barriers to knowledge seeking within mnc teams which differences matter most do international or non international differences between members matter most for multinational corporation mnc teams we consider two types of international differences arising from geographic locations and national origins and two types of non international differences arising from structural affiliations and demographic attributes examining the barriers to knowledge seeking between mnc team members we argue that whether international or non international differences create greater barriers depends on whether they are position based or person based using the social relations model to analyze 13 616 dyadic interactions among 2090 members of 289 teams in a large mnc we find that for both international and non international differences those that are position based i e geographic and structural differences created greater barriers than those that are person based i e nationality and demographic differences in addition familiarity from a prior team reduced the barriers created by international and non international differences that are position based more than those that are person based we discuss the implications of our study for understanding the micro foundations of knowledge flows in mncs

going the distance the pros and cons of expanding employees global knowledge reach while some scholars have suggested mnes to be superior to markets for managing knowledge across geographically distant boundaries how they actually accomplish this has not been fully considered we address this void by developing and testing a model that highlights the critical role of organizational incentives in enhancing employees internal search and use of knowledge data from 166 knowledge intensive projects support our argument that in contrast to process based incentives that influence more local search outcome based incentives motivate employee teams to reach well beyond their immediate location which in turn enhances performance at the same time we demonstrate that expanded reach also increases the likelihood of accessing more codifiable knowledge which can hurt performance our model examines the contradictory and previously unknown effects of global knowledge reach

ecosystem services from eye opening metaphor to complexity blinder abstract what started as a humble metaphor to help us think about our relation to nature has become integral to how we are addressing the future of humanity and the course of biological evolution the metaphor of nature as a stock that provides a flow of services is insufficient for the difficulties we are in or the task ahead indeed combined with the mistaken presumption that we can analyze a global problem within a partial equilibrium economic framework and reach a new economy project by project without major institutional change the simplicity of the stock flow framework blinds us to the complexity of the human predicament the ecosystem services approach can be a part of a larger solution but its dominance in our characterization of our situation and the solution is blinding us to the ecological economic and political complexities of the challenges we actually face

stabilizing a previously centrally planned economy poland 1990 stabilization in poland guillermo a calvo and fabrizio coricelli we examine the dynamics of the january 1990 stabilization programme in poland focusing on the substantial and sudden collapse in industrial output and inflation persistence we discuss three non mutually exclusive explanations of these phenomena 1 excessive initial stocks of inventories 2 an exogenous fall in household demand and 3 tight credit we conjecture that tight credit was at centre stage it helped to magnify the fall in output and to coordinate such a fall across sectors we base such a conjecture on the existence of substantial credit segmentation and on the underdevelopment of private credit markets the latter may explain the substantial shrinkage of interenterprise credit compounding the initial contraction of bank credit they argue that credit tightness is reflected in firms offering wages below the programme s ceilings especially given that firms are controlled by workers councils this conjecture is further strengthened by the fact that wages increased and even went beyond the programme s ceilings as credit expanded during the year we argue that the wage hike may be the reason why credit expansion did not result in a major output recovery and inflation persisted during the year

national cultural distance and cross border acquisition performance previous theoretical research has argued that national cultural distance hinders cross border acquisition performance by increasing the costs of integration this article tests the alternative hypothesis that national cultural distance enhances cross border acquisition performance by providing access to the target s and or the acquirer s diverse set of routines and repertoires embedded in national culture using a multi dimensional measure of national cultural distance and controlling for other effects we examine a sample of 52 cross border acquisitions that took place between 1987 and 1992 and find a positive association between national cultural distance and cross border acquisition performance

inflation before and after central bank independence the case of colombia abstract in this paper we model the colombian inflation rate in terms of excess demand effects from asset goods and factor markets in contrast to previous results for a group of industrial economies we find that domestic factors are a far more powerful influence on inflation than are external factors the paper pays particular attention to the potential effects of the constitutional reform of 1991 which created a central bank independent from other parts of government we find that the creation of an independent central bank did change some of the parameters of the model as the disequilibria in goods and monetary markets were found to have a smaller effect on inflation after central bank independence was granted

comments rational bubbles during poland s hyperinflation implications and empirical evidence by m funke s hall and m sola a number of papers have tested for rational bubbles in the post world war i hyperinflation in germany the present paper henceforth fhs does so in poland around the time of the big bang it finds some evidence that the main determination of the hyperinflation was a rational bubble but cautiously notes that conventional structural models might also explain the hyperinflation i salute their technically sophisticated investigation of this interesting question but in the end find their evidence distinctly less suggestive of bubbles than do they this evidence comes from a nice extension of techniques suggested by diba and grossman 1984 and hamilton and whiteman 1985 and applied to the german hyperinflation by hamilton and whiteman 1985 using the cagan model that paper noted that in the absence of bubbles prices will have the same order of integration as does money if money is say z 2 so that what is stationary is changes in the growth rate of money but not the growth rates themselves then prices should be z 2 as well but bubbles cause explosive growth so no level of differencing will induce stationarity in a variable driven wholly or even in part by a bubble hamilton and whiteman 1985 found that prices and money appeared to be z 2 in the german hyperinflation and concluded that bubbles probably were not present evans 1991 in turn pointed out that if a bubbles periodically grow and collapse and b there are not a whole lot of observations during which the bubble was growing the hamilton and whiteman 1985 test will likely fail to find bubbles and tests are likely to find that prices and money are

peer conformity attention and heterogeneous implementation of practices in mnes how do subsidiaries respond to normative demands from both their headquarters and local external constituents we propose that subsidiaries pay varying levels of attention to demands depending on their peers norm conforming behavior resulting in heterogeneous practice implementation we study the implementation of 25 practices associated with three corporate social responsibility csr issues in 101 worldwide subsidiaries of a multinational enterprise mne consistent with the idea that attention is limited and therefore selective we find that external peers conformity to the csr norm directs subsidiaries attention toward the csr related demands of external constituents at the expense of the demands from the headquarters however internal peers conformity increases attention to both external and headquarters demands related to csr as higher attention levels result in higher practice implementation internal and external peers conformity drives the heterogeneity of practice implementation in the mne our results suggest the need to rethink the influence of peers conformity on subsidiaries implementation of practices as it not only triggers mimicry based on legitimacy but also and simultaneously a more strategic response based on internal and external competitive threats and attention allocation

the dilemmas of market socialism capital market reform in china part i bonds this two part article analyses the attempts to reform the socialist financial system in china by diversifying financial assets and introducing capital markets the approach used is that of political economy in the sense of elucidating the interplay between political and economic interests actors and issues in the reform process part i discusses the issue of bonds by governments and enterprises although the reform era has seen gradual progress towards something resembling a bond market in terms of a diversification of bond types and growing competition between bond issues there is no evidence that this has improved allocative efficiency in the economy rather bonds have functioned as one instrument in a complex struggle for resources between political institutional and economic actors in the context of a continuing shortage economy this competitive system falls far short of a true market rather it embodies powerful systemic factors reflecting the basic structural and institutional features o

