angel investors around the world we document that the choice between disintermediated individual angel investments and intermediated private equity and venture capital investments depends on legal economic and cultural differences we find evidence of this using pitchbook s comprehensive data on more than 5000 angel and 80 000 private equity and venture capital investments in 96 countries from 1977 to 2012 the data further indicate that investee firms funded by angels are less likely to successfully exit through either an ipo or an acquisition these findings are robust to propensity score matching methods as well as to clustering standard errors and excluding u s observations among other approaches

the interplay of national distances and regional networks private equity investments in emerging markets integrating social network theory with the literature on national distance we examine how the investment strategy followed by a private equity pe firm in an emerging market is affected by the interplay between two important types of national distances institutional and geographic and the firm s centrality in the regional syndication network covering over 5 000 investment transactions we use a dataset of more than 500 pe firms based in both developed and emerging markets targeting three emerging market regions latin america southeast asia and eastern europe from 1996 to 2011 the results show that depending on the level of centrality of pe firms in regional syndication networks institutional and geographic distances can have differing effects both in magnitude and direction on their investment strategies in emerging markets moreover these effects are contingent on whether the pe firm is from a developed market or an emerging market we conclude that different types of national distances can operate in dissimilar ways depending on 1 firm level factors defined at the regional level such as centrality in the regional syndication network and 2 the developed market or emerging market nature of the pe firm

the kogut and singh national cultural distance index time to start using it as a springboard rather than a crutch this counterpoint investigates the continued relevance of the 30 year old kogut and singh ks index of cultural distance ks was a seminal contribution highlighting the relevance of cultural differences in ib however since then simplistic replications of the original arguments and index have prevented us from progressing towards a better understanding of how cross national differences matter we discuss the mechanisms underlying the construct and how they relate to the algorithm data and its critiques we call for more theoretically informed approaches highlighting the underlying mechanisms and specifying which data and algorithms best capture those mechanisms in each research context

reconciling the advantages and liabilities of foreignness towards an identity based framework this article leverages identity theory to address the question of when and how foreignness acts as an advantage and liability for the mne subsidiary applying an organizational identity lens i delineate how subsidiaries manage their foreignness by accentuating and attenuating internal and external organizational attributes drawing on this conceptualization i theorize how an accentuated foreign identity moderates context specific advantages and liabilities in offering a more nuanced understanding of how subsidiaries actively manage their foreignness and its contextual implications an identity based framework helps to both explain and reconcile the advantages and liabilities of foreignness

national and organizational culture differences and international joint venture performance this study examines the effect of dimensions of national and organizational culture differences on international joint venture ijv performance based on data from a survey of executives from joint ventures between indian partners and partners from other countries we found that the presumed negative effect from culture distance on ijv performance originates more from differences in organizational culture than from differences in national culture

operating flexibility global manufacturing and the option value of a multinational network the multinational corporation is a network of activities located in different countries the value of this network derives from the opportunity to benefit from uncertainty through the coordination of subsidiaries which are geographically dispersed we model this coordination as the operating flexibility to shift production between two manufacturing plants located in different countries a stochastic dynamic programming model treats explicitly this flexibility as equivalent to owning an option the value of which is dependent upon the real exchange rate the model is extended to analyze hysteresis effects and within country growth options we show that the management of across border coordination has led to changes in the heuristic rules used for performance evaluation and transfer pricing

why is corruption less harmful to income inequality in latin america summary conventional wisdom says corruption is bad for income inequality but recent research on latin america finds a trade off between corruption and inequality and suggests this is due to the large informal sector in the region using data on a large sample of countries we find that the informal sector impacts the link between corruption and inequality in particular the marginal impact of corruption becomes negative once the informal sector becomes large this is true in latin america and more generally corruption reducing policies should be accompanied by measures that help displaced informal sector workers

balancing exploration and exploitation in alliance formation do firms balance exploration and exploitation in their alliance formation decisions and if so why and how we argue that absorptive capacity and organizational inertia impose conflicting pressure

legal protection corruption and private equity returns in asia this article examines how private equity returns in asia are related to levels of legal protection and corruption we utilize a unique data set comprising over 750 returns to private equity transactions across 20 developing and developed countries in asia the data indicate that legal protections are an important determinant of private equity returns in asia but also that private equity managers are able to mitigate the potential for corruption the quality of legal system including legal protections is positively related to returns inefficient legal protections negatively impact transaction structures and economic certainty when exiting investments we also find that private equity managers irrespective of the quality of legal system they are operating within can mitigate the potential impact of corruption private equity returns are higher in countries with higher levels of corruption controlling for legal systems this finding is consistent with the view that private equity managers bring about organizational change to alleviate the costs of corruption our findings are robust to inclusion of controls for hofstede cultural variables economic conditions and transaction specific characteristics as well as consideration of econometric sample selection methods for unexited investments

linguistic gender marking and its international business ramifications darwin 1859 considered language a form of memory that stores information in a genome like mode grammar according to cognitive science research boroditsky schmidt phillips 2003 impacts a speakers cognitive framework and mental representation of social reality gender is among the most stable grammatical features wichmann holman 2009 and comparing languages is valuable for understanding their social role corbett 2011 such research should have significant value for international business ib where national variations are of focal interest but where the study of linguistics has mostly been relegated to a subset of culture culture based research currently relies on aggregate values based measures of culture e g hofstede 1980 1998 hofstede hofstede minkov 2010 house hanges javidan dorfman gupta 2004 making it susceptible to endogeneity problems and contemporaneous to gender outcomes in contrast a language s grammatical structure is a stable feature inherited from the distant past unbiased by present social political and economic forces

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

urbanization and growth in a simple urban economics framework we aim at highlighting how the trade off between optimal and equilibrium city size behaves when introducing dynamic human capital externalities beside the classical congestion externalities our purpose is to show that there are dynamic gains from oversized cities to this end we assume that productivity depends on human capital which is solely accumulated in cities such that urbanization is the engine of growth in an empirical illustration we highlight the link between urbanization and human capital accumulation by focusing on cross country panel data

income and democracy existing studies establish a strong cross country correlation between income and democracy but do not control for factors that simultaneously affect both variables we show that controlling for such factors by including country fixed effects removes the statistical association between income per capita and vari ous measures of democracy we present instrumental variables estimates that also show no causal effect of income on democracy the cross country corre lation between income and democracy reflects a positive correlation between changes in income and democracy over the past 500 years this pattern is con sistent with the idea that societies embarked on divergent political economic development paths at certain critical junctures jel d7 e 1

