examining the relationship between visual attention and stated preferences a discrete choice experiment using eye tracking abstract we examine the relationship between visual attention and stated preferences derived from a discrete choice experiment focussing on consumer preferences regarding country of origin food labels we employ a bayesian infinite mixture logit to derive results that reveal patterns of respondent heterogeneity that would not be captured assuming that random parameters take a specific distributional form our results reveal weak relationships between the eye tracking data our stated preference results and various attribute use questions although respondents with higher levels of visual attendance value specific attributes more highly the strength of the relationship is fairly weak therefore whilst we maintain that eye tracking is useful we argue that there needs to be greater clarity about the aims and purpose of using eye tracking in stated preference research

comparing alternative models of heterogeneity in consumer choice behavior summary when modeling demand for differentiated products it is vital to adequately capture consumer taste heterogeneity but there is no clearly preferred approach here we compare the performance of six alternative models currently the most popular are mixed logit mixl particularly the version with normal mixing n mixl and latent class lc which assumes discrete consumer types recently several alternative models have been developed the generalized multinomial logit g mnl extends n mixl by allowing for heterogeneity in the logit scale coefficient scale heterogeneity logit s mnl is a special case of g mnl with scale heterogeneity only the mixed mixed logit mm mnl assumes a discrete mixture of normals heterogeneity distribution finally one can modify n mixl by imposing theoretical sign constraints on vertical attributes we call this t mixl we find that none of these models dominates the others but g mnl mm mnl and t mixl typically outperform the popular n mixl and lc models copyright 2012 john wiley sons ltd

the disaggregation of corporations selective intervention high powered incentives and molecular units a vast array of organizational innovations and changes are transforming us corporations large firms have dramatically downsized refocused and vertically disaggregated they increasingly obtain goods and services pursue complex development efforts and exploit horizontal synergies without the aid of formal hierarchy large firms are also internally disaggregating into smaller more autonomous units that are treated much like external subcontractors the authors argue that these organizational innovations share an important underlying commonalty economic activity is converging toward exchange involving either internal within firm or external between firm networks of small autonomous production or service units small units and small firms have become the basic building block the molecular units of these new forms further exchange among the small autonomous units is commonly a mix of both market like and hierarchical features the authors develop a theoretical explanation for these trends the

the generalized multinomial logit model accounting for scale and coefficient heterogeneity the mixed or heterogeneous multinomial logit mixl model has become popular in a number of fields especially marketing health economics and industrial organization in most applications of the model the vector of consumer utility weights on product attributes is assumed to have a multivariate normal mvn distribution in the population thus some consumers care more about some attributes than others and the iia property of multinomial logit mnl is avoided i e segments of consumers will tend to switch among the subset of brands that possess their most valued attributes the mixl model is also appealing because it is relatively easy to estimate recently however some researchers have argued that the mvn is a poor choice for modelling taste heterogeneity they argue that much of the heterogeneity in attribute weights is accounted for by a pure scale effect i e across consumers all attribute weights are scaled up or down in tandem this implies that choice behaviour is simply more random for some consumers than others i e holding attribute coefficients fixed the scale of their error term is greater this leads to a scale heterogeneity mnl model s mnl here we develop a generalized multinomial logit model g mnl that nests s mnl and mixl by estimating the s mnl mixl and g mnl models on 10 data sets we provide evidence on their relative performance we find that models that account for scale heterogeneity i e g mnl or s mnl are preferred to mixl by the bayes and consistent akaike information criteria in all 10 data sets accounting for scale heterogeneity enables one to account for extreme consumers who exhibit nearly lexicographic preferences as well as consumers who exhibit very random behaviour in a sense we formalize below

global value chain governance a relational perspective global value chain gvc governance is an established field within international business research yet the relational aspects of gvcs have to date garnered less scholarly attention than have efficiency considerations this conceptual study s objective is to explore the relational dynamics of gvc governance using an internalization theory perspective and by linking gvc research with insights from the business network literature gvcs are argued to be a distinct form of asymmetrical networks associated with economizing and capability creation features as well as costs the orchestrating firm can thus enhance efficiency outcomes of the gvc using social mechanisms similar to those adopted by core actors in a business network in the study six such mechanisms were identified 1 selectivity 2 inclusion of non business intermediaries 3 joint strategizing 4 relational capital 5 multilateral feedback and 6 rules for equitable value distribution while safeguarding the gvc s efficiency the above social mechanisms are associated with challenges and limitations and therefore do not guarantee international competitive success however deployed in an integrative fashion these social mechanisms facilitate coordination thus economizing on bounded rationality reduce the hazards of imperfect effort by partners thus economizing on bounded reliability and foster innovation and new capability development

impacting practice through ib scholarship toy recalls and the product safety crisis ib research has made significant contributions in understanding mnes yet examples of scholarship that have had a demonstrable impact on practice and policy are rare this article presents research we conducted in the wake of the 2007 global product safety crisis as one such example we reflect on it to suggest that ib research can enhance its impact by focusing attention on issues that affect both mnes and societies and by using available data to arrive at even basic explanations and solutions to inform practice and prompt further academic research

preferences for mitigation of the negative impacts of the oil and gas industry in the niger delta region of nigeria we examine nigerian preferences for the mitigation of negative impacts associated with oil and gas production using a discrete choice experiment we analyse the data using a bayesian infinite mixtures model which given its flexibility can approximate an array of existing model specifications including the mixed logit and finite mixture specifications the application of this model to our data suggest multimodality in the marginal willingness to pay distributions associated with mitigation policy characteristics individuals are willing to pay for mitigation of negative impacts but are not necessarily willing to trade off very large increases in unemployment or poverty to achieve these benefits

the effect of a worldwide tax system on tax management of foreign subsidiaries under a worldwide tax system firms pay taxes on their domestic income and repatriated foreign income whereas under a territorial tax system repatriated foreign income is exempt from taxation we examine whether worldwide tax systems reduce the incentives of multinational corporations to engage in tax management in their foreign subsidiaries using two quasi natural experiments we show that multinationals lower the effective tax rates in their foreign subsidiaries after countries switch from a worldwide to a territorial tax system thus multinationals subject to a worldwide tax system face competitive disadvantages compared to competitors from countries with a territorial tax system