modeling the effects of adjustment programs on income distribution abstract this paper introduces the general structure of the micro macro economywide simulation model maquette used in several case studies on the impact of adjustment policies on the distribution of income the description of the maquette emphasizes how the short and medium run effects of adjustment packages are incorporated in a general equilibrium model and explains the common structure and variants in the specification and estimation of relationships in product factor financial and foreign exchange markets simulations are used to illustrate the role of differences in assumptions about market adjustment mechanisms e g fix price or flex price closed or open financial system on the effects of adjustment policies on the distribution of income adjustment to an external shock through devaluation or through fiscal retrenchment is then contrasted for an economy with different degrees of financial and foreign trade openness the simulations show that assumptions about macroeconomic closures and behavioral parameters matter a great deal in determining the productive and distributive effects of a shock and a country s adjustment to that shock

micro processes of translation in the transfer of practices from mne headquarters to foreign subsidiaries the role of subsidiary translators recent research has increasingly emphasized the micro foundations of knowledge transformation in multi national enterprises mnes although the literature has provided ample evidence of the enablers of and barriers to the translation of practices less is known about the activities and efforts of translators that lead to specific types of translation in the context of the transfer of practices initiated at a mne s headquarters hq to foreign subsidiaries we apply a scandinavian institutionalist approach to examine the translation of corporate social responsibility reporting an hq initiated practice that is transferred to five foreign subsidiaries of a uk based mne our paper builds from a preliminary framework based on extant research to develop an extended framework of the micro processes of translation by theorizing the sequence of the micro processes undertaken by translators identifying the conditions under which they occur and connecting them to the three types of translation we provide a deep understanding of the micro foundations of translation when transferring practices from hq to subsidiaries our paper shows that translation is an evolving phenomenon and illuminates the importance of attending to the social spatial and temporal situatedness of translators it also brings insights into the individual experience of institutional distance and its effects on translation

stickiness and the adaptation of organizational practices in cross border knowledge transfers the reuse of organizational practices in multiple locations is a fundamental way in which mncs leverage knowledge to seek competitive advantage scholars approaching the issue of adaptation from both a market and an institutional perspective argue that in order to achieve fit with the local environment some degree of adaptation is advisable and the need for adaptation increases as the institutional distance between source and recipient locations increases however arguments to date have examined the effect of adaptation primarily on a subsidiary s long term performance a necessary precursor is to understand the effect of adaptation on the transfer process itself as transfer difficulty or stickiness may preclude the reuse of an organizational practice in the first place in this paper we explore how the adaptation of organizational practices affects the stickiness of cross border transfers we use structural equation modeling to analyze data from 122 internal transfers of best practice contrary to expectation we find that adaptation significantly increases rather than decreases the stickiness of cross border knowledge transfer

foreign entry cultural barriers and learning this paper examines the longevity of foreign entries hypotheses are developed on the mode start ups vs acquisitions and ownership structure wholly owned vs joint ventures in relation to cultural distance the hypotheses are tested within a framework of organizational learning using data on 225 entries that 13 dutch firms carried out from 1966 onwards results show that the presence of cultural barriers punctuates an organization s learning cultural distance is a prominent factor in foreign entry whenever this involves another firm requiring the firm to engage in double layered acculturation we also identify locational paths of learning the longevity of acquisitions is positively influenced by prior entries of the firm in the same country similarly the longevity of foreign entries in which the firm has a majority stake improves whenever the expanding firm engaged in prior entries in the same country and in other countries in the same cultural block

on the credibility of big bang programs the paper examines cases in which from a production efficiency standpoint big bang programs are superior to gradualist programs nevertheless in the presence of i uncertainty about the exogenous shocks ii dependence of policy actions on the state of the economy and iii uncertain future of firms in the context of a generalized short run output contraction big bang programs can lead to inferior outcomes we argue that short term effects of a big bang on output and employment may endogenously weaken the credibility of the program this can induce perverse behaviour on the part of the economic agents leading to outcomes that are worse than those associated with a gradual program for example if the government is perceived to face a political constraints that make high rates of unemployment unacceptable then workers wage claims may be too high because of the perception of a government bailout of insolvent firms should times be tough

growth equity and the environment in chile issues and evidence abstract chile has grown at an annual rate of 7 over the past decade income distribution however deteriorated for the poor and middle class before the economy reached full capacity when real wages began to rise and unemployment to fall growth has been export led putting pressure on stocks of native forests and fishery and mining resources environmental quality worsened before 1990 reversing these trends would require extra investments on the order of 1 of gdp over many years

reproducing knowledge inaccurate replication and failure in franchise organizations the recognition that better use of existing knowledge can enhance performance has spawned substantial interest in the replication of productive knowledge within organizations an enduring belief is that when expanding by replication organizations can and should strive to adapt to fit the salient characteristics of new environments yet some have argued that the exploitation of an established template for doing business by replication can be more successful when the template is copied precisely using unique longitudinal data we report a large sample empirical investigation of the survival consequences of accurate replication versus local adaptation by examining the effect that deviation from the template has on the survival chances of franchise units within a large franchise organization

back to basics behavioral theory and internationalization international business ib scholars over reliance on a select few theories leaves our understanding of firm internationalization incomplete the behavioral theory of the firm btf can offer new insights and can be used to model a broad range of firm actions we focus on the three basic btf components problemistic search learning by doing and vicarious learning these components help us understand why firm behaviors are more dynamic and heterogeneous than other theories allow btf with its emphasis on how firms assess performance according to aspiration levels selectively learn and update routines and selectively incorporate the learning of others is better suited to examine the diversity and change increasingly observed in internationalization decisions we explain why scholars should move beyond dynamizing static theories and show btf s applicability to behaviors involving change such as multi mode market entries and market re entries btf also helps examine the decision to internationalize in the first place nascent firm internationalization location choices international market adaptation and headquarter subsidiary relationships we encourage ib scholars to use theories that can handle the complexity increasingly associated with modern firm growth and propose btf as a promising starting point

adjustment and social costs in chile during the 1980s abstract traditional analysis of adjustment programs tends to underestimate the welfare costs because it assumes that a contraction of nontradable production will close the expenditure income gap while the resulting excess supply of tradables will automatically be exported in chile however tradable output contracted sharply falling almost two thirds as much as nontradable output the conventional analysis also ignores the effect of adjustment on unemployment rates and on real wages this paper argues that the adjustment measures of the 1980s were regressive even though the government was successful in targeting its expenditures toward the very poor during the period of fiscal retrenchment among the regressive adjustment measures were the subsidies to holders of dollar denominated debt provided by the central bank in addition policies to reduce expenditures raised the unemployment rate over 26 reduced real wages by 20 for almost five years and reduced health housing and education budgets by 20 per capita finally the required real devaluation raised the cost of living for the poor

