interest groups and the rise and decline of growth interest groups are known to exert a sclerotic impact on mean growth a la olson 1982 it is unknown however what impact if any groups exert on the volatility of growth an important hindrance to development in this article we first consider what impact we should expect olson groups to have on the volatility of growth we then estimate the relation between groups and growth volatility in a cross country panel using system generalized method of moments the findings indicate that groups are associated with growth stability in addition the findings suggest that interest groups may be a source of the stability observed in democracies

occupational choice and the process of development this paper models economic development as a process of institutional transformation by focusing on the interplay between agents occupational decisions and the distribution of wealth because of capital market imperfections poor agents choose working for a wage over self employment and wealthy agents become entrepreneurs who monitor workers only with sufficient inequality however will there be employment contracts otherwise there is either subsistence or self employment thus in static equilibrium the occupational structure depends on distribution since the latter is itself endogenous we demonstrate the robustness of this result by extending the model dynamically and studying examples in which initial wealth distributions have long run effects in one case the economy develops either widespread cottage industry self employment or factory production employment contracts depending on the initial distribution in the other example it develops into prosperity or stagnation

democracy volatility and economic development growth stability is an important objective because development requires sustained increases in income because volatility is costly for the poor and because volatility deters growth we study the determinants of average growth and its volatility as a two equation system and find that higher levels of democracy and diversification lower volatility whereas volatility itself reduces growth muslim countries instrument for democracy and measures of diversification identify volatility in contrast to the lack of consensus on the democracy growth relationship the democracy stability link is robust rather than focus on growth this paper forges an alternative link between democracy and development through the volatility channel

democracy and economic growth a meta analysis despite a sizeable theoretical and empirical literature no firm conclusions have been drawn regarding the impact of political democracy on economic growth this article challenges the consensus of an inconclusive relationship through a quantitative assessment of the democracy growth literature it applies meta regression analysis to the population of 483 estimates derived from 84 studies on democracy and growth using traditional meta analysis estimators the bootstrap and fixed and random effects meta regression models it derives several robust conclusions taking all the available published evidence together it concludes that democracy does not have a direct impact on economic growth however democracy has robust significant and positive indirect effects through higher human capital lower inflation lower political instability and higher levels of economic freedom democracies may also be associated with larger governments and less free international trade there also appear to be country and region specific democracy growth effects overall democracy s net effect on the economy does not seem to be detrimental

what goals do business leaders pursue a study in fifteen countries goals in use of successful businesspersons were rated by over 1 800 junior managers and professionals attending evening mba courses at local universities in 15 countries a hierarchical cluster analysis of perceived goals divided the countries into seven clusters the relative ordering of goals within these clusters suggested seven different archetypal business leader roles perceptions correlated significantly with national wealth as well as with dimensions of national culture

national culture and strategic change in belief formation this paper studies strategy related beliefs in five organizations in hungary with substantial foreign participation we find that one of the strongest determinants of similarity of beliefs was being a member of the functional area favored by the strategic change the effect of being in the favored area was greater than the effect of all other individual characteristics including nationality

is ecommerce boundary less effects of individualism collectivism and uncertainty avoidance on internet shopping from publicly available data we identified two national culture dimensions individualism collectivism and uncertainty avoidance and their interaction that influences internet shopping rates across a wide spectrum of countries together these factors accounted for 14 of the explained variance on top of the combined variance of 63 explained by national income level educational level economic growth rate unemployment rate and crime rate in predicting internet shopping rates for countries lower in uncertainty avoidance individualist cultures show higher internet shopping rates than do collectivist cultures implications for national and internet firm level web design strategies are discussed

the international penetration of ibusiness firms network effects liabilities of outsidership and country clout the burgeoning of ibusiness firms in the modern digital economy challenges the received internationalization theory given that ibusinesses such as social networking sites create value by providing a digital platform for users to interact with one another we employ a user network perspective and externalization logic suggesting that ibusinesses internationalization process depends critically on users collective interactions instead of being solely driven by firms market commitments as noted by the uppsala model however ibusinesses may suffer from liabilities of outsidership due to the boundedness of international network effects drawing on social network theory we demonstrate that such liabilities can be mitigated by first diffusing the ibusiness platform in countries with higher clout our analysis using a unique dataset of mobile ibusiness platforms finds empirical support for the hypotheses we discuss theoretical implications for the network approach of the uppsala model in the digital era

