of a new market or the desire to preserve the existing u s market were the most frequently cited reasons for new investment in the u s factor analysis reveals that these reasons merely reinforce the primary motive namely the desire to benefit from a higher level of u s technology and innovation

the effects of compulsory schooling on growth income distribution and welfare abstract in this paper we consider an olg model with productive capital and human capital affecting the quality of labor in each generation parents invest in their children s education but disregard its external effect on the aggregate production function government intervention in providing compulsory schooling increases economic growth along the equilibrium path while the intragenerational income distribution becomes more equal also in the long run the majority of individuals in each generation are better off due to compulsory schooling

empirical evidence of recurring international compensation problems the expansion of international business necessitates an increased number of employees based in foreign markets these expatriates nationals and third country nationals represent unique and complex compensation problems this article addresses five of the recurring compensation problems reported by members of the society for human resource management international shrmi in a recent survey

the effect of national culture on the choice of entry mode characteristics of national cultures have frequently been claimed to influence the selection of entry modes this article investigates this claim by developing a theoretical argument for why culture should influence the choice of entry two hypotheses are derived which relate culture to entry mode choice one focusing on the cultural distance between countries the other on attitudes towards uncertainty avoidance using a multinomial logit model and controlling for other effects the hypotheses are tested by analysing data on 228 entries into the united states market by acquisition wholly owned greenfield and joint venture empirical support for the effect of national culture on entry choice is found

why do international assignees stay an organizational embeddedness perspective we apply an organizational embeddedness perspective to examine international assignees retention with the organization specifically we hypothesize that assignees social ties within and their perceived fit with the host unit positively relate to two sacrifices on leaving the organization their firm specific learning during the assignment and their perceived career prospects in the organization perceived career prospects are expected to predict subsequent retention moderated by firm specific learning these hypotheses are tested using a sample of 143 inpatriates in 10 german multinationals with retention measured 2 and 4 years later we show that inpatriates trusting ties with hq staff and their fit with the hq positively relate to their firm specific learning and their perceived career prospects and that the latter predicts their retention 2 and 4 years later perceived career prospects mediate the direct relationship between inpatriates fit with the hq and inpatriate retention and the indirect relationship between inpatriates trusting ties with hq staff and their retention furthermore inpatriates firm specific learning mitigates the effect of perceived career prospects on retention decisions 2 years later we contribute to the organizational embeddedness careers and international business literatures by explaining when and how facets of organizational embeddedness relate to assignee retention

mentoring across global boundaries an empirical examination of home and host country mentors on expatriate career outcomes there has long been an interest in the effects of mentors on protege career outcomes and with scholars now beginning to examine mentoring across national boundaries using survey information as well as company records for 299 expatriates 163 men 136 women in 10 countries we examined the impact of home and host country mentors upon expatriate effectiveness we found that having a host country mentor had a significant positive effect on the expatriate s organizational knowledge organizational knowledge sharing job performance promotability and perceptions of teamwork having a home country mentor had a significant positive effect only on organizational knowledge job performance and promotability surprisingly our results revealed that having a home country mentor had a significant but negative effect on the expatriate s organization identification and job satisfaction contrary to the literature neither type of mentoring had a significant effect on job tension implications for practice as well as future research are detailed

individual organizational work and environmental influences on expatriate turnover tendencies an empirical study foreign postings for executives are costly undertakings for multinational corporations especially when they fail yet little research has been done on the causes of expatriate turnover this 155 expatriate survey assesses individual organizational work and environmental influences on both internal and external turnover tendencies it was found that job autonomy and material life satisfaction were key predictors for both internal and external turnover tendencies only for organizational turnover did job autonomy supersede material life satisfaction as the lead predictor of turnover tendencies american expatriates attach much importance to maintaining living standards in postings to foreign locations

