efficiency in the factoring industry the efficiency and productivity in the italian factoring industry between 1993 and 1997 is investigated using dea the factoring industry is an important part of many financial systems and it has established itself as a major source of finance and credit management for a growing number of companies however as far as the authors are aware no studies have applied frontier methodologies to examine the efficiency and productivity of this industry this paper focuses on the italian market the second largest in the world after the uk the results suggest that there are substantial cost savings to be had in the italian factoring industry the mean cost inefficiency in the italian factoring industry over the period 1993 1997 ranged between 14 and 22 these inefficiencies are mainly generated by allocative rather than technical inefficiencies scale and technical inefficiencies seem to be similar in magnitude and the supposed importance of the latter typically found in the banking efficiency literature are n

immiserizing growth with semi public goods under consistent conjectures abstract population growth allows society to afford more public goods and in this respect improves per capita welfare possibilities however this note shows that with private provision of public goods under consistent conjectures population growth also exacerbates free riding behavior this ultimately reduces public good provision when it should be increased and population growth proves to be immiserizing this striking result constrasts with the nash model where the improved welfare possibilities are at least partially exploited

movers and shakers chaos makers in tourism development abstract like most of their counterparts in other social sciences tourism researchers have traditionally focused on aspects of tourism phenomena that exhibit order linearity and equilibrium while eschewing situations where disorder non linearity and disequilibrium are more apparent although constructs such as the destination life cycle model demonstrate the heuristic value of this approach it results in aspects of tourism development that are intrinsically chaotic being overlooked thus for instance the fundamental role of entrepreneurs in destination development has received scant attention largely because their behaviour is not readily understood in terms of the conventional analytical framework this paper argues that the chaos complexity perspective provides a potentially useful alternative framework for providing insights into the underlying dynamics of tourism development and a case study involving the examination of entrepreneurial activity on the gold coast in australia is used for illustrative purposes in this context chaos is presented as essentially a creative process and entrepreneurs play a primary role both as chaos makers and as initiators of adaptive responses to chaos induced by external events

a case for comparative entrepreneurship assessing the relevance of culture as international entrepreneurship gains momentum as a significant and relevant field of research scholars need to address methodological issues that can facilitate the triangulation of research results in this paper we examine the relationship between culture and four personality characteristics commonly associated with entrepreneurial motivation by demonstrating systematic variation in entrepreneurial characteristics across cultures we raise important questions about the boundaries of international entrepreneurship research and the challenges of transcending them

estimating a wage curve for britain 1973 90 following a w phillips s 1958 original work on the united kingdom applied research on unemployment and wages has been dominated by the analysis of highly aggregated time series data sets however it has proved difficult with such methods to uncover statistically reliable models this paper adopts a different approach it uses macroeconomic data on 175 000 british workers from 1973 to 1990 to provide evidence for the existence of a negatively sloped relationship linking the level of pay to the local rate of unemployment the paper casts doubt on standard ideas in macroeconomics regional economics and labor economics copyright 1994 by royal economic society

travel advice or trade embargo the impacts and implications of official travel advice abstract the purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the provision of official travel advice gives rise to the opportunity for tourism to be used as a political bargaining tool based on a case study of the gambia it suggests that the detail and accuracy of travel advice issued by government agencies may be influenced by broader political objectives and considers the implications of this for tourists and the tourism industry it also questions the role of governments as impartial providers of travel advice

demographic change tourism expenditure and life cycle behaviour abstract the paper explores how demographic changes in human populations may impact on tourism decision making of households over their life cycle by means of hurdle models the study focuses respectively on the decision to travel domestically or abroad and investigates if statistically significant differences exist as to the impact of age and cohort on the decision to travel and tourism expenditure using a vast dataset on italian household expenditures over the period 1997 2007 the empirical results show that demographic aspects do have a strong effect on the tourism behaviour of families and that cohort and age effects act differently on the decision of households to make a trip and on how much they spend on tourism age has a negative effect on the desire to travel but a positive effect on tourism expenditure on the other hand older cohorts are inclined to travel but they have a low propensity to spend on tourism relevant differences in income elasticity along the life cycle of households have also been found finally age and cohort aspects have a different effect on the decision as to whether to travel nationally or internationally