inequality redistribution and growth a challenge to the conventional political economy approach abstract this paper reconsiders the conventional political economy view that 1 1 more unequal societies tend to make more redistribution and 2 2 more redistribution is harmful to growth we present a number of theoretical arguments suggesting that the two previous implications are not necessarily true and that the empirically observed negative correlation between inequality and growth might just come from the fact that more unequal societies tend to redistribute less which in turn is actually detrimental to growth

political regimes and the extractive capacity of governments taxation in democracies and dictatorships recent political and economic transformations in latin america africa asia and eastern europe have brought about a renewed interest in the incentives and capabilities of different types of political regimes to implement policies that are deemed necessary for economic development in particular policies aimed at increasing tax revenue one central question is whether democracies can collect as much in taxes as dictatorships this article addresses this question by examining whether regime type classified as democracy or dictatorship has a causal impact on a government s capacity to mobilize resources through taxation on the basis of data gathered for 108 countries for the period between 1970 and 1990 the article concludes that observed differences across countries regarding the level of taxes collected by the government are not due to the fact that some are under a democracy and others under a dictatorship concerns about the inability of democratic regimes to collect taxes are therefore unfounded

cultural influence on the development of accounting systems internationally a test of gray s 1988 theory this paper attempts to test the theory developed by gray 1988 linking accounting values and systems with hofstede s 1980 cultural constructs based on data from twenty nine countries it finds that while gray s 1988 model has statistically significant explanatory power it is best at explaining actual financial reporting practices and is relatively weak in explaining extant professional and regulatory structures from a cultural base this paper further finds that both the development of financial markets and levels of taxation enhance the explanations offered by gray 1988

conflict management style accounting for cross national differences a problem in joint ventures between u s and asian firms is that cultural differences impede the smooth resolution of conflicts between managers in a survey of young managers in the u s china philippines and india we find support for two hypotheses about cultural differences in conflict style and the cultural values that account for these differences chinese managers rely more on an avoiding style because of their relatively high value on conformity and tradition u s managers rely more on a competing style because of their relatively high value on individual achievement

the impact of constitutions on economic performance constitutions matter for economic performance to the extent that they promote stability accountability and credibility this article considers the nature of political constituions and their impact on economic efficiny and economic security wnder three aspects the basic righs laid down in the constitution the structure of government and the stringency of amedment procedures while emphasizing that constitutions can be usefid by serving as precommitment devices the analysis also emphasizes the dangers of rigidity and the need for flexibility t he relation between political institutions and economic performance is not well understood the causal link goes in both directions well designed insttutions can improve economic performance but some institutions may be feasible or effective only at specific levels of economic development here i consider only one aspect of the relationship the impact of institutions on economic performance however a full treatment of the subject would consider both aspects and the following discussion must be read with this important proviso in mind i further limit myself to the subset of political institutions that are embodied in constitutions the smdy of the impact of constitutions on economic performance is part of what is usually referred to as constitutional political economy a field that can be traced back to the caklcdus of consent by buchanan and tullock 1962 buchanan was also the founder of the journal constitutional political economy the public choice approach to constitutions has focused somewhat narrowly on fiscal and monetary constitutions although actual constitutions rarely stipulate tax systems or monetary institutions in any detail the ban on paper money in the u s constituton for instance has few analogues in modem constitutions moreover even that document is concerned mostly with other matters such as the organization of the executive and the legislature separation of powers and the relations between the federal government and the states constituitional political economy

how mncs choose entry modes and form alliances the china experience this study examine two dimensions of firms foreign market entry strategy mode of entry and formation of alliances based on the existing literature we propose a model that describes how host country home country and industry specific factors affect foreign firms decisions on how they enter the market and whether they will enter with a partner firm or not the model also describes how operation related factors i e the location and the level of local government affect these decisions seven major hypotheses were tested using a longitudinal sample of 2 998 foreign business activities in china between 1979 and 1993 our sample consists of foreign investing firms from the u s europe japan and other asian countries by choosing china as a host country the study offers insights into how firms of different regional groups adapted their strategies to a changing host environment

