how important is regional vs global scope an examination of u s multinationals beginning with rugman and verbeke j int bus stud 35 1 3 18 2004 several international business ib scholars have proposed that most large multinationals are not global but regional this argument has recently been challenged for both its conceptualization and its implementation we aim to contribute to this debate by revisiting the definitions of regional and global by leveraging data from the u s bureau of economic analysis that is new to this literature and by analyzing multinationals scope in terms of both sales and production we find that u s multinationals are significantly more global than has previously been acknowledged in the ib literature

estimating the intensity of choice in a dynamic mutual fund allocation decision abstract the paper analyzes the intensity of choice in an agent based financial optimization problem mean variance optimizing agents choose among mutual funds of similar styles but varying performance we specify a model for the allocation of new funds switching between funds and withdrawals and obtain statistically significant estimates of the intensity of choice parameter this estimate is also given economic interpretation through the underperformance of funds that use an active style we find that agents with relative risk aversion of 2 will move 1 of their funds from active to passive for an extra 34 basis points of return

agent based computational transaction cost economics this article explores the use of agent based computational economics ace for modelling the development of transactions between firms transaction cost economics neglects learning and the development of trust ignores the complexity of multiple agents and assumes rather than investigates the efficiency of outcomes efficiency here refers to minimum cost or maximum profit we model how co operation and trust emerge and shift adaptively as relations evolve in a context of multiple interacting agents this may open up a new area of application for the ace methodology a simulation model is developed in which agents make and break transaction relations on the basis of preferences based on trust and potential profit profit is a function of product differentiation specificity of assets economy of scale and learning by doing in ongoing relations agents adapt their trust in a partner as a function of his loyalty exhibited by his continuation of a relation they also adapt the weight they attach to trust on the basis of realized profit the model enables an assessment of the efficiency of outcomes relative to the optimum as a function of trust and market conditions we conduct a few experiments to illustrate this application of ace

testing for imperfect competition at the fulton fish market in this article i report the results of a study of the prices paid by individual buyers at the fulton fish market in new york city in principle this is a highly competitive market in which there should be no predictable price differences across customers who are equally costly to service the results indicate that different buyers pay different prices for fish of identical quality for example asian buyers pay 7 less for whiting than do white buyers a result which is inconsistent with the model of perfect competition

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

evolving market structure an ace model of price dispersion and loyalty we present an agent based computational economics ace model of the wholesale sh market in marseille two of the stylized facts of that market are high loyalty of buyers to sellers and persistent price dispersion although it is every day the same population of sellers and buyers that meets in the same market hall in our ace model sellers decide on quantities to supply prices to ask and how to treat loyal customers while buyers decide which sellers to visit and which prices to accept learning takes place through reinforcement the model explains both stylized facts price dispersion and high loyalty in a coevolutionary process buyers learn to become loyal as sellers learn to o er higher utility to loyal buyers while these sellers in turn learn to o er higher utility to loyal buyers as they happen to realize higher gross revenues from loyal buyers the model also explains the e ect of heterogeneity of the buyers we analyze how this leads to subtle di erences in the shopping patterns of the di erent types of buyers and how this is

liability of country foreignness and liability of regional foreignness their effects on geographic diversification and firm performance the costs of inter and intra regional diversification have been widely discussed in the existing international business literature but the findings are mixed explanations for the mixed findings have important managerial implications because business managers have to estimate accurately the costs of doing business within and across regions before they make their internationalization decisions to explain the existing mixed findings this study differentiates between liabilities of foreignness at the country and regional levels and explores the joint effects of liability of country foreignness lcf and liability of regional foreignness lrf on the performance of internationalizing firms using data from 167 canadian firms we find that lcf may not necessarily be negatively correlated with intra regional diversification but lrf is positively correlated with inter regional diversification lcf moderates the relationship between lrf and inter regional diversification and also mediates the relationship between intra regional diversification and firm performance lrf mediates the relationship between inter regional diversification and firm performance missing one or more of these variables may result in different cost estimates identification of the relationships between these variables helps to improve the accuracy of estimating the costs of doing business aboard

rational behavior and economic theory abstract nowadays it seems almost universally presumed that the fundamental characteristic of homo oeconomicus is his rationality we analyze the role played by the concept of rationality in economic theory and demonstrate that it is necessarily constrained to be an essentially contentless notion we show that the main body of economic theory is firmly grounded and that some contrasting approaches to rationality although leading to heated debates and vivid confusion have no fundamental significance for economics with a refereshed view on the essence of economics we argue that the principles of economic theory form an essential methodological guide for the emergent line of research based on the use of so called evolutive models