do venture capital firms benefit from international syndicates this paper examines the benefits of syndicating with foreign venture capital vc firms for domestic vc firms in emerging markets we find that the vc firms that are domestic to their invested companies and previously syndicated with foreign partners invest proportionately more frequently in riskier ventures after gaining syndication experience with foreign vc firms a larger number of their portfolio companies are successfully exited thereby suggesting improved performance we hypothesize that this outcome is due to the organizational learning effects while the previous research has shown benefits for foreign vc firms our results show that domestic vc firms also benefit from international syndication through improved investments

mars venus marriages culture and cross border m a using a sample of over 800 cross border acquisitions during 1991 2004 we find that contrary to general perception cross border acquisitions perform better in the long run if the acquirer and the target come from countries that are culturally more disparate we use mainly the hofstede measure of cultural dimensions to measure cultural distance but also examine alternative proxies the positive relationship of performance to cultural distance persists after controlling for several deal specific variables and country level fixed effects and is robust to alternative specifications of long term performance cash and friendly acquisitions tend to perform better in the long run there is also some evidence of synergies when acquirers are from stronger economies relative to the targets

do expenditures on tobacco control decrease smoking prevalence effectiveness of tobacco control programmes in reducing smoking prevalence during 2001 to 2005 is examined tobacco control spending is found to exert no significant effects on smoking prevalence across the 50 states cigarette prices are found to lower prevalence of daily smokers but exert no effect on nondaily smoking prevalence several reasons are suggested for why these results might conflict with previous research these include that most previous studies examined two states california and massachusetts with long standing tobacco control programmes and that most studies examined periods in which many of the states in their samples did not actively fund their programmes another reason may be that unlike most previous studies this study controls for the possibility that tobacco control spending is endogenous when for example states exhibiting relatively low smoking prevalence are also states with relatively high distaste for smoking and accordingly fund tobacco control programmes more generous

cross border venture capital investments the impact of foreignness on returns against the background of the growing internationalization of venture capital vc investing this is the first global comparison of the returns generated by individual domestic and cross border deals we examine investments worldwide during 1971 2009 and find that cross border investments significantly underperform compared with equivalent domestic investments returns are negatively affected by geographic distances cultural disparities and institutional differences between the home and host countries returns on cross border and domestic deals also decline after the late 1990s international portfolio diversification and the saturation of domestic markets may explain why vc investors make cross border investments despite poor expected returns

aggregate cigarette demand and regional differences in china national educational level final consumption expenditure average propensity to cigarette consumption apcc and cigarette price are adopted to research the regional and national aggregate cigarette demand of china under the condition that the effects of anti smoking education in the chinese current educational system are not remarkable the theoretical model shows that cigarette demand will increase with the increase of national educational level empirical analysis points out that cigarette demand increases with the increase of educational level estimates also suggest that cigarette price consumption expenditure and apcc will affect cigarette demand significantly and that there are great differences for cigarette demand by region

the founding rate of venture capital firms in three european countries 1970 1990 abstract in this article the sectorial and environmental forces that facilitate or inhibit the creation of venture capital companies are studied in the three european countries where the industry is most developed the united kingdom france and the netherlands the focus is on the start up phase of the industry the period from 1970 1990 the founding of firms can be studied on four different levels entrepreneurial organizational population and macroeconomic in this study a population approach is taken this implies that we do not attempt to explain any single founding but rather the aggregate number of foundings that occur in an industry in a certain period in a certain country according to the organizational ecology theory the population density i e the total number of organizations in a population is the major environmental factor that affects the founding rate through two processes initially when the density is low each founding eases new foundings because the simple prevalence of a form tends to give it legitimacy thereby spurring imitations the training ground for qualified personnel grows and the supporting networks are widened and strengthened the legitimation process does not grow forever once enough organizations of a certain kind exist legitimation attains a ceiling as the number of organizations increases the second process becomes dominant the competition for resources raw material personnel customers capital grows leading to a negative relationship between the density and the founding rate everything else being equal thus the founding rate declines as the number of organizations increases once a threshold is reached the major hypothesis that is tested here is that the population density has an inverted u shaped effect on the founding rate of venture capital organizations in addition the effect that the venture capital firms of the three countries have on each other is studied two populations are said to interact when the populations affect each other s growth rate but the interaction need not be symmetrical the second hypothesis tested in this study is that populations in different countries have a positive effect on each other and not a competitive effect because the legitimating effect does not halt at geographical borders yet the competition for resources capital people deals among geographically different populations is limited in this industry this study is valuable because until now the existing ecological studies focus on long established industries testing the theory in a young industry that emerged only in the seventies in europe has merits in its own right because the technological progress after the second world war has altered the organizational environment tremendously the communication and transportation revolutions may have especially influenced the way in which organizations interact with each other and with the environment the venture capital firms are furthermore special in the way they are organized with the dual structure of management company and investment fund s if the theory holds in this young industry important additional evidence will be given that the theory is truly applicable to populations of all types in any time period and in any society carroll 1988 p 18 finally this study extends the theory by giving evidence on how industries in different countries may interact upon each other we show empirically that the major factor that influences the overall founding rate in each of the three countries is the density of the industry i e the number of organizations that already exist in the industry this confirms the population ecology theory when the density is low adding a new organization to the industry raises the probability of a subsequent founding when the density is high the contrary is true the institutional changes considered here such as the establishment of tax transparent legal entities or state guarantees against losses in the netherlands and the establishment of secondary stock markets do not significantly influence the founding rate in any of the three countries moreover the dutch foundings are positively influenced by the british density and the french foundings by the dutch density the british foundings are on the contrary negatively influenced by the dutch density the competitive effects between the netherlands and the u k are thus more important than initially thought the relationship between the density and the founding rate is the strongest most consistent and most significant relationship found in this study thus the number of organizations that already exist in an industry is very important in explaining the founding of organizations apart from for example the personality of the entrepreneur or from the networks in which he or she is involved this indicates that when trying to explain the founding of organizations the industry structure and more specifically the number of organizations that exist at the moment of the founding cannot be ignored

how non native english speaking staff are evaluated in linguistically diverse organizations a sociolinguistic perspective the aim of this paper is to examine the effects of evaluations of non native speaking staff s spoken english in international business settings we adopt a sociolinguistic perspective on power and inequalities in linguistically diverse organizations in an anglophone environment the interpretive qualitative study draws on 54 interviews with non native english speaking staff in 19 uk business schools we analyze along the dimensions of status solidarity and dynamism the ways in which non native speakers on the basis of their spoken english are evaluated by themselves and by listeners we show how such evaluations refer to issues beyond the speaker s linguistic fluency and have consequences for her or his actions the study contributes to the literature on language and power in international business through offering fine grained insights into and elucidating how the interconnected evaluative processes impact the formation and perpetuation of organizational power relations and inequalities it also puts forward implications for managing the officially monolingual yet linguistically diverse organizations