performance effects of added cultural distance in the path of international expansion the case of german multinational enterprises this paper contributes to the debate on the performance impact of added cultural distance in the multinational enterprise s mne s expansion path our research focuses on the ability of mnes to handle complexity associated with added cultural distance in international expansion and on the effect this may have on profitability we hypothesise that firms that make expansion moves involving a high level of added cultural distance per unit of time and those that expand in culturally distant countries in an irregular fashion that is with a higher variability will be less profitable we test these hypothesised relationships using detailed data on 2404 expansion moves undertaken by our panel of 91 german mnes whose expansion paths we tracked during periods ranging between 5 and 20 years

the forgotten history of domestic debt there is a rich scholarly literature on sovereign default on external debt comparatively little is known about sovereign default on domestic debt even today cross country data on domestic public debt remains curiously exotic particularly prior to the 1980s we have filled this gap in the literature by compiling a database on central government public debt external and domestic the data span 1914 to 2010 for most countries reaching back into the nineteenth century and earlier for many our findings here on debt sustainability sovereign defaults the temptation to inflate and the hierarchy of creditors only scratch the surface of what the domestic public debt data can reveal first domestic debt is big for the 64 countries for which we have long time series domestic debt accounts for almost two thirds of total public debt for most of the sample this debt carries a market determined interest rate except for the financial repression era between wwii and financial liberalization second the data go a long way toward explaining the puzzle of why countries so often default on their external debts at seemingly low debt thresholds third domestic debt has largely been ignored in the vast empirical work on inflation in fact domestic debt a significant portion of which is long term and nonindexed is often much larger than the monetary base in the run up to high inflation episodes last the widely held view that domestic residents are strictly junior to external creditors does not find broad support

china s macroeconomic performance and management during transition since reforms started in 1978 china has combined rapid growth with moderate price stability this paper analyzes china s macroeconomic performance over the past fifteen years with special attention to factors responsible both for the pace of economic expansion and the periodic fluctuations regarding the former the author identifies four sources of stimuli administrative decentralization high levels of fixed capital investment the elastic supply and quality of the labor force and the increasing volume of savings supplemented in recent years by a large inflow of foreign direct investment future growth with stability calls for controlling and implementing banking and fiscal reform

chinese urbanization and development before and after economic reform a comparative reappraisal abstract this paper analyzes the recent process and consequences of china s urbanization by weighing the short term policies and long term strategies concerning national development and urban growth against the objective material conditions and competing group interests in chinese society comparative insights are drawn from the experiences of other late developing countries where the effects of political decisions concerning urban growth have been fundamentally modified by social and economic forces thus china s urbanization is examined here in terms of the four major aspects of third world urbanization overurbanization urban bias and the parasitic versus generative nature of cities rural development and the role of small urban places and interregional balance in urbanization and development the rapid and complex process of urbanization certainly helps boost the dynamic of the post mao chinese economy but not without the problematic symptoms of congestion and inequality

money and monetization in china s economic reform in addition to privatization marketization liberalization and pragmatization monetization has been argued as the fifth feature in china s economic reform if monetization is taken to mean a process through which variations in money supply or interest rate are to affect macroeconomic variables the construction of four causality relationships between interest rate and investment and money and national income do not support the evidence of such a process in china between the late 1970s and early 1990s

exploring different views of exchange rate regime choice the empirical distinction between de facto and de jure exchange rate regimes raises a number of interesting questions which factors may induce a de facto peg why do countries enforce a peg but do not announce it why do countries break their promises we show that a stable socio political environment and an efficient political decision making process are a necessary prerequisite for choosing a peg and sticking to it challenging the view that sees the exchange rate as a commitment device policymakers seem rather concerned with regime sustainability in the face of adverse economic and socio political fundamentals

inflation and output dynamics with state dependent pricing decisions this paper studies a state dependent pricing model in which firms face a fixed cost of changing their pricing plans a pricing plan specifies an entire sequence of time varying future prices allowing firms to choose a pricing plan rather than a single price generates inflation inertia in the response of the economy to small changes in the growth rate of money allowing firms to choose when to change their pricing plan generates a non linear response of inflation and output to small and large changes in the money growth rate the non linear solution method also reveals that the model generates an asymmetric response of output and inflation to monetary expansions and contractions

a meta analysis of contingent valuation forest studies abstract forest ecosystems provide a variety of valuable goods and services this paper presents a meta analysis of forest studies using the contingent valuation cv method to value the provision of forest values around the world in this meta analysis we estimate the marginal value of different management programs that provide a variety of forest goods and services our results show that willingness to pay wtp estimates for forest management programs are sensitive to the program s objectives particularly when linked to the provision of recreational services other variables such as the type of forest location survey mode or the type of respondent were also found to significantly affect the wtp estimates

economic valuation of the leuser national park on sumatra indonesia abstract the leuser ecosystem in northern sumatra is officially protected by its status as an indonesian national park nevertheless it remains under severe threat of deforestation rainforest destruction has already caused a decline in ecological functions and services besides it is affecting numerous economic activities in and around the leuser national park the objectives of this study are twofold firstly to determine the total economic value tev of the leuser ecosystem through a systems dynamic model and secondly to evaluate the economic consequences of deforestation versus conservation disaggregating the economic value for the main stakeholders and regions involved using a dynamic simulation model economic valuation is applied to evaluate the tev of the leuser national park over the period 2000 2030 three scenarios are considered conservation deforestation and selective use the results are presented in terms of 1 the type of benefits 2 the allocation of these benefits among stakeholders and 3 the regional distribution of benefits the economic benefits considered include water supply fisheries flood and drought prevention agriculture and plantations hydro electricity tourism biodiversity carbon sequestration fire prevention non timber forest products and timber the stakeholders include local community members the local government the logging and plantation industry the national government and the international community the regions considered cover the 11 districts involved in the management of the leuser ecosystem with a 4 discount rate the accumulated tev for the ecosystem over the 30 year period is us 7 0 billion under the deforestation scenario us 9 5 billion under the conservation scenario and us 9 1 billion under the selective utilisation scenario the main contributors in the conservation and selective use scenarios are water supply flood prevention tourism and agriculture timber revenues play an important role in the deforestation scenario compared to deforestation conservation of the leuser ecosystem benefits all categories of stakeholders except for the elite logging and plantation industry

reform in hungary abstract the paper examines reform issues facing hungary concentrating on sequencing the liberalisation of domestic markets international trade and demonopolisation creating competitive conditions in product and factor markets is a precondition for the success of other reforms trade liberalisation could play a key role but is constrained by the large debt so demonopolisation is a critical first step if privatisation is to be undertaken quickly there is an argument for making transfers proportional to the implied asset value of state pensions and reducing subsequent pension payments