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

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

market organisation and trading relationships in this paper we give a theoretical model of buyers behaviour on a market for a perishable good where no prices are posted we show that if buyers learn from their own previous experience there is a sharp division between those who learn to be loyal to certain sellers and those who continue to shop around this feature remains in more general models which are simulated and is consistent with empirical data from the marseille fish market

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

firm specific assets and the link between exchange rates and foreign direct investment foreign direct investment fdi theory and empirical studies have generated mixed support for a link between exchange rates and fdi this paper argues that exchange rate movements may affect acquisition fdi because acquisitions involve firm specific assets which can generate returns in currencies other than that used for purchase using data on japanese acquisitions in the united states across three digit sic industries from 1975 to 1992 maximum likelihood estimates from discrete dependent variable models support the hypothesis that real dollar depreciations make japanese acquisitions more likely in u s industries particularly those which more likely have firm specific assets copyright 1997 by american economic association

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

the regional multinationals mnes and global strategic management in a recent paper in the journal rugman and verbeke 2004 aim to provoke ib scholars by arguing that international business activity is mainly regional rather than global in the regional multinational alan rugman expands his discussion of the phenomenon most firms have a strong home base and first and foremost expand to neighboring countries as one would expect based on long streams of research in international business exploring concepts such as internationalization process psychic distance or the liability of foreignness rugman shows that this holds true even for most of the largest firms of the world which may have been insufficiently recognized in the literature d eleanorwestney has reviewed the book and underlines the importance of the conceptual contribution of this research which transcends her concerns about the methodology employed to demonstrate the phenomenon

payoff assessments without probabilities a simple dynamic model of choice abstract we develop a model which reflects the tendency of people to simplify the decision problems they face the decision maker chooses among alternate strategies only on the basis of the payoff she assesses she would obtain from them and these assessments do not explicitly take into account her subjective judgements regarding the likelihood of alternate states of the world at each stage the decision maker chooses the strategy that she assesses to give the highest payoff she updates her assessments adaptively we show that such behavior leads to maxmin choices we also consider the decision maker who experiences shocks journal of economic literature classification numbers c7 d8

bertrand competition for inputs and walrasian outcomes market making by merchants who obtain stock from suppliers and resell it to con sumers is modeled as a two stage pricing game with winner take all c ompetition for the inputs in contrast to fixed capacity models the re is a unique subgame perfect nash equilibrium spne which is walr asian for elastic demand and non walrasian for inelastic demand alte rnatively when merchants first sell forward contracts to consumers a nd then compete for supplies the unique spne is always walrasian th us the author has an equilibrium model in which walrasian price aris es not from the benevolent actions of a fictitious auctioneer but fr om optimal price setting behavior of merchants copyright 1988 by american economic association

the dynamic capabilities of firms an introduction an expanded paradigm is needed to explain how competitive advantage is gained and held firms resorting to resource bas ed strategy attempt to accumulate valuable technology assets and employ an aggressive intellectual property stance however winners in the global marketplace have been firms demonstrating timely responsiveness and rapid and flexible product innovation along with the management capability to effectively coordinate and redeploy internal and external competences this source of competitive advantage dynamic capabilities emphasizes two aspects first it refers to the shifting character of the environment second it emphasizes the key role of strategic management in appropriately adapting integrating and re configuring internal and external organizational skills resources and functional competences toward changing environment 3 only recently have researchers begun to focus on the specifics of developing firm specific capabilities and the manner in which competences are renewed to respond to shifts in the business environment the dynamic capabilities approach provides a coherent framework to integrate existing conceptual and empirical knowledge and facilitate prescription this paper argues that the competitive advanis tage of firms stems from dynamic capabilities rooted in high performance routines z operating inside the firm embedded in the firm s processes and conditioned by its history it offers dynamic capabilities as an emerging paradigm of the modern business j firm that draws on multiple disciplines and advances with the help of industry studies in the usa and elsewhere

