energy price disparity and public welfare abstract the differences in the price of energy to economic sectors are linked to a number of system parameters and to public welfare there are large disparities in energy prices within states when comparing residential and industrial prices although neoclassical economics predicts one price in markets the large disparities between the two sectors across states negatively affects the efficiency of resource allocation creates subsidies for those getting the cheap energy and results in unequal access to energy these in turn lead to inefficient partitioning of energy between products and waste higher pollution leakage of wealth and poorer energy use efficiency i e high energy intensity states with large energy price disparities between sectors have statistically higher poverty lower incomes more pollution and use more energy but with less efficiency higher energy price disparities also result in higher throughput per unit of output thus reducing the chances for sustainability and lower public welfare

effects of post privatization governance and strategies on export intensity in the former soviet union the fall of the soviet union brought new enterprise opportunities whose exploitation required the development of entirely new strategies simultaneously enterprises faced crucial constraints in their governance structures this paper analyzes the impact of governance structures of privatized firms on one key outcome of new strategies export intensity using a longitudinal multi industry dataset of privatized firms in russia ukraine and belarus we analyze how export intensity is mediated by strategies involving product development acquisitions and links with foreign partners

complementarity and external linkages the strategies of the large firms in biotechnology in biotechnology large firms enter into different kinds of linkages with universities and small medium sized research intensive firms we test the hypothesis that the strategies of external linkage of the large firms with other parties are complementary to one another we show that if any two strategies are complementary i e undertaking more of one strategy raises the marginal value of the other then they are positively correlated using data for a sample large us european and japanese chemical and pharmaceutical producers we find that the strategies above are positively correlated even after controlling for firm specific characteristics

valuation of ecosystem goods and services part 1 an integrated dynamic approach abstract this is the first part of a two part paper which offers a new approach to the valuation of ecosystem goods and services the existing literature on environmental valuation is based on two distinct foundations the ecological valuation methods derive values by a cost of production approach their common characteristic is the neglect of consumer preferences the economic valuation methods focus on the exchange value of ecosystem services their common characteristic is that they are finally based on consumer preferences and do not adequately take account of the complex internal structure of ecosystems as the existing methods for the valuation of ecosystem services emphasize either the economic system or the ecosystem the main objective of part 1 is to provide the conceptual foundations for a new method of valuation of ecosystem services which deals simultaneously with the ecosystem the economic system and society in a balanced way within a simple pre industrial model it is shown how the interdependencies between the three subsystems influence values and how values change over time

bringing corporate governance into internalization theory state ownership and foreign entry strategies we use internalization theory to analyze the establishment and entry mode decisions of state owned soe and privately owned poe enterprises we enrich internalization theory by building on insights from economic theory of corporate governance and taking into account particular characteristics of soes such as non economic motivations long term orientation and different risk preferences we examine foreign entries over a 10 year period in the canadian oil and gas industry this single country and single industry context features foreign soes and poes from a wide range of home countries allowing a focused study of the combined influence of state ownership and home country factors compared to poes soes tend to prefer acquiring stand alone assets rather than firms and to take lower ownership shares we also find that differences between soes and poes diminish when home countries are characterized by high government quality and market orientation and identify differences between types of soes with partially owned soes exhibiting behaviors more similar to poes than fully owned soes we demonstrate how our enrichment of internalization theory strengthens its predictive and explanatory capacity our results also show that soes from strong and market oriented institutional environments are similar to poes and can be studied using the traditional internalization theory

asset stock accumulation and sustainability of competitive advantage given incomplete factor markets appropriate time paths of flow variables must be chosen to build required stocks of assets that is critical resources are accumulated rather than acquired in strategic factor markets barney barney j 1986 strategic factor markets expectations luck and business strategy management sci october 1231 1241 sustainability of a firm s asset position hinges on how easily assets can be substituted or imitated imitability is linked to the characteristics of the asset accumulation process time compression diseconomies asset mass efficiencies inter connectedness asset erosion and causal ambiguity

on the use of ecological prices and system wide indicators derived therefrom to quantify man s impact on the ecosystem abstract ecological prices and other system wide quantitative descriptors of ecosystem functioning are derived from the assumption that ecosystems allocate available resources efficiently among their components however ecological prices are not efficiency prices only and using them does not require one to assume that the ecosystem is completely controlled by man the same prices balance flows of different biomasses in a multicomponent system as such they play the role of exchange prices in a decentralized ecosystem properly defined with the help of ecological prices the resulting ecosystem productivity is no less a significant indicator of ecosystem functioning than the national product is significant for assessing the functioning of an economy considerations of the values taken simultaneously by our proposed indicators and by their economic analogs are of much help in judging the desirability of projects with relatively mild environmental repercussions these values are obtained from an integrated model of a system in which ecological and economic activities are intertwined however for the indicators to have an analytical meaning the methodology should be applied to trace only those dynamic paths during which the system possesses unique state dependent intensive properties in other cases a more comprehensive methodology one which also pays due regard to the viability of the ecosystem must supplement the analytical approach this rather comprehensive methodology is scale dependent and probabilistic in nature while delineating relations between the structure of the system and its behavior this method implies that efficiency and viability are two complementary rather than two commensurate attributes of a single entity an outside observer may be guided by his own values in his attempts to weigh these features but no inherent property of the system exists that supports his values unequivocally nevertheless this paper proposes an approximation to overcome this difficulty and to estimate a quantitative limit to the rate of substitution between productivity and viability such a limit is also an intensive property of the simulated system and the estimation of its value is shown to be crucial for studying the vulnerability of real ecosystems to severe man made disturbances

