industry and country effects on managers perceptions of environmental uncertainties international management research highlights political government policy and macroeconomic uncertainties strategy studies focus on input supply product market and competitive uncertainties this study develops and tests the reliability of an instrument for measuring managers uncertainly perceptions data analyses using an international sample provide insights into the relative importance of country and industry factors for explaining managers perceptions of different environmental uncertainties

social absorption capability systems of innovation and manufactured export response to preferential trade incentives abstract in many extant analyses of the impact of non reciprocal system of trade preferences it is typical to focus on the details of market access value of tariff concessions as explanation for why export of beneficiaries may or may not respond to incentives very often the role that supply related factors can and do play in the process is relegated to the background this paper argues that the social absorption capability of a beneficiary s economy as expressed in her incumbent systems of innovation is a crucial determinant of export performance response the experience of sub sahara african countries under the us african growth and opportunity act apparel trade incentive is used as a classical illustration of this proposition it is shown that the comparative efficiency of lesotho despite emerging from a relatively weak trade performance potential background in recording the highest level of export success among beneficiaries of the scheme is a function of the relative efficiency of her systems of innovation

upgrading primary production a global commodity chain approach abstract global commodity chain gcc analysis has been concerned mainly with examining power relations in global manufacturing industries although it has been preoccupied increasingly by the question of how developing country dc producers can upgrade this paper extends gcc analysis to traditional primary commodities where international traders exercise the driving role and suggests a new agenda for their upgrading in dcs based upon public action

a measure of export market orientation scale development and cross cultural validation this study reports on the construction and psychometric assessment of a measure of export market orientation four multi item scales were developed showing strong evidence of reliability and convergent discriminant and nomological validity in samples of u k and dutch exporters further analysis revealed full invariance of the final measure across the two country samples several suggestions for applying the measure in substantive research are offered

the asian drivers and ssa is there a future for export oriented african industrialisation export oriented industrialisation is the orthodoxy and is widely indicated as a development path for sub saharan africa in recent years there has been a surge of clothing exports from a limited number of ssa economies to the us in 2006 these exports accounted for more than half of ssa s manufactured exports excluding south africa however the ending of quota controls on chinese clothing exports to the us led to a significant fall in these exports is this a harbinger for the future of export oriented industrialisation in ssa in a world of a level trading playing field

loan pricing under basel ii in an imperfectly competitive banking market abstract the new basel ii accord 2006 established new and revised capital requirements for banks in this paper we analyze and estimate the possible effects of the new rules on the pricing of bank loans we relate to the two approaches for capital requirements internal and standardized and distinguish between retail and corporate customers our loan equation is based on a model of a banking firm facing uncertainty operating in an imperfectly competitive loan market we use israeli economic data and data of a leading israeli bank the main results indicate that high quality corporate and retail customers will enjoy a reduction in loan interest rates in big banks which most probably will adopt the irb approach on the other hand high risk customers will benefit by shifting to small banks that adopt the standardized approach

the african growth and opportunity act and the global commodity chain for clothing abstract this paper examines responses to the african growth and opportunity act in sub saharan africa s clothing sector the paper reviews statistical evidence on supply response as well as presenting recent fieldwork findings from southern africa using a modified version of global commodity value chain analysis it argues that while there has been a significant level of response this has been largely confined to enterprises of a particular type the latter has evolved globally in relation to the specificities of the us clothing market this has consequences both for chain analysis and for broader debates concerning industrial upgrading and trade vs aid

the relationship between export market orientation and export performance an empirical study abstractthis article investigates the relationship between export market orientation and export performance in saudi export firms questionnaire method was used to collect the data from managers of export firms with the mediating role of export strategy the data were analysed using structural equation modelling sem implemented using amos software results of sem analysis showed that export market orientation has impact on export performance the mediator variable export strategy was found to have partial mediation role in the relationship this article joins the literature of international trade by adding the perspective of saudi export firms managers of export firms can employ the study to support their firm towards the effect of market orientation on their performance

the effects of customer and competitor orientations on performance in global markets a contingency analysis should companies adjust their orientations toward customers or toward competitors in global markets to answer this question we use contingency theory and examine how the effects of customer and competitor orientations on performance are moderated by different environmental conditions our results from the global hotel industry indicate that a customer orientation works better in economically developed markets as well as in markets with good local business conditions greater resource availability and demanding customers in contrast a competitor orientation is more effective in markets that are economically developing have poor local business conditions and face resource scarcity