selling costs and switching costs explaining retail gasoline margins recent theoretical work has shown that price discrimination can take place in imperfectly competitive as well as monopoly markets the persistence of higher retail margins on unleaded than on leaded gasoline during the 1980s suggests that discrimination may occur even in very competitive markets this article studies a number of cost based explanations for such gasoline pricing as well as the possibility of price discrimination the analysis indicates that gas stations discriminate against groups of customers who are less likely to switch to another station the conclusions highlight the influence of shopping or search costs on pricing decisions even in markets thought to be quite competitive

the influence of seller learning and time constraints on sequential bargaining in an artificial perishable goods market in this paper we test some hypotheses about the formation of prices through sequential bilateral bargaining on a perishable goods market under the assumption of behavioural learning by buyers and sellers we constructed a multi agent simulation model based on a survey concerning the fruit and vegetables market in marseille france in our model the agents bargain the price of a perishable good the representation of agents rationality is inspired by a literature relative to markets of perishable goods kirman 6 7 and rouchier 18 19 20 as well as on artificial bargaining brenner 2 weisbuch 22 we study the influence of three parameters the sellers initial beliefs concerning the buyers willingness to pay the time spent by buyers on the market and the heterogeneity in the sellers limit value on the evolution of prices and of agents representations of others agents we compare our results with empirical observations and some existing literature on bargaining we find that our assumptions concerning the learning process give consistent results and lead the transactions prices to converge toward the sellers limit value

adaptive learning models of consumer behavior abstract in a model of dynamic duopoly optimal price policies are characterized assuming consumers learn adaptively about the relative quality of the two products a contrast is made between belief based and reinforcement learning under reinforcement learning consumers can become locked into the habit of purchasing inferior goods such lock in permits the existence of multiple history dependent asymmetric steady states in which one firm dominates in contrast belief based learning rules must lead asymptotically to correct beliefs about the relative quality of the two brands and so in this case there is a unique steady state

learning and strategic pricing we consider the situation where a single consumer buys a stream of goods from different sellers over time the true value of each seller s product to the buyer is initially unknown additional information can be gained only by experimentation for exogeneously given prices the buyer s problem is a multi armed bandit problem the innovation in this paper is to endogenize the cost of experimentation to the consumer by allowing for price competition between the sellers the role of prices is then to allocate intertemporally the costs and benefits of learning between buyers and sellers we examine how strategic aspects of the oligopoly model interact with the learning process all markov perfect equilibria mpe are efficient we identify an equilibrium which besides its unique robustness properties has a strikingly simple seemingly myopic pricing rule prices below marginal cost emerge naturally to sustain experimentation intertemporal exchange of the gains of learning is necessary to support efficient experimentation we analyze the asymptotic behavior of the equilibria

on the behavior of proposers in ultimatum games we demonstrate that one should not expect convergence of the proposals to the subgame perfect nash equilibrium offer in standard ultimatum games first imposing strict experimental control of the behavior of the receiving players and focusing on the behavior of the proposers we show experimentally that proposers do not learn to make the expected payoff maximizing offer second we put the experimental data into perspective by considering a range of learning theories from approximately optimal to boundedly rational these theoretical benchmarks explain that the lack of convergence to the minimal offer is an inherent feature of the learning task faced by the proposers

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

is the international business research agenda running out of steam this research note challenges international business researchers to think of their future work in terms of the past achievements of their discipline it identifies three key research areas corresponding to attempts to tackle crucial empirical questions the explanation of foreign direct investment the multinational firm and the globalization of business it ends by considering the future research agenda

was hayek an ace in order to address the question whether hayek might have been an agent based computational economist ace avant la lettre we consider an ace model concerning the phenomenon of information contagion alongside increasing returns network externalities and information cascades information contagion has been presented in the literature as an explanation for particular patterns of macrobehavior that may seem at odds with the underlying micromotives but whereas these other explanations have been shown to have a proper microfoundation information contagion has remained a phenomenon that seemed to occur only when certain ad hoc rules of thumb for individual behavior are assumed we show how information contagious behavior can emerge in a coevolutionary process of interacting adaptive agents how this is related to various hayekian themes and how ace research in general is an application of hayek s methodological insights