seeking commonalities or avoiding differences re conceptualizing distance and its effects on internationalization decisions past research established distance s key influence on internationalization however theoretical issues methodological challenges and inconsistent results hinder scholarship on why distance plays such an influential role to address these problems we draw from cognitive research on similarity comparisons to re conceptualize distance and test a model of internationalization decisions analyzing the verbal protocols of executives considering a series of internationalization opportunities we demonstrate that over and above objective distance indicators considerations that reduce distance commonalities and considerations that augment distance differences have distinct effects on decisions of where when and how to internationalize as such our study contributes new insights for understanding the nature and effects of distance across different dimensions of distance and internationalization decisions moreover internationalization theories have come to emphasize different theoretical rationales for explaining the influential role of distance on different decisions by integrating these rationales together with the notion that distance reducing commonalities and distance augmenting differences have distinct implications for internationalization decisions we introduce the notion that it is not only the addition of distance considerations that matters but also the directionality of such changes doing so our study points to new theoretical and methodological insights to help address prior criticisms and advance future research

political losers as a barrier to economic development per capita income in many sub saharan african countries such as chad and niger is less than 1 30th of that of the united states most economists and social scientists suspect that this is in part due to institutional failures that stop these societies from adopting the best technologies a particularly interesting historical example comes from the diffusion of railways in the 19th century while railways are regarded as a key technology driving the industrial revolution there were large lags in their diffusion for example in 1850 the united states had 14 518 km of track britain 9 797 km and germany 5 856 km in the russian and hapsburg empires there were just 501 km and 1 357 kim respectively all data from brian r mitchell 1993 why do societies as in this example fail to adopt the best available technologies one answer is that existing powerful interest groups block the introduction of new technologies in order to protect their economic rents and societies are able to make technological advances only if they can defeat such groups economic monopolies may be one example a monopolist might wish to block the introduction of a new technology by a rival that will capture the market this idea which we call the economic losers hypothesis was discussed by simon kuznets 1968 developed at length by joel mokyr 1990 in the context of technology adoption and formalized by per krusell and jose victor rios rull 1996 and stephen l parente and edward c prescott 1997 related ideas are widely discussed in the literature on international trade policy with many formal models e g gene m grossman and elhanan helpman 1994 there are problems with this story however first despite the intuitive appeal of the idea there are relatively few instances where major economic change was blocked by economic losers mokyr 1990 emphasizes the attempts of many skilled artisans to block the introduction of new machines the most famous example is the luddites skilled weavers who were thrown out of work by mechanization interestingly however many of these groups including the luddites were ultimately unable to block economic progress equally important the economic losers hypothesis relies on the presumption that certain groups have the political power to block innovation but if so why not use this power to simply tax the gains generated by the introduction of the new technology this might be because there are limits on the nature of fiscal instruments though it seems plausible that groups with sufficient political power to block innovation would be able subsequently to lobby effectively for redistribution a more important reason however may be that the introduction of new technology and economic change more generally may simultaneously affect the distribution of political power we argue that the effect of economic change on political power is a key factor in determining whether technological advances and beneficial economic changes will be blocked in other words we propose a political loser hypothesis we argue that it is groups whose political power not economic rents is eroded who will block technological advances if agents are economic losers but have no political power they cannot impede technological progress if they have and maintain political power i e are not political losers then they have no incentive to block progress it is therefore agents who have t discussant gene grossman princeton university

resilience in the dynamics of economy environment systems the ecological concept of resilience has begun to inform analysis of change in economy environment systems the linkages between resilience and the stability of dynamical systems are discussed along with its role in understanding of the evolution of such systems particular linkages discussed include those between resilience biodiversity and the sustainability of alternative states recent developments in modelling the resilience of joint economy environment systems suggest the advantages of analysing change in the system as a markov process the transition probabilities between states offering a natural measure of the resilience of the system in such states it is argued that this emergent property of the collaboration between ecology and economics has far reaching implications for the way we think about model and manage the environmental sustainability of economic development

asset exploitation versus asset seeking implications for location choice of foreign direct investment from newly industrialized economies this study examined several hypotheses regarding the location choice of foreign direct investment from newly industrialized economies nies using a sample of 328 taiwanese firms in the analysis this study found that the firms motivations had a significant impact on the choice of their investment location developed countries vs less developed countries yet this impact was moderated by the capabilities that the firms possessed the results suggest that both asset exploitation and asset seeking aspects of investments are predictive of the nie firms location choice of investment