the efficiency of equity in organizational decision processes it is now widely accepted that rent seeking anne krueger 1974 or directly unproductive profit seeking jagdish bhagwati 1982 may cause inefficiencies in the context of public sector decisions the possibility that government decisions for example about taxes quotas franchises or standards may create or redistribute rents induces private parties to spend valuable resources to influence that distribution even when such expenditures carry no social benefit moreover the social cost of rent seeking can exceed the value of the resources spent trying to gain and protect rents for example because the fear of losing wealth through redistribution reduces the incentives for wealth creation treating rent seeking activities as characteristic of public sector decision processes ignores the fact that similar phenomena are to be found in firms unions and other private sector organizations our recent work milgrom 1988 our 1988 1990 papers attempts to identify the advantages of decision processes private or public that permit rent seeking and to incorporate these into a cost benefit analysis of optimal decision processes our work begins with an analysis of why rents and quasi rents arise in organizations and of the forms that the rent seeking they engender may take some measures to insulate the decision process from rent seeking such as limits on the provision of information by interested parties or restrictions on the range of options considered may degrade the quality of decisions especially by blocking the flow of valuable information optimal decision processes balance the costs of rent seeking against the value of information obtained several aspects of the rules affect the opportunities that members have to spend resources trying to alter the distribution of rents to ascertain the possibilities for rent seeking the analyst must ask questions like can the parties propose new initiatives at any time can they give volumes of testimony in a form of their own choosing can they appeal adverse decisions are decision makers obliged to respond to the parties initiatives is the range of actions that they can take in response relatively broad rather than being tightly constrained by property rights or other formal rules more affirmative answers to these questions lead to more opportunities or greater incentives for costly rent seeking as a kind of shorthand we call decision processes that have more of these elements more open processes the very elements that make a process open to rent seeking may also add flexibility and responsiveness helping to ensure that important ideas and proposals are fully considered from this perspective the benefits of openness can in principle be measured by a value of information calculation in the usual manner of statistical decision theory weighing the costs and benefits it follows that a more open process is more desirable when the rents available for redistribution are low and the value of the information that might be acquired is high conversely when the potential for redistribution is high and the value of information is low the optimal decision process is less open this kind of reasoning helps to illuminate the variations in the decision processes that are found in many organizations we have discussed a number of examples in our earlier work including the characteristics of personnel departments the contrasting patterns of decision making employment and compensation in u s and japanese firms professor of economics stanford university and jonathan b lovelace professor of economics graduate school of business stanford university stanford ca 94305 respectively this work was supported by the national science foundation

overcoming the liability of outsidership for emerging market mnes a capability building perspective this paper develops and discusses a model describing how multinational enterprises from emerging economies emnes overcome the liability of outsidership in their internationalization from a capability building perspective our aim is to celebrate the important intellectual contribution of johanson and vahlne j int bus stud 40 9 1411 1431 2009 who introduced the liability of outsidership concept we first discuss learning from the local environment that can reduce outsidership and then explain how greater absorptive capacity can translate into better performance internationally finally we elaborate on how the institutional environment further conditions the process and the outcomes of learning we conclude with some suggestions for future research from five theoretical perspectives learning social network theory institutional theory resource dependence theory and mne structure and design

the new political economy of food and agricultural development abstract this paper emphasizes the benefits of an agricultural strategy of development in the third world it begins by analysing the close links between food and employment in the development process this is followed by an examination of the important contribution that technological change in agriculture can make to the growth process and the role of politics and the state in influencing such a pattern of development it concludes that an agricultural strategy of development can increase domestic food production at the same time that it stimulates an equity oriented pattern of economic growth in the third world

inter city competition for foreign investment static and dynamic effects of china s incentive areas abstract china s open door policy has created a natural experiment for studying agglomeration externalities and the role of incentives designed to attract foreign direct investment we build a model which predicts that foreign firms will prefer cities where other foreign firms are located we estimate the model using data on 931 foreign ventures we then use simulations to explore the effect policies favoring particular cities had on the distribution of investment we find that attractive cities those with good infrastructure and an established industrial base gained most and that agglomeration effects greatly magnified the direct impact of policy

giving stated preference respondents time to think results from four countries previous studies have found that contingent valuation cv respondents who are given overnight to reflect on a cv scenario have 30 40 lower average willingness to pay wtp than respondents who are interviewed in a single session this time to think ttt effect could explain much of the gap between real and hypothetical wtp observed in experimental studies yet giving time to think is still rare in binary or multinomial discrete choice studies we review the literature on increasing survey respondents opportunities to reflect on their answers and synthesize results from parallel ttt studies on private vaccine demand in four countries across all four countries we find robust and consistent evidence from both raw data and multivariate models for a ttt effect giving respondents overnight to think reduced the probability that a respondent said he or she would buy the hypothetical vaccines average wtp fell approximately 40 respondents with time to think were also more certain of their answers and a majority said they used the opportunity to consult with their spouse or family we conclude with a discussion of why researchers might be hesitant to adopt the ttt methodology

corporate taxes and the location of intangible assets within multinational firms intangible assets like patents and trademarks are increasingly seen as the key to competitive success and as the drivers of corporate profit moreover they constitute a major source of profit shifting opportunities in multinational enterprises mnes due to a highly intransparent transfer pricing process this paper argues that for both reasons mnes have an incentive to locate intangible property at affiliates with a relatively low corporate tax rate using panel data on european mnes and controlling for unobserved time constant heterogeneity between affiliates we find that the lower a subsidiary s corporate tax rate relative to other affiliates of the multinational group the higher is its level of intangible asset investment this effect is statistically and economically significant even after controlling for subsidiary size and accounting for a dynamic intangible investment pattern

liabilities of regional foreignness and the use of firm level versus country level data a response to dunning et al 2007 we are pleased that dunning et al have provided macro country level data demonstrating the increased internationalization of many nations over the past decade we also appreciate their findings lending support to our perspective on the regional nature of world business our work was based solely on micro firm level data both country level data and firm level data have methodological problems which we attempt to reconcile in this commentary we also address the broader conceptual issues of how to interpret country level vs firm level data

inferred and stated attribute non attendance in food choice experiments we review the current literature on attribute non attendance in stated choice and use data from beef and chicken choice experiments using both inference and the respondents own statements inference is based on panel data analysis by mixed logit models of choice with both discrete and continuous mixtures of coefficients and is conditional on the observed pattern of choice information from respondent statements on non attendance is directly embedded in the specification of the indirect utility function results show no clear winner between the inferential approaches but the inference based on constrained latent class panel models better matches the observed data

beyond hofstede and globe improving the quality of cross cultural research journal of international business studies 2010 41 1259 1274 doi 10 1057 jibs 2010 41 overview of 41 8 hofstede and globe in cross cultural research while hofstede s work was not the first systematic study on crossnational cultures his seminal book culture s consequences international differences in work related values 1980 succeeded in putting cross cultural analysis at the forefront of international business ib research in a later paper he boldly asserted that the business of international business is culture 1994 1 despite the criticisms that have been voiced against his work see mcsweeney 2002 oyserman coon kemmelmeier 2002 hofstede s influence on the fields of ib and management is undeniable according to harzing s publish or perish citation index as of june 2010 there were over 54 000 citations to his work this is a remarkable record that attests to first the growing popularity of cross cultural research in light of continued internationalization of the world economy and second hofstede s personal impact on scholarly research this jibs issue brings together 10 articles on culture and ib all of which were submitted to the editorial team led by jibs editorin chief lorraine eden while the articles were independently submitted through the regular double blind reviewing process the decision to join them in one collection creates in effect a special issue on culture in international business research which the jibs editors hope will be widely read and cited by ib scholars in general terms the papers in this collection fall into one of two categories 1 articles and commentaries about conceptual and methodological issues associated with hofstede s oeuvre vs the global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness globe project s cultural dimensions and 2 articles and perspectives that use culture and or cultural dimensions as well as the operational measurement thereof to explain differences in behavior and practices across countries the common feature of all these scholarly pieces is that they challenge particular assumptions often made too easily in conventional cross cultural research the first paper in this collection is a perspective written by franke and richey that cautions against questionable generalizations from small numbers of countries in international business research using statistical analysis to support their assertion franke and richey argue that in order to draw credible generalizations in ib a minimum of 7 10 countries must be used this is an important message researchers should never formulate strong conclusions about the impact of cultural dimensions on journal of international business studies 2010 41 1259 1274 2010 academy of international business all rights reserved 0047 2506