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

semiglobalization and international business strategy if markets were either completely isolated by or integrated across borders there would be little room for international business strategy to have content distinctive from mainstream strategy but a review of the economic evidence about the international integration of markets indicates that we fall in between these extremes into a state of incomplete cross border integration that i refer to as semiglobalization more specifically most measures of market integration have scaled new heights in the last few decades but still fall far short of economic theory s ideal of perfect integration the diagnosis of semiglobalization does more than just supply a relatively stable frame of reference for thinking about the environment of cross border operations it also calls attention to the critical role of location specificity in the prospects of distinctive content for international business strategy relative to mainstream business and corporate strategy in addition it flags factors products subject to location specificity as being salient from the perspective of international business finally it highlights the scope for strategies that strive to capitalize on the large residual barriers to cross border integration as well as those that simply try to cope with them

learning to bid in sequential dutch auctions abstract we propose an agent based computational model to investigate sequential dutch auctions with particular emphasis on markets for perishable goods and we take as an example wholesale fish markets buyers in these markets sell the fish they purchase on a retail market the paper provides an original model of boundedly rational behavior for wholesale buyers behavior incorporating learning to improve profits conjectures as to the bids that will be made and fictitious learning we analyze the dynamics of the aggregate price under different market conditions in order to explain the emergence of market price patterns such as the well known declining price paradox and the empirically observed fact that the very last transactions in the day may be at a higher price the proposed behavioral model provides alternative explanations for market price dynamics to those which depend on standard hypotheses such as diminishing marginal profits furthermore agents learn the option value of having the possibility of bidding in later rounds when confronted with random buyers such as occasional participants or new entrants they learn to bid in the optimal way without being conscious of the strategies of the other buyers when faced with other buyers who are also learning their behavior still displays some of the characteristics learned in the simpler case even though the problem is not analytically tractable

inefficiencies in a model of spatial networks formation with positive externalities abstract in this paper we make an exploratory use of computational techniques genetic algorithms and monte carlo simulations to compute efficient and emergent networks in a spatialized version of the connections model of jackson and wolinski jackson m o wolinski a 1996 a strategic model of social and economic networks journal of economic theory 71 44 74 this approach allows us to observe and discuss inefficiencies that arise in a strategic network formation context with imperfectly link mediated positive externalities to connections and spatial link costs our results highlight that depending on the strength of the externalities emergent and efficient networks may share several structural properties nevertheless emergent networks are insufficiently dense and should be more structured around central agents

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

information on sellers and buyers characteristics added value to explain price formation at primary fish markets in managed french scallop fisheries the aim of this article is to explore through a hedonic approach the factors that might explain the price variability for the french managed fishery of scallop at primary fish markets in addition to factors classically identified in the current literature like intrinsic product characteristics or markets situation the characteristics of operators are tested the relationships of loyalty between sellers and buyers and market assiduity are notably considered

international business responses to institutional voids for nearly two decades scholars in international business and management have explored the implications of institutional voids for firm strategy and structure although institutional voids offer both opportunities and challenges they have largely been associated with firms efforts to avoid or mitigate institutional deficiencies and reduce the transaction costs associated with operating in settings subject to those institutional shortcomings the goal of this special issue is to advance scholarship on this topic by a exploring institutional voids that are new to the literature b providing a deeper assessment of the different ways in which firms respond to these voids and c utilizing diverse disciplines and theoretical approaches to do so in this introduction we first review and synthesize extant research on institutional voids tracking the evolution of institutional void scholarship since the inception of the concept khanna palepu journal of economic literature 45 2 331 372 1997 and providing our perspective on its contributions and limitations we then summarize the contributions of the articles included in this special issue in addition to identifying an array of institutional voids economic and social the articles highlight four different strategies for responding to them internalization substitution borrowing and signaling drawing on these we develop new insights on the implications of institutional voids for firm behavior we conclude with suggestions for future research