accounting for endogeneity when assessing strategy performance does entry mode choice affect fdi survival firms choose strategies based on their attributes and industry conditions therefore strategy choice is endogenous and self selected empirical models that do not account for this and regress performance measures on strategy choice variables are potentially misspecified and their conclusions incorrect i highlight how self selection on hard to measure or unobservable characteristics can bias strategy performance estimates and recommend an econometric technique that has been developed to account for this effect although this concern applies to a wide range of strategy questions to demonstrate its effect i empirically examine if entry mode choice acquisition versus greenfield influences foreign direct investment survival in specifications that do not account for self selection i find that greenfield entries have survival advantages compared to acquisitions this confirms previous findings however the significance of this effect disappears once i account for self selection of entry mode in the empirical estimates the results confirm that estimates from models that do not account for self selection of strategy choice can lead to incorrect or misleading conclusions

foreign direct investment in the united states an analysis by country of origin given the large size and rapid growth of foreign direct investment in the united states this subject is a central concern of u s firms and u s government policymakers this study explores the factors that contribute to the explanation of fdi in the united states by country of origin of investment evidence from the past twelve years shows that the main significant positive influences are home country s exports to the united states and home country market size significant negative influences include the home country s imports from the united states the cultural and geographic distances of the home country from the united states and the exchange rate fx

deregulation despite transitional gains the brewers guild of cologne 1461 acemoglu and robinson in the american economic review 90 2 126 130 2000 argue that historically economic rents have been less of a barrier to regulatory reform and innovation than political rents contrary to this conclusion i argue that the important margin of distinction for factors preventing deregulation is not whether rents are economic or political but rather what alternative profit opportunities are available and how innovation has changed the entrepreneurial opportunity set using the example of medieval cologne i show that the transitional gains trap framework as developed by tullock in the bell journal of economics 6 2 671 678 1975 applies in a static environment and can successfully prevent reform over long periods of time but that neither political nor economic entrepreneurs will ignore an opportunity for increased profitability in the long run in addition the organization of the political unit to which the regulation applies can determine the persistence of said regulation

global strategy and multinationals entry mode choice this paper makes a case directed towards establishing the importance of global strategic considerations in choosing multinationals entry mode specifically it is our contention that beyond the environmental and transaction specific factors well established in the literature to affect the entry mode decision we should also consider the strategic relationship a multinational envisages between its operations across borders in reaching this decision after incorporating various global strategic variables into an eclectic framework of the factors influencing the entry mode choice this paper tests both the validity of the overall framework and the importance of each entry mode determinant in differ entiating among entry modes this is done based on ninety six multinational managers responses to a survey questionnaire concerning their entry mode decision experiences the results suggest that an express incorporation of global strategic variables into an analysis of the entry mode decision is warranted

concepts of efficiency in ecological economics sisyphus and the decision maker abstract efficiency forms the bedrock of policy planning and business approaches to sustainable development but what do ecological economists mean by efficiency in the resource use context efficiency has a wide range of potential interpretations from the ratio of work output energy inputs to pareto efficiency despite the potential richness of the efficiency concept in practice efficiency is often narrowly conceived within disciplinary boundaries this appears to be the case even in ecological economics which purports to be transdisciplinary and pluralistic such narrow disciplinary perspectives essentially waste the richness of the efficiency concept this wasting could mean ecological economists and decision makers are destined to sisyphean toil in the pursuit of sustainable development this paper explores the efficiency concept and its interpretation it then reviews ecological economic literature to find that there is much room for improvement in the way ecological economists apply efficiency finally the paper presents a framework within which a truly ecological economic approach to efficiency can emerge armed with this framework policy makers and planners should be better prepared to make decisions leading to sustainable development

reappraising the eclectic paradigm in an age of alliance capitalism this article discusses the implications of the advent of alliance capitalism for our theorizing about the determinants of mne activity in particular it argues that due to the increasing porosity of the boundaries of firms countries and markets the eclectic or oli paradigm of international production needs to consider more explicitly the competitive advantages arising from the way firms organize their inter firm transactions the growing interdependencies of many intermediate product markets and the widening of the portfolio of the assets of districts regions and countries to embrace the external economies of interdependent activities

the role of thermodynamics in the study of economic and ecological systems abstract economic theory has always maintained that economic value is generated solely within the economy where it is fully distributed among the factors of production before being consumed according to this theory the economy is an isolated system that does not need flows to pass across its boundaries in support of its steady state general equilibrium from a thermodynamic point of view this idea is unacceptable according to thermodynamic theory any open system which allows flows of matter and energy to cross its boundaries is capable of maintaining itself in steady state only because it transport value from its environment to restore the value that has been consumed within the system and dissipated drawing on the analogy with thermodynamics this paper replaces the traditional systemic analog of the economy which is the closed circular flow process with the steady flow process according to this analog any efficient economy is an open system both physically and economically requiring a flow of economic value to maintain its steady state in other words an economically isolated system has to be inefficient and is bound to misallocate and overuse environmental resources whether the economy behaves as an economically isolated inefficient or open efficient system is an empirical question however if real economies are economically open and efficient and environmental resources are abused due to the economy s unrestrained material growth parts of traditional economic theory espicially those related to benefit evaluation will have to be modified policy recommendations will be affected in any case because internalization the panacea of resource misallocations cannot be more than a temporary solution instead of opening the economy internalization encloses the harmed resource and saves it by abusing excessively other environmental resources