education social security and growth abstract we study the role of government s allocation of tax revenues between two outlays public investment in education a transfer to the young generation and social security benefits to the older generation in an overlapping generations economy with pay as you go social security and altruistically motivated transfers from parents to children we analyze how the allocation of the tax revenues between the two outlays affects growth and welfare in competitive equilibria a we obtain comparative dynamics results for nonstationary equilibria subject to a change in the allocation profile b for stationary equilibria we show that for a given allocation profile of the tax revenues educational subsidies can either increase the growth rate or decrease it depending on the parameters of the model preferences production function and the tax rate c if government seeks to allocate funds in a way that maximizes the growth rate we demonstrate that under some plausible conditions it is not optimal to maintain pay as you go social security however if parents preferences combine strong concern for their retirement with significant degree of altruism towards their children then pay as you go social security system does enhance growth and welfare

managing the learning and transfer of global management competence antecedents and outcomes of japanese repatriation effectiveness this study examines predictors that lead to effective individual learning of global management competencies on expatriate assignments and the transfer i e the application of those competencies in new assignments upon repatriation a structural equation model based on data from 305 japanese repatriates identifies linkages from organizational support intercultural personality characteristics self adjustment and repatriation policies to outcomes of global competency learning and transfer which in turn lead to heightened job motivation and performance

recent advances in modelling seasonality abstract in this paper we review recent developments in econometric modelling of economic time series with seasonality the prime focus is on econometric models which incorporate explicit descriptions of seasonal variation instead of removing this variation using a seasonal adjustment method this review centres around developments in seasonal unit root models and in periodic parameter models both in the univariate and multivariate context several empirical examples are used for illustration we also discuss several areas for further research

qualified immigrants success exploring the motivation to migrate and to integrate high quality employees with international experience bring valuable advantages to internationally operating organizations the growing number and importance of immigrants and particularly qualified university educated immigrants deserves more attention from international business practitioners and scholars the market for highly qualified people within mncs is increasingly becoming international and ever more of them have migrated to a new country to advance their career such employees can be a source of competitive advantage for international firms we use qualitative research with qualified immigrants qis in france to argue that the success of qis depends in large part on their motivation to integrate into their host country which is largely explained by their motivation to migrate from the qualitative data we derive four different types of qualified migrant and suggest that the type will determine the success of the immigrant within and outside the organization the relationship between the motivation to migrate and the motivation to integrate is moderated by met expectations and organizational integration policies such that the effects of these in turn vary with type recognition of the types of qi and the moderating factors will be valuable for practitioners as well as opening up research avenues for scholars

when yankee comes home factors related to expatriate and spouse repatriation adjustment this study examined anticipatory and in country individual job organizational and non work variables and their relationship with work interaction and general repatriation adjustment for u s managers the study also examined anticipatory and in country individual and non work variables and their relationship with interaction and general repatriation adjustment for the spouses of the managers who were married age total time overseas social status and housing conditions were generally related to all facets of repatriation adjustment for both expatriates and spouses practical and research implications are explored

a conceptual model of expatriate turnover many factors may contribute to the high rate of expatriate turnover experienced by u s multinational corporations the objective of this article is to present a comprehensive model of the expatriate turnover process by identifying the key contributing factors and suggesting intermediate linkages and relationships the model appears to have both managerial and theoretical implications

expatriation repatriation and domestic geographical relocation an empirical investigation of adjustment to new job assignments this research examines the relative impact of six sets of factors on multiple indices of adjustment to new job assignments these six sets of factors include demographic variables indices of the internationalness of the job change e g whether the job changer is an expatriate repatriate or domestic geographical relocator job characteristics variables types and amount of career development assistance degree of change between successive job assignments and types of individual coping strategies employed by job changers data were collected from 459 job changers from twenty six countries the results highlight both the commonalities among expatriates repatriates and domestic geographical relocators in adjusting to new job assignments as well as the differences among them

revisiting repatriation concerns organizational support versus career and contextual influences this paper reviews and integrates two perspectives on repatriate retention a traditional one which suggests that the main determinant of repatriate retention is the availability of repatriation support programs and an emerging one which focuses on individual career activism in a changing employment context results of a study of 133 expatriates from 14 mncs indicate that both views contribute to our understanding of repatriate retention building on the results of our study we put forward a framework to guide future research