reassessing home regionalisation alan rugman and co authors argue that globalisation and with it global strategy is a myth this contention rests on a taxonomy of the world s largest firms based on their sales showing an overwhelming share of home regional firms we question the rationales underpinning their classification scheme when retesting the data using different schema we find that the original results are far from robust with a significant share of firms attaining bi regional or global status further longitudinal analysis shows that large firms increasingly are extending their sales beyond the home region our results defy regionalisation theory in its current form and we call for refinements through further research

towards more realistic conceptualisations of foreign operation modes we address a long standing discrepancy between theory and practice regarding how firms choose use and modify their modes of operation in foreign markets theory typically treats foreign operation modes as choices between well specified discrete alternatives observation of business practice reveals a messier reality we commonly observe mode packages within mode adjustments and mode role changes yet by and large these aspects of international business development have been relatively ignored in the literature and in theoretical and empirical research we propose richer and more realistic conceptualisations of foreign operation modes and look at their implications for theory and practice

grain legume productivity in subsistence agriculture a global challenge abstract large increases in global cereal production have been primarily dependent on the use of nitrogen fertilizer productivity increases in grain legumes have been much smaller yet grain legumes play an important socioeconomic role in subsistence farming past legume improvement has been limited by lack of investment and significant research environmental and physiological constraints new international research initiatives are needed to increase grain legume yield by developing better plants improving biological nitrogen fixation and achieving more effective technology transfer with an increased emphasis on generic broadly applicable technologies

a perspective on regional and global strategies of multinational enterprises multinational enterprises mnes are the key drivers of globalization as they foster increased economic interdependence among national markets the ultimate test to assess whether these mnes are global themselves is their actual penetration level of markets across the globe especially in the broad triad markets of nafta the european union and asia yet data on the activities of the 500 largest mnes reveal that very few are successful globally for 320 of the 380 firms for which geographic sales data are available an average of 80 3 of total sales are in their home region of the triad this means that many of the world s largest firms are not global but regionally based in terms of breadth and depth of market coverage globalization in terms of a balanced geographic distribution of sales across the triad thus reflects a special and rather unusual outcome of doing international business ib the regional concentration of sales has important implications for various strands of mainstream ib research as well as for the broader managerial debate on the design of optimal strategies and governance structures for mnes journal of international business studies 2004 35 3 18 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400073

subsidiary expansion contraction during times of economic crisis this paper compares two real options within country growth and across country operational flexibility to examine subsidiary expansion contraction during times of economic crisis specifically we examine how the real options orientations of individual subsidiaries interact with the general characteristics of multinational enterprise networks our main findings are that a economic crises can be detrimental for subsidiaries with stronger within country orientations and advantageous for those with stronger across country orientations and b network characteristics are not the sole determinants of subsidiary expansion contraction what really matters is how the real options orientations of individual subsidiaries mesh with the overall characteristics of the network they belong to

enforcing higher labor standards within developing country value chains consequences for mnes and informal actors in a dual economy the 2013 collapse of the rana plaza building in dhaka bangladesh led external stakeholders to insist on higher labor standards in apparel global value chains gvcs stakeholders now expect mnes to take full chain responsibility however the increased monitoring and enforcement costs of a large network of suppliers have been non trivial mnes instead implement a cascading compliance approach coupled with a partial re internalization elevated costs are further exacerbated in developing countries where the informal and formal sectors are linked and cost competitiveness greatly depends on this duality monitoring actors in the informal sector is difficult and few informal actors can achieve compliance gvcs have therefore reduced informal sector engagement by excluding non compliant actors and investing in greater automation by seeking to strictly enforce compliance mnes are attenuating some of the positive effects of mne investment particularly the prospects for employment creation especially among women and enterprise growth in the informal sector i discuss how these observations might inform other cross disciplinary work in development ethics and sociology finally i note implications for ib theory from the disparities between the ownership control and responsibility boundaries of the firm

multinationals and industrial policy are there benefits to the host country from multinational investments does potential value from these investments make active industrial policy worthwhile we answer the first question affirmatively having reviewed economic principles and evidence concerning the effects of projects locating in or not being off shored from a country on the second policy can have a limited effect in influencing location decisions but it is doubtful that it is cost effective implementation faces lack of information risk of capture and in many cases non rigorous processes competition between jurisdictions means that much policy is investment diversion not investment creation there is a case for supra national controls as with eu state aid regulations for policy to be used only for well defined market failures and for better implementation and more rigorous ex ante appraisal and ex post evaluation copyright 2013 oxford university press

consumer willingness to pay to reduce the probability of retail foodborne pathogen contamination abstract the us department of agriculture applies a cost of illness approach to value reductions in morbidity which may understate the projected benefits from proposed food safety improvements by ignoring costs such as pain suffering and worry we use a national survey with a hypothetical food choice experiment to estimate a more comprehensive measure of consumer willingness to pay for food safety improvements our approach differs from previous evaluations of food safety improvements because we 1 provide the respondent with information about the promised change in the probability of pathogen contamination in retail food packages rather than changes in the probability of becoming ill 2 elicit changes in respondents subjective probability of becoming ill and 3 elicit predicted changes in the quantity demanded for products that have enhanced food safety properties we estimate the consumer s choice between a safety enhanced and an existing product the change in subjective probability of contracting foodborne illness associated with the enhanced product and the change in demand for the enhanced product in a manner that recognizes the correlation among unobserved elements the aggregated results suggest benefit estimates that are significantly larger than previous estimates for similar improvements

multidivisional vs metanational governance of the multinational enterprise the effective and efficient management of diversified business firms that supply multiple products and operate in multiple dynamic markets especially large multinational enterprises mnes builds upon a number of specific governance principles these governance principles allow the alignment of environmental characteristics strategy and organization given the rising need to learn from the world doz et al in their influential harvard business school press book entitled from global to metanational have proposed a new set of governance principles described under the metanational umbrella concept this paper revisits the metanational using a comparative institutional perspective here we contrast multidivisional and metanational governance principles a comparative institutional analysis suggests that the metanational s application potential in terms of actually improving the effectiveness and efficiency of mne governance may be subject to more qualification than suggested by doz et al senior mne management must therefore reflect carefully before substituting metanational governance principles for the more conventional multidivisional ones with established contributions to managerial effectiveness and efficiency

ecosystem specific advantages in international digital commerce we consider the applicability to digital platforms of extant international business scholarship the organization of digital platforms has been seen to such an extent as predicated upon the bundling of external resources for collective value creation that their expansion may follow the logic of externalization we further that literature contrasting the governance of network multinationals with that of platform centric ecosystems building on and extending the theory of the ecosystem we propose the concept of ecosystem specific advantages we identify costs and difficulties in the transfer of such advantages to new markets emphasizing in particular the idea of bottlenecks we then propose a framework that can be applied to future research on digital platforms focusing on the users suppliers of complementary products and platform firms we also call for research on the dynamic process of creating transferring and upgrading ecosystem specific advantages

information customization and food choice in this article we employ a hypothetical discrete choice experiment dce to examine how much consumers are willing to pay to use technology to customize their food shopping we conjecture that customized information provision can aid in the composition of a healthier shop our results reveal that consumers are prepared to pay relatively more for individual specific information as opposed to generic nutritional information that is typically provided on food labels in arriving at these results we have examined various model specifications including those that make use of ex post de briefing questions on attribute non attendance and attribute ranking information and those that consider the time taken to complete the survey our main results are robust to the various model specifications we examine