unraveling the mne wage premium whereas ib has extensively studied mnes generic positive impact on host economies but rarely on employee wages economics research has only shown an overall mne wage premium we unravel this premium considering multiple levels of analysis and accounting for host country contextual contingencies to unveil mnes different positive or negative distributional effects using unique micro level data from over 40 000 employees in 13 countries we examine mnes distributional effects for employees gender experience and immigrant status the influence of host country property rights protection and labor regulation and interplays with region and industry effects mnes distributional effects show marked differences that largely depend on the host country context and that are positive for experienced and foreign born employees in developed countries but negative for females working in developing countries whereas in developed countries the gender wage gap is smaller in mnes than in domestic firms as hypothesized we find evidence of a larger wage gap in developing countries the analysis also reveals that the higher host countries level of property rights protection the lower the mne wage premium our study points at the need to reassess statements about the generic positive impact of mnes in host countries particularly in developing countries and discusses further research implications

do international acquisitions by emerging economy firms create shareholder value the case of indian firms while overseas acquisitions by emerging economy firms are gaining increased attention from the business press our understanding of whether and why this inorganic mode of international expansion creates value to acquirer firms is limited we argue that international acquisitions facilitate internalization of tangible and intangible resources that are both difficult to trade through market transactions and take time to develop internally thus constituting an important strategic lever of value creation for emerging economy firms furthermore the magnitude of value created will be higher when the target firms are located in advanced economic and institutional environments country markets that carry the promise of higher quality of resources and therefore stronger complementarity to the existing capabilities of emerging economy firms an event study of 425 cross border acquisitions by indian firms during 2000 2007 supports our predictions

international corporate governance a review and opportunities for future research we review four decades of research about the corporate governance of multinational corporations mncs which we label international corporate governance icg we identify and discuss three main streams of research that draw on different conceptualizations and theoretical lenses of corporate governance after synthesizing their respective findings we propose several avenues for future research that integrate these three streams of research with the goal of developing a more nuanced understanding of icg we hope this review article will inspire international business scholars to continue examining how corporate governance can be an effective tool for mnc success

the disinterest in deregulation in the analysis of the costs of monopoly power the usual experiment is to convert a competitive industry into a monopoly and observe the consequent change in consumer s surplus modern contributions have emphasized the deadweight cost of monopoly arnold harberger 1954 and the possibility of an associated rent seeking cost of monopoly gordon tullock 1967 the harberger cost of course refers to the lost consumer s surplus triangle the tullock cost concerns the role of competition for monopoly returns taken together and assuming that the competition for monopoly rents is perfect the total cost of monopoly power is a trapezoid the rectangle of monopoly profits plus the triangle of lost consumer s surplus richard posner 1975 in this paper we approach the monopoly problem in a different spirit we compare three states of the world competition regulation and deregulation in this setting we ask what happens if a monopoly is eliminated through deregulation our analysis suggests that because under most conditions tullock costs cannot be recouped the returns to deregulation are lower than previously thought rent seeking expenditures in the past leave the economy permanently poorer even if competition is restored to the industry in contrast the returns to preventing monopoly in the first place are relatively high in our model an insight afforded by the analysis is an explanation of the persistence of laws and regulations which appear to serve no interest in this regard the example of railroad regulation in the united states comes to mind the standard explanation for such regulation is either that voters and government decision makers are ignorant of basic economics or that a small interest group like railroad firms wins rents at the expense of uninformed or economically rational consumers of rail services who do not find it cost effective to seek deregulation we offer another and perhaps more plausible explanation for the persistence of regulation and the apathy of consumers about the costs of regulation namely the costs of such regulations are for the most part the original rent seeking expenditures that lead to the regulation in the first place and these costs are sunk abolishing so called uneconomic laws does nothing to recover these losses hence there is little political support from any quarter to return to the status quo ante in fact as we shall show such a deregulatory program can easily impose more costs than it is worth there are numerous examples of this point including tariffs and quotas of all sorts subsidies to farmers the postal monopoly organized labor s antitrust exemption the licensing of doctors and so forth the traditional explanations of these monopoly rights namely ignorance of economic common sense and special interest groups are neither sufficient nor necessary since the primary costs of these laws are rent seeking expenditures which are made prior to their passage there is simply little to be gained by changing them now gains would accrue in the form of reduced harberger costs costs would be borne in passing and implementing the deregulatory program it is not that the potential gainers from deregulation are large in number diffuse heterogeneous and face high organizational costs rather they do not exist to any degree interpreted in this light efforts by political action groups such as the right to work foundation stand to be a drain on society s resources they cannot produce anything unless they prevent further monopolization through regulation we do not of course mccormick and shughart clemson university clemson sc 29631 tollison center for the study of public choice george mason university fairfax va 22030 thanks go to james buchanan rex cottle and gordon tullock for helpful comments the usual caveat applies

