the impact of wind power generation on the electricity price in germany abstract this paper investigates the relationship between intermittent wind power generation and electricity price behaviour in germany using a garch model i evaluate the effect of wind electricity generation on the level and the volatility of the electricity price in an integrated approach the results show that variable wind power reduces the price level but increases its volatility this paper s results also indicate that regulatory change has stabilised the wholesale price the electricity price volatility has decreased in germany after a modification of the marketing mechanism of renewable electricity this gives confidence that further adjustments to regulation and policy may foster a better integration of renewables into the power system

the innovation impact of the eu emission trading system findings of company case studies in the german power sector abstract this paper provides a detailed analysis of how the european emission trading system eu ets as the core climate policy instrument of the european union has impacted innovation towards this end we investigate the impact of the eu ets on research development and demonstration rd d adoption and organizational change in doing so we pay particular attention to the relative influences of context factors policy mix market factors and public acceptance and firm characteristics value chain position technology portfolio size and vision empirically our qualitative analysis is based on multiple case studies with 19 power generators technology providers and project developers in the german power sector which were conducted in 2008 09 we find that the innovation impact of the eu ets has remained limited so far because of the scheme s initial lack of stringency and predictability and the relatively greater importance of context factors additionally the impact varies significantly across technologies firms and innovation dimensions and is most pronounced for rd d on carbon capture technologies and organizational changes our analysis suggests that the eu ets on its own may not provide sufficient incentives for fundamental changes in corporate innovation activities at a level which ensures political long term targets can be achieved

governments as owners state owned multinational companies the globalization of state owned multinational companies somncs has become an important phenomenon in international business ib yet it has received scant attention in the literature we explain how the analysis of somncs can help advance the literature by extending our understanding of state owned firms soes and multinational companies mncs in at least two ways first we cross fertilize the ib and soes literatures in their analysis of foreign investment behavior and introduce two arguments the extraterritoriality argument which helps explain how the mnc dimension of somncs extends the soe literature and the non business internationalization argument which helps explain how the soe dimension of somncs extends the mnc literature second we analyze how the study of somncs can help develop new insights of theories of firm behavior in this respect we introduce five arguments the triple agency conflict argument in agency theory the owner risk argument in transaction costs economics the advantage and disadvantage of ownership argument in the resource based view rbv the power escape argument in resource dependence theory and the illegitimate ownership argument in neo institutional theory after our analysis we introduce the papers in the special issue that collectively reflect diverse and sophisticated research interest in the topic of somncs

reinterpreting a temporally aggregated consumption cap model recent literature has found that the coefficient of relative risk aversion estimated through consumption based asset pricing models is implausibly high even when the phenomenon of temporal aggregation is taken into account this article suggests that an ima 1 1 process be assumed as the generating mechanism of consumption instead of the standard random walk process in this case if the coefficient of the moving average component is negative the implied value of the coefficient of relative risk aversion can be reduced to plausible levels some empirical and theoretical support for the ima 1 1 hypothesis is also presented and discussed