global value chains a review of the multi disciplinary literature this article reviews the rapidly growing domain of global value chain gvc research by analyzing several highly cited conceptual frameworks and then appraising gvc studies published in such disciplines as international business general management supply chain management operations management economic geography regional and development studies and international political economy building on gvc conceptual frameworks we conducted the review based on a comparative institutional perspective that encompasses critical governance issues at the micro gvc and macro levels our results indicate that some of these issues have garnered significantly more scholarly attention than others we suggest several future research topics such as microfoundations of gvc governance gvc mapping learning impact of lead firm ownership and strategy dynamics of gvc arrangements value creation and distribution financialization digitization the impact of renewed protectionism the impact of gvcs on their macro environment and chain level performance management

from m p to ma p multinationality alignment and performance rather than searching for a universal optimal level of multinationality for all firms we argue that firm specific attributes should result in firm specific optimal levels of multinationality specifically we draw upon transaction cost and internalization theory to argue that there will be different optimal levels of multinationality for individual firms and if firms internalize foreign operations to an extent less than or greater than their individual optimal levels transaction costs will increase and performance will decrease to test this idea we use transaction cost models in the context of large us law firms during the time period from 1986 through 2008 to estimate firm specific optimal multinationality next we test relationships between alignment with or deviations from firm specific optimal levels of multinationality and performance ma p consistent with the ma p hypothesis insufficient and excessive levels of multinationality are both negatively related to financial performance in addition excessive multinationality is positively associated with downside performance risk one key implication is that an ma p approach may offer greater theoretical validity and clarity than traditional multinationality and performance m p approaches

addressing preference heterogeneity multiple scales and attribute attendance with a correlated finite mixing model of tap water choice unobserved heterogeneity of error scale in choice models is a recent extension of the better investigated issue of heterogeneity of taste intensity it is achieved by fitting choice panel data with specifications that simultaneously handle inter personal variation in scale and taste the aim is to separate differences in preference intensities across respondents from differences in the degree of consistency in choice behaviour or preference discrimination while accounting for correlation between the two another recent substantive issue in choice data analysis is attribute non attendance we develop a finite mixing model to address simultaneously the three issues above we empirically prove the concept on stated preference data related to tap water attributes in a study for industry regulation

offshoring administrative and technical work new fields for understanding the global enterprise in this paper we introduce the journal of international business studies special issue on offshoring administrative and technical services ats in doing so we have attempted to locate the topic within the international business research tradition as well as suggest challenges and opportunities that the phenomenon offers to theoretical and empirical research in the field we examine the interplay of costs knowledge and innovation in the evolution of ats offshoring from modest beginnings to its current stature as an accepted business practice we suggest that understanding the continuing evolution of ats offshoring requires researchers to take into account not only the business imperative of cost saving but also a more complex set of underlying factors and potential outcomes we argue that the rapid growth of ats offshoring has brought about an accumulation of resources including financial flows knowledge infrastructure and human capital to create new platforms for knowledge creation and innovation low costs may characterize the initial conditions for offshoring but they also provide the basis for up market moves as firms increasingly pursue innovation based strategies we introduce the papers in the special issue as integral elements in our discussion contributing new ideas that stimulated our thinking and hopefully will do the same for others seeking to understand this emerging area of globalization and international managerial practice journal of international business studies 2009 40 887 900 doi 10 1057 jibs 2009 22

equilibrium political budget cycles political business cycle theories generally rely on nominal rigidities and voter myopia this paper offers an equilibrium theory that preserves some basic insights from earlier models though with significant refinements the political budget cycle emphasized here is in fiscal policy rather than output and inflation it arises via a multidimensional signal process one can consider the welfare implications of proposals to mitigate the cycle and the effects of altering the electoral structure copyright 1990 by american economic association

taxes organizational form and the deadweight loss of the corporate income tax abstract by changing the relative gain to incorporation corporate taxation can play an important role in a firm s choice of organizational form general equilibrium models have shown that substantial shifting of organizational form in response to tax rates implies a large deadweight loss of taxation this paper estimates the impact of taxes on organizational form using data from 1900 1939 the results indicate that the effect of taxes is significant but small a corporate rate increase of 0 10 raises the non corporate share of capital 0 002 0 03 the implied deadweight loss of the corporate income tax is around 5 10 of revenue

international acquisition success social community and dominant logic dimensions international acquisitions intended to achieve knowledge transfers and improvements of innovation capacity can only be successful if the acquirer devotes balanced attention to a building a unified social community and b achieving requisite commonality in dominant logic the balance between these two dimensions of success depends on the activity class considered in some activity classes imposing the acquiring firm s dominant logic will be dysfunctional and therefore the post acquisition managerial focus may need to shift towards social community building bresman birkinshaw and nobel s 1999 acclaimed jibs paper should be commended for identifying the social community dimension as a critical driver of international acquisition success

visual attention and attribute attendance in multi attribute choice experiments summary decision strategies in multi attribute choice experiments are investigated using eye tracking the visual attention towards and attendance of attributes is examined stated attendance is found to diverge substantively from visual attendance of attributes however stated and visual attendance are shown to be informative non overlapping sources of information about respondent utility functions when incorporated into model estimation eye tracking also reveals systematic nonattendance of attributes only by a minority of respondents most respondents visually attend most attributes most of the time we find no compelling evidence that the level of attention is related to respondent certainty or that higher or lower value attributes receive more or less attention copyright 2014 john wiley sons ltd

taxing the multinational enterprise on the forced redesign of global value chains and other inefficiencies the taxation of the multinational enterprise mne has been a continuing concern for policymakers we argue that the changing nature of the mobile mne e g its improved ability to fine slice the value chain and disperse it geographically makes it increasingly important to rethink current tax policies first there should be more focus on the inefficiencies that arise when taxation leads to the inefficient location of mne activities thus mnes may shift activities to low tax jurisdictions that offer lucrative pecuniary and non pecuniary incentives but do not enable their investments to maximize their contribution to global value creation second international tax regimes should ensure that mnes pay for their consumption of local public goods and public finance scholars have long known that the taxation based distortions are minimized when the tax objects are immobile however the bulk of current tax policies are aimed at corporate profits that are both poor proxies for the consumption of local public goods as well as extremely mobile integrating theory from international business public finance and economic geography our analysis demonstrates that moving the incidence of taxation from corporate profits to dividends and consumption would unambiguously improve both wealth creation and efficiency

will social welfare expenditures survive tax competition increasing economic openness creates demands for social welfare programmes designed to cushion the impact of economic changes but may also encourage governments to reduce tax rates to attract mobile economic resources competitive tax reductions could then prevent governments from being able to finance significant welfare spending alternatively economic globalization might improve the ability of governments to afford social welfare programmes and several considerations point in this direction first taxes on internationally mobile activity represent only small fractions of total revenue collections personal income taxes value added taxes and social insurance contributions finance most social welfare spending second international competition need not reduce taxes and indeed over the past 25 years corporate tax collections have remained high as fractions of gdp and total taxes third the vitality of a country s economy largely determines its level of social spending to the extent that incomes rise as a result greater economic openness should strengthen provision of social welfare copyright 2006 oxford university press