the environmental cost of sustainable welfare abstract welfare is a measure of the well being of society it is sustainable if it can be maintained steadily for many years according to neoclassical economic theory value that is the flow of welfare attributed to the totality of available outputs is generated distributed and consumed solely within the economy when environmental externalities are absent or after they have been internalized environment derived welfare is constant and no environmental costs need be incurred to sustain economy derived welfare hence resource accumulation and technological progress enable society to experience sustainable development futures where its welfare always increases possibly exponentially thermodynamics generates an alternative theory of value drawing on this theory i show that the sum of the economy derived and environment derived welfare is not affected by the location of the boundaries between the economy and the environment hence to recognize their contribution to welfare environmental resources need not be internalized into the economy according to thermodynamics based theory economy derived welfare may be sustained only because the economy is able to transport net value from its environment to restore the value that is necessarily consumed within it hence the environmental costs of sustaining welfare are always positive they increase with the welfare to be sustained and decrease as a consequence of technological advance since part of these costs will never disappear the room for better technologies cannot be exhausted once solar power is fully utilized future increase of welfare will be guided by the rate of adoption of more efficient technologies that slow down the economic process although welfare is bounded asymptotically and its steady growth is precluded economy derived welfare and the corresponding environmental costs are determined by social decisions rather than by immutable laws of nature

toward consilience between biology and economics the contribution of ecological economics abstract during its ten year history ecological economics has made a real difference in the way economists look at the natural world and in the way biologists look at the economy in this survey article we examine the contributions to the journal in terms of e o wilson s concept of consilience that is his argument that the methods and assumptions of any field of study should be consistent with the known and accepted facts in other disciplines in particular we examine the contributions of ecological economics to reconciling the economic theory of the consumer and producer with biophysical reality

ownership and firm innovation in a transition economy evidence from china we examine innovation performance of firms in a transition economy from an ownership perspective we focus specifically on the relationship between ownership structures and firm innovation performance drawing on data from 548 chinese firms we find volume of patent registration to be most strongly influenced by foreign ownership in the firm along with firm affiliation within a business group the influence of state and institutional ownership on innovation performance is positive but lagged contrary to expectations insider ownership leads to lower innovation performance and concentrated ownership has no significant impact our study has two principal contributions firstly we utilize a comprehensive treatment of ownership characteristics overcoming weakness in previous studies that have used a more narrow focus on ownership type secondly we contribute to understanding of how firms in transition economies build indigenous capabilities for innovation by drawing attention to the interplay of foreign and domestic control of agents innovation

reported trade figure discrepancy regulatory arbitrage and round tripping evidence from the china hong kong trade data this study uses reported trade figures from china and hong kong to examine the relationships among market impediments trade figure irregularities and tax induced regulatory arbitrage the empirical findings consistent with our tax induced regulatory arbitrage models and the round tripping phenomenon in china that is moving funds across the mainland chinese border through trade typically to hong kong or an offshore tax haven before re entering china as foreign direct investment provide support for several conclusions first the spurious flows of funds to and from china via the underreporting of exports and the overreporting of imports closely follow the preferential tax incentives accorded to foreign investors second the underreporting of exports is negatively related to export tax rebates third the overreporting of imports is negatively related to import tariffs finally both of these two appear to be most prevalent in state owned enterprises

economics for sustainable rural systems abstract critics often reproach the discipline of economics for supporting developments that result in environmental and social degradation this article identifies where such censure is valid but proceeds to argue that the rationale underlying economic techniques is at fault rather than the techniques themselves within the rural context we suggest that economics can make a valuable contribution to the design and achievement of sustainable ways of living valid criticism of economics focuses on its assumptions about value since this has led to emphasis of favourable effects of markets and laissez faire policies exposing rural areas to more rigorously competitive market conditions encourage their transformation by increasing mechanisation industrialisation and a less sustainable use of resources new approaches and policies are required if different outcomes are to be achieved an initial step is to identify desirable outcomes a matter of social choice however society makes multiple demands on rural resources and such issues cannot be adequately captured within a neo classical welfare model an alternative hierarchical framework in the tradition of systems thinking capable of analysing the complex relations associated with rural resource use provides appropriate emphasis to the economic links between goals at different levels within the system and appears to have some heuristic value an empirical counterpart of the hierarchical framework input output analysis generates information to support social choices and can also contribute to the understanding of economic systems and their interaction with the wider social cultural ethical and environmental universe the article concludes with some revised economic policy prescriptions to promote rural sustainability