international corporate entrepreneurship and firm performance the moderating effect of international environmental hostility abstract globalization of the world economy has encouraged u s companies to leverage their resources and skills by expanding into existing or new foreign markets u s companies have also acquired new capabilities by locating important functional activities overseas and joining with foreign partners in new markets through alliances and joint ventures these opportunities however are tempered by the constraints imposed by the competitive forces that exist in international environments aggressive government intervention technological changes and fierce local rivalries all contribute to hostile international environments for u s firms global expansion success in global business operations requires resourcefulness and entrepreneurial risk taking the activities of u s companies in foreign markets therefore provide a unique opportunity to examine the effects of international corporate entrepreneurship ice efforts on company performance ice is defined as the sum of a company s efforts aimed at innovation proactiveness and risk taking these efforts offer an important means of revitalizing and renewing established companies and improving their performance few studies have empirically examined the effects of ice activities on companies financial performance this study used data from 98 u s companies to 1 determine the impact of ice efforts on firm performance and 2 explore the moderating effect that the perceived hostility of the international environment has on the relationship between ice and company performance the results showed that ice was positively associated with a firm s overall profitability and growth as well as its foreign profitability and growth those firms that aggressively pursued ice in international environments with higher levels of hostility had higher return on assets roa but did not achieve significantly higher levels of growth however as hostility in the international environment continued to intensify roa rose and then fell as companies increased their ice activities thus there was a point of diminishing returns to a company s aggressive pursuit of ice under excessive environmental hostility the results highlight both the rewards and risks of pursuing ice companies benefit from ice activities by achieving higher overall performance as well as foreign profits and growth in revenue however the aggressive pursuit of ice does not always guarantee superior performance our results show that the payoff from ice is moderated by executives perceptions of the hostility of their firm s international business environment our findings highlight the importance of ice for organizational success both overall and in foreign markets yet the results compellingly suggest that there are upper limits to the potential gains a firm achieves from its aggressive pursuit of ice when the international environment in which it competes is hostile

different shades of green global oil and gas companies and renewable energy abstract the long term energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy raises critical questions about the future of oil and gas firms this study asks why some oil and gas firms are committed to renewable energy while others continue to maintain a distinct fossil fuels focus with little or no investment in renewable energy the analysis reveals that there is a wide range in the degree to which oil and gas firms have invested in renewable energy some firms have no investments and others have investments in multiple renewable energy technologies across many countries we examine a combination of country based institutional factors and firm based knowledge and experience factors that could impact oil and gas firms decisions to invest in renewable energy activity regulative and normative pressures impacted renewable energy investments as did environmental citizenship and the degree of internationalization the study s integration of country level factors with firm level experiences provides insights into how firms are dealing with the energy transition by examining areas such as sustainability and regulatory policy the paper sheds light on the ways in which scholars can tap into measures and methods that can extend traditional ib research

is there a relationship between a geocentric mind set and multinational strategy this paper operationalizes and tests relationships between a geocentric managerial mind set geographic scope and the structural and strategic characteristics of firms and industries relationships are tested using data from a survey of senior corporate international hrm managers of large u s based manufacturing multinationals an index of a geocentric mind set is found to correlate with geographic scope and various aspects of ihrm policy and practice however no relationship is found with measures of multinational strategy or organizational structure the paper concludes with a speculative hypothesis development of a geocentric mind set may relate to the information or knowledge intensity of the firm rather than its position on the strategic continuum

valuation of the operating flexibility of multinational corporations the returns to multinationality are estimated as the value of operating flexibility empirical measures of the return of multinationality require a precise specification of the extensiveness of the mnc s transnational network to measure the degree of multinationality this precise empirically grounded definition of multinationality has been absent from the academic literature to date we address this omission and we find that two characteristics of the transnational network its breadth number of foreign countries in which the mnc has operations and depth the concentration of foreign subsidiaries in a few countries are significant in explaining the value of operating flexibility in particular we find that the returns to multinationality are maximized for firms with networks that have breadth but not depth the role of market intangibles such as r d and advertising on mnc market valuation is shown to depend on the flexibility regime

the psychic distance paradox companies tend to begin their internationalization process in countries that are psychically close researchers describe the sequence of entry that firms follow and the mode of entry they choose they suggest that psychically close countries are more easily understood than distant ones and offer more familiar operating environments although not prescriptive an unstated conclusion can be drawn linking sequence of entry to performance evidence from thirty two canadian retail companies shows that only seven 22 were functioning successfully in the united states the psychic distance paradox is that operations in psychically close countries are not necessarily easy to manage because assumptions of similarity can prevent executives from learning about critical differences moreover empirical evidence from 271 ceos confirms greater cultural differences between canada and the u s than assumed previously modifications are suggested to improve the psychic distance concept