rough and lonely road to prosperity a reexamination of the sources of growth in africa using bayesian model averaging this paper takes a fresh look at africa s growth experience by using the bayesian model averaging bma methodology bma enables us to consider a large number of potential explanatory variables and sort out which of these variable can effectively explain africa s growth experience posterior coefficient estimates reveal that key engines of growth in africa are substantially different from those in the rest of the world more precisely it is shown that mining primary exports and initial primary education exerted differential effect on african growth these results are examined in relation to the existing literature copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

the slave trade and the origins of mistrust in africa in a recent study nunn 2008 examines the long term impacts of africa s slave trade he finds that the slave trade which occurred over a period of more than 400 years had a significant negative effect on long term economic development although the article arguably identifies a negative causal relationship between the slave trade and income today the analysis is unable to establish the exact causal mechanisms underlying this reduced form relationship in this article we examine one of the channels through which the slave trade may affect economic development today combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we ask whether the slave trade caused a culture of mistrust to develop within africa initially slaves were captured primarily through state organized raids and warfare but as the trade progressed the environment of ubiquitous insecurity caused individuals to turn on others including friends and family members and to kidnap trick and sell each other into slavery sigismund wilhelm koelle 1854 p e h hair 1965 charles piot 1996 we hypothesize that in this environment a culture of mistrust may have evolved which may persist to this day we show that current differences in trust levels within africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and indian ocean slave trades combining contemporary individual level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group we find that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today evidence from a variety of identification strategies suggests that the relationship is causal examining causal mechanisms we show that most of the impact of the slave trade is through factors that are internal to the individual such as cultural norms beliefs and values jel j15 n57 z13

venture capital investment cycles the impact of public markets abstract it is well documented that the venture capital industry is highly volatile and that much of this volatility is associated with shifting valuations and activity in public equity markets this paper examines how changes in public market signals affected venture capital investing between 1975 and 1998 we find that venture capitalists with the most industry experience increase their investments the most when public market signals become more favorable their reaction to an increase is greater than the reaction of venture capital organizations with relatively little industry experience and those with considerable experience but in other industries the increase in investment rates does not affect the success of these transactions adversely to a significant extent these findings are consistent with the view that venture capitalists rationally respond to attractive investment opportunities signaled by public market shifts

host market government corruption and the equity based foreign entry strategies of multinational enterprises while extant theory suggests that the pervasiveness of host market government corruption should influence the equity ownership decisions of foreign investing multinational enterprises mnes empirical research has produced inconclusive results we leverage insights from transaction cost economics to advance an uncertainty oriented framework which can be used to explain the impact of host market government corruption on the equity based entry strategies of mnes we disaggregate government corruption into two distinct components grand corruption and petty corruption we propose that grand and petty corruption precipitate different types of uncertainty environmental and behavioral which motivate mnes to vary their equity based foreign entry strategies entry mode and partnering hypotheses pertaining to the entry strategies of mnes under conditions of more pervasive grand and petty corruption are developed and tested with a sample of 643 japanese investments in 30 countries between 2004 and 2007 we find that the main effect of grand corruption and the interaction between grand and petty corruption significantly impact a mne s entry mode further while more pervasive grand corruption increases the likelihood that a mne will engage in a joint venture investment with a host country partner we find that an increase in petty corruption heightens a mne s preference to invest with a home country partner

gifts of mars warfare and europe s early rise to riches abstract western europe surged ahead of the rest of the world long before technological growth became rapid europe in 1500 already had incomes twice as high on a per capita basis as africa and one third greater than most of asia in this essay we explain how europe s tumultuous politics and deadly penchant for warfare translated into a sustained advantage in per capita incomes we argue that europe s rise to riches was driven by the nature of its politics after 1350 it was a highly fragmented continent characterized by constant warfare and major religious strife no other continent in recorded history fought so frequently for such long periods killing such a high proportion of its population when it comes to destroying human life the atomic bomb and machine guns may be highly efficient but nothing rivaled the impact of early modern europe s armies spreading hunger and disease war therefore helped europe s precocious rise to riches because the survivors had more land per head available for cultiva

venture capital internationalization synthesis and future research directions research on venture capital internationalization vc has expanded rapidly over the last decade this paper reviews the extant literature on vc internationalization and highlights gaps in our knowledge we identify three major research streams within this literature which revolve around the following questions 1 which vc firms invest across borders and what countries do they target with a macro economic or a micro economic focus 2 how do vc firms address the liabilities of non domestic investing and 3 what are the real effects of international vc investments we provide an overview of the contributions in these research streams discuss the role of public policy and suggest avenues for future research specifically we call for a deeper understanding of 1 the functioning and impact of vc firms modes of internationalization 2 micro level processes such as the functioning and decision making of international investment committees the interaction between headquarters and local offices or the development of international human and social capital 3 the role of country institutions in vc internationalization and its real effects and 4 the interplay of international vc with alternative financing sources

cultural differences and cross border venture capital syndication we examine cross border syndication in investments led by foreign venture capitalists vcs focusing on the potential correlation between cultural differences and the formation of vc syndicates contrary to the risk sharing motive we find that a greater cultural disparity between the countries of investors and their companies is actually associated with smaller vc syndicates this is driven largely by lesser local investor representation in foreign vc led syndicates however certain cultural disparity related syndication strategies such as the involvement of locally experienced foreign vcs or syndicate members from culturally similar countries are associated with greater presence of local vcs who provide valuable monitoring services we further show that these culture linked syndication approaches are significantly correlated with vc financing and monitoring strategies in cross border investments and their eventual success

ceo international experience effects on strategic change and firm performance despite the growing importance of ceos international experience ie we have yet to gain sufficient insights into its conceptualization and effect on firm outcomes based on prior research and work experience models we suggest a new framework for measuring ie including three components length of time number of countries and cultural distance along with their interactions drawing upon social and cognitive learning theories we explore the impact of ceos ie on two outcomes strategic change and firm performance we argue that ie components affect the two outcomes by enhancing executives international knowledge and general competencies while international knowledge may affect firm performance directly general competencies may affect firm performance both directly and indirectly through strategic change using a sample of 387 new ceos we found that time abroad had a positive effect on strategic change and firm performance while number of countries and cultural distance positively moderated these relationships additionally we also found that these components affected firm performance both directly and mediated through strategic change our findings have important theoretical implications for the conceptualization and impact of ceos ie and practical implications for executive development and promotion