what you do depends on where you are understanding how domestic and expatriate work requirements depend upon the cultural context to empirically address the importance of the cultural context for successful assignments we conducted two studies using a large sample of public sector us professionals working in comparable jobs in 156 different countries the results provided direct evidence that social and perceptual skill reasoning ability and adjustment and achievement orientation personality requirements are higher in expatriate assignments which has implications for pre departure selection also the results partly supported the hypothesis that expatriates are required to adjust their behavior to be consistent with the local cultural values which has implications for post arrival behavioral training

endogenous determination of public budget allocation across education stages abstract this paper studies the endogenous determination of public budget allocation across hierarchical education stages in less developed economies the top class has dominant political power to implement its most preferred policy which is characterized by exclusive participation and large schooling expenditure at higher education at the expense of basic education in developed economies the budget allocation is more balanced under certain parameters it leads to expanded participation of the middle class in higher education the model offers an explanation to the observed cross country policy difference and is broadly consistent with historical evidence

repatriation of corporate executives an empirical study the effective management of corporate executives returning from foreign assignments has received little attention from academic researchers this study is based on questionnaires completed by members of the american society of personnel administration international aspi the focus of the study was directed at problems that occurred in repatriating executives programs used by corporations to repatriate returning executives and examines why programs have not been instituted by multinational corporations

minding the gap between schools and universities abstract during the 2000s decade governments in south america reallocated per student public expenditures from tertiary to basic education potentially alleviating the economic gap between students in public schools and public universities to investigate the welfare and macroeconomic effects of such types of policies we build and calibrate a general equilibrium model using brazilian data from the beginning of the 2000s we find that the optimal utilitarian policy allocates per student public expenditures equally across education stages benefits almost the entirety of households delivers significant welfare gains to the poorest families and cuts back income inequality we also use our framework to investigate economic differences between brazil and the united states and find that differences in the supply of vacancies in public universities is the education policy aspect that alone has the highest explanatory power over aggregate earnings and college attendance differences between the two countries

seasonality in surveys a comparison of belgian french and german business tests abstract seasonal effects appear in qualitative responses of monthly business surveys the seasonal effects can be extracted like in regression or time series models via dummy variables in surveys however there is another route to extract the seasonal effects by incorporating questions on the questionnaires which force respondents to make a distinction between seasonal and cyclical effects it is shown in the paper that a comparison of these two approaches on theoretical grounds is inconclusive evidence from belgian french and german surveys is used to make a comparison the approach with survey based seasonal measures is found more desirable moreover the responses to the request to separate seasonal from cyclical effects seem to be fairly consistent

formalizing internationalization in the eclectic paradigm the paper presents a simple general equilibrium model that formalizes internationalization in the eclectic paradigm based on a reconfiguration of concepts taken from the new classical economics literature the model enables us to address simultaneously the role of ownership location and internalization advantages and their interaction in the emergence of the multinational enterprise mne through a set of mathematical inequalities our model offers a bridge between the detached perceptions of the mne often held by international trade economists and international business scholars and makes specific aspects of the eclectic paradigm empirically testable

technological progress mobility and economic growth this paper analyzes the relationship between technological progress wage inequality intergenerational earnings mobility and economic growth in periods of major technological inventions a decline in the relative importance of initial conditions raises inequality enhances mobility and generates a larger concentration of high ability individuals in technologically advanced sectors stimulating future technological progress and growth however once technologies become more accessible mobility is diminished and inequality decreases but becomes more persistent the reduction in the concentration of ability in technologically advanced sectors diminishes the likelihood of technological breakthroughs and slows future growth user friendliness therefore becomes unfriendly to future economic growth copyright 1997 by american economic association

toward a theoretical framework of repatriation adjustment although the increased internationalization of business has brought greater scholarly attention to the issue of adjustment to overseas assignments comparatively little research activity has been paid to the topic of adjustment back to the home country and home office repatriation adjustment in this article we argue that repatriation adjustment is sufficiently different from other forms of work adjustment e g domestic relocation and expatriate assignments to warrant separate theoretical and empirical investigation to facilitate this we propose an initial theoretical framework and set of derived propositions to guide and spark future research on this topic