fdi by firms from newly industrialised economies in emerging markets corporate governance entry mode and location previous studies emphasise that the foreign direct investment fdi strategies of firms from newly industrialised economies nies are different from the fdi strategies of firms from developed economies it has also been shown that nie firms are often controlled by founding families who make key strategic decisions and that they rely heavily on network linkages when developing their fdi strategies what is less clear however is how the corporate governance factors in nies the risk preferences of the main shareholder constituencies and the network based business culture affect the decision to undertake fdi in emerging markets this paper explores the entry mode and location choices of firms from an asian nie taiwan in an emerging market the people s republic of china it shows that the choice of equity stake in an affiliate depends upon the extent of family and institutional share ownerships in the parent company high commitment entry is found to be positively associated with the affiliate being located in areas with strong economic cultural and historic links with the parent company furthermore the entry mode and location decisions appear to be interrelated with the parent s equity stake in the affiliate depending inter alia upon the location within china and the favoured location depending inter alia upon the equity stake

partitioning of resources in production an empirical analysis abstract industrial economies ingest materials energy and information to produce goods and services and excrete wastes and emissions wastes can be minimized and the relative amounts of resources which go into goods and services as opposed to waste are essential to clean production and to the sustainability of the production system a regression model based on empirical data is presented that provides a partition coefficient expressing the ratio of energy or material resources invested in goods to energy going to waste partition coefficients are developed for five countries and are shown to be related to gdp energy and material consumption and energy and waste intensities higher partition coefficients mean higher productivity and lower energy waste and material intensities in addition energy use capita and pollution capita is lower the price of energy to the industrial sector is related to the partition coefficient the policy implications are that partitioning of resources to goods should be maximized and waste minimized for economic as well as environmental reasons

information and economic analysis a perspective ten years ago i delivered a paper before this group with the title information and economic analysis i chose the title deliberately i did not call the subject on which i was speaking the economics of information because to do so would have been to suggest that my topic like the economics of agriculture or the economics of industry or the economics of labour represented another branch of specialisation within economics i wanted to suggest that informational considerations were in fact central to the analysis of a wide variety of phenomena that they constituted a central part of the foundations of economic analysis at the time though economists had long paid lip service to the importance of information there was little formal literature the last decade has seen a burgeoning of the literature it has become to the late 7o s and early 8o s what growth theory was to the early 6o s and it has been greeted with some of the same scepticism there seems to be a myriad ofspecial cases and few general principles the little examples are often contrasted unfavourably with the generality of general equilibrium theory what have we learned have diminishing returns set in are there fruitful directions for future research and if so what are they these are the questions which i wish to address here the work of the past decade has made i think a fundamental and lasting contribution to economic analysis the contributions have been both negative and positive we have learned that much of what we believed before is of only limited validity that the traditional competitive equilibrium analysis though having the superficial appearance of generality in terms of superscripts and subscripts is indeed not very general the theory is not robust to slight alterations in the informational assumptions it is but a special and not very plausible example among the possible set of informational assumptions which can be employed to characterise an economy at the same time the theory has been able to provide insights into phenomena about which the traditional model had nothing to say or which seemed inconsistent or inexplicable within the competitive paradigm it has provided some of the micro foundations for macro economics it has provided the basis of a new theory of the firm of a new new welfare economics and of a theory of economic organisation including a comparison of economic

network linkages and location choice in foreign direct investment this paper shows that network linkage is an important determinant of location choice in foreign direct investment fdi network linkages are divided into internal intra firm and external inter firm linkages external linkages are further separated into strategic and relational linkages we found that taiwanese firms are keen on making external linkages but are indifferent to or incapable of making internal linkages through fdi strategic linkages motivate taiwanese fdi in the united states while relational linkages facilitate taiwanese fdi in southeast asia and china small firms are more sensitive to relational linkages than large firms in their choice of fdi location

small firms as international players in this paper using aggregate data from the u s bureau of economic analysis the author explores the strategies small u s based foreign investing firms follow in their international activities the aggregate study supports the findings of an earlier study of a few small firms with international activities these firms have a lower than expected tendency to form minority owned affiliates abroad an analysis of the industries in which these small foreign investing firms operate supports the notion that these firms follow specific strategies uncovered in the small scale study finally the paper ties the findings to alliance strategies of small firms

a thermodynamic approach to economics abstract the economic theory presented in this paper develops a theme first published by the author in energy economics 1 the concept that economic value is fundamentally equivalent to energy value both at a macro and micro level is investigated in some depth economic equivalents of the first and second laws of thermodynamics are derived and inflation is shown to be equivalent to net cycle entropy gain a simple business cycle is constructed from a number of basic economic processes and a series of efficiency measures are examined including overall efficiency work ratio net work output cycle inflation growth and stock turnover a model of the money system is developed and the effects of monetary policy are examined the difficulties of deriving a standard scale of productive content a necessary part of the valuation of economic goods and services are analysed it is hoped that the paper will open up new avenues for future work particularly of statistical investigations of macro and micro systems

firm ownership preferences and host government restrictions an integrated approach two approaches may explain how multinational enterprises mnes select ownership structures for subsidiaries the first argues that mnes prefer structures that minimize that transaction costs of doing business abroad the second argues that ownership structures are determined by negotiations with host governments whose outcomes depend on the bargaining power of the firm this paper presents a framework integrating these two approaches and uses statistical methods to separate their effects empirically

