FDI on the move: cross-border M&A and migrant networks

Review of World Economics - Using data on Chinese outward direct investment and migrant stocks in 96 countries from 2003 to 2014, we find that migrant networks have a positive and significant...     

Co-innovation in networks of resources — A case study in the Chinese exhibition industry

This work explores how network partners collaborate to innovate and innovate to collaborate and thereby achieve value. The innovation processes analyzed are within an IJV in the Chinese exhibition industry. The findings highlight that the IJV's development of a successful trade show resulted from effective co-innovation by partners which enabled the exploitation of opportunities in an industry characterized by rapid growth and continuing structural change. Partner co-innovation enabled evolving strategic and operational capabilities which has led to continued and growing market success. This co-innovation involved the targeted co-mingling of partner resources which creates value that motivated continued cooperation. The effectiveness of the partners' activities is evidenced by the growing size and prestige of their large-scale trade show as well as the expansion of the IJV into other endeavors. The paper concludes by considering the way these innovative processes can be applied in other contexts.     

A Note on the Teaching of Economics Through American History

McConnell examines problems connected with measuring the readability of introductory economics textbooks and observes that an index of readability based on sentence length and the number of syllables per some given number of words may be deficient, misleading, and possibly counterproductive. In this connection, he observes that “virtually no work has been undertaken to determine whether the choice of textbook is a significant factor in determining student understanding and performance.” Research in this area might make it possible to substitute empirical evidence for what most instructors in their selection of a textbook attempt to intuit.     

New technology in UK retailing: Issues and responses

Technology application in retailing has a considerable history, with applications for the most part aimed at labour cost reduction. The technologies now being applied in retailing and distribution however differ from these earlier ones in a fundamental way. The new technologies in micro‐electronic based computing and micro‐electronic communications differ by being general purpose and flexible and by developing very rapidly. The new technology is enabling changes to take place in the distribution channel. The areas of applications of the new technology and the applications and reasons of technology introduction are analysed in this paper.     

Technology, Work Restructuring and the Orchestration of a Rational Narrative in the Pursuit of 'Management Objectives': The Political Process of Plant-level Change

In this article a narrative approach is used in the construction of a story about the political aspects of plant-level change. It is shown how different individuals may recount and reconstruct stories which reflect their own interests and how the maintenance of common organizational stories often reflects the influence and political action of certain powerful actors and groups. These dominant narrators are often actively involved in a political process by which a rational narrative is constructed, revised and modified over time and sustained within the context of other competing voices and views. In examining the uptake of cellular manufacturing, technology is not conceptualized as a determinant of outcomes but as a substance of the workplace initiative which is continually open to influence (the mutual shaping of the 'social' and 'technical') during the political process of change. Finally, a broad conceptualization of political process is adopted in order to enable the reader to critically reflect on the data in pursuing their own analysis and conclusions.     

The Importance of Store Operator on Superstore Employment Levels

Information from 175 superstores, operated by three companies, is used to investigate the importance of store operator in setting superstore employment levels and types of employment. Store operator is shown to be a significant factor determining employment numbers and types in British superstores.     

Television Advertising: In Need of Reinvention?

As the media technologies carrying advertising messages advance in sophistication, commercial communication inexorably becomes more fragmented, more targeted and individual in focus, and more consumer-driven. Advertising as an industry continues to grow, but is still based on its original mass-communication models. The industry must now consider reinventing itself.     

HERD SIZE AND UNIT COSTS OF PRODUCTION IN THE ENGLAND AND WALES DAIRY SECTOR

This paper examines the relationship between herd size and unit costs of production in the England and Wales dairy sector. Following the two-stage estimation procedure of Dawson & Hubbard (1987), longrun average cost (LAC) functions are estimated from cross-section data for five separate years between 1976/7 and 1986/7. Results show that the LAC curves are U-shaped but highly skewed, implying that considerable economies of size are present at low output levels but diseconomies at larger levels are much less marked. Over time, technological change in particular has been shifting the LAC curves downward and to the right and away from the sector's long-run equilibrium. The differential shift of cost curves, depending on the size of production, implies that technological change has been biased in favour of larger herds.     

Do We Have a Redundant Set of Cost–Efficiency Targets in the NHS?

There has been a long history of hospital trust cost–efficiency targets being used in the National Health Service (NHS), but there is little evidence about whether they are effective in reducing hospital unit costs and reducing the dispersion of unit costs between trusts. In 1997, the new Labour government announced that it would replace the purchaser efficiency index with a new approach to securing cost–efficiency gains from trusts. Since 1999/2000 trust efficiency targets have been based on reference costs. This article presents evidence to suggest that efficiency targets have not been effective and that the new reference cost based system of targets is irrelevant. The efficiency gains that trusts seek to achieve are those that emerge from the purchaser funding formula and the contracting process.     

Measuring the Volatility of Wheat Futures Prices on the LIFFE

Agricultural prices rose dramatically in 2007 and have subsequently fluctuated at high levels. This paper estimates the volatility of daily wheat futures prices on the Euronext/London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange for 1996–2012 using an exponential generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model with a constant (price) elasticity of variance (CEV) and a broken trend. Results show that volatility is highly persistent; there is a structural break in volatility in June 2007 when volatility rose by 10%; subsequently, the wheat futures price has become more volatile; and the CEV is 0.04.