heterogeneity stratification and growth macroeconomic implications of community structure and school finance this paper examines how socioeconomic stratification and alternative systems of education finance affect inequality and growth agents interact through local public goods or externalities school funding neighborhood effects and economywide linkages complementary skills knowledge spillovers sorting families into homogeneous communities often minimizes the costs of existing heterogeneity but mixing reduces heterogeneity faster integration therefore tends to slow down growth in the short run yet raise it in the long run a move to state funding of education presents society with a similar intertemporal trade off local and global complementarities play major roles in determining the efficient social and educational structures copyright 1996 by american economic association

licensing duration in foreign markets a real options perspective licensing can be considered an initial trial of a foreign market before a firm fully commits to it through other investment modes the length of trial has great importance because licensing duration represents part of the licensing agreement when it is too short the firm may not acquire the necessary experience and knowledge of the foreign market but if it is too long the firm misses optimal expansion timing arguing that licensing can be considered as a european style real option with a fixed holding period we develop and test a model of the determinants of licensing duration in foreign markets empirical results based on a sample of firms in various countries show that uncertainty and threat of competitive pre emption in the foreign market are related to shorter duration of the technology licensing agreements we also find that irreversibility of the impending investment moderates the relationships between uncertainty and duration specifically market and technology uncertainties in the foreign market induce shorter contracts under low levels of irreversibility

the stylized facts about the behavior of manufacturers inventories and backorders over the business cycle 1959 1980 recent theoretical work has highlighted the role of inventories in propagating business cycles this paper attempts to provide an empirical foundation for current and future research on the role inventories play in business cycles the evidence presented here indicates that inventories and backorders are major variables in predicting output fluctuations further the evidence is that disaggregating inventories by stage of fabrication is important in predicting output in concert with previous findings our results suggest that disaggregated inventories ought to be a component of models of the business cycle

disequilibrium dynamics an empirical study despite the amount of attention devoted in economics to the study of equilibria the process by which an equilibrium can be attained is not well understood stephen smale 1977 called this the fundamental problem of economic theory this paper explores the microeconomics of the adjustment process by examining empirically the disequilibrium behavior of firms implications for the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics are stressed the data from german industry describe the month by month price and output changes of individual firms as well as the firms own assessments of the levels of their inventories and unfilled orders because the data are qualitative use is made of the multivariate conditional logit model developed by marc nerlove and s james press 1973 1976 and extended by kawasaki and zimmermann section i discusses the underlying model of firm behavior and the significance of the inquiry for macroeconomics in section ii the econometric techniques are briefly described in section iii the empirical results are summarized and interpretations of the results are offered in section iv

public versus private investment and growth in a hierarchical education system abstract the paper studies the interaction between public and private spending in a two stage education framework k 12 and tertiary education and their effects on economic growth we find that an increase in the overall education public spending crowds out the total level of private contributions and increases the share of resources that households devote to k 12 education for a given public budget a higher share of k 12 public funding induces higher private education spending overall of which a larger share goes towards higher education the model broadly matches data on education finance in the oecd countries the calibrated parameter values suggest that at both stages public and private inputs are good yet imperfect substitutes with a higher degree of complementarity in basic education we show that the growth maximizing share of public spending devoted to k 12 should be high irrespective of the size of the public budget using the calibrated model to compare the structure of education funding in the eu and the us we find that to maximize growth high tax countries should use more of their public resources in tertiary education relative to low tax countries this suggests that us efforts to improve k 12 education and the reform of higher education in europe are consistent with the objective of increased economic growth

nationality cultural distance and expatriate status effects on the managerial network in a multinational enterprise we study the role of three characteristics of international managers nationality cultural distance and expatriate status for their network ties a network analysis of cross subsidiary interactions among 457 managers in an mne demonstrates that managers form strong expressive ties with peers with smaller cultural distance and from the same status group however managers form strong instrumental ties with peers who are different on these background characteristics the implications for international management theory and practice are discussed