performance factors of small tourism ventures the interface of tourism entrepreneurship and the environment abstract performance factors of small israeli tourism ventures were examined using an integrated model that combines four theoretical approaches each focusing on a different central facet environmental milieu institutional support entrepreneurial human capital and the venture s bundle of services the current research developed an operational instrument for assessing environmental attractiveness components of tourism ventures and their relationship to performance a factor analysis based on this instrument revealed three environmental factors tourist related infrastructure options for excursions and scenery including climate an attractive environment contributed to higher revenues in tourism ventures however it did not assure profitability the results indicate the dual nature of the impact of institutional support upon the tourism venture s performance regardless of the size and age of ventures those obtaining the advisory type of assistance from the governmental tourism incubator performed less well than those ventures that did not obtain such support by contrast those tourism ventures that were financially supported by external sources performed better than those that were not financially supported the explanation for this curious and seemingly contradictory finding may lie in the different criteria for receiving financial and advisory assistance success in persuading external sources to provide financial support would seem to be evidence of the soundness of the venture s planning and its economic viability by contrast insofar as virtually any venture in the area may apply for and obtain advisory assistance from the governmental tourism incubator with no requirement to meet financial criteria of any kind it could be that precisely the weaker ventures are being carried along by this form of assistance among the various entrepreneur s attributes examined managerial skills provided the strongest association with the performance measures the managerial skills were also found to be the most significant variable explaining performance relatively to the variables derived from the other three approaches these results have implications regarding the nature of the support to be given by a governmental tourism incubator to entrepreneurs operating in the region given that lack of managerial skills is one of the main barriers to a venture s success particularly in small businesses where the owners have to be involved in all areas of activity the incubator needs to provide entrepreneurs with tailored regional business and management training tools to promote tourism venture development and success the study also reveals that the number of services offered by a tourism venture made only a minor contribution in the revenues regression which may indicate that providing a bundle of services for the tourist customer does not necessarily guarantee profitability a noteworthy finding is the similarity in the differential association between the number of services offered and the performance measures on the one hand and attractiveness features with performance on the other in both cases these factors positively contribute to the revenues regression but neither contributes to the profitability or income regression this means that an attractive environment does contribute to higher revenues in that more tourists choose to visit the tourist attractions however this does not assure profitability similarly providing many services to the visitors may also contribute to higher revenues but does not necessarily assure profitable business outcomes the current findings indicate that small tourism venture profitability is contingent on human capital especially the skills of the entrepreneurs running the venture in accordance with our findings that managerial skills are so crucial for venture success the main objective of advisory incubators should be to promote managerial competencies

cultural values and international differences in business ethics we analyze ethical policies of firms in industrialized countries and try to find out whether culture is a factor that plays a significant role in explaining country differences we look into the firm s human rights policy its governance of bribery and corruption and the comprehensiveness implementation and communication of its codes of ethics we use a dataset on ethical policies of almost 2 700 firms in 24 countries we find that there are significant differences among ethical policies of firms headquartered in different countries when we associate these ethical policies with hofstede s cultural indicators we find that individualism and uncertainty avoidance are positively associated with a firm s ethical policies whereas masculinity and power distance are negatively related to these policies

total factor productivity and the convergence hypothesis in the italian regions this article is aimed at testing the catching up hypothesis for the italian regions the use of malmquist productivity indices allows to decompose productivity growth into technological progress and technical efficiency change interpreted respectively as innovation and catching up measurements the analysis leads to a conclusion that regional economies diverge at a decreasing rate

measuring hospital performance a non parametric approach abstract in this paper a technique for assessing the relative performance of firms is introduced and applied to a sample of hospitals in california hospitals are compared on the basis of their relative technical efficiency the reference technology is constructed from observed outputs and inputs including physicians using programming techniques and efficiency is assessed relative to the frontier of the technology using measures similar to those suggested by farrell the technique used here imposes no prespecified functional form allows for multiple outputs and inputs allowing for differences in case mix and yields information on the productive performance of individual hospitals this technique can also be used to determine whether different types of hospitals use different technologies our results although illustrative rather than definitive suggest that ownership affects efficiency as measured here public and nfp hospitals have different best practice frontiers and public hospitals appear to use relatively fewer resources these results could reflect differences in quality of care by ownership

national business ideology and employees prosocial values employees prosocial values have been shown to foster helping cooperating and volunteering behaviors which in turn increase firm performance however despite the importance of prosocial values there is a general neglect of this area in the international arena as more trade occurs globally interest in cross cultural prosocial values is growing we therefore build on socialization theory and introduce national business ideology as a country level determinant of employees prosocial values we thus argue that transformational leadership and professional altruism are key elements of a national business ideology s stimulation of employees prosocial values while corporate corruption is considered to be an impediment based on 19 026 individuals from 17 countries our cross level analyses point to the national business ideology explaining national level variances above and beyond cultural aspects results support our hypothesis that national business ideology including transformational leadership and professional altruism is positively related to employees prosocial values the hypothesis on corporate corruption however was not supported instead results indicate that employees apply rationalization strategies to justify corruption with prosocial values being important for organizational performance as well as social welfare in general we thus draw attention to socialization processes in national corporate work contexts

the theory of public goods non nash behaviour abstract most treatments of equilibrium public goods provision assume zero conjectural variations in the sense that each individual regards the behaviour of the rest of the community as independent of his own this paper introduces nonzero conjectural variations into the model a diagram is introduced which can depict both the individual s and the community s equilibrium in the presence of nonzero conjectural variations equilibrium and optimal outcomes are compared and a specific functional form is used to investigate the effect of community size on the nature of equilibrium finally we discuss the requirement that conjectures should be consistent

the build up of cooperative behavior among non cooperative selfish agents abstract we develop a theoretical model in which each individual is in some ultimate sense motivated by purely egoistic satisfaction derived from the goods accruing to him but there is an implicit social contract such that each performs duties for the others in a way that enhances the satisfaction of all we introduce a state variable that acts as a proxy for social capital of trustworthiness and that we call the stock of cooperation we show that non cooperative agents might condition their action on this state variable agents build up the society s stock of cooperation and gradually overcome the free riding problem in a game of private contribution to a public good we assume that there are neither penalties in the sense of trigger strategies nor guilt and that each individual is rational