global platforms and ecosystems implications for international business theories the emergence of digital platforms and ecosystems dpe as a venue for value creation and capture for multinational enterprises holds considerable implications for the theory and practice of international business in this paper we articulate these implications by considering the dual perspectives of cross border platforms and ecosystems as a venue for multifaceted innovation and as multisided marketplace and focusing on three overarching themes at the intersection of dpes and international business that is dpes as affording new ways of internationalization as facilitating new ways of building knowledge and relationships and as enabling new ways of creating and delivering value to global customers we explain specific dpe related concepts and constructs that underlie these themes and discuss how they could be incorporated into existing ib theories in ways that would enhance their richness and continued relevance as well as their ability to better predict a multitude of emerging ib phenomena

shifting mne taxation from national to global profits a radical reform long overdue the current separate accounting taxation of corporations gives governments the right to tax the national incomes of firms operating within their borders however multinational and increasingly digital business models beg the question what is national taxable income we argue that a radical rethink of the corporate taxation moving away from a separate taxation of national corporate income to a taxation of global corporate income allocated via formula apportionment is long overdue global corporate income as a basis for taxation is supported both by recent theoretical developments and corroborating empirical evidence with the eu and emerging economies including china already considering its adoption nor is it new as we relate formula apportionment of global corporate income was used a century ago before commercial and political interests promoted separate accounting thereby providing both precedent and experience to inform its re adoption

choosing between internet and mail survey modes for choice experiment surveys considering non market goods in a choice experiment setup considering a non market good this paper adds to the literature on survey mode effects by providing evidence that internet surveys can be a viable alternative to traditional mail surveys when gathering feedback from a sample of respondents the case study concerns preferences for protecting different types of landscape from road encroachment when building new motorways in denmark two samples of respondents are surveyed one by internet and one by mail the performances of the two samples are compared over six different criteria response rates protest responses demographics preferences and wtp estimation precision and finally certainty in choice differences are observed for some of these criteria implying that analysts should be aware that choosing internet over mail could be accompanied by a survey mode effect however the observed differences do not translate into significant differences in the unconditional wtp estimates in most applied economic valuation studies of non market goods the main objective is in fact estimation of wtp hence in the present case the identified survey mode effects do not severely invalidate the applicability and continued use of the internet as a suitable means of collecting data for choice experiment economic valuation of non market goods

model selection for the mixed logit with bayesian estimation in this paper the mixed logit ml using bayesian methods was employed to examine willingness to pay wtp to consume bread produced with reduced levels of pesticides so as to ameliorate environmental quality from data generated by a choice experiment model comparison used the marginal likelihood which is preferable for bayesian model comparison and testing models containing constant and random parameters for a number of distributions were considered along with models in preference space and wtp space as well as those allowing for misreporting we found strong support for the ml estimated in wtp space little support for fixing the price coefficient a common practice advocated and adopted in the environmental economics literature and weak evidence for misreporting

an evolutionary approach to understanding international business activity the co evolution of mnes and the institutional environment this paper examines the co evolution of mne activities and institutions external and internal to the firm we develop a theoretical framework for this analysis that draws on the more recent writings of douglass north on institutions as a response to complex forms of uncertainty associated with the rise in global economic interconnectedness and of richard nelson on the co evolution of technology and institutions we link historical changes in the character of mne activities to changes in the institutional environment and highlight the scope for firm level creativity and institutional entrepreneurship that may lead to co evolution with the environment we argue that the main drivers for institutional entrepreneurship are now found in the increasing autonomy of mne subsidiaries thus mne agency derives from more decentralized forms of experimentation in international corporate networks which competence creating nodes of new initiatives can co evolve with local institutions unlike most other streams of related literature our approach connects patterns of institutional change in wider business systems with more micro processes of variety generation and experimentation within and across individual firms this form of co evolutionary analysis is increasingly important to understanding the interrelationships between mne activities and public policy

the globalisation of technology what remains of the product cycle model this paper reexamines two hypotheses associated with earlier versions of the product cycle model the first hypothesis that innovations are almost always located in the home country of the parent company is rejected on the basis of evidence drawn from one hundred years of u s patent office data the second hypothesis that the international dispersion of activity is led by technology leaders is historically valid however over the last twenty years technology leaders have been ahead instead in the globalization of technology that is in developing internal international networks to exploit the locationally differentiated potential of foreign centers of excellence c 1995 academic press inc copyright 1995 by oxford university press

the role of duration in multinational investment strategies the location of investment by multinational enterprises has been investigated from many perspectives it has been suggested that investment may be motivated by experience of a particular location represented by tenure of operations in contrast portfolio considerations suggest that increased investment in a given location increases risk exposure in this paper the question of whether a multinational with a longer duration of operations at a particular location is more likely to invest further is addressed after taking portfolio risk into account a conceptual model of multinational investment strategy is developed and empirically tested using data from a survey of multinational enterprises operating in the west midlands region of the united kingdom two innovative non parametric tests for duration dependence are applied after normalising for portfolio considerations it is found that multinational investment is significantly duration dependent i e firms with a longer tenure of operations are significantly more likely to invest in any given period this finding has important implications for the strategy of inward investment agencies in particular an investment agency is short sighted if it seeks to attract new investors if that is at the expense of neglecting multinationals with current operations in its jurisdiction

extending the theory of the multinational enterprise internalization and strategic management perspectives this paper assesses the continued relevance of buckley and casson s 1976 book on the future of the multinational enterprise mne against a background of increasing criticism of transaction cost related scholarly work we demonstrate that the schism that can currently be observed in the field between international business and international management is misguided as the transaction cost internalization school may offer useful insights to both management scholars and managers for this to occur however it is necessary first to extend the empirical scope of transaction cost based reasoning to include the functioning of differentiated network mnes the paper suggests that buckley and casson s book still represents a beacon of clarity and a superb starting point for the study of the mne even if the complexity of this governance structure has grown far beyond what any international business scholar or even international management scholar could have predicted 25 years ago

international corporate diversification market valuation and size adjusted evidence errunza and senbet es 7 analyze the effects of international operations on the market value of the firm both at theoretical and empirical levels the theoretical model which is largely heuristic exploits the costly supply adjustment of multinational firms mncs in providing international portfolio diversification services to investors who face differential cost barriers to direct holdings of assets across national boundaries mncs compete as financial intermediaries to undo the barriers so that in equilibrium profits are driven out mncs and pure domestic firms sell at an equivalent risk adjusted return however costly financial intermediation and the associated relative efficiency leads to a positive valuation effect for mncs relative to purely domestic firms further the equilibrium analysis implies that demand side investor barriers to international capital flows alone are inconsequential to the valuation of mncs in their pure financial role but that the interaction with the supply side costs are necessary to produce a valuation effect at the corporate level es subject the theory to an empirical analysis in a value based approach by employing a variant of tobin s 17 qratio the analysis controlling for industrial market power suggests that the relationship between the excess valuation and the degree of international involvement doi has magnified over periods characterized by severe u s government controls vis a vis the more recent periods in this paper we formalize the theoretical argument by viewing indirect portfolio diversification by mncs as a means of completing the international capital market we employ a paradigm in the unanimity literature and formally characterize the equilibrium in which there is a rationale for mnc financial intermediation we then perform an expanded empirical study by employing generalized least squares and maximum likelihood procedures since the positive relationship between excess valuation and doi as suggested in es 7 might be attributed to the so called small firm or size and the p e effects the test methodology controls for such effects also the traditional literature has relied upon foreign sales percentage as a proxy for doi in view of the well recognized limitations of this proxy we employ four different measures of international