prospect theory mental accounting and differences in aggregated and segregated evaluation of lottery portfolios if individuals have to evaluate a sequence of lotteries their judgment is influenced by the presentation mode experimental studies have found significantly higher acceptance rates for a sequence of lotteries if the overall distribution was displayed instead of the set of lotteries itself mental accounting and loss aversion provide an easy and intuitive explanation for this phenomenon in this paper we offer an explanation that incorporates further evaluation concepts of prospect theory our formal analysis of the difference in aggregated and segregated portfolio evaluation demonstrates that the higher attractiveness of the aggregated presentation mode is not a general phenomenon as suggested in the literature but depends on specific parameters of the lotteries the theoretical findings are supported by an experimental study in contrast to the existing evidence and in line with our theoretical results we find for specific types of lotteries an even lower acceptance rate if the overall distribution is displayed

selling success constructing value in conservation and development summary selling success is crucial in conservation and development solutions ideas projects and people must actively be constructed as valuable to get donors and policy makers to buy into them exactly how success travels and becomes capital however is not often explicated using a southern african conservation and development intervention the paper compares positive translation along the project s accountability chain with the broader circulation of positive references to the project s payments for ecosystem services initiative while both illuminate the construction of value in conservation and development the paper concludes that a neoliberal context increasingly emphasizes the latter tactic of epistemic circulation

a portfolio performance index fund managers may sensibly be averse to earning a time averaged portfolio return that is less than the average return of some designated benchmark when a portfolio is expected to earn a higher average return than the benchmark return the probability that it will not approaches zero asymptotically at a computable exponential decay rate the probability decay rate is thus proposed here as a new portfolio performance index in the widely analyzed special case in which returns are normally distributed the new performance index maximizing portfolio is the same as the popular sharpe ratio maximizing portfolio the results of the two approaches generally differ however because of nonnormal levels of skewness and or kurtosis in the portfolio attributable to large asymmetrical economic shocks or investments in options and other derivative securities an illustrative example will show that the new index is easy to implement and consistent with empirical evidence on portfolio choice favors investments with

reference dependent subjective expected utility abstract a reference dependent generalisation of subjective expected utility theory is presented in this theory preferences between acts depend both on final outcomes and on reference points which may be uncertain acts it is characterised by a set of axioms in a savage style framework a restricted form of the theory separates attitudes to end states encoded in a satisfaction function from attitudes to gains and losses of satisfaction given weak additional assumptions the restricted theory excludes cycles of choice explains observed disparities between willingness to pay and willingness to accept valuations of lotteries and predicts preference reversal

international business competence and the contemporary firm the trend of increasing internationalization of small and medium enterprises smes is noteworthy because such firms typically have far fewer financial and tangible resources than large multinational enterprises as a result international business is often more challenging for smaller firms in this study we investigate the widespread internationalization of smes and specific factors that support their superior performance abroad we uncover a collection of intangible capabilities that are especially salient to these firms and their growing international involvement we identify international business competence ibc as an intangible overarching firm resource that engenders superior international performance in the international sme through case studies and a comprehensive literature review we identify four dimensions of ibc we devise and assess a model that links ibc to sme international performance results suggest that international orientation international marketing skills international innovativeness and international market orientation are all significant dimensions of ibc and that ibc is instrumental in sme international performance we discuss resultant findings and offer managerial implications

diagnosing measurement equivalence in cross national research many researchers have pointed out that it is necessary to ensure measurement equivalence in cross national comparative research three aspects of measurement equivalence translation metric and calibration equivalence are necessary to establish the cross national reliability and validity of items used to measure theoretical constructs this paper discusses these issues and proposes two recently developed empirical techniques multiple group lisrel and optimal scaling for use in diagnosing cross national measurement equivalence these techniques are illustrated by reanalysis of a pioneering u s and japanese study the two techniques yield convergent results indicating measurement equivalence for some but not all ordinal level items under consideration the findings demonstrate that the proposed methods are useful diagnostic tools for exploring measurement equivalence several suggestions for reducing the likelihood of problems with measurement equivalence and a number of methods for dealing with items where lack of equivalence persists are also discussed

a note on capital asset pricing and heterogeneous taxes abstract in this paper we present a stylized model where we show how asset prices i e required expected rates of returns may be characterized in a world with heterogeneous asset taxes within a simple capm like framework we derive an after tax beta equal to the pre tax beta multiplied by a non obvious asset specific tax adjustment we further show in what sense the security market line here can be replaced by a security market fan well known capm relations are obtained as special cases and policy implications are analyzed