explaining international stock correlations with cpi fluctuations and market volatility this paper investigates the dynamic correlations among six international stock market indices and their relationship to inflation fluctuation and market volatility the current research uses a newly developed time series model the double smooth transition conditional correlation with conditional auto regressive range dstcc carr model findings reveal that international stock correlations are significantly time varying and the evolution among them is related to cyclical fluctuations of inflation rates and stock volatility the higher lower correlations emerge between countries when both countries experience a contractionary expansionary phase or higher lower volatilities

renewable generation and electricity prices taking stock and new evidence for germany and austria abstract economic theory predicts that the increase of renewable electricity production should reduce the price of electricity in the short run which is also known as the merit order effect although the merit order effect is only one of several consequences of renewable production on the electricity system it is crucial to determine its size for the economic evaluation of renewable energies in this paper we present a comprehensive overview of relevant past research results on the price effect of renewables additionally we conduct a new empirical analysis of the price effect of renewable production for the austrian german region a market that clearly qualifies for a merit order effect analysis given its characteristics based on the review and our own analysis we show that the merit order effect varies depending on the region and the assessment method chosen we also find that the size of this effect is less dispersed throughout different markets than previously suggested by the literature

a three stage theory of international expansion the link between multinationality and performance in the service sector it is generally assumed that the performance of a firm improves with greater multinationality yet recent empirical studies have shown both a u shaped relationship which suggests an initially negative effect of international expansion on performance before the positive returns of international expansion are realized and an inverted u shaped relationship which suggests that international expansion beyond an optimal level is again detrimental to performance and results in a negative slope this paper proposes a new unified three stage theory of international expansion that incorporates both concepts in a sigmoid hypothesis it then tests this on data from 11 service industries highlighting the difference between knowledge based and capital intensive service sectors

forecasting financial volatilities with extreme values the conditional autoregressive range carr model we propose a dynamic model for the high low range of asset prices within fixed time intervals the conditional autoregressive range model henceforth carr the evolution of the conditional range is specified in a fashion similar to the conditional variance models as in garch and is very similar to the autoregressive conditional duration acd model of engle and russell 1998 extreme value theories imply that the range is an efficient estimator of the local volatility e g parkinson 1980 hence carr can be viewed as a model of volatility out of sample volatility forecasts using the s p500 index data show that the carr model does provide sharper volatility estimates compared with a standard garch model

temporal aggregation and hall s model of consumption behaviour a simple exercise of time series analysis shows that the presence of the phonomenon of temporal aggregation in quarterly consumption data can substantially alter the empirical inference about hall mocel of consumption behaviour this fact has received almost no attention in the econometric research in this field

testing for weak form efficiency of crude palm oil spot and future markets new evidence from a garch unit root test with multiple structural breaks there is a sizeable literature that tests for weak form efficiency in commodity and energy spot and future prices while many studies now allow for multiple structural breaks to address the criticism that conventional unit root tests have low power to reject the unit root null in the presence of structural change the extant literature overlooks the fact that conventional unit root tests are biased in the presence of conditional heteroscedasticity we apply a recently developed generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity garch unit root test with multiple structural breaks to crude palm oil spot and future prices and find much more evidence against weak form efficiency than that found using tests that fail to allow for conditional heteroscedasticity our results point to the importance of allowing for heteroscedasticity when testing for efficiency in commodity and energy spot and future prices

measuring the degree of internationalization of a firm in spite of both positivistic and instrumental research the reliability of measuring the degree of internationalization of a firm remains speculative we collected data on nine attributes of seventy four american manufacturing mncs alpha factor and frequency analyses revealed a linear combination of five variables with a reliability coefficient of 79 as a measure of the degree of internationalization of a firm we discuss the statistical and conceptual properties of the scale and their implications for content and construct validity