valuing nature lessons learned and future research directions this paper critically reviews the literature on environmental valuation of ecosystem services across the range of global biomes the main objective of this review is to assess the policy relevance of the information encompassed by the wide range of valuation studies that have been undertaken so far published and other studies now cover most ecosystems with aquatic and marine contexts attracting the least attention there is also a predominance of single function valuation studies studies valuing multiple functions and uses and studies which seek to capture the before and after states as environmental changes take place are rare by and large it is the latter types of analyses that are most important as aids to more rational decision taking in ecosystem conservation versus development situations involving different stakeholders local national and global aggregate global scale estimates of ecosystems value are problematic given the fact that only marginal values are consistent with conventional decision aiding tools such as economic cost benefit analysis in general valuation data provide prima facie support for the hypothesis that net ecosystem service value diminishes with biodiversity and ecosystem loss balmford et al 2002 science 297 p 950 future research effort should include complementary research on multiple ecosystem services that seeks to capture the temporal disturbance profile and its causal factors the explicit recognition of multiple interdependent ecosystem services and values poses both conceptual and empirical research challenges it would serve to transform the practice of research in this sub field via the a priori assumption of multiple and inter dependent use instead of independent single use this line of reasoning can then be extended to the institutional arrangements that determine which values are captured new institutional processes and arrangements are probably required in order to best realise benefit streams from multiple ecosystem use and non use provision across a range of different stakeholders

a quantitative analysis of inflation as a tax on the underground economy abstract inflation rates are more dispersed and are persistently higher in developing countries this paper quantifies the importance of the public finance motive for inflation in the presence of a tax evading sector the underground economy the approach is motivated by the observation that the underground economy is especially large in poor countries the analysis builds on a general equilibrium monetary model with two production sectors where income in one of the sectors cannot be taxed a benevolent government finances its budget using an optimal combination of the income tax rate and the inflation rate the model is first calibrated to the u s economy and is then used for a cross country simulation the resulting relationships between the size of an underground economy inflation rate income tax rate and the share of seigniorage in the government revenue rationalize the cross country data quantitatively well

the impact of china s economic reforms on agricultural productivity growth this paper presents a method for assessing the relative importance of price increases and strengthened individual incentives due to the introduction of the responsibility system for the post 1978 increase in china s agricultural productivity data on post 1978 chinese agricultural performance suggest that a little over three quarters of the measured productivity increase is due to payment system changes and the remainder to price increases we also use our method to calculate incentive indices giving an estimate of the fraction of their marginal product that peasants received under the pre 1978 regime

inertial credit and opportunistic arrears in transition in a transition economy enterprise restructuring may exhibit a laffer curve response to tighter credit as a result of rational collective inertia in the presence of a rigid production structure unenforceable contracts and high adjustment costs a contraction in credit finance subtracts more liquidity than enterprises can generate internally because unrestructured firms are forced to extend trade credit to illiquid buyers an increase in their number increases the availability of forced supplier credit in turn increasing the attractiveness of inertial behavior as trade credit cannot be enforced a critical mass of trade and wage arrears causes pressure for a collective bailout thus validating inertial behavior even by reformable firms

structural uncertainty and subsidy removal for economies in transition abstract economies in transition are faced with a high degree of structural uncertainty i e uncertainty about which it is possible to learn through experience we study structural uncertainty s effects on a subsidy removal program subsidy removal causes unemployment but yields fiscal benefits and facilitates private sector growth when the policymaker does not know the speed with which the private sector absorbs the unemployed he will be driven toward a more decisive and therefore more informative policy the model also rationalizes policy reversals and implies that irreversibility constraints and political instability dampen the learning effect making policy more gradualist

central banks and seigniorage a study of three economies in transition abstract the paper examines the relations between central banks and other macro sectors in the czech republic hungary romania with respect to the creation and distribution of seigniorage taking austria and germany as a reference in economies in transition transfers of seigniorage from the central bank to the government and to the banking sector may appear as a natural way to soften the financial constraints of both sectors we propose a simple framework for the analysis of central bank seigniorage based on the opportunity cost approach and measure both the amount and allocation of seigniorage for the five countries in 1993 we find central bank seigniorage to be approximately four times our benchmark value in hungary and thirty times in romania the latter due to the high level of the inflation tax in hungary and romania most seigniorage is appropriated as an interest rate subsidy by the government in romania a large part also goes as a subsidy to the financial sector in none of the five countries we find that central banks retain an excessive amount of seigniorage for reserve accumulation or for current expenditures in the last part of the paper we discuss the implications of our findings on seigniorage for the evaluation of central bank independence vis a vis the government

manufacturing output employment and real wages in the 1980s labour s loss until the century s end during the 1980s most developing countries experienced sharp declines in manufacturing output and real wages whilst their manufacturing sectors were supposedly restructured or made more competitive by having to confront market forces this article examines the extent to which macroeconomic adjustment and industrial restructuring policies succeeded in achieving their objectives

the construct of institutional distance through the lens of different institutional perspectives review analysis and recommendations this paper presents a review and critique of the 20 year old literature on institutional distance which has greatly proliferated we start with a discussion of the three institutional perspectives that have served as a theoretical foundation for this construct organizational institutionalism institutional economics and comparative institutionalism we use this as an organizing framework to describe the different ways in which institutional distance has been conceptualized and measured and to analyze the most common organizational outcomes that have been linked to institutional distance as well as the proposed explanatory mechanisms of those effects we substantiate our qualitative review with a meta analysis which synthesizes the main findings in this area of research building on our review and previous critical work we note key ambiguities in the institutional distance literature related to underlying theoretical perspectives and associated mechanisms distance versus profile effects and measurement we conclude with actionable recommendations for improving institutional distance research

optimal tax rates and tax design during systemic reform abstract budgets in eastern europe are under strain as taxes are reformed and receipts fall should expenditure be maintained or should personal taxes be cut this paper asks how optimal tax rates might respond to a transition in which the government becomes less averse to inequality but the inequality in skills increases these are roughly offsetting and less important than falling enterprise revenue and the decline in the efficiency of personal taxation both of which cause a sharp fall in optimal transfers tax design consists of balancing the diffeiing inefficiencies of incompleteness in indirect tax coverage against evasion prone direct taxes

labor markets and adjustment in open asian economies the republic of korea and malaysia this article deals with the adjustment following external shocks in two open asian economies the republic of korea and malaysia there were important differences in the economic structure of the two countries as well as significant differences in the way external events produced crises that interrupted their dynamic economic growth detailed analyses of economic cycles in the two decades preceding 1987 88 show that the behavior of factor markets particularly the markets for labor and foreign exchange helped korea to adjust quickly to the shocks but in malaysia actually caused the crisis to deepen for economies heavily dependent on exports the unit cost of labor in dollars is of central importance as an index of the competitiveness of exports and hence of their ability to mount a sustained recovery after a difficult period accordingly the heart of the analysis is the determination of the unit cost of labor and the factors affecting its change throughout the cycles concentration on this critical variable helps to spotlight the crucial differences in the factor markets of the two economies

the postsocialist transitions in comparative perspective policy issues and recent experience abstract this paper examines the postsocialist transition in eastern europe the reforms in china and the postdirigiste transitions in latin america the paper analyzes the initial conditions that gave rise to processes of reform in the different countries the main strategies for economic reform shock treatment gradualism and mixed strategies discussing their conditioning factors and rationale the actual record of these policies in terms of key indicators of economic performance such as inflation gdp growth external sector sustainability progress in privatization and the social costs of adjustment in addition the paper discusses interdependencies between economic and political reforms during the course of systemic transformation