risk aversion and incentive effects comment charles a holt and susan k laury 2002 develop an experimental design to determine the risk attitude of an individual they use their observations to argue that increased incentives appear to change risk attitudes leading to greater risk aversion popular utility functions that do not allow for such effects are therefore misspecified building on this finding they estimate a flexible utility function that characterizes their aggregate data well but that does not assume constant absolute or relative risk aversion the basic holt and laury 2002 hl design should become an important tool for the interpretation and design of experiments in which risk attitudes could play a role however their most important result showing the effect of scaling up the stakes of the lottery choice task is confounded by a possible order effect an order effect occurs when prior experience with one task affects behavior in a subsequent task the primary methodological contribution of experiments in economics is to enhance control ideally such control makes the explanatory variables of interest in this case scale orthogonal to other explanatory variables such as order allowing clearer inferences about behavior than one could get from field econometric data we argue that not controlling for order effects results in a misspecification of utility functions that is as important as that of scale the subjects in the hl design were given sequences of three or four tasks as shown in table 1 task 1 involved choices over lotteries with a baseline level of prizes which we will refer to as the 1 scale task 2 involved hypothetical choices over prizes with a scaled up level of prizes either 20 50 or 90 task 3 repeated task 2 but with choices that involved real payoffs task 4 was a return to the baseline task with real 1 prizes in some sessions subjects were not given task 2 or task 3 what could one infer from the comparison of measured risk attitudes in the 1 and 20 tasks in hl unfortunately any observed difference could be due either to the scale of the prizes involved or the task order or some combination of both thus the effect of scale is intrinsically confounded with the possible effect of task order this is a logical flaw in their design which

export processing zones in madagascar a success story under threat summary the success of export processing zones or the zone franche in madagascar since 1990 is with the exception of mauritius an isolated and unknown case in africa this paper based on first hand data explains that the zone franche has had a highly significant macroeconomic impact in terms of exports and jobs we show that average wages in the zone franche are equivalent to the other formal activity sectors other things being equal and that labor standards there are higher than average the zone franche quickly recovered from the 2002 crisis and has benefited a great deal from agoa the final phase out of the multi fibre arrangement in 2005 is expected to have a negative impact on the zone franche

local means in value chain ends dynamics of product and social upgrading in apparel manufacturing in guatemala and colombia summary this paper contributes to existing discussions of global value chains gvc and industrial upgrading by examining observations from eight months of field research in guatemala and colombia where upgrading firms have their own nationally distinct form of labor relations despite producing the same products for the same overseas buyers analysis of these observations leads to the conclusion that labor relations show significant leeway in relation to upgrading outcomes and that local history merits more attention as a driver of management strategy the paper concludes with a discussion of relevant theory and implications for future research

measurement issues in cross national research substantive inference from cross national studies have important implications for theory e g because they reveal insights into generalizability and boundary conditions and managerial practice e g because they offer guidelines to mnc managers however few empirical studies attend to measurement issues involved in cross national research and still fewer recognize the risk of inferential errors that are likely to occur by overlooking measurement issues we discuss four measurement issues namely 1 standardized versus unstandardized coefficients 2 the impact of measurement error and unequal reliability 3 the overall error rate and simultaneous analysis and 4 construct equivalence using illustrate examples we demonstrate the nature of each of these problems the likely impact they can have on substantive conclusions and approaches for tackling these problems additionally we reanalyze a recently published three nation study by dubinsky michaels kotabe lim and moon 1992 to clarify these measurement concerns highlight a methodological approach and delineate the extent and severity of inferential errors our reanalysis shows that the interactive effects of these measurement issues are pervasive complex and unpredictable we close with implications for cross national research in general

industrialization trajectories in madagascar s export apparel industry ownership embeddedness markets and upgrading summary the paper shows the importance of ownership as a conceptual category within global value chain gvc analysis through analyzing firm types based on their gvc linkage market access and ownership profile in madagascar s apparel export industry the central argument is that ownership leading to variances in embeddedness matters ownership characteristics of supplier firms shape the ability to shift between different end markets respond to lead firm requirements and pursue upgrading with madagascar s exclusion from agoa benefits this has enabled locally embedded european french diaspora owned firms and regionally embedded mauritian owned firms to shift market channels and upgrade while asian owned firms largely exited the industry

the safety first expected utility model experimental evidence and economic implications abstract roy s roy a 1952 safety first and the holding of assets econometrica 20 3 431 449 safety first criterion advocates the minimization of the probability of outcomes below a certain disaster level this paper examines safety first theoretically and experimentally we find that safety first plays a crucial role in decision making inducing choices that cannot be explained by and even contradict risk aversion prospect theory and loss aversion in general yet safety first alone cannot explain individual choice therefore we propose an expected utility safety first eu sf model where decisions are made based on a weighted average of the safety first criterion and standard expected utility maximization we experimentally estimate these relative weights and discuss their economic implications