how does germany s green energy policy affect electricity market volatility an application of conditional autoregressive range models abstract based on a dynamic model for the high low range of electricity prices this article analyses the effects of germany s green energy policy on the volatility of the electricity market using european energy exchange data from 2000 to 2015 we find rather high volatility in the years 2000 2009 but also that the weekly price range has significantly declined in the period following the year 2009 this period is characterised by active regulation under the energy industry law enwg the eu emissions trading directive etd and the renewable energy law eeg in contrast to the preceding period price jumps are smaller and less frequent especially for day time hours implying that current policy measures are effective in promoting renewable energies while simultaneously upholding electricity market stability this is because the regulations strive towards a more and more flexible and market oriented structure which allows better integration of renewable energies and supports an efficient alignment of renewable electricity supply with demand

the expansion of renewable energies and employment effects in germany the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy is a high priority of the european union as well of its member states the german government wants to increase the share of renewable energies from about 5 to 12 by 2010 to attain this goal the german government has introduced compulsory compensation schemes for electricity produced from renewable energy fed into the public grid this paper examines the economic impact of this policy employing an econometric model particular emphasis was given to employment effects in general we distinguish two effects 1 an expansive effect resulting from additional investments and 2 a contractive effect resulting from an increase in the production cost of power the first effect will dominate during the first years and lead to an increase in employment of approximately 33 000 new jobs however the contractive effect will offset these gains and lead to a slightly negative employment balance by 2010

local regional or global quantifying mne geographic scope this paper proposes a multidimensional index of regional and global orientation that can be used in confirmatory studies with econometric methodologies unlike extant measures the index is objectively scaled and controls for home country orientation and market size differences the index is shown to be consistent with models of internationalization that incorporate different assumptions about investment choice and global competition preliminary results show that large multinationals follow home region oriented internationalization paths although much of the regional effect reported by previous studies in fact reflects strong home country biases

is monthly us natural gas consumption stationary new evidence from a garch unit root test with structural breaks we apply a recently developed unit root test that simultaneously accounts for heteroskedasticity and structural breaks to united states monthly natural gas consumption we find that united states monthly natural gas consumption is stationary our results illustrate the importance of accounting for heteroskedasticity when testing for a unit root in energy consumption with higher frequency data

measuring the degree of internationalization of a firm a comment sullivan s 1994 suggestion that an index measure of the internationalization construct is superior to single variable measures is critiqued on psychometric content validity criterion validity reliability and utilitarian grounds we argue that internationalization is more complex than envisioned by this index and suggest that further refinement of the construct is necessary before constructing indices

green energy market development in germany effective public policy and emerging customer demand this paper reviews the development of renewable energy in germany from 1973 to 2003 it investigates the relative importance of energy policy and green power marketing in shaping the renewable energy market more than a decade of consistent policy support for renewables under the feed in law streg and its successor eeg has been an important driver for increasing renewable electricity generation to date putting the country in a better position than most of its peers when it comes to achieving european union targets for renewable energy green power marketing driven by customer demand on the other hand is growing but has had limited measurable impact so far we discuss potential intangible benefits of green power marketing and scenarios for future market development the paper concludes with lessons that can be learned from the german case for policy design and market development in other countries

the merit order effect a detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in germany the german feed in support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources has led to high growth rates of the supported technologies critics state that the costs for consumers are too high an important aspect to be considered in the discussion is the price effect created by renewable electricity generation this paper seeks to analyse the impact of privileged renewable electricity generation on the electricity market in germany the central aspect to be analysed is the impact of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices the results generated by an agent based simulation platform indicate that the financial volume of the price reduction is considerable in the short run this gives rise to a distributional effect which creates savings for the demand side by reducing generator profits in the case of the year 2006 the volume of the merit order effect exceeds the volume of the net support payments for renewable electricity generation which have to be paid by consumers