state owned mncs and host country expropriation risk the role of home state soft power and economic gunboat diplomacy expropriation risk has a binding effect on foreign direct investment fdi however state owned multinational corporations may counter the monopoly power of the host state by leveraging the political influence of their home government the magnitude of this counter force we argue may vary depending on the strength of political relations between the home and host state and the level of economic dependence of the host country on the home market we find supporting evidence of our hypotheses using chinese firm level fdi information between 2003 and 2010

the theory of the firm as governance structure from choice to contract the propositions that organization matters and that it is susceptible to analysis were long greeted by skepticism by economists one reason why this message took a long time to register is that it is much easier to say that organization matters than it is to show how and why the prevalence of the science of choice approach to economics has also been an obstacle as developed herein the lessons of organization theory for economics are both different and more consequential when examined through the lens of contract this paper examines economic organization from a science of contract perspective with special emphasis on the theory of the firm

ecological production based pricing of biosphere processes abstract ecological pricing theory and method is reviewed and then applied to the valuation of biosphere processes and services ecological pricing values biosphere processes on the basis of biophysical interdependencies between all parts of the ecosystem not just those that have direct or obvious value to humans the application of the ecological pricing method to the biosphere for 1994 indicates that the total value of primary ecological inputs services to be nearly us 25 trillion this compares with us 33 trillion obtained in the costanza et al 1997 study our analysis also indicated a good correspondence between the shadow ecological price and the observed market price for all marketable goods except fossil fuel which was undervalued by the market

the economic growth debate what some economists have learned but many have not one thing economists should have learned from the economic growth debate is the importance of defining the term growth by growth i mean quantitative increase in the scale of the physical dimensions of the economy i e the rate of flow of matter and energy through the economy from the environment as raw material and back to the environment as waste and the stock of human bodies and artifacts by development i mean the qualitative improvement in the structure design and composition of physical stocks and flows that result from greater knowledge both of technique and of purpose simply put growth is quantitative increase in physical dimensions development is qualitative improvement in non physical characteristics an economy can therefore develop without growing just as the planet earth has developed evolved without growing neoclassical growth models notwithstanding there is good evidence that neither the earth s surface nor the flux of solar energy grows at a rate equal to the rate of interest in fact they seem not to grow at all yet qualitative evolution occurred and continues to occur two general classes of limits to growth in the above defined sense can be further distinguished biophysical limits and ethicosocial limits in both cases it is growth not development that is limited there may or may not exist limits to development but that is another topic standard neoclassical economics was built on the assumption that the economy is far from both limits i e that it is always biophysically possible and ethicosocially desirable for aggregate product to grow as abramowitz l put it echoing pigou

developed country mnes investing in developing economies progress and prospect this study reviews research from 1970 through 2016 on developed country multinational enterprises dmnes entering and competing in developing economies to identify the current state of knowledge of this research and push it further we review the literature using bibliometric and qualitative content analyses covering leading journals and books we articulate frontier issues that are understudied yet critical to both theorization and practice of dmnes in developing economies we discuss the findings and conclusions from prior research along five key areas 1 entering developing economies 2 organizing local activities 3 managing alliances and joint ventures 4 competing in dynamic environments and 5 dealing with institutions governments and society we offer prospective insights into future agenda that have important implications for mne strategies and decisions and propose frontier directions that encompass strategic localization reverse transfer and adaptation co evolution with local business ecosystems reorganizing and restructuring and strategic responses to institutional and market complexity

on the ideological foundations of environmental policy abstract this paper is an investigation into the philosophies of science inherent in the development of two schools of thought in environmental economics neoclassical and steady state analysis it attempts to gain clearer insight into the direction of inquiry and the policy options of each by contrasting their perspective metaeconomic structures the sets of first principles shaping theoretical development the ontology of steady state analysis while accepting the general principle of rationality differs from neoclassicism by including the ecological interaction of people with nature as an element of spicies being the cosmology of the two schools differs in the steady statists take the laws of thermodynamics and the principle of biospheric assimilation of first principles questions of absolute scarcity take primacy over the neoclassical focus on problems of relative scarcity in policy analysis consequently steady state theorists view the environment problem in its global dimensions over a longer time continuum the result is that steady state policy prescriptions are not necessarily market bound and may transcend the intstitutional arrangements common in western capitalist societies

foreign direct investment in china a spatial econometric study foreign direct investment fdi began to flow into china with advent of reforms in 1978 following a period of relatively slow growth fdi inflows to china picked up after 1990 as china surpassed every other nation but the united states in attracting foreign investment in particular coastal regions of china have received the bulk of fdi inflows to the country in this paper we use province level data to explain the pattern of fdi location across china we build upon previous research introducing new potential determinants using more recent fdi data and incorporating spatial econometric techniques in doing so we test for potential econometric problems arising from the spatial pattern of the data and correct for them by running more appropriate models we find that economic size labor productivity and coastal location attract fdi while higher wages and illiteracy rates deter it the transportation infrastructure variables we try are not found to have statistically significant relationships with the level of fdi inflows across provinces this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