the entrepreneurial m form strategic integration in global media firms many researchers believe that bounded rationality prevents ceos in large complex multidivisional m form corporations from personally formulating division level strategies instead ceos are seen as guiding a bottom up process whereby division managers propose strategies for review and approval by the corporate office contrary to this view we argue that ceos in global media firms frequently drive strategy in a top down manner especially when their firms seek to expand by integrating the activities of two or more existing divisions we refer to such firms as entrepreneurial m forms and maintain that their reliance on an activist ceo offers benefits 1 in turbulent environments when the use of slow bottom up planning processes risks forfeiting first mover advantages and 2 when expansion entails major capital commitments and division managers may be reluctant to accept the career risks associated with sponsorship of bet the company projects

the structural reshaping of globalization implications for strategic sectors profiting from innovation and the multinational enterprise the rapid reshaping of the global economic order requires fundamental shifts in international business scholarship and management practice new forms of protectionist policies new types of internationalization motives and new tools of techno nationalism may lead to what we call bifurcated governance at the macro level and value chain decoupling at the micro level as a result innovation networks will require novel reconfigurations we examine the emerging constraints on multinational enterprises imposed by a bifurcated world order we also discuss how the dynamic capabilities framework can guide scholars and managers alike to achieve new forms of evolutionary fitness

how do respondents process stated choice experiments attribute consideration under varying information load the popularity of stated choice sc experiments has produced many design strategies in which researchers use increasingly more complex choice settings to study choice behaviour when the amount of information to assess increases we wonder how an individual handles such information in making a choice defining the amount of information as the number of attributes associated with each choice set we investigate how this information is processed as we vary its complexity four ordered heterogeneous logit models are developed each for an sc design based on a fixed number of attributes in which the dependent variable defines the number of attributes that are ignored we find that the degree to which individuals ignore attributes is influenced by the dimensionality of the sc experiment the deviation of attribute levels from an experienced reference alternative the use of adding up attributes where feasible the number of choice sets evaluated and the personal income of the respondent the empirical evidence supports the view that individuals appear to adopt a range of coping strategies that are consistent with how they process information in real markets and that aligning choice complexity with the amount of information to process is potentially misleading relevancy is what matters copyright 2006 john wiley sons ltd

mindless eating and healthy heuristics for the irrational food choice decisions are not the same as intake volume decisions the former determine what we eat soup or salad the latter determine how much we eat half of the bowl or all of it large amounts of money time and intelligence have been invested in understanding the physiological mechanisms that influence food choice james o hill forthcoming much less has been invested in understanding how and why our environment influences food consumption volume yet environmental factors such as package size plate shape lighting variety or the presence of others affect our food consumption volume far more than we realize wansink 2006 whereas people can acknowledge that environmental factors influence others they wrongly believe they are unaffected perhaps they are influenced at a basic level of which they are not aware a better understanding of these drivers of consumption volume will have immediate implications for research policy and personal interventions there are three objectives of this paper 1 explain why environmental factors may unknowingly influence food consumption 2 identify resulting myths that may lead to is specified models or misguided policy recommendations and 3 offer clear direction for future research policy and personal dietary efforts

corporate venture capitalists autonomy obstacles and performance abstract this report presents the results of a formal study of the corporate venture capital community in the united states and is based upon responses to a questionnaire completed by 52 corporate venture capitalists cvcs the central question addressed in this study involves which approach to corporate venture capital is most likely to produce successful results this question was addressed via cluster analysis which segregated the cvc community into two broad classes pilots which are marked by substantial organizational independence and copilots which are highly dependent on corporate management with respect to venture funding and decision authority pilots achieve equal or higher levels of performance and are plagued by far fewer obstacles than their highly dependent counterparts the results suggest the following 1 the corporate venture fund should be established as an independent entity and should have access to a committed separate pool of funds this will enable cvcs to respond aggressively to and manage investment opportunities with minimal corporate interference such an independent entity will defuse justifiable concerns on the part of entrepreneurs related to such interference 2 the fund should be managed by skilled venture professionals who may be drawn from the independent venture community or the small but growing pool of experienced cvcs corporate executives may comprise a part of the management team 3 if the corporate venture fund hopes to attract top quality managers it must be prepared to offer compensation and authority commensurate with their skill level in short corporate venture capitalists should be treated like independent venture capitalists by organizing the fund as an independent entity the political problem associated with establishing compensation levels above those of the corporation can be minimized 4 all cvcs should establish a primary focus on the realization of financial objectives i e return on investment strategic benefit objectives are not necessarily ill advised so long as they do not interfere with sound financial decision making when they do the corporate venture capital process is likely to become less effective for instance a corporate venture fund should only confine itself to investing in a few industries if there are sufficient high grade investment opportunities within those industries to ensure adequate deal flow the venture fund should not be pressured investments that appear exciting from a corporate perspective for technological or marketing reasons but are not financially attractive may well drain resources rather than produce opportunities 5 venture proposals failing on financial criteria might be referred to other parts of the corporation with the purpose of exploring an alternate relationship e g a development contract or joint venture if this is appealing to the corporation a mechanism such as a corporate liaison or reporting system might be established to facilitate the flow of information 6 a corporation should be willing to make a complete commitment of talent and capital if it establishes its own corporate venture fund the corporation should then be willing to accept a limited role if the corporation is unable to accept a limited role with respect to its own fund it may be best for it to participate as an investor in a traditional fund where such limitations will be enforced however this latter approach may significantly dilute or eliminate potential for strategic benefits

income shifting investment and tax competition theory and evidence from provincial taxation in canada abstract we study corporate income taxation when firms operating in multiple jurisdictions can shift income using tax planning strategies because income of corporate groups is not consolidated for tax purposes in canada firms may use financial techniques such as lending among affiliates to reduce subnational corporate taxes a simple theoretical model shows how income shifting affects real investment government revenues and tax base elasticities depending on whether firms must allocate income to provinces or not we then analyze data from administrative tax records to compare the behavior of corporate subsidiaries that may engage in income shifting to comparable firms that must use the statutory allocation formula to determine their taxable income in each province the evidence suggests that income shifting has pronounced effects on provincial tax bases according to our preferred estimate the elasticity of taxable income with respect to tax rates for income shifting firms is 4 9 compared with 2 3 for other comparable firms

exploring scale effects of best worst rank ordered choice data to estimate benefits of tourism in alpine grazing commons in many environmental valuation applications standard sample sizes for choice modelling surveys are impractical to achieve one can improve data quality using more in depth surveys administered to fewer respondents we report on a study using high quality rank ordered data elicited with the best worst approach the resulting exploded logit choice model estimated on 64 responses per person was used to study the willingness to pay for external benefits by visitors for policies which maintain the cultural heritage of alpine grazing commons we find evidence supporting this approach and reasonable estimates of mean wtp which appear theoretically valid and policy informative

the fable of fisher body abstract general motors s gm s acquisition of fisher body is the classic example of market failure in the literature on contracts and the theory of the firm according to the standard account in 1926 gm merged vertically with fisher body a maker of auto bodies because of concerns over transaction specific investment and contractual holdup that account exhibits errors of historical fact and interpretation general motors acquired a 60 percent interest in fisher body in 1919 moreover the contractual arrangements and working relationship prior to the 1926 merger exhibited trust rather than opportunism fisher body s production technology did not exhibit asset specificity the merger reflected economic considerations specific to that time not some immutable market failure we demonstrate that vertical integration was directed at improving coordination of production and inventories assuring gm of adequate supplies of auto bodies and providing gm with access to the executive talents of the fisher bro