how well do supranational regional grouping schemes fit international business research models international business ib research has long acknowledged the importance of supranational regional factors in building models to explain phenomena such as where multinational corporations mncs choose to locate yet criteria for defining regions based on similar factors vary substantially thus undermining consensus regarding which regional grouping schemes fit ib research models better in response we develop and empirically validate a theory of comparative regional scheme assessment for model building purposes assuming that 1 schemes can be classified based on their source of similarity and 2 schemes within the same similarity class can be assessed for their structural coherence based on group contiguity and compactness schemes with better structural coherence will also exhibit better fit with ib research models we document support for our theory in comparative analyses of regional schemes used to explain where us based mncs locate operations around the world geography culture and trade and investment based schemes with better structural coherence exhibit better initial fit with mnc location models and less change in fit after modest scheme refinement using a simulated annealing optimization algorithm our approach provides criteria for comparing similar regional grouping schemes and identifying best in class schemes tailored to models of mnc location choice and other ib research models

varieties of agents in agent based computational economics a historical and an interdisciplinary perspective in this paper we trace four origins of agent based computational economics ace namely the markets origin the cellular automata origin the tournaments origin and the experiments origin along with this trace we examine how these origins have motivated different concepts and designs of agents in ace which starts from the early work on simple programmed agents randomly behaving agents zero intelligence agents human written programmed agents autonomous agents and empirically calibrated agents and extends to the newly developing cognitive agents psychological agents and culturally sensitive agents the review also shows that the intellectual ideas underlying these varieties of agents cross several disciplines which may be considered as a part of a general attempt to study humans and their behavior with an integrated interdisciplinary foundation

towards a renaissance in international business research big questions grand challenges and the future of ib scholarship in this article we review critiques of international business ib research with a focus on whether ib scholarship tackles big questions we identify three major areas where ib scholars have addressed important global phenomena but find that they have had little influence outside of ib and only limited effects on business or government policy we propose a redirection of ib research towards grand challenges in global business and the use of interdisciplinary research methods multilevel approaches and phenomena driven perspectives to address those questions we argue that ib can play a more constructive and vital role by tackling expansive topics at the business societal interface

dynamic interaction models of economic equilibrium abstract the paper develops a stochastic dynamic model of economic equilibrium with locally interacting agents the main focus of the study is on the modeling of market interactions those arising in connection with commodity exchange and regulated by price mechanisms the mathematical framework is a control theory for random vector fields on directed graphs the graphs involved serve to describe the spatio temporal structure of commodity flows in the system the main results are concerned with the existence uniqueness and stability of stochastic dynamic equilibria

what s that got to do with the price of fish buyers behavior on the ancona fish market abstract in this paper we analyze the ancona wholesale fish market meritan where transactions take place in three simultaneous dutch auctions our objective is to characterize the behavior of market participants and in particular that of buyers in such a market structure our analysis shows that buyer seller relationships are less important than in a pairwise bargaining market such as the marseille fish market but that a significant amount of loyalty is still present under the auction mechanism we provide an explanation of the declining price paradox for the fish market of ancona by linking the rule used by the buyers to set their bid to the relationship between the variation in the price of the last transactions in the day and the quantity of fish available on that day in fact the average price tends to increase for the last transactions on days characterized by a limited supply of fish

integrating the tourism industry problems and strategies this paper addresses two interrelated issues in tourism development horizontal integration within tourism s component sectors and attempts at vertical integration between them the paper employs a conceptual framework adapted from regulation theory to assess the dynamics of these processes particularly in relation to airlines and hotels through examining some of the most important examples of both horizontal and vertical integration it indicates how these have influenced contemporary strategies in the component sectors the paper goes on to illustrate how trends towards fordist organization within airlines have conflicted with post fordist trends in hotel operations to undermine attempts at vertical integration across the tourism industry

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

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

introduction to the special issue on agent based computational economics abstract a brief overview of agent based computational economics ace is given followed by a synopsis of the articles included in this special issue on ace and in a companion special issue on ace scheduled to appear in computational economics

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