a reversal of fortune for korean women explaining the 1983 upward turn in relative earnings between 1971 and 1983 korea s mean gender earnings ration remained virtually stagnant at 47 percent but after 1983 the earnings ration took a distinct turn upward in other words not until after 1983 did korean women make any progress in closing the gender earnings gap when controlling for education the analysis reveals a surprising drop in relative earning across education groups in the 1970s and early 1980s and a recover thereafter the author uses an extremely rich set of microdata suitable for decomposition to explain the trends in korea s earnings differential results indicate that most of the 1983 reversal is attributable to a strong compression in market returns to skills and to narrowing gender differences in education and experience the widening gender earnings differential across education groups before 1983 resulted primarily from a growing gender gap in unobserved characteristics growing gender differences in unmeasured ability or increased wage discrimination could explain this trend after 1983 women with high school education or less benefit primarily from a dramatic narrowing in the economy s distribution of market payoffs to skills enough for women to begin to catch up to men relative earnings a compression in the return to skills helped only some groups women with college educations did not experience increased benefits from changes in the market payoff to skills stricter enforcement of korea s equal pay for equal work provision could help reduce the outright discrimination against women workers that might be the underlying problem by boosting the potential of korea s female labor force stronger enforcement of korea s equal opportunity provisions would improve the country s economic productivity

the dynamics of inflation and capital accumulation in previously centrally planned economies a theoretical framework the corporate governance problem of state enterprises in former communist economies can give rise to excessive wage claims and or capital decumulation this paper focuses on these problems highlighting the dynamic links between wage behavior the fiscal deficit inflation and the capital stock the fiscal impact of higher wages works through the reduction in public enterprises profits and hence government revenues from profit taxes if wage and tax claims on firms revenue are too high capital can be run down until wage claims are moderated by the fall in output copyright 1995 by the london school of economics and political science

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

building a process model of local adaptation of practices a study of six sigma implementation in korean and us firms the strategic transformation of asian firms into global players has involved the adoption and adaptation of many organizational practices developed in the west we build a process model of adaptation by observing how an organizational practice is adapted to a local setting different from its locus of origin through inductive methods and case studies of six sigma implementation in korean and us firms based on these cases we propose a cascading sequential pattern to the local adaptation of the conceptual social and technical dimensions of organizational practices reconciling conflicting views in the literature on whether or not to adapt our theoretical model highlights the importance of considering the different degrees of contextual influence on different underlying dimensions of a practice and of configuring each dimension accordingly further we suggest that the sequence and configuration of adaptation across different practice dimensions matter to the successful implementation of a practice across borders

technological capabilities of countries firm rivalry and foreign direct investment studies on foreign direct investment fdi have concentrated on sectoral effects but rarely on country patterns in this paper we use u s department of commerce data to identify the largest country shares of new fdi entries into the u s and the technological motivations for their investments based on the technological intensities of major investing countries in manufacturing industries we conclude that technological industries attract a disproportionate share of fdi entries however the acquisition of u s technology is not a major motivation the findings indicate that industry rivalry is an important dimension to understanding fdi

on the future of international joint venture research international joint ventures ijvs are an important type of international strategic alliance isa and have been studied by scholars for decades resulting in a plethora of empirical studies publications and reviews yet an inadequate accumulation of knowledge exists as a closer look reveals much more than providing a summary and critical assessment of past contributions this paper develops an expansive research agenda based upon a deep understanding of past research and comprehensive frameworks that distill this research we identify a number of research opportunities that would not only advance ijv research but also closely related literatures and disciplines such as isas theories of the multinational firm international business research and strategic management

measurement of repressed inflation in china abstract we estimate a measure of the repression of the chinese price level by developing a simple analytical model which derives a true rate of inflation on the basis of the different rates of change of the stock of money in circulation and the nominal value of retail sales this true rate of inflation is then used to explain changes in quasi money balances we estimate this model for the period 1979 1988 using quarterly data the results strongly support the hypothesis of repressed inflation the annual rate of inflation of the true price index is approximately 12 4 percent higher than that of the official price index over the 10 year period

going to the woods is going home recreational benefits of a larger urban forest site a travel cost analysis for berlin germany we present an application of the travel cost method to a large urban forest site in berlin germany the analysis is based on a large onsite survey and the same survey administered online although such applications are rare in an urban context applying a seasonal demand model to the case of grunewald is possible because the distances travelled are relatively large the majority of the respondents use motorized or public transport and grunewald is a large and unique urban forest site with very few substitutes the main results are the following 1 the demand for visits to grunewald is less elastic if only berlin residents are taken into account compared to when residents from the entire larger urban area of berlin are considered 2 estimated consumer surpluses are therefore greater if only berlin residents are taken into consideration 3 in addition demand is more elastic for the internet sample than for the on site sample 4 results suggest a lower bound overall consumer surplus of 14 95 per visit the results indicate that despite its inherent limitations non market economic valuation through the travel cost method can provide administrations with a powerful tool to monetize the benefits of urban forest recreation to increase public funding and redirect resources to address intensified use

task success based on contingency fit of managerial culture and embeddedness the article extends research on the contingency of fit in international management at the level of managerial tasks foreign firms managerial tasks are embedded in two environments with different profiles and different managerial cultures fit them to ensure task success study 1 analyzes 18 critical incidents summarizes chinese and japanese managerial cultures and identifies three types of managerial tasks we hypothesize that task success depends on the fit between task type and the chosen managerial culture such that foreign firms can have their operational local and people tasks successfully completed using home host or integrated managerial cultures respectively study 2 tests our hypotheses using 112 critical incidents the fit pattern at the level of managerial tasks advances the contingency perspective in international management and equips managers with cultural agility to confront international challenges

valuing forest ecosystem services what we know and what we don t abstract ecosystem services valuation has achieved considerable prominence in research and policy circles in recent years this paper reviews the studies that have tried to estimate the value of forest ecosystem services broadly this study addresses the following questions 1 what insights do these studies provide on the value of forest ecosystems 2 what lessons do they offer from an economic and policy perspective 3 what are the shortcomings of the existing studies and what are the challenges and issues for future research evidence from a cross section of forest sites countries and regions suggests that not only the total valuation of ecosystem services varies widely across studies but also the valuation of individual services this variation suggests that policies to conserve ecosystems and their services should emphasise local contexts and values this paper concludes by discussing the shortcomings of existing studies and suggests that among other things future research should focus on the neglected ecosystem services disservices assess the role of dynamic factors and environmental catastrophes on the provision of ecosystem services and assess the benefits of keeping forests intact versus converting them to alternative uses