inventories and sticky prices more on the microfoundations of macroeconomics the role of inventories in making prices sticky is studied by analyzing a dynamic linear quadratic model of a monopoly firm facing stochastic demand but able to store its finished goods in inventory it is shown that in contrast to the usual presumption firms that exhibit the smallest output responses to demand fluctuations may also exhibit the smallest price fluctuations specifically firms which have very flexible inventory storage facilities or are subjected to very transitory demand shocks will rely on inventories as buffers and will change neither production nor price very much on the other hand firms which have very inflexible storage facilities or whose demand shocks are quite permanent will display large swings in both price and output the standard assumption about inventory carrying costs that has been used in the literature that they are linear is shown to imply that production is impervious to fluctuations in demand it is also established that prices may respond more strongly to positive demand shocks than to negative ones if it is impossible to hold negative inventories i e to have unfilled orders the model offers an explanation for stickiness in relative prices however under certain circumstances it may help explain the persistence of inflation this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the impact of educational standards on the level and distribution of earnings the goal of this paper is to present the following finding an egalitarian policy maker might prefer higher standards than would a policy maker whose goal was to maximize the sum of earnings the result is based on the observation that if workers are differentiated with respect to ability an increase in educational standards will increase the earnings of both the most able and the least able workers the only workers whose earnings fall are those workers who after the increase fail to continue meeting the standard

cultural adaptation of business expatriates in the host marketplace satisfaction with the host culture has been found to influence the expatriate s commitment to the local operation and to the parent company this paper investigates the role that the expatriate s consumer experiences play in the determination of his her satisfaction with the new culture market alienation has a negative effect on satisfaction but it is reduced by participation in the host marketplace further cultural knowledge was not found to be directly related to satisfaction with the host culture but rather was related indirectly through its association with participation in the host marketplace

when do international human capital enhancing practices benefit the bottom line an ability motivation and opportunity perspective we study the conditions under which firms can capitalize on their international human capital ihc using the ability motivation opportunity amo perspective we conceptualize ihc as ability collaborative climate as motivation and the firm s level of internationalization as opportunity we test three alternative amo models the additive model main effect the combinative model two way interactions and the multiplicative model a three way interaction using a cross industry sample of south korean firms we find support for the multiplicative model specifically the relationship between ihc enhancement practices and firm performance is significant and positive only when both collaborative climate and internationalization are high

redistribution and subsidies for higher education the financing of higher education through public spending imposes a transfer of resources from taxpayers to university students and their parents we provide an explanation for this phenomenon those who attend institutions of higher education will earn more income in the future and will pay more taxes people whose children do not receive higher education however should agree to help pay the cost of such education providing that taxes are sufficiently high to ensure an adequate redistribution in favor of their own children at some time in the future

a simple model of educational standards the author models standards for educational credentials such as high school diplomas standard setters maximize their conception of social welfare knowing that utility maximizing students choose whether to meet the standard the author shows that more egalitarian policymakers set lower standards the median voter would prefer higher standards under symmetric distributions and decentralization lowers standards among identical communities optimal standards do not necessarily fall with increased student preference for leisure deterioration of nonstudent inputs to education or increased student heterogeneity superseding binary credentials by perfect information increases average achievement and social welfare for plausible degrees of heterogeneity egalitarianism and pooling under decentralization

risk bearing and the theory of income distribution this paper develops the stochastic theory of distribution with a dynamic model which focuses on the role of incomplete insurance in generating inequality unlike previous work our approach takes explicit account of the reason for market incompleteness in modeling agents behaviour in particular the amount of risk borne is endogenous using a model of growth with altruism in which agents are risk averse and there is moral hazard we show that lineage wealth follows a markov process which converges globally to an ergodic distribution this also represents the long run population distribution of wealth we discuss the role of particular assumptions such as availability of production loans and unboundedness of utility in yielding the qualitative properties of the distribution of wealth the choice of occupation and the prevention of poverty traps