englishization in offshore call centers a postcolonial perspective the spread and use of english as the lingua franca of international business ib corporate englishization has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years but the focus has mostly been on the communication benefits and challenges of using english as a shared language inside multinationals in this article we examine how english is used externally in the provision of business services and apply a postcolonial perspective to frame our analysis drawing on fieldwork in india within the call center units of two outsourcing organizations serving anglo american firms we show how corporate englishization 1 relies on and contributes to producing comprador managerial cadres 2 serves to construct a transnational intra linguistic hierarchy of power and privilege and 3 undercuts its own effectiveness by simultaneously eliminating and maintaining the alterity of the other through processes of mimicry we thus show how corporate englishization does not merely overcome or conversely worsen transnational communication problems it also re produces colonial style power relations between the anglosphere and the rest our analysis deepens our understanding of corporate englishization and opens a new avenue for postcolonial research on the role of language in ib our analysis also advances the field of postcolonial organization studies and has implications for ib scholarship more generally

determinants of required return in venture capital investments a five country study abstract using two complementary theoretical perspectives we develop hypotheses regarding the determinants of the return required by venture capitalists and test them on a sample of over 200 venture capital companies vccs located in five countries consistent with resource based theory we find that early stage specialists require a significantly higher return than other vccs when investing in later stage ventures consistent with financial theory we find that acquisition buyout specialists require a significantly lower return than other vccs when investing in expansion companies furthermore in comparison to specialists highly stage diversified vccs require a significantly higher return for early stage investments independent vccs require a higher rate of return than captive or public vccs in general higher required returns are associated with vccs who provide more intensity of involvement have shorter expected holding period of the investment and being located in the us or uk in comparison to those in france belgium and the netherlands

explaining ijv survival in a transitional economy through social exchange and knowledge based perspectives in this study we combine social exchange and knowledge based perspectives to develop a general path model of ijv survival we further refine our expectations by considering the transitional economic context of our study and the somewhat unique managerial values resulting from the legacy of marxist ideology results from structural equation modeling suggest that an imbalance in the management control structure between the parents leads to parental conflict and an increased likelihood of ijv failure an imbalance in the ownership control structure however had no influence on conflict or survival in general support from the foreign parent is positively related to ijv learning and ijv survival however higher levels of technical support provided by the foreign parent to the ijv reduced the level of parental conflict whereas management support had no effect on conflict our results suggest some dilemmas for firms pursuing ijvs in transitional economies although the foreign parent often contributes critical resources to the ijv providing it with bargaining power and a high level of influence an imbalance in management control between the partners may ultimately be detrimental to ijv survival copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

the effects of within country linguistic and religious diversity on foreign acquisitions this article explores how within country diversity of both language and religion influences the ownership structure of foreign acquisitions commentators have acknowledged the potential importance of within country diversity but to date this issue has received minimal empirical attention we propose that diversity plays two distinct roles namely diversity within the host country may be an additional source of behavioral uncertainty and information asymmetry over and above the effects arising from cross national differences moreover diversity within the home country may increase the cognitive complexity of the decision makers moderating the firm s response to the distance and diversity of the host country results based on foreign acquisitions across 67 acquirer and 69 target countries confirm both of these roles while the main focus of this article is on the role that within country diversity plays in international business decisions it also makes contributions in terms of expanding the range of dimensions of distance investigated in the cross border acquisition literature in highlighting a potentially positive role that diversity might play in such acquisitions and in providing a potential explanation for asymmetries in distance that is differences in cognitive complexity

individualism and stock price crash risk employing a sample of 26 473 firms across 42 countries from 1990 to 2013 we find that firms located in countries with higher individualism have higher stock price crash risk furthermore individualism can be transmitted by foreign investors from overseas markets to influence local firms crash risk and can exacerbate the impact of firm risk taking and earnings management on crash risk moreover the positive relation between individualism and crash risk is amplified during the global financial crisis and attenuated by enhanced country level financial information transparency and the adoption of international financial reporting standards

determinants of the share of equity sought in cross border acquisitions the extent of ownership in foreign market entry is an important topic in the entry mode literature yet the determinants of the share of ownership sought in cross border acquisitions cbas have not received much research attention drawing on multiple theoretical explanations we develop and test hypotheses on factors influencing the share of equity sought by foreign firms in cbas findings based on a sample of cbas by us firms show that the share of equity sought is influenced by many factors including the cost of valuing local firm assets difficulty in integrating local firm managers in culturally distant countries the cost of separating desired assets from the rest of the local firm and the cost of resource commitment under exogenous uncertainty

a theory of rational addiction we develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable they are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention our theory also implies that cold turkey is used to end strong addictions that addicts often go on binges that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction

escalation of commitment in venture capital decision making differentiating between domestic and international investors drawing upon an escalation of commitment framework this study investigates how differences between cross border and domestic venture capital investors in emotional social and institutional factors affect their decision to terminate an unsuccessful investment we track the exit outcome of 1060 venture capital investments in 684 european technology companies results show that domestic investors have a high tendency to escalate their commitment to a failing course of action while cross border investors terminate their investments efficiently even when investing through a local branch this is explained by cross border investors having a lower social and emotional involvement with the project and a lower embeddedness in the local economic and social environment decreasing individual decision biases further they are affected to a lower extent by normative pressures to further invest from their co investment network local branches of cross border investors are also shielded from escalation of commitment we conjecture that their international investment committee acts as an organizational safeguard against individual decision biases domestic investors may hence benefit from mimicking the behavior of cross border investors

the curious attraction of wagner s law wagner s law of increasing state activity has recently been subjected to intensive use of recondite econometric testing procedures an examination of the relevant articles reveals ignorance both of wagner s definition of state activity and of his insistence that he was not engaged in prediction consequently the omission of public enterprises contained in wagner s definition leads to a model misspecification and the object of testing his hypothesiss remains obscure

openness country size and government size additional evidence from a large cross country panel abstract a body of influential research has suggested that there is a negative association between country size and government size and between country size and openness and these may account for the positive association between openness and government size estimation of several models from 41 year panel data for over 150 countries indicates that while pooled ols estimates support the foregoing scenario when cross country heterogeneity is taken into consideration through the fixed effects format there is little evidence of a negative association of country size with either government size or openness therefore it does not seem likely that positive association between openness and government size arises due to the mediating role of country size

productivity and territorial specialization on the basis of a relatively free trade world and global economy specialization tends to increase the comparative advantages of a country but in this scenario not countries but cities are the territorial organizations that play the main role cities concentrate the economic activity and political influential household that reflects economic changes the purpose of this study is to explore the principles underlie the distribution of population on a territory and the likely effect of economic development on redistributing population geographically