are high interest rates effective for stopping high inflation some skeptical notes high interest rates are considered an effective toolfor stopping high inflation the case for a policy of high interest rates is developed in terms of a conventional is lm model however among other things the model ignores some central aspects of modern credit markets in particular high interest rates may give rise to nonperforming bank loans thus seriously jeopardizing the effectiveness of the policy examples are developed in which it would be optimal to aim for equilibriums of low rather than high interest rates one of these examples hinges on the existence of nonindexed domestic debt this article looks at the effectiveness and desirability of relatively high interest rates in stabilization programs high interest rates refer to nominal interest rates that would result in unsustainable high real interest rates that is real rates of interest that would cause a state of generalized bankruptcy if maintained for a few months or a year if the program s inflation target were to be achieved the article evolves through a series of examples beginning with the is lm model described in section i despite its simplicity and early vintage the model is still important in discussions of policy the conventional is lm approach which gives strong support to a policy of high interest rates implies that tight money is effective in reducing economic activity and through the phillips curve is also effective in lowering inflation the larger the interest rate the sooner price stability will be achieved section ii questions the relevance of the is lm result on the basis of two observations first we live in a world in which countries are closely linked from a financial point of view therefore high interest rates are likely to signal expectations of high devaluation or inflation second high inflation rates make expected or ex ante real interest rates look much smaller than if the stabilization plan s inflation targets were to be fulfilled consequently banks may continue lending despite high nominal rates with the passage of timne however firms will find themselves in serious financial straits which eventually may result in a state

dynamic capabilities what are they this paper focuses on dynamic capabilities and more generally the resource based view of the firm we argue that dynamic capabilities are a set of specific and identifiable processes such as product development strategic decision making and alliancing they are neither vague nor tautological although dynamic capabilities are idiosyncratic in their details and path dependent in their emergence they have significant commonalities across firms popularly termed best practice this suggests that they are more homogeneous fungible equifinal and substitutable than is usually assumed in moderately dynamic markets dynamic capabilities resemble the traditional conception of routines they are detailed analytic stable processes with predictable outcomes in contrast in high velocity markets they are simple highly experiential and fragile processes with unpredictable outcomes finally well known learning mechanisms guide the evolution of dynamic capabilities in moderately dynamic markets the evolutionary emphasis is on variation in high velocity markets it is on selection at the level of rbv we conclude that traditional rbv misidentifies the locus of long term competitive advantage in dynamic markets overemphasizes the strategic logic of leverage and reaches a boundary condition in high velocity markets copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

transition to the market economy poland 1989 93 in comparative perspective poland the economic outcomes leszek balcerowicz the principal architect of poland s radical reform strategy in 1990 analyses here its economic outcomes prior to reform the characteristics which distinguished the polish economy from other socialist economies in central europe were the critical nature of the hyperinflation and accompanying macroeconomic crisis in 1989 the magnitude of the country s external debt the particularly strong socio political position of the labour movement in general and of the employees of state enterprises in particular a level of dependence of the ussr which though dramatic was less than that of its neighbours less economic centralization and a greater degree of private ownership in agriculture than elsewhere the last two factors were favorable but the first three most particularly the heavy legacy of hyperinflation were economically unfavorable on balance poland entered reform with a substantial disadvantage nonetheless its macroeconomic performance in the four years which followed reform was relatively better than that of its neighbours the crown jewel of poland s success was the halt of hyperinflation this was not achieved at a relatively greater cost in output cumulative gdp decline was less than elsewhere though after adjustment for the effects of the cmea shock the differences are not large balcerowicz attributes poland s relative success to the salient characteristics of its reform programme it was rapid radical comprehensive and consistent romania for one followed the opposite course of stop go gradualism that country s accelerating inflation and deep decline in output suggests what might have happened to poland had it followed a softer approach

monetary valuation of forest ecosystem services in china a literature review and identification of future research needs we propose a review of empirical studies dealing with the monetary valuation of forest ecosystem services in china the analysis focuses on assessing methodological differences between studies highlighting the variation of monetary values across different ecosystem service types and identifying and discussing future research needs based on a systematic search our data set consists of 12 studies published in peer reviewed journals in english dealing with 72 forest ecosystem services our results suggest that domestic literature is affected by elusive categorization of ecosystem services and methodological inconsistencies the wide variation in monetary values of chinese forest ecosystem services a phenomenon also observed in global level reviews can be partially explained by the methodological heterogeneity of the studies future research could benefit from a strengthened and more standardized methodological approach drawing from relevant methods and indicators employed in the reviewed domestic articles as well as from insights and solutions proposed in the international empirical and conceptual literature the exceptional forest restoration policy landscape coupled with the increasing establishment of commercial plantations offer important research opportunities for monetary valuation in china efforts should be directed towards assessing marginal values of ecosystem services in land use changes over time and benefit flows among different stakeholders

intellectual capital configurations and organizational capability an empirical examination of human resource subunits in the multinational enterprise building on the organizational capabilities literature and theories of the multinational enterprise this paper develops and tests a framework that examines the relationship between intellectual capital configurations and organizational capabilities in human resource hr subunits looking at 187 subunits from 20 mnes findings show that intellectual capital dimensions vary in their usefulness for generating sharing and implementing hr management practices in particular while certain resources may help in the development of one capability they may harm the development of another implications are that an organization s intellectual capital investments will differ depending on the desired capability

the effects of mnc parent effort and social structure on subsidiary absorptive capacity although the literature provides ample evidence that the global transfer and local implementation of knowledge represents a key advantage for multinational corporations mncs we lack comparable understanding as to whether knowledge creating mnc parents can actively expand the absorptive capacity of their subsidiaries using a teacher student lens this study examines the combined impact of specific structural mechanisms and motivational processes by mnc parents on the ability of 216 subsidiaries to absorb parent initiated marketing strategies the findings reveal that mnc parents can indeed cultivate subsidiaries ability to appropriate marketing knowledge through a combination of adopting specific social structures and investing in particular efforts however the effect of social structure on subsidiary absorptive capacity is indirect and accounted for by the parents intensity of effort a number of theoretical implications emerge from the findings for research on absorptive capacity in relation to the role of the knowledge source the need to examine organizational influences in relation to one another and validating the original absorptive capacity dimensions for managers in the global marketplace the findings lead to the suggestion that mncs devote attention to nurturing the absorptive capacities at different organizational levels in order to optimize the global transfer of knowledge

influences on human resource management practices in multinational corporations a study of human resource management practices in 249 u s affiliates of foreign based multinational corporations mncs shows that in general affiliate hrm practices closely follow local practices with differences among specific practices the degree of similarity of local practices is significantly influenced by the method of founding dependence on local inputs the presence of expatriates and the extent of communication with the parent in addition sharp differences are revealed among affiliates of canadian japanese and european mncs suggesting strong country effects together these findings support the view of mncs as composed of differentiated practices which in turn are shaped by forces for local isomorphism and for internal consistency