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

a framework to update hofstede s cultural value indices economic dynamics and institutional stability this study offers an update of the hofstede cultural value dimensions we argue that changes in economic conditions are the source of cultural dynamics while the endurance of institutional characteristics provides the foundation for cultural stability it is found that national wealth measured by gdp per capita has a curvilinear relationship with individualism long term orientation and power distance scores relatively speaking uncertainty avoidance and masculinity mainly reflect some rather stable institutional traditions such as language religion climate ethnic homogeneity and legal origin and are less likely to change over time

are innovations relevant for consumers in the hospitality industry a hedonic approach for cuban hotels abstract this paper evaluates the impact of innovative activity in the hotel industry on the willingness to pay by consumers to this end we estimate a hedonic price function where innovation is identified indirectly through certain attributes that previous literature has linked with hotel innovativeness the test is performed on a representative sample of cuban hotels considering a large number of attributes of hotels and rooms to solve the usual problems of collinearity a million alternative models are estimated by choosing the variables included in a random manner and obtaining the final coefficients by means of an internal meta analysis the results are completed with a variance decomposition analysis the results highlight the importance of the attributes linked to innovation and internationalization on the determination of room prices in cuban hotels membership of international hotel chains high quality offers diversified rooms and adaptability to specific needs of each client

a dynamic model of conflict and appropriation abstract this paper presents an extension of a static model of economic conflict analyzed by hirshleifer 1991 1995 and skaperdas 1992 to an infinite horizon differential game our aim is to highlight the strategic role of appropriation among a smaller group of agents in an intertemporal context the model yields the conclusion that there exists a unique linear nonlinear markov perfect equilibrium strategy even when strategies are defined over the entire state space we demonstrate that partial cooperation can be seen as a long run response to conflict moreover a decrease in the effectiveness of appropriation the depreciation rate of a common pool stock the rate of time preferences or an increase in the degree of noise improves the degree of partial cooperation and thus welfare in an anarchic society

national culture and corporate investment we explore the relation between individualism and horizons and types of corporate investment based on individualism s implications for risk taking we find that firms in individualistic countries invest more in long term risky than in short term safe assets moreover the effect of individualism on long term investment hinges on rd and 2 firms in individualistic countries invest more in r d because they have higher investment efficiency or pick less risky r d projects we further find that individualistic firms tend to employ excess cash to increase r d rather than increase dividends and r d decisions are less reliant on internal financing but more responsive to growth opportunities in individualistic countries

is tourism firm competitiveness driven by different internal or external specific factors new empirical evidence from spain abstract the quest to understand the multilevel antecedents of competitiveness has led to a separation of approaches on one side of the question are the environment theories that analyze the structural characteristics of the general and competitive environment on the other side are the resource based view and its extensions that highlight firm specific resources and capabilities as the main basis of firms competitiveness however in recent years the nature of competition and shifting economic conditions have given rise to new theoretical approaches that complement the assumptions underlying both environmental and firm theories specifically this study contributes by examining the regional environment effect the district effect and the strategic group effect through a study of 364 spanish tourism firms this research explores the relative importance of distinct external forces such as the general environment or country effect the regional effect the competitive environment or industry effect the district effect and internal factors such as the firm s tangible resources capabilities and strategy selection the results demonstrate that firms capabilities are more important than environment effects and tangible resources

nonlinear strategies in dynamic duopolistic competition with sticky prices abstract we discuss nonlinear strategies in an infinite horizon duopoly game with sticky prices where firms maximize their discounted sum of profit we construct a stationary feedback equilibrium without guessing value functions and feedback strategies that solve the hamilton jacobi equation for this purpose we study the auxiliary equation that is derived from the hamilton jacobi equation we show that the domain of the state space plays an crucial role in characterizing feedback equilibria and discuss several implications of this observation in particular we find that when the upper bound of the state space is not very high previously unknown feedback equilibria emerge

on consistency of conjectures in the private provision of public goods abstract this paper shows that the condition recently given by cornes and sandler for consistency of conjectures in a non nash model of voluntary public good provision is neither necessary nor sufficient it gives an alternative condition which is both necessary and sufficient for consistency of conjectures and may be used to compute appropriate conjectural variations in communities of arbitrary size if a symmetric equilibrium exists

the role of family ownership in international entrepreneurship exploring nonlinear effects empirical research on international entrepreneurship is growing but results on the role of family ownership in this phenomenon are inconsistent we believe these inconsistencies owe to prior researchers having not yet investigated nonlinear relationships drawing on opposing perspectives of stewardship and stagnation we explore potential benefits and drawbacks of family ownership for international entrepreneurship and explore nonlinear relationships among these two variables using a sample of 1 035 us family businesses and applying ordinal regression analysis we find an inverted u shaped relationship between family ownership and international entrepreneurship international entrepreneurship is maximized when family ownership stands at moderate levels we discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and indicate avenues for future research

consistent conjectures and voluntary contributions to public goods why the conventional theory does not work abstract the conventional theory of voluntary contributions to public goods assumes that each person maximises his utility taking other people s behaviour as given nash conjectures it is now coming to be recognised that this theory is inconsistent with observed behaviour this paper argues that the problems of the theory are compounded and not as some economists have argued resolved by relaxing the assumption of nash conjectures if individuals conjectures are consistent each person will hold the correct belief that other people s contributions are inversely related to his own under most reasonable assumptions equilibrium is a state in which no one contributes anything