the nexus between gender collective action for public goods and agriculture evidence from malawi across the developing world public goods exert significant impacts on the local rural economy in general and agricultural productivity and welfare outcomes in particular economic and social cultural heterogeneity have however long been documented as detrimental to collective capacity to provide public goods in particular women are often underrepresented in local leadership and decision making processes as are young adults and minority ethnic groups while democratic principles dictate that broad civic engagement by women and other groups could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of local governance and increase public goods provision the empirical evidence on these hypotheses is scant this article develops a theoretical model highlighting the complexity of constructing a fair schedule of individual contributions given heterogeneity in costs and benefits that accrue to people depending for instance on their gender age ethnicity and education the model demonstrates that representative leadership and broad participation in community organizations can mitigate the negative impacts of heterogeneity on collective capacity to provide public goods nationally representative household survey data from malawi combined with geospatial and administrative information are used to test this hypothesis and to estimate the relationship between collective capacity for public good provision and community median estimates of maize yields and household consumption expenditures per capita the analysis shows that similarities between the leadership and the general population in terms of gender and age and active participation by women and young adult in community groups alleviate the negative effects of heterogeneity and increase collective capacity which in turn improves agriculture productivity and welfare

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

symposium on democracy and development academic fashions often follow the public political mood in a period when euphoric public commentators have announced the end of history in the triumph of capitalist democracy one sees an increasing number of scholarly studies attempting to show often on the basis of crosscountry statistical evidence and a bit of wishful thinking a positive effect of democracy on development it is in this context refreshing to see the agnostic results reported by adam przeworski and fernando limongi in their paper on the basis of their review of the theoretical arguments and statistical studies they conclude rather bluntly we do not know whether democracy fosters or hinders economic growth their brief but fairly exhaustive examination of the various statistical studies of the last few decades shows the studies to be hopelessly inconclusive and beset with serious methodological problems at the analytical level they argue that it is not at all clear if democracy with its slow empowerment of the less wealthy secures growth fostering capitalist property rights better than dictatorships democracies may actually be more susceptible to pressures for immediate consumption and other particularistic demands that may hamper long run investment on the other hand authoritarian rulers who have the capacity to resist such pressures may instead be self aggrandi zing plundering the surplus of the economy in fact authoritarian regimes may come in different kinds some deriving their legitimacy from providing order and stability some from rapid growth sah 1991 has argued that authoritarian regimes exhibit a larger variance in economic performance than democracies

variance estimation for price indexes from a two stage sample with rotating panels estimation of price indexes in the united states is generally based on complex rotating panel surveys the sample for the consumer price index for example is selected in three stages geographic areas establishments and individual items with 20 of the sample being replaced by rotation each year at each period a time series of data is available for use in estimation this article examines how to best combine data for estimation of long term and short term changes and how to estimate the variances of the index estimators in the context of two stage sampling i extend the class of estimators introduced by valliant and miller of laspeyres indexes formed using sample data collected from the current period back to a previous base period linearization estimators of variance for indexes of long term and short term change are derived the theory is supported by an empirical simulation study using two stage sampling of establishments and items from a population derived from u s bureau of labor statistics

wealth culture and corruption this paper examines the impact of national wealth income distribution government size and four cultural variables on the perceived level of corruption in a country the study finds that corruption is significantly correlated to gnp per capita power distance masculinity and uncertainty avoidance significant interaction effects occur in collectivistic and high power distance countries suggestions for future research are developed

avoiding uncertainty in hofstede and globe this paper compares the uncertainty avoidance ua dimension of national culture across the hofstede and globe models looking at relationships in both data and analysis rather than mutual support we detail major differences and anomalies across the studies we show how these anomalies are resulting in contradictory explanations in research on national differences across a range of individual firm and country level phenomena we clarify the ua measurement in both hofstede and globe and find that the two models are measuring different components of the ua construct we propose a two component model of ua namely ua stress and ua rule orientation and confirm its validity with national culture data from the hofstede and globe studies and economic data from the world bank we also explain the negative globe ua practices values relationship using motivational theories a way forward in future ua related research is suggested the hofstede ua index the globe ua practices scores and the globe ua values scores should be used within the specific domains that they represent that is stress rule orientation practices and rule orientation aspirations respectively resolving the contradictions in ua between and within hofstede and globe will help cross cultural researchers develop more robust theories and more practical recommendations for international business management