distance without direction restoring credibility to a much loved construct in this commentary we build on shenkar s 2001 award winning critique of cultural distance arguing that most distance constructs in fact suffer the same flaws because they oversimplify the relationship between countries overlook their subjective and context specific nature and pay insufficient attention to the mechanisms through which distance operates the idea of distance however has intrinsic value moreover its considerable appeal and undeniable effectiveness have made it a well entrenched construct therefore we see merit in redressing its weaknesses and offer several suggestions for doing so these include allowing for the influence of firm level characteristics that either moderate the effects of distance or render distance at least in part subjective with varying consequences for different mnes maintaining directionality by distinguishing between distance and the tendency toward a particular characteristic and acknowledging asymmetry and conceptualizing the effects of distance and the mechanisms through which it operates more carefully by drawing on concepts and measures from a variety of disciplines by offering ways to strengthen both its theoretical foundations and measurement we hope to enhance the usefulness of one of international business theory s most central constructs

managing foreign subsidiaries agents of headquarters or an interdependent network in this study two different theoretical perspectives are used to develop sets of hypotheses regarding the mechanisms used to manage foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations first agency theory serves as the basis for a model that predicts the use of monitoring mechanisms and incentive compensation then it is argued that these mechanisms are insufficient for managing subsidiaries characterized by high levels of intra firm international interdependence the management of which is critical to many of today s complex global firms a second set of hypotheses is argued linking international interdependence to several social control mechanisms primary and secondary data from u s based multinational corporations were used to test both sets of hypotheses the results indicate that agency theory although a useful foundation for studies of control within mncs is limited in its ability to explain fully the phenomenon of foreign subsidiary control however the model based on intra firm interdependence had much greater predictive ability copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

lost in translation the effect of cultural values on mergers around the world we find strong evidence that three key dimensions of national culture trust hierarchy and individualism affect merger volume and synergy gains the volume of cross border mergers is lower when countries are more culturally distant in addition greater cultural distance in trust and individualism leads to lower combined announcement returns these findings are robust to year and country level fixed effects time varying country pair and deal level variables as well as instrumental variables for cultural differences based on genetic and somatic differences the results are the first large scale evidence that cultural differences have substantial impacts on multiple aspects of cross border mergers

stabilization syndication and pricing of ipos we argue that in the after market trading of an ipo the underwriting syndicate by standing ready to buy back shares at the offer price price stabilization compensates uninformed investors ex post for the adverse selection cost they face in bidding for ipos this domi nates ex ante compensation by underpricing the reason is that stabilization exploits ex post information about investor demand whereas underpricing must be based on ex ante infor mation however liquidity and syndication costs constrain the use of stabilization which in equilibrium generates some underpricing as well we develop a model that formalizes this intuition and generates several empirical implications

national culture and expatriate deployment we hypothesize that expatriate deployment is a control function predicted by home country culture dimensions with transaction cost and agency repercussions rather than culture in the aggregate this departure from the traditional conceptualization and measurement of cultural impact also yields a hypothesized asymmetrical effect which is tested for a multi country sample of 236 multinational subsidiaries using multiple measures of national culture hypotheses are supported with assertiveness and power distance confirmed as prime predictors of expatriate deployment

language as a lightning rod power contests emotion regulation and subgroup dynamics in global teams based on an ethnographic study comprising interviews with and observations of 96 globally distributed members of six software development teams we propose a model that captures how asymmetries in language fluency contribute to an us vs them dynamic common in global teams faultlines formed along the dimensions of asymmetries in lingua franca fluency location and nationality of team members were associated with subgrouping in some but not all of the teams our findings suggest that divisive subgroup dynamics occurred only in teams that also suffered from power contests suggesting that power contests activate otherwise dormant faultlines our findings extend theory on subgroup dynamics in global teams by adding language as a potential faultline dimension showing how power struggles activated faultlines and were in turn reinforced by them and documenting the emotion regulation processes triggered by subgrouping and enacted through language related choices and behaviors

the effects of linguistic distance and lingua franca proficiency on the stake taken by acquirers in cross border acquisitions we study the effects of linguistic distance and lingua franca proficiency on the equity stake taken by acquirers from 67 countries in 59 092 acquisition targets in 69 host countries we theorize and find that acquirers take lower equity stakes in foreign targets when linguistic distance and differences in lingua franca proficiency between them are high and take higher stakes when the combined lingua franca proficiency of the parties is high we also find that linguistic and cultural distance reduce the impact of the combined lingua franca proficiency of the parties on the level of equity taken which shows that the effective use of a lingua franca is affected by the native tongues and cultures of the parties our results clearly demonstrate that governance research and international business studies can benefit from incorporating language into their explanatory models

knowledge transfer capacity and its implications for the theory of the multinational corporation this study updates and extends research on foreign entry modes by examining the impacts of knowledge transfer capacity and knowledge tacitness research on international corporate expansion has long emphasized that deploying intangible knowledge based assets is required for successful international expansion more recently research from a knowledge based perspective has addressed the role of tacitness in constraining a firm s ability to transfer knowledge internationally we combine these perspectives to describe how knowledge tacitness affects the relative suitability of four archetypal entry modes exporting licensing establishing an alliance and wholly owned entry we then examine and develop conceptually a seldom studied firm characteristic knowledge transfer capacity we offer predictions that describe the combined effects of knowledge tacitness and transfer capacity on entry mode choice we distinguish between the transfer capacity of the organization that develops knowledge source transfer capacity and that of the organization that seeks to access that knowledge recipient transfer capacity the discussion addresses how our model generalizes to knowledge seeking strategies and to the study of ongoing multinational networks the study enriches and reconciles multiple theoretical perspectives on entry strategy it brings together the study of knowledge characteristics and firm heterogeneity in the theory of the multinational corporation and in international and strategic management more generally journal of international business studies 2003 34 356 373 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400037

cigarette demand health scares and education in turkey the purpose of this paper is to examine the demand characteristics of cigarettes in turkey aggregate time series date for the 1960 88 period are used in estimation income and price elasticities of cigarette demand are obtained the effect of health warning is estimated to reduce cigarette consumption by about 8 since the inception of warnings in 1982 imports of cigarettes have been allowed since 1984 in addition to advertising of cigarettes in the non electronic media the effect of health warnings are found to be stronger than the opposing effect of advertising the results also suggest that public education about adverse health effects of smoking may be more effective in reducing consumption and less regressive on consumer incomes than raising the price of cigarettes