repeated contests a general parameterization abstract contests often involve players vying for the same prize year after year this paper characterizes equilibrium effort both individual and aggregate in a general parameterization of such repeated contests

analysing the technical efficiency of the spanish football league first division with a random frontier model this article analyses technical efficiency of football clubs in the spanish football league division 1 primera liga from the seasons 1995 1996 to 2004 2005 with an unbalanced panel data the random frontier model is used allowing the identification of random variables in the cost frontier it is concluded that the price of capital investment the number of points won and attendance are heterogeneous variables therefore no common public policy aiming to improve efficiency can embrace all of the clubs so that policies by clusters are required

consequences of cultural practices for entrepreneurial behaviors although national culture is an important regulator of entrepreneurship there is a dearth of studies that 1 explore the effects of national cultural practices on entrepreneurial behaviors by individuals 2 use appropriate multilevel research designs 3 consider the effects of culture on different entrepreneurial behaviors such as entry and post entry growth aspirations we combined global entrepreneurship monitor gem and global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness globe data from 42 countries for 2005 2008 to address these gaps using a multilevel design we found societal institutional collectivism practices negatively associated with entrepreneurial entry but positively associated with entrepreneurial growth aspirations uncertainty avoidance practices were negatively associated with entry but not with growth aspirations and performance orientation practices were positively associated with entry our analysis highlights the differential effects of cultural practices on entrepreneurial entry and growth aspirations and demonstrates the value of multilevel techniques in analyzing the effect of culture on entrepreneurship

organizational entrainment and international new ventures from emerging markets organizational entrainment captures the temporal fit in the activity cycles between exchange partners we argue that organizational entrainment between international new ventures invs and their most important international customers positively moderates the relationship between the degree scope and speed of internationalization and performance of invs we test our hypotheses on invs from china india and south africa the results support the contingent role of entrainment for degree and scope of internationalization but not for speed findings suggest that when invs attain temporal fit with their most important international customers they can implement their strategic goals in international markets more effectively

new firms societal contribution versus survival potential abstract new business firms are now considered a major source of new jobs economic growth technical innovation and economic flexibility they may provide a major strategic advantage for the united states in world competition a more complete precise understanding of the dynamics of new firm development their societal contributions and factors affecting their survival has considerable policy and managerial significance a study of new firm contributions and survival was completed to determine whether the same factors would account for both they do not the research began with a substantial body of descriptive information on 551 new firms initiated in minnesota between 1978 and 1984 the initial data were collected in the summer of 1984 a one year follow up was completed in 1985 to determine new firm survival the sample was representative of all major industry sectors and all regions of the state about 60 were located in the minneapolis st paul urban area attempts to predict current 1984 contributions indicated that age was not a significant factor older new firms did not contribute more than younger new firms the developmental pattern primarily the average annual growth rate was highly related to sales or jobs provided in 1984 next most significant was the industry of the new firm manufacturing distributive services and business producer service new firms provided more significant contributions the one year follow up was able to determine the survival status of 548 of the 551 firms slightly less than 10 48 had not survived major factors related to survival appeared to be age high death rates at 2 3 years and attention to financial matters

the globalization of our mental maps evaluating the geographic scope of jibs coverage this article analyzes patterns of country coverage in the journal of international business studies during the twenty five years of its existence the analysis shows a substantial expansion in the journal s geographic reach over the years but also a somewhat narrow mental map with many countries and areas receiving only minimal coverage explanations for country preferences among researchers are explored and implications for the future are discussed

the efficiency of mozambique soccer league the mocambola abstractthis paper analyses the technical efficiency of the mozambique football league from 2008 to 2014 using a bayesian stochastic frontier model with exponential specification covariates include contextual characteristics such as location identification as a muslim club and sporting performance the results uncover that mozambique sports clubs display varying efficiency revealing distinct managerial incentives in the mozambique football league policy implications are derived including efficiency scores deemed to be acceptable to the league and reconsideration of the rationale for national investment in all league s clubs

tourism and economic development the beach disease abstract this paper analyses empirically the danger of a dutch disease effect in tourism dependent countries in the long run data on 134 countries of the world over the period 1970 2007 is used in a first step the long run relationship between tourism and economic growth is analysed in a cross country setting the results are then checked in a panel data framework on gdp per capita levels that allows to control for reverse causality non linearity and interactive effects it is found that there is no danger of a beach disease effect on the contrary tourism dependent countries do not face real exchange rate distortion and deindustrialisation but higher than average economic growth rates investment in physical capital such as for instance transport infrastructure is complementary to investment in tourism

a bayesian stochastic frontier of italian football this study analyses the technical efficiency of serie a italian football clubs during the 2004 2012 seasons with a bayesian stochastic frontier model using unique data extracted from clubs annual reports specifically the focus of the study is on assessing the impact effects on clubs efficiency whether they are big clubs they employ several foreign player they compete in european competitions and their involvement with football scandals in the italian football the empirical results reveal that efficiency varies among the clubs analysed and policy implications are derived

the feedback equilibria of a differential game of capitalism abstract the feedback equilibria of a capitalistic game described by kelvin lancaster are derived under concave utility functions with a constant degree of absolute risk aversion and standard production function it is shown that the equilibrium solution is unique if the rate of time preference and the constant degree of absolute risk aversion are sufficiently great some properties of the equilibrium solution are reported