do natural resources fuel authoritarianism a reappraisal of the resource curse a large body of scholarship finds a negative relationship between natural resources and democracy extant cross country regressions however assume random effects and are run on panel datasets with relatively short time dimensions because natural resource reliance is not an exogenous variable this is not an effective strategy for uncovering causal relationships numerous sources of bias may be driving the results the most serious of which is omitted variable bias induced by unobserved country specific and time invariant heterogeneity to address these problems we develop unique historical datasets employ time series centric techniques and operationalize explicitly specified counterfactuals we test to see if there is a long run relationship between resource reliance and regime type within countries over time both on a country by country basis and across several different panels we find that increases in resource reliance are not associated with authoritarianism in fact in many specifications we generate results that suggest a resource blessing

understanding compensation practice variations across firms the impact of national culture with operations spread worldwide firms that find themselves competing in a global marketplace are looking at the implications of the admonition when in rome this raises the question do cultures of countries have an impact on the generally accepted methods of managing human resources the answer to this question is the focus of this article by developing culture specific propositions for four categories of compensation practices based on status performance social benefits and programs and employee ownership plans we seek to determine the extent to which hofstede s four dimensions of culture are associated with specific compensation practices support is found for most of the propositions the implications of the finding for the management of human resources by multinational firms are discussed

a retrospective on culture s consequences the 35 year journey abstract our 2006 journal of international business studies article a quarter century of culture s consequences a review of the empirical research incorporating hofstede s cultural values framework provided a comprehensive review of 180 empirical journal articles and edited volume chapters published between 1980 and june 2002 that incorporated hofstede s cross cultural values framework we examined empirical research that positioned culture as either a main or moderating effect the review attempted to make sense of the almost quarter century of research examining the impact of culture at the individual group organization and country levels in the present commentary we provide a a summary of the progress that has been made in the intervening decade and most importantly b a new set of recommendations for the next decade to guide those wishing to study the role of national culture in organizations

government partisanship labor organization and macroeconomic performance governments of the left and right have distinct partisan economic policies and objectives that they would prefer to pursue their propensity to do so however is constrained by their desire for reelection we argue that the ability of governments to further their partisan interests and preside over reelectable macroeconomic outcomes simultaneously is dependent on the organization of the domestic economy particularly the labor movement we hypothesize that there are two different paths to desirable macroeconomic performance in countries with densely and centrally organized labor movements leftist governments can promote economic growth and reduce inflation and unemployment conversely in countries with weak labor movements rightist governments can pursue their partisan preferred macroeconomic strategies and achieve similarly beneficial macroeconomic outcomes performance will be poorer in other cases these hypotheses are supported by analysis of pooled annual time series data for 16 advanced industrial democracies between 1967 and 1984

political regimes and economic growth arguments that relate regimes to growth focus on property rights pressures for immediate consumption and the autonomy of dictators while everyone seems to agree that secure property rights foster growth it is controversial whether democracies or dictatorships better secure these rights the main mechanism by which democracy is thought to hinder growth is pressure for immediate consumption which reduces investment only states that are institutionally insulated from such pressures can resist them and democratic states are not the main argument against dictatorships is that authoritarian rulers have no interest in maximizing total output these views are summarized in turn

the socio cultural environment for entrepreneurship a comparison between east asian and anglo saxon countries this study uses a theory of face to identify predictors of interest in entrepreneurship in six east asian and four anglo saxon countries at the cultural level social status of entrepreneurship and shame from business failure predict interest in entrepreneurship better in east asian than anglo countries at the individual level social status predicts interest in entrepreneurship in the entire sample

a superpopulation theory approach to the design of price index estimators with small sampling biases this article uses simple superpopulation models to examine estimators for long and short term laspeyres price relatives based on pps samples