does market oriented institutional change in an emerging economy make business group affiliated multinationals perform better an institution based view viewing market oriented institutional change as a two staged process we propose that the effects of market oriented institutional change on two organizational forms business group affiliated and independent firms are different depending on the stage of institutional change specifically we examine how the two distinct periods of market oriented institutional change that is institutional friction and institutional convergence affect business group affiliated firms and independent firms in their abilities to profit from international diversification using data on 140 korean manufacturing multinational firms from 1993 to 2003 we find that emerging economy firms face an international diversification discount a negative relationship between international diversification and firm performance we also find that business group affiliation affects the international diversification discount differently during the two periods of market oriented institutional change particularly when firm performance is measured by the market to book value mbv the moderating effect of business group affiliation on the relationship between international diversification and mbv is negative during the institutional frictions period but becomes positive during the institutional convergence period in the later stage of institutional change our findings warn against viewing market oriented institutional change as a discrete event highlighting the importance of recognizing the qualitatively distinctive nature of different periods of market oriented institutional change in future research

international coherence and mne performance we introduce the concept of international coherence ic to describe the degree of relatedness in a multinational enterprise mne we propose that ic hinges on the interplay of the relatedness between any two mne units and the linkages that tie them together linkages can be thought of as the often costly pipes that allow the content that is resources and information that define relatedness to flow we argue that greater ic increases the potential of an mne to generate economies by facilitating resource sharing and diffusion as well as learning and knowledge creation among mne units while controlling corresponding bureaucratic costs in turn this will lead to superior mne performance we also hypothesize that firms facing high levels of competition will have greater incentives to capitalize on ic to test our hypotheses we first estimate the relatedness between units by the revealed unit relatedness using data on nearly a half a million global investments by all public mnes worldwide we then use this information and data on 960 us mne units locations to estimate ic and find support for our hypotheses our results indicate the potential for ic as an important new facet of multinationality

the market value of variable renewables the effect of solar wind power variability on their relative price this paper provides a comprehensive discussion of the market value of variable renewable energy vre the inherent variability of wind speeds and solar radiation affects the price that vre generators receive on the market market value during windy and sunny times the additional electricity supply reduces the prices because the drop is larger with more installed capacity the market value of vre falls with higher penetration rate this study aims to develop a better understanding on how the market value with penetration and how policies and prices affect the market value quantitative evidence is derived from a review of published studies regression analysis of market data and the calibrated model of the european electricity market emma we find the value of wind power to fall from 110 of the average power price to 50 80 as wind penetration increases from zero to 30 of total electricity consumption for solar power similarly low value levels are reached already at 15 penetration hence competitive large scale renewable deployment will be more difficult to accomplish than as many anticipate

third world copycats to emerging multinationals institutional changes and organizational transformation in the indian pharmaceutical industry this article investigates how indian pharmaceutical firms facing discontinuous institutional changes in their domestic environment due to economic liberalization and intellectual property reforms have undertaken organizational transformation internationalization of resources and product markets constitutes an important component of organizational transformation for local firms in emerging economies using longitudinal data on 206 indian pharmaceutical firms from 1995 2004 we find that firms access to international technological and financial resources enables product market internationalization furthermore we theorize and find support for our predictions that the association between international resources and markets is conditioned by time and business group affiliation and product market internationalization affects financial performance several implications thus emerge for theory and practice associated with the sources of competitiveness in emerging economy firms and their transformation into globally competitive multinational firms

income uncertainty and optimal redistribution 1 introduction redistribution policy under a utilitarian criterion aims to transfer dollars from one group in the population to another if the weighted utility gain to the recipients exceeds the utility cost to the donors under diminishing marginal utility of income part of any exogenous change in one group s income should be shared with the other group for example if taxpaying workers suffer a negative shock to their mean earnings then part of this utility shock should be spread to nonworkers in the form of lower transfer payments and vice versa for the case of a positive shock this article demonstrates the counterintuitive result that under reasonable preference representations a policymaker may respond optimally to a negative utility shock by redistributing income away from the harmed group thus exacerbating the group s utility loss in particular under risk aversion a mean preserving increase in the variance of income typically has an effect on well being analogous to a decrease in mean income 1 it may nevertheless be welfare enhancing to transfer income away from those suffering an increase in income uncertainty even though this policy compounds their welfare loss the main ideas can be demonstrated in a simple framework for illustration the analysis will focus on redistribution from taxpaying workers to nonworkers the central result is that a meanpreserving increase in earnings uncertainty among taxpayers can increase optimal transfer amounts to nonworkers increasing optimal income replacement rates even though the redistribution exacerbates the taxpayers utility loss from the increase in uncertainty 2 model footnote 1 many factors in the economy affect earnings uncertainty even conditional on being employed such as the form of compensation e