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

interfirm diversity organizational learning and longevity in global strategic alliances organizational theorists have correctly argued that the emergence and maintenance of robust cooperation between global strategic alliance partners is related to the diversity in the partners characteristics yet previous research has failed to systematically delineate the important dimensions of interfirm diversity and integrate the dimensions into a unified framework of analysis this paper develops a multilevel typology of interfirm diversity and focuses on organizational learning and adaptation as critical processes that dynamically moderate diversity s impact on alliance longevity and effectiveness

the stampede toward hofstede s framework avoiding the sample design pit in cross cultural research we propose a method to design better multi country samples for international business studies using hofstede s framework and aimed at determining the effects of national culture on various business phenomena we describe typical research scenarios then develop sets of algorithms that calculate indexes reflecting the power of different samples for hypotheses testing the indexes were computed from hofstede s data then rank ordered the top multi country samples are presented in tables for selection when designing studies

does urbanization mean bigger governments this paper proposes urbanization as a determinant of government size as people move to cities their demand for a more de ned set of regulations but also for basic health education and income standards rises our theoretical framework determines how the regional distribution of the population a ects government size we test this theory on panel data of 175 countries from 1960 to 2010 and two state level samples from colombia and germany results demonstrate a strong positive e ect from urbanization on government spending with a 1 percent increase in the amount of urban citizens leading to a 0 2 percent rise in public expenditure our ndings indicate that public sectors may become more important as worldwide urbanization is progressing this result underlines why government e ectiveness and the quality of public goods provision will be even more important in the future

does urbanization lead to less energy use and lower co2 emissions a cross country analysis despite the relationship between urbanization energy use and co2 emissions has been extensively studied in recent years little attention has been paid to differences in development stages or income levels most previous studies have implicitly assumed that the impact of urbanization is homogenous for all countries this assumption can be questionable as there are many characteristic differences among countries of different levels of affluence this paper investigates empirically the effects of urbanization on energy use and co2 emissions with consideration of the different development stages using the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model and a balanced panel dataset of 99 countries over the period 1975 2005 the findings suggest that the impact of urbanization on energy use and emissions varies across the stages of development surprisingly urbanization decreases energy use in the low income group while it increases energy use in the middle and high income groups the impact of urbanization on emissions is positive for all the income groups but it is more pronounced in the middle income group than in the other income groups these novel findings not only help advance the existing literature but also can be of special interest to policy makers and urban planners

the choice between mergers acquisitions and joint ventures the case of japanese investors in the united states this paper investigates the determinants of the choice between two alternative methods of pooling similar and complementary assets the merger acquisition and the greenfield equity joint venture two theories of the determinants of that choice are tested on a sample of japanese investments in the united states the results show that equity joint ventures are preferred over acquisitions when the desired assets are linked to nondesired assets because the u s firm owning them is large and not divisionalized when the japanese investor has little previous experience of the american market and hence seeks to avoid postmerger integration problems when the japanese investor and the u s partner manufacture the same product and when the industry entered is growing neither very rapidly nor very slowly

clean indoor air laws addiction and cigarette smoking cigarette demand equations derived from the becker and murphy 1988 model of relational addiction are estimated which include alternative measures of state level clean indoor air laws the laws have been the most widely used tool in the recent years of the anti smoking campaign survey data taken from the second national health and nutrition examination survey augmented with county level cigarette prices and excise taxes and state level measures of restrictions on smoking are used to estimate the demand equations clean indoor air laws are found to have a significant negative impact in average cigartte consumption increased restrictiveness of these laws beyond some basic level however is not found to further reduce smoking the effects of these restriction are found to differ across sexes average consumption among men is significantly reduced by the passage of the laws whereas smoking among women is unaffected finally cigarette prices are found of have a significant negative impact on consumpti

survival of the fittest in cities urbanisation and inequality we develop a framework that integrates natural advantage agglomeration economies and firm selection to explain why large cities are both more productive and more unequal than small towns our model highlights complementarities among those factors and matches a number of key stylised facts about cities a larger city size increases productivity via selection and higher urban productivity provides incentives for rural urban migration tougher selection increases the returns to skills and earnings inequality in cities we illustrate a multi city version of the model numerically and explore the formation of new cities the growth of existing cities and changes in income inequality

openness country size and government abstract this paper shows that smaller countries have a larger share of public consumption in gdp and are also more open to trade these empirical observations are consistent with recent theoretical models explaining country formation and break up and may account for the observed positive empirical relationship between trade openness and government size

the transaction costs theory of joint ventures an empirical study of japanese subsidiaries in the united states this paper offers the first large sample empirical study of the factors which influence the choice of japanese firms between full or partial ownership of their u s manufacturing subsidiaries it studies for the first time the ownership policies of investors of a single home country in a single host country thus keeping variations within home and host countries constant one methodological improvement over previous studies is the use as independent variables of the relevant characteristics of the investing firms these had been proxied in previous studies by data on u s industries entered the results suggest that the degree of ownership taken by japanese manufacturing investors in their american subsidiaries is driven by the same general transaction costs variables that determine the choices made by their u s counterparts japanese parents joint venture when they need to combine with other firms intermediate inputs which are subject to high market transaction costs an intriguing result however is the lack of significance of two variables which in the u s case strongly push towards full control of foreign subsidiaries in this study neither the japanese parent s r d nor its advertising intensities had any significant impact on their ownership policies

the cultural relativity of organizational practices and theories this paper summarizes the author s recently published findings about differences in people s work related values among 50 countries in view of these differences ethnocen tric management theories those based on the value system of one particular country have become untenable this concept is illustrated for the fields of leadership organization and motivation a key issue for organization science is the influence of national cultures on introduction management twenty or even 10 years ago the existence of a relationship be management and tween management and national cultures was far from obvious to many and it national cultures may not be obvious to everyone even now in the 1950s and 60s the dominant be lief at least in europe and the u s was that management was something univer sal there were principles of sound management which existed regardless of na tional environments if national or local practice deviated from these principles it was time to change local practice in the future the universality of sound manage ment practices would lead to societies becoming more and more alike this ap plied even to the poor countries of the third world which would become rich as well and would be managed just like the rich countries also the differences be tween management in the first and second world capitalist and socialist would disappear in fact under the surface they were thought to be a lot smaller than was officially recognized this way of thinking which dominated the 1950s and 60s is known as the convergence hypothesis during the 1970s the belief in the unavoidable convergence of management prac tices waned it was too obviously in conflict with the reality we saw around us at the same time supranational organizations like the european common market which were founded very much on the convergence belief had to recognize the stubbornness of national differences even within existing nations regional dif ferences became more rather than less accentuated the welsh the flemish the basques the bangladeshi the quebecois defended their own identity and this was difficult to reconcile with a management philosophy of convergence it slowly became clear that national and even regional cultures do matter for management the national and regional differences are not disappearing they are here to stay in fact these differences may become one of the most crucial problems for man agement in particular for the management of multinational multicultural orga nizations whether public or private