a class of multiplicative estimators of laspeyres price indexes publication of indexes measuring changes in prices of retail wholesale export and import items is an important part of many governmental statistics programs one form of price index that is often used is the fixed base laspeyres in which a fixed market basket of goods is priced over time this article introduces a new class of multiplicative estimators of laspeyres indexes the optimum within the class is derived for long term price change and compared with two other members of the class when used for estimating both long term and short term change theoretical properties are derived under a model in which long term relative price changes for individual items have common within stratum means and are correlated over time theory for long term and short term change estimators is tested in a simulation study in which a large number of stratified probability samples is selected from a population extracted from items priced for the u s consumer price index

the effect of cultural differences on behavioral responses to low job satisfaction this article reports the results of a field study that evaluated behavioral responses to low job satisfaction of participants in hong kong and new zealand culture measured by vertical and horizontal individualism and collectivism had both main and moderating effects on responses first cultural groups responded differently to low job satisfaction with exit voice loyalty or neglect second culture moderated the effect of quality of job alternatives and job satisfaction on exit and loyalty and moderated the effect of quality of job alternatives on voice

profiles of internet buyers in 20 countries evidence for region specific strategies the prospect of an emerging global internet consumer entices many internationalizing organizations as it would enable standardization of internet strategies on a worldwide basis a sample of advanced internet users from 20 countries shows differences in beliefs attitudes perceptions and internet buying behavior depending on user experience and home country or region there were important differences after controlling for social cultural and macro economic variables implications for a regional approach to global e commerce strategies are discussed

why the poor do not expropriate the rich an old argument in new garb we consider a political economy with two partisan parties each party represents a given constituency of voters if one party labour represents poor voters and the other christian democrats rich voters if a redistributive tax policy is the only issue and if there are no incentive considerations then in equilibrium the party representing the poor will propose a tax rate of unity if however there are two issues tax policy and religion for instance then this is not generally the case the analysis shows that if a simple condition on the distribution of voter preferences holds then as the salience of the non economic issue increases the tax rate proposed by labour in equilibrium will fall possibly even to zero even though a majority of the population may have an ideal tax rate of unity 1998 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

influences on exchange processes buyers preconceptions of a seller s trustworthiness and bargaining toughness exchange theories posit that trust has an important and favorable influence on dyadic interactions this paper examines the notion that trust plays a key role in making a seller s tough bargaining strategy successful in a bargaining experiment we manipulated subjects preconceptions about a seller s trustworthiness and bargaining toughness as hypothesized a seller s expected trustworthiness plus toughness in bargaining led to higher levels of buyer seller cooperation and agreement and a higher level of buyer concessions

is democracy more expropriative than dictatorship tocquevillian wisdom revisited abstract we reexamine the incentive effect of political democracy on the tax rate by defining a political regime over two dimensions the extent of the franchise and the extent that the redistribution of tax revenues is biased towards the rich standard tocquevillian models assume that even if there is limited franchise there is no redistribution bias from this it follows that democracy is more expropriative than oligarchy because a poorer median voter opts for higher taxes introducing the realistic assumption of a redistribution bias we find a countervailing effect democratization decreases exploitation by the rich on the disenfranchised poor since tax revenues are redistributed over a larger base the median voter may gain less from redistributive taxation we call this the olson effect

estimation of laspeyres price indexes using the prediction approach for finite population sampling estimators of chain and fixed base laspeyres price indexes are studied using the prediction approach to finite population sampling the estimators include some that are based on those used in several u s government index programs and others derived from prediction models biases and variances of the estimators are studied for a case in which the reference period index weights are unknown for nonsample items under a model for a one period price change in which items have common within stratum means unbiased estimators can be constructed but under a more general regression model special sample balance conditions are needed for unbiasedness of those estimators the theory for the estimators of fixed base indexes is illustrated in an empirical study using a population of items priced for the u s consumer price index