renewable energy and employment in germany abstract the positive impacts of an increasing share of renewable energy on the mitigation of climate change as well as on the decrease of the dependency of energy imports are indisputable however one persistent problem for the german economy has been its high level of unemployment in the recent past therefore any policy strategy will be measured also by its net impact on the labor market the paper describes the results of a study that models this impact and is novel within three respects firstly an input output vector for the renewable energy sector was developed based on the results of more than 1000 interviews with an extensive questionnaire secondly gross and net effect of two different policy scenarios for germany until 2030 were calculated and thirdly the approach varies from earlier studies by its explicit modeling of export and foreign trade effects

the influence of the management team s international experience on the internationalization behaviors of smes why are some small and medium sized enterprises smes more successful in selling outside their domestic markets than are other smes in the same industry although the traditional explanation is that firms can gain valuable knowledge and resources as they become older and larger small and young firms are not necessarily disadvantaged if they develop other mechanisms to acquire the requisite knowledge and resources we examine the role of the management team s international experience as such a mechanism for the internationalization of canadian software product firms we show that internationally experienced management teams have a greater propensity to develop foreign strategic partners and to delay less in obtaining foreign sales after start up and that these behaviors are associated with a higher degree of internationalization

u k smes decision to discontinue exporting an exploratory investigation into practices within the clothing industry abstract although the decision to internationalise has been viewed in certain studies as an entrepreneurial act research has also indicated that some firms may be better served in concentrating on their domestic market depending on a number of internal and external considerations associated with the profitable exploitation of identified opportunities this investigation reports on first reasons why a sample of executives from small firms discontinued export activities and second perceptions towards policy assistance that may motivate them to recommence overseas activities in the future analysis in this study establishes that differences exist between two distinct groups of firms namely those indicating their discontinuation of exporting was a short term measure compared with those that viewed the decision as longer term entrepreneurial learning was found to be present in firms that influenced some managers to overcome identified obstacles and engage in alternative modes of international activity to the export route whereas others decided to pursue domestic opportunities the study provides recommendations for policymakers in the provision of trade assistance programs

internationalization trajectories a cross country comparison are large chinese and indian companies different this paper explores whether the internationalization trajectories patterns over time in the level pace variability and temporal concentration of international expansion of large firms from china and india are fundamentally different from those of developed country firms a longitudinal cross country comparative study of 256 large firms for the 1990 2004 period shows that although internationalization trajectories of large and leading chinese and indian firms are indeed different there are also considerable similarities between established developed country firms and the new firms from emerging markets not in the least because they often interact within the same sector

how to deal with negative power price spikes flexible voluntary curtailment agreements for large scale integration of wind for the large scale integration of electricity from renewable energy sources res e the german system seems to reach its limits in 2009 the electricity wholesale market experienced serious negative prices at times of high wind and low demand the feed in system in germany consists of a fixed feed in price a take off obligation and a res priority rule and in practice only very restrictive use of res e curtailment exactly the latter is the problem we argue that the overall performance of the system would improve seriously by lifting the restrictions on the use of voluntary curtailment agreements while retaining the priority rule as such since generators of res e can only improve under this system reform investment conditions improve leading to higher installed res e capacity this in turn implies that reduced wind output due to curtailment can actually be offset by higher wind output in all periods in which there is no problem

