Capital mobility and import substitution policies

This paper considers a conventional trade model with intermediate goods and capital mobility. In this framework, raising the barriers to imports tends to carry a country toward high exports. This is a new result and casts serious doubts regarding the proposition that policies of import substitution which characterized much of Latin America in the 1950s are basically inward oriented and tend to carry toward the low import, low export end of the spectrum.     

OPEC investment strategies—Past and future

Some forecasters recently have predicted that OPEC countries with continuing current account surpluses will shift from long-term to short-term investments in the near future to improve their liquidity positions. However, careful study of a variety of data, including historical patterns, suggests that this will not be the case. Instead, surplus countries will turn even more to long-term investments offering higher returns over time.     

A model of trade between creative regions in the presence of sector specific learning by doing

We analyze a model of trade between two heterogeneous regions that are creative in the sense of Richard Florida. One region is larger than the other region in terms of its endowment of creative capital. Each region produces a single final good with inputs 1 and 2 that are traded. There is learning by doing only in the sector producing input 1. Our primary objective is to study the impacts of this sector specific learning by doing and trade on the economies of the two regions under consideration. Our analysis leads to two salient results. First, when a specific condition holds, the smaller region specializes completely in the production of input 1 but there is incomplete specialization in the larger region. In particular, at time t = 0, not all creative capital in the larger region is employed in sector 2 and there is some learning by doing in this larger region as well. Second, in the long run, the smaller region continues to specialize completely in the production of input 1 but the larger region specializes completely in the production of input 2.     

A New Application of RFM Clustering for Guild Segmentation to Mine the Pattern of Using Banks’ e-Payment Services

ABSTRACT

With increasing use of point of sale terminals at stores, banks are seeking to achieve a bigger portion in such financial exchanges. An important problem for banks is to identify the most profitable professions. For this purpose, a new application using recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM)-based clustering and customer lifetime value analysis containing two extensions of RFM is proposed for guild segmentation. The methodology is applied on a real data from an Iranian state bank. The findings reveal that this methodology is applicable in practice and could be very effective for bank managers of any other banks.     

The Archaic, the Obsolete and the Mythical in Neoclassical Economics

A bstract . The assumptions of omniscient rationality and of optimizing behavior of neoclassical economics are serious flaws in that theoretical system. By imitating Newtonian mechanics , by going back to 18th century psychology and philosophy and to Benrtham's rationalism and hedonism, and by assuming the ideal world of perfect competition , neoclassical economics had to ignore its psychological dimension and thus focus on the behavior of a simple and abstract "economic man" , who lacks social, ethical and political dimensions, and who is not a creature of habit, hunches, impulses, etc. The rationality postulate cannot be tested empirically and economic behavior is much too complicated to warrant use of the classical optimization techniques of Newtonian mechanics. Economics , dealing with open systems and being an evolutionary science , once again is not logically consistent with the application of classical Newtonian optimization techniques.     

An opinion survey of malaysian middle level managers and professionals

This study reports the results of an opinion survey of a Malaysian managerial subelite, potential future business and government leaders. Their responses to propositions put forth in a detailed questionnaire indicate that they have values conforming to those associated with Western bureaucratic society. The results of this 1982 survey are discussed under the topics of attitudes toward women, attitudes toward business and religion, station in life, and peer trust levels.Bernard Sarachek is with the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Aziz Abdul Hamid and Zakaria Bin Ismail are with the Faculty of Business Management, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.