values schemas and norms in the culture behavior nexus a situated dynamics framework international business ib research has predominantly relied on value constructs to account for the influence of societal culture notably hofstede s cultural dimensions while parsimonious the value approach s assumptions about the consensus of values within nations and the generality and stability of cultural patterns of behavior are increasingly challenged we review two promising alternatives the constructivist approach centering on schemas and the intersubjectivist approach centering on norms and the evidence that demonstrates their usefulness in accounting for international differences in the behavior of managers employees and consumers we propose a situated dynamics framework specifying the role of values schemas and norms in accounting for cultural differences and delineating conditions under which each causal mechanism is operative values play a more important role in accounting for cultural differences in weak situations where fewer constraints are perceived schemas play a more important role when situational cues increase their accessibility and relevance and norms play a more important role when social evaluation is salient directions for future research based on this integrative framework and its implications for the measurement of culture and application in ib are discussed

culture and congruence the fit between management practices and national culture the financial performance of european and asian work units of one multinational company is examined as a function of the congruence between management practices and national culture using hofstede s five national culture dimensions and analogous management practices we find that work unit financial performance is higher when management practices in the work unit are congruent with the national culture

dynamic decision making a cross cultural comparison of u s and peruvian export managers export managers from the u s and peru completed a survey designed to measure cooperative decisions during a sequence of three simulated interactions with business partners during the initial stage of the relationship the decisions of peruvian export managers reflect less trust than do those of their u s counterparts during the second stage peruvian exporters respond differently to weak cheating results generally are consistent with cultural differences in attitudes toward in group v out group members however the influence of cultural differences gradually erodes in favor of personal characteristics and relationship specific history suggesting that cultural differences between business partners decline in importance as they get to know each other

political freedom economic freedom and income convergence do stages of economic development matter in the literature theory and empirical evidence on the nexus of political freedom economic freedom and economic growth are mixed in this paper we test the hypothesis that the effect of political freedom on promoting economic growth is realized and detectable at later stages of social and economic development using panel data for a sample of 104 countries between 1970 and 2003 we find strong support for our hypothesis while economic freedom has greater effects on income convergence in the oecd countries political freedom clearly promotes the convergence among those oecd countries

why did the west extend the franchise democracy inequality and growth in historical perspective during the nineteenth century most western societies extended voting rights a decision that led to unprecedented redistributive programs we argue that these political reforms can be viewed as strategic decisions by the political elite to prevent widespread social unrest and revolution political transition rather than redistribution under existing political institutions occurs because current transfers do not ensure future transfers while the extension of the franchise changes future political equilibria and acts as a commitment to redistribution our theory also offers a novel explanation for the kuznets curve in many western economies during this period with the fall in inequality following redistribution due to democratization i introduction the nineteenth century was a period of fundamental political reform and unprecedented changes in taxation and redistribution britain for example was transformed from an oligarchy run by an elite to a democracy the franchise was extended in 1832 and then again in 1867 and 1884 transferring voting rights to portions of the society with no previous political representation the decades after the political reforms witnessed radical social reforms increased taxation and the extension of education to the masses moreover as noted by kuznets inequality which was previously increasing started to decline during this period the gini coefficient for income inequality in england and wales had risen from 0 400 in 1823 to 0 627 in 1871 but fell to 0 443 in 1901 two key factors in the reduction in inequality were the increase in the proportion of skilled workers williamson 1985 and the redistribution of income toward the poorer segments of the society for example taxes rose from 8 12 percent of national product in 1867 to 18 8 percent by 1927 and the progressivity of the tax system increased substantially see lindert 1989

what differences in the cultural backgrounds of partners are detrimental for international joint ventures an international joint venture implies that a firm has to cooperate with a partner with a different cultural background in this study hypotheses about which differences in national culture are most disruptive for international joint ventures were developed and tested using hofstede s five dimensions the study focused on how these dimensions affect the survival of international joint ventures as well as their incidence relative to wholly owned subsidiaries the hypotheses were tested on longitudinal data about 828 foreign entries of twenty five dutch multinational in seventy two countries between 1966 and 1994 the database which spans almost three decades was also used to provide new evidence on a key assumption of hofstede s work that cultural values are stable over time

the influence of culture on budget control practices in the usa and japan an empirical study this article reports the results of a study that hypothesized the influence of culture on six aspects of budget control practices in the united states and japan data were collected through questionnaires from 70 manufacturing companies in the united states and 149 such companies in japan results of data analyses indicate that the individualism collectivism dimension would seem to explain why the u s companies compared to the japanese companies tend to use communication and coordination more extensively build budget slack to a greater extent and use long term performance evaluations to a lesser extent the implications of the results for further research and practice are discussed