cost efficiency of french rugby clubs this article analyses the cost efficiency of french first league rugby clubs using a stochastic frontier model the frontier estimation confirmed that the model fits the data well with all coefficients correctly signed and in line with the theoretical requirements the results show that one of the clubs is operating efficiently with the majority of clubs clustered around 20 inefficiency policy implications are derived

the influence of market demand upon innovation a critical review of some recent empirical studies abstract a number of recent empirical studies of technical change at the level of the individual firm have concluded that market demand is the dominant influence upon the innovation process calling forth innovations in market economies the pace of innovation in the private sector heavily influences the growth of national output and productivity and these studies and their conclusions have therefore received much attention having been extensively quoted in discussions of appropriate government policy for the encouragement of innovation this paper reviews a number of these studies and concludes that their findings and the interpretations of their findings in the secondary literature are seriously flawed and in many cases invalid the proposition that market demand governs the innovation process is by no means conclusively demonstrated in these studies and they are therefore inadequate and inappropriate guides for the formulation of policy most of the studies examined employ a working definition of demand factors which is so broad as to embrace a range of possible influences upon innovation which should more properly be classified elsewhere the concept of demand utilized in these studies bears little resemblance to the more restrictive and precise definition of market demand found in economics in addition the phenomena analyzed in these studies are a very heterogeneous lot the studies do not address identical empirical questions and their findings are as a result neither uniform nor unambiguous both demand and supply side influences are crucial to understanding the innovation process and it is the exclusive preoccupation with only one set of these forces which is criticized in this paper some implications of the criticism for government policy toward innovation are discussed in the conclusion

fostering corporate entrepreneurship cross cultural comparisons of the importance of individualism versus collectivism this study reports on results of a cross cultural empirical investigation designed to assess the impact of individualism collectivism upon organizational entrepreneurship the findings indicate individualism collectivism is an important factor in understanding entrepreneurial behavior in the firm implications of these findings are discussed

relationship between individualist collectivist culture and entrepreneurial activity evidence from global entrepreneurship monitor data this paper examines how one dimension of national culture an individualist collectivist orientation is related to total entrepreneurial activity depending on the level of economic development measured by gdp per capita researchers have traditionally associated individualism with high rates of firm creation arguing that an orientation towards achievement and the pursuit of personal objectives dominant aspects in individualist cultures are determinants of entrepreneurial activity the current analysis shows that a country s culture correlates to entrepreneurship but cannot uphold the idea that higher levels of individualism mean higher rates of entrepreneurship using data from the global entrepreneurship monitor on 52 countries the results show that a country s entrepreneurship rate is negatively related to individualism when development is medium or low and positively related to individualism when the level of development is high thus individualism is not related to entrepreneurship in the same way in countries with differing levels of development

tourism in the gambia problems and proposals abstract this paper analyses the development constraints which confine the gambia to being one of the poorest countries in the world the programmes designed to reduce these constraints are outlined in particular tourism is identified as an appropriate development strategy using primary data tourism in the gambia its development and administration are described in some detail althoiugh a prima facie case can be made extolling the virtues of tourism in that country the industry is beset by a range of problems the juxtaposition of the country s growing reliance on tourism against increasing stagnation in the sector is a focus of particular concern constraints in the tourism sector are identified in the spheres of policy formulation and implementation capital investment human resource endowment existing and potential tourist markets seasonality issues and product resource base for each constraint identified a management strategy is proposed in essence the article is an advocation of sustainable tourism development for the gambia based on long term holistic planning including appropriate resource development community involvement education and training

a dynamic conjectural variations model in the private provision of public goods a differential game approach abstract the purpose of this paper is to provide a reasonable microfoundation to justify the concept of a conjectural variations equilibrium which is often used in the literature on private provision of public goods with the help of the differential game by interpreting the steady state conjectures in a dynamic contribution game as the conjectural variations in the corresponding static game we derive explicit forms of nash or non zero conjectural variations depending on the choice of the strategy spaces furthermore we find that there may be uncountable many conjectural variations and the possibility of matching behavior i e positive conjectural variations when non linear markov perfect strategies are used and when the domain of a state variable is appropriately restricted

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

measuring innovation in tourism from the schumpeterian and the dynamic capabilities perspectives this paper offers a diagnosis of the state of the issue regarding the measurement of innovation in the tourism industry at the company level and some recommendations for overcoming identified problems the study addresses two central issues how existing secondary databases of innovative activity define the boundaries of the tourism industry and the degree to which these databases reflect the particular characteristics of this economic activity it is concluded that these analyses present serious biases and anomalies hindering the understanding of the situation at the micro level and complicating the issue of international comparability and the analyses do not capture the internal heterogeneity of innovative behavior of tourism companies from specific intra sectoral activities the problems concern inappropriate indicators and the need for survey methods to complement the development of innovation scoreboards in secondary sources the study concludes by detailing a set of proposals that should be considered in the context of a scoreboard to provide a comprehensive view of a tourism firm s technological and organizational innovations as well as its innovative capabilities combining schumpeterian theory and the dynamic capabilities based approach and also making cross national comparisons feasible