ecosystem prices activity analysis applied to ecosystems abstract in this paper a method is developed to derive prices for natural goods from information about material and energy flows within ecosystems the derivation is based on an analogy between ecological and economic systems both systems are characterized by flows of material and energy to derive ecosystem prices the mathematical structure of koopman s economic linear production model his activity analysis is applied to a material flow model of ecosystems the ecological interpretation of these prices is discussed and the uniqueness of the price system is investigated an algorithm for price calculation is derived and demonstrated with a numerical example finally it is discussed whether ecosystem prices may be suitable as surrogates for economic valuations of natural goods

a tale of three countries italian spanish and swiss manufacturing operations in china in this paper the choice of joint venture versus wholly foreign owned enterprise wfoe made by italian spanish and swiss multinationals in china as shaped by the risk of dissipation of intangible assets is investigated probit estimates based on an entirely new firm level dataset constructed by the author show that wfoe is more likely to emerge when know how easily spills over namely for firms endowed with more intangible assets or belonging to high tech sectors in line with the theoretical expectations

the distribution of foreign direct investment in china foreign direct investment fdi has played a major role in china s push toward a market oriented economy recent inflows account for 40 percent of combined flows of fdi to all developing countries making china the biggest developing country fdi recipient this record is impressive but certain problems must be overcome if fdi is to continue to help sustain the country s record growth rate and further its economic development for one thing fdi in china is highly concentrated geographically and its sector distribution is highly uneven the authors empirically analyze the geographic determinants of fdi in china they find that fdi s geographical distribution in china is determined mostly by gnp infrastructure development level of general education and coastal location although the sectoral distribution of fdi is coming into line with the rest of the world in the past fdi has been biased toward speculative types of investment especially in the real estate sector

international investment location decisions abstract in international location tournaments governments compete for foreign investment with tax and other short run incentives such tournaments can be won if agglomeration economies are sufficiently powerful to overcome investors desire to spread investments as a hedge against risk we focus on manufacturing investments by u s multinationals in the 1980s our econometric results suggest that agglomeration economies are indeed the dominant influence on investor calculations paradoxically short run incentives have limited apparent impact on location choice we conclude that high cost tournament play is unnecessary for countries with good infrastructure development specialized input suppliers and an expanding domestic market

explaining diversity in the worldwide diffusion of codes of good governance extending earlier literature on diffusion of codes of good governance cggs by integrating the effect of national culture this study offers a novel perspective on cross national diversity in the worldwide diffusion of corporate governance best practices we argue that particular cultural dimensions affect the indicators i e total number of codes per country and identity of issuing organizations of such diffusion for a sample of 67 countries our analysis reveals that individualist cultures have a stronger tendency to develop cggs in cultures with a high receptivity to power differences there is a higher probability that the first issuers are the government directors or professional associations whereas with low receptivity the stock exchange and investors groups of issuers are more likely to initiate the first code the effects of culture remain significant even after accounting for differences in legal systems and economic institutions indicating that national culture may serve as a comprehensive indicator of the regulatory stance with respect to good governance indeed the effect size is large enough to give pause e g to a location choice and possibly has relevance for strategic decision making by international companies

the 45 years of foreign direct investment research approaches advances and analytical areas what are the main tenets associated with foreign direct investment fdi what research has been performed in the area of fdi to date which direction should research in this field proceed in the days to come as there is no article with comprehensive coverage of all the studies on fdi we review empirical research in this area between the years 1970 and 2014 as an attempt to answer these questions we identify the advances and analytical areas of fdi research list out the impactful research papers and authors theoretical and methodological approaches leading journals and variables of interest that exist in the area of fdi research as the research into the fdi has advanced significantly over the last two decades we have also tried to point out the gaps in the literature taken together our paper highlights the heterogeneous nature of fdi across countries and firms

towards circular economy implementation a comprehensive review in context of manufacturing industry the concept of circular economy ce is to an increasing extent treated as a solution to series of challenges such as waste generation resource scarcity and sustaining economic benefits however the concept of circularity is not of novel as such specific circumstances and motivations have stimulated ideas relevant to circularity in the past through activities such as reuse remanufacturing or recycling main objectives of this work are to provide a comprehensive review of research efforts encompassing aspects of resources scarcity waste generation and economic advantages to explore the ce landscape in the context of these three aspects especially when they are considered simultaneously based on an idea of a comprehensive ce framework propose an implementation strategy using top down and bottom up approach in a concurrent manner to fulfill this objective a comprehensive review of state of the art research is carried out to understand different ideas relevant to ce motivation for the research and context of their recurrence main contributions of this paper are a comprehensive ce framework and a practical implementation strategy for a regenerative economy and natural environment the framework emphasizes on a combined view of three main aspects i e environment resources and economic benefits it also underlines that joint support of all stakeholders is necessary in order to successfully implement the ce concept at large scale the proposed framework and implementation strategy also identify new avenues for future research and practice in the field of ce