New Scale and Scope for Industrial Policies in the 1990s

A central hypothesis of this paper is to consider that changes in the economic and political environment invite us to appraise the status that industrial policies can have in the making of contemporary macroeconomic policies. This perspective is first referred to the post-war debate on standard and radical Keynesianisms. The main trends in the fields of public interventions up to the 80s are recalled. It helps to stress the change of context in the 80s and 90s, especially regarding the forms of competition prevailing on product markets. All of which set opportunities to reshape industrial policies and all the more so given that macroeconomic policies are losing momentum. Despite their renewed legitimacy and efficiency, the question of the macroeconomic impact of these coordinated industrial policies remains open, still depending on the scale that central and local authorities are willing to give us to these new schemes.     

Information Disclosure to Employees and Rational Expectations: A Game-Theoretical Perspective

This paper analyses the voluntary disclosure strategies of a privately informed firm manager when the information is relevant to both a financial market for valuation purposes and a union for wage bargaining purposes. Disclosure of favourable information may adversely affect the terms under which the firm can secure the required flow of labour and may thus lead to a decrease in the firm's market value. The paper shows that both a full-disclosure and a nondisclosure equilibrium may exist, which contradicts an earlier analysis of the issue made by Pope and Peel (1981).     

The Agency Structure of Loan Syndicates

Leaders of loan syndicates often delegate some administrative tasks to banks known as co‐agents. One reason is that co‐agents are specialized banks that help split the costs of managing the syndicate. Another reason is that co‐agents monitor the leader on behalf of syndicate members to mitigate informational asymmetry problems. Large sample tests on the Dealscan database provide support for both arguments. Evidence of repeated contracting between the same banks explains the moderate magnitude of monitoring effects.     

Profiling the non-user: Rethinking policy initiatives stimulating ICT acceptance

Business strategies and policies that were successful in increasing internet penetration in the early days may no longer be appropriate. This is most probably so in countries where a bigger proportion of the population is already connected to the internet. As more people are online, it becomes more likely that the remaining fraction of non-users is either hard to convince, under-skilled or simply lacking the financial resources to afford a connection. In view of this, a new policy approach is proposed to increase ICT acceptance. The approach is based on strategies of segmentation and differentiation. This entails that policy initiatives are specifically targeted towards different groups in the population. This article demonstrates that being a non-user can be explained by a combination of access problems, lack of ICT skills or rather negative attitudes towards ICT or by the outweighing effect of one of them. It also provides a framework for setting up new policy measures.     

M&A Operations and Performance in Banking

This paper investigates whether M&A operations influence the performance of banks. Using a sample of 714 deals involving EU acquirers and targets located throughout the world over the period 1991–2005, we investigate whether M&A operations are associated with improved performance (using both standard accounting ratios and cost and alternative profit X-efficiency measures). Despite the extensive and ongoing consolidation process in the banking industry, we find that M&A operations are associated with a slight deterioration in return on equity, cash flow return and profit efficiency and with a marked improvement in cost efficiency. Hence, the improvements in cost efficiency appear to be transferred to bank clients. These changes in performance are directly attributable to the M&A operations, and would not have occurred in their absence. Moreover, these changes exhibit a particularly negative trend for cross-border deals to testify the importance of geographical relatedness in order to achieve better post-M&A performance. The environmental and bank-characteristics that make a deal successful or unsuccessful are finally identified.     

Registering Ideology in the Creation of Social Entrepreneurs: Intermediary Organizations, ‘Ideal Subject’ and the Promise of Enjoyment

Few industries have been pressured to develop corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards and policies like oil and gas. This has translated into the creation of non-governmental organizations and branches of the oil and gas firms focused on CSR. However, given the intrinsic complex characteristics of this industry, its global reach, and the fact that its operations affect and involve a wide variety of stakeholders, CSR issues cannot be defined and implemented exclusively at the industry or firm levels, but require the participation of other actors affected directly or indirectly by oil and gas activities. In this paper we argue, first, that oil and gas CSR issues are collectively constructed through meta-organizations (organizations composed by other organizations), and, second, that the complexity and variety of CSR issues require companies to build industry-specific and non-industry-specific collective actions. Based on how oil and gas firms participate in this multi-level co-construction of CSR issues, we created a typology of meta-organizations as infra-sectoral, sectoral, cross-sectoral, and supra-sectoral meta-organizations.     

Neighbourhood Spatial Order,the Local Economy and Firm Mobility in Urban Areas of the Netherlands

Urban residential neighbourhoods in the Netherlands increasingly function as incubation zones for small‐scale businesses. Despite this development, little is known about whether and how the local production environment in these neighbourhoods shapes firm mobility behaviour. This article studies how two aspects of the local production environment — the built neighbourhood environment and zoning regulations — affect firm mobility of small‐scale businesses in urban residential neighbourhoods. To achieve this aim, we contrast two sets of urban neighbourhoods, pre‐ and post‐second world war neighbourhoods with a comparable low socio‐economic profile, but with distinct built environments and zoning regulations. We combine quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse available trade register data from the Dutch regional Chambers of Commerce, study neighbourhood zoning regulations, and conduct focus‐group and individual interviews with neighbourhood experts and entrepreneurs. The local built environment and its regulations appear to have a small but significant effect on the firm mobility behaviour of entrepreneurs in the neighbourhoods studied. Relocation intentions are higher among entrepreneurs in post‐war than in pre‐war neighbourhoods, which may (in part) be attributed to less favourable local institutional settings for businesses, but actual firm mobility does not differ between these neighbourhoods.     

Can We Prevent Boom-Bust Cycles During Euro Area Accession?

Euro-area accession caused boom-bust cycles in several catching-up economies. Declining interest rates and easier financing conditions fuelled spending and borrowing from abroad. Over time inflation deteriorated external competitiveness, turning the boom into a bust. We ask whether such a scenario can be avoided using macroeconomic tools that are available in the period of joining a monetary union: central parity revaluation, fiscal tightening or increased taxation. We find that exchange rate revaluation is the most attractive option. It simultaneously trims the expansion of output and domestic demand, reduces the cost pressure and ranks first in terms of welfare.     

Monitoring and evaluation practices of volunteer tourism organisations

Monitoring and evaluation are tools that can facilitate sustainable and responsible tourism planning and management in organisations through encouraging good practice and the continuous improvement of programmes. However, to date, there is limited knowledge and understanding of how, or indeed if, volunteer tourism organisations actually monitor and evaluate their programmes. The aim of this paper is to identify and critically examine the extent to which volunteer tourism organisations engage with the monitoring and evaluation of their projects. Based on a survey of 80 organisations and qualitative interviews with representatives from 29 organisations, the research found that monitoring and evaluation practices vary greatly. Participants readily accept a lack of time and resources as barriers to monitoring an evaluation, there is an assumption that any volunteer-host community interaction is positive, and despite voluntary guidelines, there is little incentive to prioritise monitoring and evaluation of volunteer programmes. A small number of volunteer organisations emerged as an exception to this overall pattern and are discussed. Discrepancies between stated importance of monitoring and evaluation and actual practices are examined and opportunities for improved practices identified.