optimal incentive contracts with multiple agents abstract a setting in which a single principal contracts with two agents who possess perfect private information about their own productivity is considered with correlated productivities each agent s private information also provides a signal about the other agent s productivity in contrast to the setting in which there is only one agent it is shown that such private information may be of no value to the agents it is only if the agents are risk averse that their private information may allow them to command rents moreover when the agents are constrained only to reveal their private information truthfully as a nash equilibrium the pareto optimal incentive scheme may induce the agents to adopt strategies other than truth telling this leads to the consideration of truth telling equilibria that are not pareto dominated in the subgame played by the agents among all such equilibria the one preferred by the principal restricts one agent to tell the truth as a dominant strategy and the other as a nash response to truth

traffic lights and food choice a choice experiment examining the relationship between nutritional food labels and price in this paper we investigate how consumers respond to the uk nutritional food label traffic light system tls employing a choice experiment ce we find that consumers appear to behave in a manner consistent with our expectations regarding the impact of the tls we identify a strong preference on the part of respondents to avoid a basket of goods containing a mix of foods with any red lights in addition we find that consumers have a hierarchy of importance in terms of perception of the various nutrients examined and there are clear behavioural differences associated with particular socio economic characteristics confirming early research on the use of nutrition labels overall our results indicate significant heterogeneity in the attitudes and responses of consumers to the tls nutritional food labels within and across socio economic strata

optimal taxation and optimal tax systems the theory of optimal taxation has for the pas two decades been the reigning normative approach of taxation this paper argues that in its current state optimal tax theory is incomplete as a guide to action concerning many critical issues in tax policy it is incomplete because it has not yet come to terms with taxation as a system of coercively collecting revenues from individuals who will tend to resist the coercive nature of collection taxes implies that the resource cost of implementing a tax system have been and will continue to be a critical determinant of appropriate tax policy the paper first presents the three cornerstone propositions of optimal tax theory and then it discusses the influence of these propositions on recent tax policy developments it concludes by sketching an alternative to optimal taxation called the theory of optimal tax systems which embraces the insights of optimal taxation but also considers the technology of raising taxes and the constraints placed upon tax policy by that technology the optimal tax systems perspective is shown to shed light on the choice of tax instruments the problem of tax evasion and the appropriate tax treatment of capital income this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a control function approach to endogeneity in consumer choice models abstract endogeneity arises for numerous reasons in models of consumer choice it leads to inconsistency with standard estimation methods that maintain independence between the model s error and the included variables the authors describe a control function approach for handling endogeneity in choice models observed variables and economic theory are used to derive controls for the dependence between the endogenous variable and the demand error the theory points to the relationships that contain information on the unobserved demand factor such as the pricing equation and the advertising equation the authors approach is an alternative to berry levinsohn and pakes s 1995 product market controls for unobserved quality the authors apply both methods to examine households choices among television options including basic and premium cable packages in which unobserved attributes such as quality of programming are expected to be correlated with price without correcting for endogeneity aggregate d

introduction to the symposium multinationals the janus face of globalization panning the globe its af liates andstrategic partnerships linking coun tries in complex webs of alliances themultinational enterprise mne is theembodiment of globalization and itsprincipal agent nation states have con tributed towards making the mne thekey agent of globalization through pro moting technological innovation reduc ing tariff and non tariff barriers and lib eralizing their domestic nancial sys tems multinationals have been theprime movers behind globalization tak ing advantage of the increased opennessof domestic economies to integrate theiractivities across national markets and so cieties given their mobility and visibility itis not surprising that mnes have becomea lightning rod for groups concernedabout the various costs of globalization social cultural political and perhapsmost importantly the economic costs although international business ib scholars and policymakers emphasizethe bene ts of globalization and cooper ative relations with mnes the publicand non governmental organizationshave ignored these views and focused onthe dark side of mne state relations with the growing backlash against glob alization and mnes more research onthe janus face of globalization is neededif the pro mne pro globalization viewsof most ib scholars are to prevail in pub lic policy debates this research symposium served as aninvitation to international businessscholars to further explore the janus faceof globalization through organizing thissymposium we have come to appreciatethat when scholars look at problemsidenti ed with globalization s dark side they also often contribute to our under standing of the bright side the potentialfor globalization to bring with it wide spread bene ts for all we submit that asscholars we can learn more when we tryto ferret out the causal relationships be tween globalization the mne the state

the food sector and economic growth abstract this paper analyses the contribution of the food sector disaggregated into raw and processed sectors to economic growth using the input output method and data from greece the interdependence between food and non food sectors is examined it is found that the food sector substantially influences economic output income and employment the processed food sector generates output for the non food sector whereas the non food sector provides inputs for the food sector it is concluded that policies that permit balanced sectoral growth can benefit both the food and non food sectors and lead to stable economic growth in the long run

managerial governance adaptation in the multinational enterprise in honour of mira wilkins we propose an analytical business history approach informed by new internalisation theory to study managerial governance adaptation in the multinational enterprise mne we shed new light on the timing and the scale of managerial governance adaptation these two issues have remained largely unaddressed in mainstream international business theory we uncover the importance of delayed larger scale governance adaptation as a response to cumulative localised commitment failures we illustrate our new perspective on managerial governance adaptation by providing a short retrospective of wilkins and hill s american business abroad ford on six continents cambridge university press cambridge 1964 classic historical account of ford motor company s expansion across six continents between 1903 and 1963 our brief retrospective highlights the value of in depth historical analysis informed by umbrella behavioural assumptions such as those adopted in new internalisation theory based research to gain improved understanding of international strategy and governance trajectories of large mnes

microfoundations in international management research the case of knowledge sharing in multinational corporations microfoundations have become an important theme in recent macro management research however the international management im field is an exception to this we document the lack of attention on microfoundations in im research by focusing on knowledge sharing a key im research field which we investigate by means of a keyword based literature study of the leading im and general management journals we discuss possible reasons why microfoundations have so far met with less resonance in im research we point to the training and background of im scholars as possible reasons we also highlight the significance that im scholars place on context and structure in explanation these may be seen as contrary to a microfoundations perspective a view that we show is incorrect we end by identifying several microfoundational issues in im research calling for a sustained effort with respect to theory heuristics and empirics

preferential trade agreements and tax competition for foreign direct investment abstract this paper examines how free trade agreements and customs unions affect the location of foreign direct investment fdi and social welfare taking into account that governments may adjust taxes and external tariffs to compete for fdi conditions are identified under which a free trade agreement leads to fdi and under which this improves welfare the welfare effect is shown to depend on the relative size of efficiency gains in production and government revenue losses due to tax competition a free trade agreement may fail to induce welfare improving fdi creating a role for a customs union

the theoretical evolution and use of the uppsala model of internationalization in the international business ecosystem the uppsala model typically viewed as an internationalization process model an internationalization stages model or a sequential internationalization model has served as a theoretical underpinning in the international business literature since johanson and vahlne s j int bus stud 8 1 23 32 1977 article incorporated thoughts by researchers at uppsala university in one all encompassing model major updates to the model were published in 2009 and 2017 by the original authors our work examines what has now become the time tested and decade award winning 2009 version of the uppsala model relative to the original model in 1977 we also provide an outlook for international business research within the scope of the 2017 version of the model this evaluation and dive across times into the nuances of the uppsala model capture aspects of the model s theoretical and empirical power as well as its limitations within today s international business ecosystem the international business ecosystem is defined as the organisms of the business world including stakeholders organizations and countries involved in exchanges production business functions and cross border trade through both marketplace competition and cooperation in the process we push the theoretical boundaries of the model and provide a unique connection to marketing thought