confirmation bias in individual level perceptions of psychic distance an experimental investigation in this article we draw from social cognition theory to explore the influence of confirmation bias on perceptions of psychic distance despite the prominence of psychic distance and other forms of distance as potential predictor variables in international business ib research very little work has been done exploring the factors and processes that shape a decision maker s perceptions of distance we argue in this article that social cognition theory can help fill that void specifically we hypothesize that confirmation bias may influence managers processing of information concerning differences between cultures such a bias may cause managers to attend more to information that confirms pre existing beliefs and discount information that contradicts pre existing beliefs thus biasing their perceptions of psychic distance using an experimental approach the impact of confirmation bias on perceptions of psychic distance is confirmed in a sample of 200 australian managers the observed changes in perceptions are also associated with changes in perceptions of risk and preferences for entry modes in a hypothetical business scenario as a result this article demonstrates how the application of social psychology theories and methods can provide new theoretical perspectives to explain when how and why individual level perceptions of psychic distance might diverge from national level averages

international evidence on the impact of adopting english as an external reporting language this study investigates the economic consequences of non english speaking companies adopting english as an external reporting language we examine a sample of european companies that initiate the voluntary issuance of an annual report in english in addition to the local language annual report to control for self selection we use a difference in differences design with a propensity score matched control sample we find that adoption of english as an external reporting language is associated with increased foreign ownership decreased information asymmetry and increased analyst following we also find that these benefits are not conditional on the use of ifrs for financial reporting our findings hold if we run a number of robustness checks to control for correlated events creation of an investor relations service provision of conference calls and or changes in management these results are consistent with the language used in the annual report acting as a barrier to investment for some investors and with annual reports issued in english reducing investors information processing costs

cross border private equity syndication institutional context and learning abstract private equity pe has become an increasingly international phenomenon but there is a lack of research that looks at the process by which pe firms invest across borders we aim to fill this gap in the literature by examining the role of institutional context and organizational learning as determinants of cross border pe syndication we examine these issues by studying the international expansion by later stage uk pe investors into continental europe over the period 1990 to 2006 our results indicate that institutional context in terms of the number of pe firms in the local environment and the presence of investment bankers in the local market and organizational learning in terms of the pe firm s experience in the host country the pe firm s multinational experience and the number of investment managers per portfolio company but not the presence of local offices are significantly related to the use of cross border syndicates implications for theory and practice are suggested

kalman filter and the demand for cigarettes kalman filter estimates of price income and advertising elasticities are presented an analysis of structural change in the demand for cigarettes in the us for the period 1929 86 is made estimated price and income elasticities are generally smaller and the advertising elasticity larger than estimates previously found cigarette demand is inelastic with respect to price and income and advertising elasticity is statistically insignificant for the most part furthermore both income and price elasticities decline over time while advertising elasticity tends to rise four time periods where structural change has occurred are identified the health scare reports and the fairness doctrine act have a significant impact on per capita cigarette consumption

what differences in the cultural backgrounds of partners are detrimental for international joint ventures an international joint venture implies that a firm has to cooperate with a partner with a different cultural background in this study hypotheses about which differences in national culture are most disruptive for international joint ventures were developed and tested using hofstede s five dimensions the study focused on how these dimensions affect the survival of international joint ventures as well as their incidence relative to wholly owned subsidiaries the hypotheses were tested on longitudinal data about 828 foreign entries of twenty five dutch multinational in seventy two countries between 1966 and 1994 the database which spans almost three decades was also used to provide new evidence on a key assumption of hofstede s work that cultural values are stable over time

media choice in multilingual virtual teams this study investigates the impact of language barriers on multilingual virtual teams members choice between different communication media in their inner team interactions through interviewing team leaders and members in both mono and multilingual virtual teams we discover discrepancies in media choice and media performance between these two settings and identify foreign language induced cognitive load as a key reason for these divergences our study advances research on communication and knowledge exchange in multilingual virtual collaboration by showing how language barriers alter the process of converging different viewpoints through team interaction by suggesting language related modifications to the seminal media synchronicity theory and by demonstrating the benefits of new media in multilingual settings it also broadens the disciplinary scope of language research in international business by introducing theories from communication studies and cognitive research in practical terms it highlights the benefits of redundant communication the need for an adequate media infrastructure in multinational corporations and the importance of motivating team members to use new media

does legal enforcement affect financial transactions the contractual channel in private equity analyzing 210 developing country private equity investments we find that transactions vary with nations legal enforcement whether measured directly or through legal origin investments in high enforcement and common law nations often use convertible preferred stock with covenants in low enforcement and civil law nations private equity groups tend to use common stock and debt and rely on equity and board control transactions in high enforcement countries have higher valuations and returns while relying on ownership rather than contractual provisions may help to alleviate legal enforcement problems these results suggest that private solutions are only a partial remedy

the size and composition of government expenditure abstract this paper tests several leading hypotheses on determinants of government expenditure the purpose is to avoid omitted variables bias by testing the prominent theories in a comprehensive specification to identify persistent puzzles for the current set of theories and to explore those puzzles in greater depth by looking at the composition of government expenditure and the level of government at which it takes place as well as its magnitude using government financial statistics data from the imf covering over 100 countries from 1970 2000 i look at cross sectional and inter temporal variation in government expenditure and both individual categories of expenditure such as defense education health care and different levels of government central and local among other results i find a new explanation for wagner s law widespread evidence that preference heterogeneity leads to decentralization rather than outright decreases in expenditures that a great deal of the expenditure associated with increased trade openness is not in categories that explicitly insure for risk and evidence that both political access and income inequality affect the extent of social insurance

cigarette demand and tax policy for race groups in south africa this paper calculates cigarette demand for race groups in south africa elasticities are the most important information a tax policy analyst can have elasticities determine how the tax base will change with a change in the tax rate and thus how government revenues will respond to the tax elasticities also determine the excess burden that consumers will bear as a result of the tax as such own price crossprice and expenditure elasticities are calculated along with government revenue maximizing tax rates and total and excess burdens parametric and semiparametric estimation techniques are used and compared results show that a tax on cigarettes will discourage nonsmokers from starting to smoke and mainly raise revenue from current smokers furthermore it is found that consumption behaviours between groups are different implying different government revenue maximizing tax rates for each group affecting the distribution of income