a review of innovation research in tourism abstract over the past two decades there has been increasing focus on the topic of innovation in tourism this article reviews the research contributions various categories of innovation product process managerial marketing and institutional are addressed important determinants of innovation are acknowledged including the role of entrepreneurship technology push and the existence of territorial industry clusters representation of knowledge is also identified as a critical factor for both the occurrence and nature of innovations the review reveals that there is still only limited systematic and comparable empirical evidence of the level of innovative activities and their impacts and wider implications for destinations and national economies an agenda for future research is emerging suggesting that there is quest for both formal quantification and for qualitative studies of the foundations processes implications and policies of innovation in tourism

stability vs flexibility the effect of regulatory institutions on opportunity type how entrepreneurial opportunities are formed and exploited depends upon the institutional environment in which they are embedded the varying amounts of risk and uncertainty across and within heterogeneous institutional environments have important implications for the types of opportunity developed while the international business and entrepreneurship literatures consider the effect of environmental risk and uncertainty on firms risk and uncertainty are often treated as interchangeable or synonymous and rarely are both considered to be present together to address this we develop a new theoretical model based on institutional economics describing how institutional arrangements promoting stability thus supporting an entrepreneur s ability to assess risk will lead to more imitative opportunities while institutions promoting flexibility thus supporting an entrepreneur s ability to respond to uncertainty by iterating will foster more innovative opportunities we test this framework using cross national data across 40 countries from the gem survey finding that institutional arrangements that promote stability do lead to more imitation while institutions that promote flexibility foster more innovation by treating risk and uncertainty as distinct constructs our study makes theoretical contributions to research on institutional environments and opportunity types with implications for future research on subsidiary initiatives the evolution of mnes and born global firms

duopoly can be more anti competitive than monopoly abstract we prove two results on feedback equilibria under dynamic renewable resource duopoly the linear feedback output is smallest which sharply contrasts to the existing literature where it is largest moreover prices in two feedback equilibria are higher than under monopoly

performance evaluation of the english premier football league with data envelopment analysis this paper uses data envelopment analysis dea to evaluate the performance of english premier league football clubs from 1998 99 to 2002 03 combining sport and financial variables the paper evaluates how close the clubs are relative to the frontier of best practices analysing how they manage sport as well as financial results managerial implications of the research are devised

towards a theory of innovation in services abstract the paper sets out some foundations for a theory of innovation in service industries and indicates the role that such innovation may play in the generation of growth cycles the discussion starts with the origins of a major new technology in the capital goods sector and its subsequent development according to the normal product cycle theory this is followed by a consideration of the transmission process by which the new technology is taken up in user industries within the consumer goods and services sector a reverse product cycle is then proposed to describe the innovation process which takes place in user industries such as services once the new technology has been adopted this cycle starts with process improvements to increase the efficiency of delivery of existing services moves on to process innovations which improve service quality and then leads to product innovations through the generation of new types of services finally the existence of two out of phase innovation cycles in the capital and consumer sectors deriving from a technology transmission process which causes disequilibrium in technical progress between the two is put forward as a mechanisms helping to create the long wave fluctuations in economic development associated with schumpeterian technological revolutions

national context and individual employees trust of the out group the role of societal trust out group trust is a crucial driver of international business performance however employees from different countries vary in their levels of out group trust the aim of this study is therefore to capture national forces driving out group trust based on kramer s theorizing on the multiple bases of trust we argue that at the societal level dispositional categorization based and rule based trust influence employees out group trust in particular we argue for dispositional and rule based societal trust to increase and for categorization based societal trust to decrease employees out group trust through different types of socialization using data on 25 622 employees from 42 countries we find partial support for the coexistence of these bases of societal trust disentangling trust forming and trust impeding models we find support for dispositional and rule based societal trust as drivers of employees out group trust and for categorization based societal trust as impeding employees out group trust in a combined model however rule based trust is not significantly related to employees out group trust considering the coexistence of trust and distrust employees out group trust develops through socialization effects conveying general trust in others i e high dispositional trust and the equality of social groups i e low categorization based trust

entrepreneurship culture and the epigenetic revolution a research note we show how the type of alcohol consumed is related to the type of entrepreneurship present for economies in europe we differentiate between beer wine and spirit drinking countries and disting

production frontiers and panel data an application to u s class 1 railroads in this article the appropriateness of inefficiency measures obtained directly from the production function as in schmidt and sickles 1984 is examined relative to those provided by a the cost function aproach b klein s approach and c the iterative sur technique efficiency rankings yielded by different methods are also compared and tested

cuba in transition tourism industry perceptions of entrepreneurial change abstract the cuban government is working to create a climate conducive to a strong and sustainable private sector as state employment declines many residents are exploring the potential of tourism cuban entrepreneurs are interested in expanding beyond packaged mass tourism to develop more creative tourism products however the success of cuban entrepreneurs is dependent on a number of conditions external to the entrepreneur known as the entrepreneurial climate ec building on previous entrepreneurship research this study utilizes interviews of a small group of tourism stakeholders in cuba to address the research question what are the perceptions of tourism stakeholders of both barriers to and factors encouraging private enterprise it concludes with recommendations for planning and policy based on these perceptions that may cultivate entrepreneurial tourism development in cuba including improved internet access development of both wholesaling and financing systems business education and legalization of additional tourism professions recommendations from the informants also align with recent initiatives in other centrally governed nations e g china singapore and bolivia that have introduced private enterprise to their economies recently these initiatives could serve as models for cuba moving forward