escape from the usa government debt to gdp ratio country tax competitiveness and us oecd cross border m as statutory tax rates of a country do not reflect a country s true tax competitiveness we propose and show that government debt to gdp ratio govdebt of a country is a better proxy for its tax competitiveness using a comprehensive sample of 1 884 completed cross border acquisition transactions from the u s to other oecd countries we document that the u s target country govdebt difference is significantly and positively related to both deal announcement return and post deal tax saving of the acquirer the govdebt difference is also significantly and positively related to u s target country deal flow the findings remain robust when we control for the potential endogeneity of govdebt difference our findings strongly suggest that tax avoidance is an important driver of u s oecd cross border deal flow and it increases shareholder wealth for u s acquirers

the rise of the digital economy rethinking the taxation of multinational enterprises the international tax regime in relation to multinational enterprises mnes is ineffective and a rethink is required we illustrate that the tax avoidance motive of mnes can incentivize managers to locate profits in low tax jurisdictions without affecting the locations of their real operations we also argue that proposals to tax shareholders and consumers rather than corporate profits face significant theoretical and practical obstacles finally we extend a recently proposed model to tax mnes using a sales based allocation of consolidated worldwide profits this aims to prevent mnes shifting profits to low tax jurisdictions and reduces incentives for tax competition between countries

knowledge connectivity an agenda for innovation research in international business the innovation driven multinational enterprise mne has dominated international business ib research for several decades now beginning with the award winning research of dunning there have been calls for ib researchers to rediscover the importance of locations recent work has emphasized that firms and locations co evolve with one another as knowledge is transferred and leveraged across space integrating insights from ib and economic geography we propose a research agenda for ib scholarship on spatially dispersed yet connected innovation processes this agenda is premised on the current reality of global value chains in which mobile mnes people and immobile locations factors interact the research perspective suggested recognizes that locations are host to increasingly fine sliced activities whose nature and composition are continuously changed by mne driven innovation processes as today s specialized activities become tomorrow s standardized ones the shifting distribution of global value creation depends on the pattern of international knowledge connectivity

multinational enterprise internal governance and industrial organization abstractthe following sections are included monopoly vs efficiency interpretations of the multinational enterprisehost country controlsdynamic considerationsconclusionreferences this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the end of the opportunism vs trust debate bounded reliability as a new envelope concept in research on mne governance modern transaction cost economics tce thinking has developed into a key intellectual foundation of international business ib research but the williamsonian version has faced substantial criticism for adopting the behavioral assumption of opportunism in this paper we assess both the opportunism concept and existing alternatives such as trust within the context of ib research especially work on multinational enterprise mne governance case analyses of nine global mnes illustrate an alternative to the opportunism assumption that captures more fully the mechanisms underlying failed commitments inside the mne as a substitute for the often criticized assumption of opportunism we propose the envelope concept of bounded reliability brel an assumption that represents more accurately and more completely the reasons for failed commitments without invalidating the other critical assumption in conventional tce and internalization theory thinking namely the widely accepted envelope concept of bounded rationality brat bounded reliability as an envelope concept includes two main components within the context of global mne management opportunism as intentional deceit and benevolent preference reversal the implications for ib research of adopting the bounded reliability concept are far reaching as this concept may increase the legitimacy of comparative institutional analysis in the social sciences

monitoring choice task attribute attendance in nonmarket valuation of multiple park management services does it matter land management in alpine parks provides multifunctional services to separate groups of users choice experiments can be used to derive estimates of value for different management attri butes however little research has been conducted on how frequently respondents ignore attributes used to describe policy management scenarios we fill this gap using an approach that identifies and compares both serial and choice task attribute nonattendance addressing five different visitor types our results indicate that accounting for choice task nonatten dance significantly improves model fit and yield estimates of marginal willingness to pay with a more plausible pattern of signs and greater efficiency jel q24 q51 i introduction the effects of park management policies on outdoor recreation are increasingly coming under public scrutiny alpine park land is among the most valuable land in terms of outdoor recreation park manage ment decisions are often controversial be cause of differences between objectives pursued by conservationists and the tourist industry parkland management agencies find it increasingly difficult to fund all the services needed to facilitate the ever broad ening variety of outdoor recreation activi ties this is further exacerbated by the increasing expectations for high quality recreational experiences by a population of recreationists with a heightened sensitivity to environmental and conservation issues such a situation widens the scope for multiattribute nonmarket valuation meth ods especially for those methods capable of capturing and modeling the preferences of heterogeneous visitors who seek to pursue a variety of activities in the land under study our research reports the results of a study designed to address attribute nonattendance henceforth abbreviated as an a which despite being quite a common decision heuristic has only recently begun to be explored by analysts with this decision heuristic respondents ignore some of the described attributes in their evaluation of alternatives within a given choice task they hence act as if a zero weight were assigned to the ignored attributes in the utility of the respective alternatives we study this issue by using a well known statistical model of discrete choice the multinomial logit mnl model this random utility model is often used for the purpose of multi attribute nonmarket valuation but the effects of accounting for an a are still rela tively unexplored information on an a is commonly collected by questioning each respondent at the end of the sequence of choice tasks respondents are asked to list those attributes that they feel they have

zoom in zoom out geographic scale and multinational activity ib scholars have long studied the multinational enterprise mne and now recognize that its ability to capture value stems from its control of bottleneck assets in contrast economic geographers and regional scientists have largely focused their attention on the locations within which economic and business systems operate in this article we draw on both these literatures we emphasize that the mne s integration of upstream and downstream strategic considerations to maximize its control of bottleneck assets implies an optimal geographic footprint this optimal footprint is typically asymmetric with a spatial scale that varies dramatically across the different activities of the value chain upstream innovation processes are likely to be based on highly local considerations like the availability of specialized resources and collocation advantages in contrast downstream sales and marketing processes are likely to driven by imperatives of high volume and global reach further in the current fast clockspeed business environment the location and nature of bottleneck assets are likely to change rapidly and unpredictably making organizational flexibility a crucial mne capability

what happened to the transnational the emergence of the neo global corporation bartlett and ghoshal s transnational solution for managing the mnc remains popular among scholars and practitioners alike however our in depth qualitative study of unilever an exemplary case of a transnational found that in the period 2000 2012 the company evolved into a very different organizational form with a distinct set of characteristics we call this the neo global corporation in explaining how and why this transformation occurred we turn to organizational evolutionary theory and use our case to generate a multi cycle process model of mnc evolution given the dynamism of the mnc and its environments we anticipate that the neo global will also eventually transform and call for more organization level case studies of mncs in future international business research

search and satisficing many everyday decisions are made without full examination of all available options and as a result the best available option may be missed we develop a search theoretic choice experiment to study the impact of incomplete consideration on the quality of choices we find that many decisions can be understood using the satisficing model of herbert simon 1955 most subjects search sequentially stopping when a satisficing level of reservation utility is realized we find that reservation utilities and search order respond systematically to changes in the decision making environment jel d03 d12 d83