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

union recognition by multinational companies in china a dual institutional pressure perspective over the last decade chinese authorities have pressed foreign multinational companies to recognize official trade unions employing cross classified multilevel modeling on a large data set 10 108 foreign owned firms cross embedded in 32 home countries and 755 chinese cities this study examines the antecedents of the varied positions of foreign owned firms toward union recognition around the midpoint of the first decade of the 2000s a time when the government led union recognition campaign in china was gaining strength drawing on a dual institutional pressure perspective the authors theorize that the likelihood that a foreign owned firm will recognize a union depends on both the industrial relations system in the home country and the location of its operations in the host country specifically a foreign owned firm is more likely to recognize unions if it originated from a nation where the legitimacy of collective representation is high and if it is located in a chinese city where union recognition is prevalent among chinese owned firms

a microfoundations approach to transnational capabilities the role of knowledge search in an ever changing world scholars seeking to understand the origin of dynamic capabilities have struggled to articulate specific capabilities and locate their source of variation within the firm we propose that the transnational imperative and a microfoundations approach to knowledge search can help to develop this topic adopting an engaged scholarship approach hypotheses are tested in a global consulting company counter to traditional capabilities arguments we find that drawing from globally dispersed colleagues will more strongly impact local responsiveness than drawing from locals outside the company though both may still be needed efficiency increases when teams draw upon codified knowledge but decreases when they draw upon embedded tacit knowledge finally through continual learning teams can change and re direct the composition of their responsiveness and efficiency activities in ways sensitive to an ever changing world

structural adjustment and international trade in eastern europe the case of poland poland andrew berg and jeffrey sachs the polish economic programme is important not only in its own right hut as a key example of the benefits and possible costs of a rapid movement to convertibility this paper proposes an analytical framework and new estimates of the costs and benefits the framework shows that convertibility revolves around the relationship of two nominal variables the money supply and the nominal exchange rate return to convertibility is achieved not mainly through a real depreciation but through a nominal depreciation which helps to bring the overall price level back into line with nominal aggregate demand and particularly with the money supply the new estimates show that the costs a drop in living standards and output are less than commonly believed given the extreme inflationary conditions in 1989 and the shock following the disintegration of cmea trade the loss of output was not caused in any important way by the rapid move to free trade

economic reform in czechoslovakia should we believe in santa klaus czechoslovakia david begg between the wars czechoslovakia was a prosperous market economy important legacies remain but 40 years of planning have caused severe distortions can czechoslovakia again become the jewel in the crown of eastern europe reforms began later than in hungary and poland but are now proceeding apace traditional sequencing of reforms is unwise micro reforms deserve greater priority and themselves affect macro credibility monetary and fiscal policies are intended to be tight but worries remain wage indexation a fuzzy exchange rate commitment and rising unemployment enterprise reform divides into better internal and external incentives privatization will be impeded by restoration of property to former owners and in any case is insufficient problems of corporate control will remain and inadequate attention is being given to incentives for state owned enterprises better external incentives require more foreign competition still limited tougher domestic competition policy still inadequate attention to banks and credit where bankruptcy is hard to enforce and balance sheets should be restructured and a temporary wage subsidy activities with negative value added at world prices should cease other activities would be more efficiently supplied through imports i discuss the principles governing the pace of intelligent restructuring and assess the prospects for its success in czechoslovakia

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

selective attention and the initiation of the global knowledge sourcing process in multinational corporations multinational corporations mncs frequently use their foreign subsidiaries to identify new opportunities to access external knowledge this article builds on the attention based view to examine how selective attention the focus on certain issues or answers at the exclusion of others works in the global knowledge sourcing process in mncs the results reveal an intriguing paradox while mncs may establish foreign subsidiaries far from headquarters to identify diverse novel knowledge and overcome local search headquarters decision makers tend to favor opportunities that are market proven and simply confirm what the mnc already knows subsidiary managers pre selling and selling efforts however can play a pivotal role in overcoming that bias this study combines detailed qualitative data with access to a proprietary database on 137 external knowledge sourcing opportunities in one of the world s largest mncs in the telecommunications sector

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

the no exit economy soft budget constraints and the fate of economic reforms in developing countries abstract the paper investigates the general issues of the costs and sustainability of economic reforms in the light of the current economic transformation of central and eastern europe using the conceptual framework of kornai s soft budget constraint macro and microeconomic indicators of budget softness are derived with the help of factor analysis budget softness may be represented as a linear combination of these indicators in a three factor model the role of soft budget constraints is tested to substantiate two hypotheses first macroeconomic stabilization is only credible and sustainable if appropriate microeconomic incentives in the form of hard budget constraints for enterprises exist second the costs of economic adjustment to exogenous price shocks in terms of short run growth and investment performance are related to the speed with which budget constraints can be hardened while the first two hypotheses are supported by the evidence the paper does not settle a third issue raised by the conceptual framework namely whether no exit economies also grow slower in the long run

multiculturalism from a cognitive perspective patterns and implications multiculturalism the internal representation of multiple cultural meaning systems has critical implications for global managers and multinational corporations mncs understanding multiculturalism is becoming increasingly important given that the locations within which mnc activity resides and the composition of the workforce even within a given location are more diverse building on the connectionism perspective we offer a novel cognitive conceptualization of multiculturalism that incorporates the individual s multicultural cognitive content and structure based on that we explain how specific sociocultural experiences interact with existing individual cognitions to form different patterns of multiculturalism specifically we propose five stylized patterns compartmentalization integration inclusion convergence and generalization and explain how they are developed through specific sociocultural experiences we discuss how different patterns of multiculturalism influence specific capabilities of multicultural mnc managers and their effectiveness in a variety of critical mnc tasks we believe the cognitive connectionist perspective which has not been brought before into international business discussions of culture and cultural capabilities holds great promise for better understanding global managers capabilities and development

unequal but fluid social mobility in chile in comparative perspective a major finding in comparative mobility research is the high similarity across countries and the lack of association between mobility and other national attributes with one exception higher inequality seems to be associated with lower mobility evidence for the mobility inequality link is however inconclusive largely because most mobility studies have been conducted in advanced countries with relatively similar levels of inequality this article introduces chile to the comparative project as the 10th most unequal country in the world chile is an adjudicative case if high inequality results in lower mobility chile should be significantly more rigid than its industrialized peers this hypothesis is disproved by the analysis despite vast economic inequality chile is as fluid if not more so than the much more equal industrialized nations furthermore there is no evidence of a decline in mobility as the result of the increase in inequality during the market oriented transformation of the country

economic reform in china since 1978 china has undergone a series of radical economic reforms which officially constitute a logical step in the initial stage of socialism and imply a transition from central planning to a mixed economy the author argues that in fact the transition taking place is from a soviet type of state capitalism towards private capitalism the rural reforms involve the restoration of pre revolutionary production relations while the urban reforms introduce new capitalists drawn from the ranks of the state administration to the detriment of the poor and unskilled there has been a retreat from marxism as the official ideology and the legitimacy of the regime is now based on modernisation as a national goal

searching locally and globally applying daniel levinthal s scholarship to international business daniel a levinthal has made several important contributions to the fields of strategy and management his research has been pivotal in enhancing our understanding of interactions between the internal and external contexts that organizations face as well as the roles of experience search and learning processes despite substantial overlap between the core issues in international business ib and levinthal s work the ib field has yet to fully embrace key tenets of his research we aim to bridge this gap by providing a number of concrete suggestions for areas in which ib research may benefit from levinthal s work and vice versa