ecotourism and indigenous micro enterprise formation in northern australia opportunities and constraints abstract indigenous australians suffer considerable social and economic disadvantage the challenge for indigenous communities and policy makers is to discover or create opportunities that will provide sustainable development tourism is seen as one sector that could possibly provide such opportunities indigenous tourism enterprises are in most situations likely to be micro businesses micro businesses indigenous and non indigenous have relatively high failure rates so it is important to undertake substantial planning to avoid failure this paper presents the results of a planning process undertaken by an indigenous clan planning to operate their own ecotourism micro enterprise within ngukurr an indigenous community in northern australia the study highlights the fact tourism does provide potential for economic development because indigenous enterprises often have some competitive advantages in addition the study highlights the fact that communities often do not have the capacity to undertake all the tasks necessary to establish and operate a commercially successful ecotourism enterprise partnerships with other stakeholders within the region can help overcome this constraint finally it is noted that the cdep scheme has the potential to satisfy the need for funds that cannot be satisfied through normal channels

what did globe really measure researchers minds versus respondents minds the globe research program expanded the hofstede model of five dimensions of national cultures to 18 a re analysis based on globe s 2004 summary book produced five meta factors one was significantly correlated with gnp capita and from the hofstede dimensions primarily with power distance three more correlated significantly with hofstede s individualism uncertainty avoidance and long term orientation the fifth included the few globe questions that related to hofstede s dimension of masculinity versus femininity globe s respondents minds classified the questions in a way that the researchers minds did not account for and which closely resembles the original hofstede model

feedback equilibria in a dynamic renewable resource oligopoly pre emption voracity and exhaustion abstract we revisit a recent literature on productive asset exploitation describing a differential oligopoly game of resource extraction under static linear feedback and nonlinear feedback strategies where we explicitly allow for the possibility of resource exhaustion we show that i feedback rules entail resource exhaustion for a finite number of firms and ii feedback strategies are more aggressive than static ones as long as the resource stock is large enough in accordance with the acquired view based on the traditional pre emption argument associated with feedback information

cultural influences on national rates of innovation abstract the purpose of this research was to examine the effect of the cultural values of individualism power distance uncertainty avoidance and masculinity on national rates of innovation in 33 countries in 1975 and 1980 the study found that rates of innovation are most closely associated with the cultural value of uncertainty acceptance but that lack of power distance and individualism also are related to high rates of innovation this research suggests that nations may differ in their rates of innovation because of the cultural values of their citizens these findings have important implications for managers and policy makers first culture matters countries may not be able to increase their rates of innovation simply by increasing the amount of money spent on research and development or industrial infrastructure they also may need to change the values of their citizens to those that encourage innovative activity this concept in turn suggests that national rates of innovation are driven by more fundamental forces than economic conditions and that societal change may be necessary to make less innovative societies more innovative second the values associated with high national rates of innovation are those that many scholars have long argued are important at the firm level an acceptance of uncertainty appears to be necessary probably because innovation requires a tolerance for risk and change individualism seems to be important perhaps because of its association with autonomy independence and freedom lack of power distance appears important perhaps reflecting the role that tolerance of change in the social order and distribution of power play in the innovation process third the study indicates that the strength of the relationship between innovation and two cultural values individualism and lack of power distance were stronger in 1975 than in 1980 suggesting perhaps that these values are becoming less important in spurring the innovation process this finding supports the anecdotal evidence that many collectivist and hierarchical asian nations are becoming more innovative fourth this study shows that per capita income is a more important economic variable than industrial structure in determining national rates of innovation this finding confirms previous work that has shown that as nations become wealthier they become more innovative the reason may be that wealthier countries have more demand for innovations both because innovations are often laborsaving and because wealthier nations have greater demand for new and differentiated consumer goods

financial constraints on sport organizations cost efficiency the impact of financial fair play on italian soccer clubs we analyze the effect of the introduction of stricter financial constraints on the trade off between sporting and economic results we apply a stochastic cobb douglas production frontier model to a

supporting innovation for tourism development through multi stakeholder approaches experiences from africa innovation and entrepreneurship provide essential value to the advancement and quality of the international tourism industry for less economically developed countries ledcs tourism innovation is an opportunity to differentiate the tourism product making it more competitive and increasing socio economic gains at grassroots level counteracting foreign currency leakages from the destination the paper argues that for small indigenous businesses in ledc destinations to flourish a supportive environment promoting innovation and entrepreneurship is required the paper emphasises the importance of multi stakeholder collaboration by drawing on two distinct african case studies a trade association in the gambia and a training programme building entrepreneurial capacity in a university in tanzania both of which have helped provide supportive environments for indigenous entrepreneurship and innovation the gambian case study is based on a collaborative marketing approach the tanzanian case study on the triple helix model both demonstrate the importance of institutional support in stimulating networking transfer of knowledge and best practice in ledc destinations

translation in cross language international business research beyond equivalence in this paper we problematise the way translation has been treated in international business ib research we start by conducting an interpretive content analysis of both qualitative and quantitative cross language studies published in four core ib journals over the course of a decade our analysis shows the dominance of a technicist view of translation associated with the equivalence paradigm in contrast we advocate a shift to a more contextualised approach informed by theoretical developments in translation studies more specifically we focus on two theoretical perspectives skopos theory and cultural politics which offer related but distinct approaches to rethinking equivalence we conclude by advocating that the translation process be reframed as a process of intercultural interaction rather than a lexical transfer of meaning this reconceptualisation would we argue open up what is currently a black box in most ib studies the contextualised approach that we offer has the potential not just to enrich the findings of studies but also provide insights that are of multidisciplinary relevance