variances of security price returns based on high low and closing prices in a recent paper garman and klass 1980 studied the problem of estimating capital asset price volatility parameters developing an idea first introduced by parkinson 1980 they argue that improved volatility measures can be obtained by taking into account the daily high low and opening prices in addition to the traditionally used closing prices this paper is concerned mainly with testing the empirical validity of different volatility estimators based on high low and closing prices

cultural diversity and the performance of multinational firms we test the hypothesis that culturally related international diversification will have a positive impact on firm performance and that the opposite will be true for culturally unrelated globalization cultural diversity for fortune 500 firms was used to predict performance over a ten year period 1985 1994 controlling for several organizational and industry characteristics regression tests using nine indicators of cultural diversity revealed no significant cultural effects alternate interpretations are offered

grappling with globalisation challenges for economic governance this paper examines the key domestic institutional challenges posed by globalisation in terms of the following questions how does economic globalisation differ from other types of economic integration what is its impact on the extant national institutions of economic governance what institutional innovations are required to cope with the challenges and how can institutional change be made politically feasible it identifies three perspectives on how national governments may respond retreat hold fort or rearticulate it concludes that though governments need to devise policies to attract mnes indulging in races to the bottom is not the only route perhaps not even a desirable route second to attract fdi governments must afford labor flexibility how they actually implement it will vary within and across countries depending on the capacities and the willingness of governments to undertake institutional reform labour flexibility can be made politically feasible by increasing the levels of social insurance to protect displaced labour and by instituting programmes that increase their skills and employability

the relationship between international diversification and performance in service firms international diversification is a growth strategy that has a major potential impact on firm performance the relationship between international diversification and firm performance has been extensively studied in the international strategy literature a major gap in the literature has been the non existence of studies that have examined the effect of international diversification on performance in service firms previous studies that have tested the international diversification performance relationship were based on samples of manufacturing firms we argue that the form of the relationship between multinationality and performance is different in service firms we provide a theoretical argument for this claim and hypothesize that there is a u shaped curvilinear relationship between multinationality and performance in service firms our sample consists of 81 major german service firms spanning across four industries results show that there is support for a u shaped curvilinear relationship based on the findings implications and directions for future research are provided

multinationality and performance among british manufacturing companies over the period 1972 84 profitability among 304 large british manufacturing companies was positively related to their degree of multinationality moreover increases in overseas production were strongly associated with increases in sales and profitability the profitability of multinational growth over the whole period was independent of its destination supporting the view that the primary source of the superior performance of multinationals was competitive advantage rather than the higher rate of profit in the industries of other countries

when do international human capital enhancing practices benefit the bottom line an ability motivation and opportunity perspective we study the conditions under which firms can capitalize on their international human capital ihc using the ability motivation opportunity amo perspective we conceptualize ihc as ability collaborative climate as motivation and the firm s level of internationalization as opportunity we test three alternative amo models the additive model main effect the combinative model two way interactions and the multiplicative model a three way interaction using a cross industry sample of south korean firms we find support for the multiplicative model specifically the relationship between ihc enhancement practices and firm performance is significant and positive only when both collaborative climate and internationalization are high

on the durability of non durable goods abstract using both monthly and quarterly data this paper shows that the durability rates of non durable goods and services are significantly greater than zero and in line with the prediction of the theory the common practice of testing consumption and consumption related models with the national income and product account category of non durables and services under the assumption of zero durability may thus be inappropriate

structural breaks and petroleum consumption in us states are shocks transitory or permanent abstract this short communication extends the literature on the stationarity of energy consumption to the case of us petroleum consumption at the state level from 1960 to 2007 the results of lee and strazicich 2003 and narayan and popp forthcoming unit root tests with endogenously determined structural breaks in the intercept and slope of the trend function reveal break dates that correspond to the two opec oil shocks of the 1970s along with the double dip recession of 1980 1982 the null hypothesis of a unit root in petroleum consumption is rejected for a majority of states these results highlight the importance of recognizing the heterogeneity in the behavior of petroleum consumption across states in the formulation of energy conservation and demand management policies