the economics of biodiversity conservation a study of a coffee growing region in the western ghats of india this paper analyses the economics of biodiversity conservation in the context of a tropical forest ecosystem in the western ghats region of india where coffee is the main competitor for land use using primary data covering a cross section of coffee growers the study notes that the opportunity costs of biodiversity conservation in terms of coffee benefits foregone are quite high even after including external costs due to wildlife damages and defensive expenditure to protect against wildlife the npvs and irrs from coffee for all land holding groups were high including external costs these npvs across different land holding groups ranged between rs 17 thousand to over rs 106 thousand per acre at 12 discount rate and the irrs between 16 6 and 23 even if the expected benefits were to decrease by 20 and costs rise by a similar proportion still the irrs from coffee were quite high 19 5 20 1 the study notes that the external costs accounted for between 7 and 15 of the total discounted costs of coffee cultivation and smaller holdings proportionately incurred higher external costs as compared to large holdings the study also notes high transaction costs incurred by the growers to claim compensation for wildlife damages notwithstanding these disincentives the study notes that the local community had a positive attitude towards biodiversity conservation and were willing to pay in terms of spending time for participatory biodiversity conservation taking elephants a keystone and threatened species in asia and the study region for the contingent valuation survey the study notes that the respondents are willing to spend 25 8 humandays per household annually which works to over rs 6003 per household per annum in terms of the income foregone they also preferred a decentralized government institution for participatory biodiversity conservation d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

deconstructing the liability of foreignness regulatory enforcement actions against foreign banks it is widely acknowledged that foreign firms are at an institutional disadvantage relative to domestic firms operating in the local market this liability of foreignness typically manifests as inferior performance for foreign firms relative to domestic competitors although myriad studies document the liability of foreignness few demonstrate how individual host country institutions generate specific liabilities in this study we explore the regulatory liabilities that foreign firms face using a sample of 189 foreign banks operating in the united states we find that regulators initiate more enforcement actions on average against foreign banks than they do against domestic banks the effects however vary by regulation type and firm characteristics for example foreign banks are no more likely to receive risk related sanctions but far more likely to receive stakeholder related sanctions foreign banks with higher quality of human capital and more host country experience are less likely to run afoul of all regulations foreign banks with more third country experience are less likely to receive risk related sanctions but more likely to receive stakeholder related sanctions the results highlight the contingent nature of regulatory liabilities the role of information asymmetry versus regulatory bias in enforcement outcomes and the liability reducing effects of resources and capabilities

international human resource strategy and its determinants the case of subsidiaries in taiwan this paper explores how the tension between global integration and local responsiveness affects the dimensions and determinants of international human resource ihr strategy to accomplish this jarillo and martinez s 1990 business strategy framework for parents and their subsidiaries was recast in an ihr strategy setting then the relationships between the two dimensions of ihr strategy that emerged global integration and local responsiveness and a set of interorganizational interdependency variables were explored several new and informative associations between the interorganizational interdependency variables subsidiaries dependence on parent s resources local resources and hot institutions and ihr strategy were observed in a sample of one hundred subsidiaries of japanese u s and european mncs operating in taiwan

firm dynamics and industrialization in the chinese economy in transition implications for small business policy abstract this article first presents a review of the development of different types of domestic enterprises state owned enterprise soes collectiveowned enterprises coes and other enterprises oes which include mainly private enterprises compared with other transition economies coes are actually an important source of china s rapid economic growth they are vaguely defined cooperative without a well defined ownership structure there is no equivalent organizational structure similar to coes in western economies the purpose of this article is to study the empirical relationship between the size of domestic enterprises including state owned enterprises collective owned enterprises and other enterprises and their firm dynamics growth by investigating whether they grow according to gibrat s law the majority of coes and oes were formed after the economic reform the rapid growth of these non state enterprises especially coes is actually the driving force behind the rapid development of the industrial sector our empirical results suggest that gibrat s law does not hold for all types of enterprises the rejection is especially strong for coes moreover small enterprises are growing faster than their larger counterparts in terms of employment and output this conclusion leads to at least three implications 1 there has been little research into the dynamics of soes and coes in an economy in transition our results not only help stimulate further research in this area but also provide information for designing policies to speed up the economic reforms 2 until now the chinese government has not had a comprehensive small business policy given our empirical results there is an implication for government policy prescription to achieve china s development targets of rapid industrialization and lower unemployment or underemployment the chinese economy can reap more dynamic benefits by breaking up a giant and inefficient enterprise especially inefficient soe into a number of smaller enterprises in addition more small enterprises also improve competition in the marketplace and force other inefficient soes to improve their performance further research should be undertaken to examine the viability of this policy 3 because coes are the majority of small manufacturing enterprises the rapid growth of coes after their formation that are simply the opposite of the type of private organizations the center of the central and east european reforms is rather surprising to academics although some hypotheses like cooperative culture and moral framework for rights are put forward to explain their superior performance the validity of such hypotheses has not been empirically tested yet this is a fruitful area for further research

effective demand enterprise reforms and public finance in china economic reform in china athar hussain and nicholas stern this paper examines some problems of transition from a command to a market economy through an analysis of the most important example to date the reforms in the chinese economy since the late 1970s our focus is on the links between enterprise reforms effective demand and public finance the reforms have created a curious and problematic hybrid of market and command economies with serious problems of coordination they have concentrated almost exclusively on the delegation of decision making to enterprises from the higher to lower tiers of the government without taking into account its implications for investment consumption and public finance an understanding of future policy and lessons for other countries requires a careful examination of the effects of these past policies granting discretion to enterprises over investment and wages has resulted in both an investment and consumption boom but paradoxically a fall in profits there are strong reasons to suppose that the investment ratio has been too high in recent years fuelling inflation and slowing additions to supply by prolonging the gestation period of investment there has been a large increase in liquid assets in the hands of households which makes their expectations increasingly important for macroeconomic policy there is need for concerted financial innovation to diversify household wealth away from liquid assets finally the changes in the composition of government revenue and expenditure are disturbing there is an urgent need for a flexible and broad based tax system and for reducing price subsidies and subsidies to loss making enterprises

stochastic economic assessment of afforestation on marginal land in irrigated farming system we analysed the economic viability of afforestation on marginal irrigated croplands in irrigated drylands of uzbekistan the revenues derived from a combination of diversified agricultural production carbon sequestration nitrogen fixation and avoided irrigation water use were analysed considering uncertainty associated with on farm activities such as crop production and short rotation forestry at the per hectare scale variability in land use revenues would necessitate substantial increases in carbon prices for afforestation to be as profitable as crop cultivation on marginal lands assuming an abundant irrigation water supply in contrast at the farm scale the analysis results revealed that afforestation can be attractive financially even without carbon payments due to farm production constraints variable land use returns and the benefits of land use diversification increased carbon prices would promote carbon sequestration by motivating farmers to plant high biomass producing tree species but would have an ecosystem service trade off by reducing the appeal of nitrogen fixing species that are essential for nitrogen self sufficiency of afforestation efforts given the modest irrigation needs of afforestation efforts compared to the cultivation of annual crops tree plantations could become a primary income source for farms during periods of drought irrigation water saved from replacing crops with trees on marginal farmland would enhance the cultivation of commercial crops on productive lands thus increasing farm income