key characteristics in the choice of international technology transfer mode the choice between licensing and direct investment as a vehicle for international technology transfer is hypothesized to be related to characteristics of the individual technology parent corporation and the host country involved in the transfer a set of hypotheses regarding these relationships are developed and tested in a logit statistical model for a sample of 1 226 technology transfers we find that hypotheses regarding the effects of technology and parents characteristics are strongly supported by this analysis hypotheses regarding the effect of host country characteristics on transfer patterns receive mixed support

government size and growth a survey and interpretation of the evidence the literature on the relationship between the size of government and economic growth is full of seemingly contradictory findings this conflict is largely explained by variations in definitions and the countries studied an alternative approach of limiting the focus to studies of the relationship in rich countries measuring government size as total taxes or total expenditure relative to gdp and relying on panel data estimations with variation over time reveals a more consistent picture the most recent studies find a significant negative correlation an increase in government size by 10 percentage points is associated with a 0 5 to 1 percent lower annual growth rate we discuss efforts to make sense of this correlation and note several pitfalls involved in giving it a causal interpretation against this background we discuss two explanations of why several countries with high taxes seem able to enjoy above average growth one hypothesis is that countries with higher social trust levels are able to develop larger government sectors without harming the economy another explanation is that countries with large governments compensate for high taxes and spending by implementing market friendly policies in other areas both explanations are supported by ongoing research

experience imitation and the sequence of foreign entry wholly owned and joint venture manufacturing by south korean firms and business groups in china 1987 1995 the evolution of foreign entry in the form of joint ventures and wholly owned manufacturing operations is examined as a staged process shaped by experience and imitation dynamics at the firm group and industry levels of analysis the expansion of south korean firms into china between 1987 and 1995 lends support to the staged view of foreign entry over time technology intensive firms are more likely to abandon joint venture entry modes owing to contractual hazards firms in the same business group are found to imitate each other s choice of joint ventures and wholly owned plants firms in the same industry mimic each other s choice of wholly owned plants though not of joint ventures

venture capital and management led leveraged buy outs a european perspective abstract management and leveraged buy outs became phenomena of the 1980s from beginnings in the u s they quickly traversed the atlantic spreading first to the u k and then throughout europe the venture capital industry has played a crucial role in the development of buy outs in europe particularly in smaller deals in the u k the netherlands and france this paper examines three aspects of the market for venture and development capital funded management led buy outs in europe it provides a framework for analysis of the different levels of development of each country s market it examines performance of u k buy outs and addresses the extent and nature of exits throughout the paper use is made of the extensive database of european buy outs developed by the authors the main conclusions to emerge are as follows european experience can not be compared to that in the u s as a single economy there are important differences between european countries in respect of the level of buy out activity and the extent to which conditions are or will be favourable for the development of such transactions conceptually a buy out market may be considered as requiring three main factors to be present if it is to develop the generation of buy out opportunities the infrastructure to complete a transaction and opportunities for the investors in a buy out to realise their gains these broad groups may be further sub divided the generation of opportunities will be heavily influenced by attitudes to entrepreneurial risk and hence willingness of managers to buy the ownership structure of industry and hence the generation of entities which are for sale and the state of development of mergers and acquisition markets the infrastructure to complete transactions includes sources of funding both in respect of venture capital availability and the ability of banks to fund transactions the nature of legal and taxation regimes and the existence of intermediaries and advisors who can both identify and negotiate buy outs the existence of suitable exit routes comprises stock market flotation sale to another group and recapitalisation possibly through a secondary buy out many of these factors are similar to the conditions necessary for venture capital deals to develop the generation of entities for sale may take various forms with succession issues in family firms divestment of unwanted divisions privatization of public sector activities and going privates of companies quoted on a stock market being the most important this framework was used to analyze european buy out markets through a combination of interview and desk research the evidence shows that the most highly developed buy out markets and those with the greatest short term potential are not necessarily to be found in the largest economies u s investors who turn towards europe to develop their markets at a time when the u s buy out market is experiencing a downturn and european investors seeking to broaden their activities need to be aware of these differences as in comparable studies in the u s u k lbos on the evidence from our survey of 182 buyouts on average produce performance improvements u k lbos appear to undertake a greater level of new product development and asset purchase after buy out than do their counterparts in the u s and have placed less emphasis on asset disposals than u s lbos managers buying out frequently tightened up their control of working capital the results of our survey indicate support for both the entrepreneurial and agency cost reduction perspectives about buy outs with the former perhaps being somewhat more in evidence exit routes are an important aspect of the buy out market but evidence presented here indicates that buy outs are unlikely to exit in the way in which they originally envisaged in particular buy outs that initially were aiming for flotation on a secondary tier stock market have almost invariably been sold to third parties

information costs and location of fdis within the host country empirical evidence from italy the literature on foreign direct investments fdis has analysed the location strategies of multinational enterprises across national borders but there have been few studies of location decisions by foreign investors within the borders of a single country the paper argues that the driving factors of these location choices have differing influences on indigenous and foreign investors specifically foreign investors suffer from a condition of adverse asymmetry in information costs compared to insiders thus foreign investors decisions on the location of their activities within a host country mainly reflect a rational responses to the existence of information costs

from the editors what makes a study sufficiently international journal of international business studies 2008 39 180 183 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400351 from the flow of submissions that arrive on the desk of the jibs editors it appears that the issue of what makes a study sufficiently international to be of potential interest to jibs and its readership is perhaps not so obvious to some contributors to the journal one of the top reasons for desk rejection is a misunderstanding by authors of jibs s position on what studies are sufficiently international some leading journals in the business and management domain such as academy of management journal amj consider studies to be sufficiently international if they either involve a non us setting or a non us co author this is definitely not the case in jibs in the following discussion which includes specific examples we clarify what makes a study sufficiently international for jibs and provide advice to help authors to determine in advance the suitability of their potential submissions to jibs as the leading journal in international business ib in short jibs entertains only submissions that are intrinsically international in nature as noted in the jibs statement of editorial policy that can be found on http www palgrave journals com jibs jibs statement html

the governance impact of a changing investor landscape within the backdrop of comparative corporate governance research we draw on the managerial reporting and impression management literatures to examine how the type level and nature of foreign shareholders infused with their own governance logic influence initial managerial earnings optimism and how foreign ownership shapes earnings guidance in a stakeholder oriented setting drawing on japanese data and addressing endogeneity concerns our results show that under the presence of foreign owners managers are more optimistic in their initial earnings forecasts but that in subsequent revisions they are more likely to provide timely adjustments of their earnings forecast and avoid making last minute adjustments this research illustrates how foreign practices travel across borders and contributes to understanding triggers to governance and strategic changes