dynamic free riding with irreversible investments we study the markov equilibria of a model of free riding in which n infinitely lived agents choose between private consumption and irreversible contributions to a durable public good we show that the set of equilibrium steady states converges to a unique point as depreciation converges to zero for any level of depreciation moreover the highest steady state converges to the efficient level as agents become increasingly patient these results are in contrast to the case with reversible investments where a continuum of inefficient equilibrium steady states exists for any level of depreciation discount factor and size of population

determinants and effects of new business creation using global entrepreneurship monitor data this paper is an introduction to the present special issue dedicated to scientific research using data collected as part of the global entrepreneurship monitor gem and considering new venture creation as the hallmark of entrepreneurship after a short description of gem s theoretical and methodological background this introduction highlights the main results of seven papers which were presented at the first gem research conference in berlin from 1 to 3 april 2004 first there is empirical evidence that the role of entrepreneurial activity differs across the stages of economic development in that there appears to be a u shaped relationship between the level of development and the rate of entrepreneurship consequently a positive effect of entrepreneurial activity on economic growth is found for highly developed countries but a negative effect for developing nations second it is shown that different types of entrepreneurship may have a different impact on a nation s innovativeness and economic growth rate in particular potentially high growth business start ups and so called opportunity entrepreneurship enhance knowledge spillovers and economic growth third entrepreneurship is again shown to be a regional event that can only be understood if regional framework conditions including networks and regional policies are taken into consideration

cross cultural competence in international business toward a definition and a model many international business failures have been ascribed to a lack of cross cultural competence cc on the part of business practitioners however the international business literature appears to lack an adequate conceptualization and definition of the term cc focusing instead on the knowledge skills and attributes that appear to be its antecedents in this conceptual study we propose a definition of cc as it applies to international business and develop a model for understanding how cc is nurtured in individuals linking our definition to the concept of cultural intelligence we discuss the components of the model and suggest that there are environmental and contextual impediments to the effective application of the requisite skills knowledge and attributes that have been identified as necessary for cc resulting in a gap between knowing and doing we conclude by discussing the implications of the model for practitioners and by suggesting appropriate directions for further research

dynamic voluntary provision of public goods abstract the paper considers a dynamic public goods problem in which individuals contributions are accumulated over time analyzing the infinite duration dynamic game with continuous contributions and flow benefits the paper demonstrates that the free riding problem is aggravated when players contributions are conditional on the observable collective contributions hence without commitment an additional incentive to depress contributions arises a current contributor can free ride on all future contributions as well as on current ones

manufacturer governance of foreign distributor relationships do relational norms enhance competitiveness in the export market research on international marketing channels accentuates the importance of relational norms and trust building activities between buyers and sellers indeed cultural and country differences may limit the use and effectiveness of traditional tools such as market incentives and authoritative control that govern the relationship between an exporting manufacturer and its foreign distributor consequently exporting manufacturers need to emphasize relationships with their foreign distributors this research finds evidence that supports both direct and indirect effects between the manufacturer s use of governance via relational norms and its competitiveness in the export market the indirect effect results from the mediating role of trust a finding that makes a key contribution to the understanding of the role of relational governance in cross border relationships

identifying innovation in surveys of services a schumpeterian perspective abstract in order to compensate for decades of neglect of services in innovation studies a strand of literature has emerged which emphasises alleged distinctive features of service innovation these studies apply innovation concepts developed especially for services thereby contributing to the existing divide between manufacturing and services the present paper demonstrates that schumpeter s original innovation concept is indeed broad enough to encompass services and manufacturing and that a more direct reference to schumpeter in particular innovation as a contrast to activities based on routine systems in service oriented studies would add a needed theoretical and conceptual strengthening to service innovation studies

why environmentalists resist trade liberalization we build a two country differential game model of polluting oligopoly to consider the effects of trade liberalization as in static models the opening of trade promotes competition but expands global pollution characterizing open loop and feedback strategies we derive a sufficient condition for losses from trade this losses from trade proposition could provide a rationale for persistent resistance to globalization by environmentalists

entrepreneurs creativity and firm innovation the moderating role of entrepreneurial self efficacy there are several studies in entrepreneurship investigating determinants of innovation outcomes in smes although entrepreneurs entrepreneurial creativity is often seen as a prerequisite previous research indicates it is not an exclusive determinant of innovation we use theoretical logics of social cognitive theory and innovation theory to develop a conceptual model of entrepreneur s creativity self efficacy and innovation outcomes the model is then tested on a large sample of small and medium firms from two distinct economies the united states and slovenia empirical findings partially support the proposed moderation effects of entrepreneurial self efficacy but with the same variations between countries the implications of these results in relation to entrepreneurship theory and practice are discussed

innovation in services the purpose of this article is to lay the foundations of a theory that can be used to interpret innovation processes in the service sector the hypothesis underpinning this article is based on lancaster s definition of the product in both manufacturing and services as a set of service characteristics the article follows the example of those who have sought to apply lancaster s work to technological phenomena various modes of innovation in the service sectors are highlighted and illustrated