process standardization across intra and inter cultural relationships theory suggests that culture may hinder the ability to effectively standardize the process of relationship development strategies across intra and inter cultural relationships construct relationships between trust commitment conflict and satisfaction in manufacturer distributor relationships are examined intra i e within a single cultural type and inter culturally i e between different cultural types with a sample of distributors from canada chile mexico and the united states results support theoretical differences in the consequences of the trust commitment relationship between intra cultural and inter cultural relationships the results suggest process standardization based upon cultural type

national competitive advantage and the roles of economic and political freedom evidence from hong kong the equivocal interrelationships between economic performance and the institu tions of respectively economic and political freedom are examined using data from firms op erating in hong kong an economy where both an erstwhile paramount international business reputation for competitiveness and the institutional basis on which it was predicated have come into question in recent years it is hypothesized that i both economic and political freedom declines will be associated with a proxy for future economic performance competitiveness decline but that ii the correlation of economic freedom declines with competitiveness de cline will be mediated by political freedom declines hierarchical regression analyses tend to support these hypotheses although results vary by firm origin

understanding the domain of cross national buyer seller interactions cross national face to face selling has thus far received very little scholarly treatment in marketing literature with few notable exceptions most existing research in this area has been fragmentary and opportunistic these problems are largely because of the lack of a broad generalizable framework within which to conceptualize and execute research studies in offering such a conceptual framework this article looks at buyer seller interactions from a communication perspective

a theory of trickle down growth and development this paper develops a model of growth and income inequalities in the presence of imperfect capital markets and it analyses the trickle down effect of capital accumulation moral hazard with limited wealth constraints on the part of the borrowers is the source of both capital market imperfections and the emergence of persistent income inequalities three main conclusions are obtained from this model first when the rate of capital accumulation is sufficiently high the economy converges to a unique invariant wealth distribution second even though the trickle down mechanism can lead to a unique steady state distribution under laissez faire there is room for government intervention in particular redistribution of wealth from rich lenders to poor and middle class borrowers improves the production efficiency of the economy both because it brings about greater equality of opportunity and also because it accelerates the trickle down process third the process of capital accumulation initially has the effect of widening inequalities but in later stages it reduces them in other words this model can generate a kuznets curve

the dynamics of the wealth distribution and the interest rate with credit rationing are uniquely determined and wealth dispersion among individuals or firms is irrelevant introducing credit rationing into the solow model modifies these conclusions multiple stationary interest rates and wealth distributions can exist because higher initial rates can be self reinforcing through higher credit rationing and lower capital accumulation the wealth accumulation process is ergodic in every steady state but wealth mobility is lower with higher steady state interest rates aggregate output is higher in steady states with lower interest rates because credit is better allocated short run interest rate or distribution shocks can be self sustaining and can have long run effects on output through the induced dynamics of the wealth distribution and credit rationing

inequality and redistribution revisited abstract as inequality rises taxation can be less efficient in the sense that a given tax rate produces a smaller tax base if this tax base effect outweighs the conventional political effect then increasing inequality can induce less public spending or redistribution contrarily to alesina and rodrik and persson and tabellini

core labor standards and development impact on long term income summary the paper focuses on the impact of international core labor standards on long term per capita income in order to do that it is necessary to build a new synthetic indicator of labor standards using multiple correspondence analysis measuring the four core labor standards recognized by ilo we propose an estimation of the steady state per capita income for a large panel of countries 104 and then that of developing countries the two stage least square method is used to correct potential problems of endogeneity the findings show that by and large countries with higher labor standards have a higher steady state level 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

cross national differences in computer use ethics a nine country study this study examines computer use ethics among nine countries singapore hong kong united states great britain australia sweden wales and the netherlands based on paradice 1990 an instrument was developed containing three scales focusing on ethical attitudes toward software license infringement use of virus programs and misuse of corporate computing resources analysis indicates that there are significant differences in ethical values among nationalities for each of these scales