Managing the foreign investment portfolio: How industry and governance diversity influence firm performance

Foreign investment has been seen as an important strategy for learning about new technologies and markets. However, the link between the characteristic of a foreign investment portfolio and firm performance has not been examined in detail. Using panel data from 199 Taiwanese firms, this study examines how the foreign investment portfolio in terms of industry and governance diversity influences firm performance. This study finds that governance diversity has an inverse U-shaped relationship to firm performance, whereas industry diversity does not. In addition, this study also finds that their relationships are affected by R&D capability and industry profitability. The empirical findings of our study are useful for firms that invest in emerging economies.     

FDI spillovers in the Chinese hotel industry: The role of geographic regions,star-rating classifications,ownership types,and foreign capital origins

Although productivity spillovers have long been recognized to be a major benefit of foreign direct investment (FDI), such spillovers have not yet been systematically studied in the context of the hotel industry. This paper investigates hotel-related FDI spillover effects as well as moderating factors (geographic region, star rating classification, ownership type and foreign capital origin) in China. Evidence from province-level panel data reveals the existence and significance of intra-industry spillovers from foreign to domestic hotels in China, although the nature and magnitude vary based on different moderating factors. Domestic hotels in eastern and western China and those with alliance and limited liability ownership structures benefit significantly from productivity spillovers. Foreign-invested three-star hotels transfer a significant amount of positive productivity, whereas domestic three- and five-star hotels benefit the most from productivity spillovers. Moreover, foreign-invested hotels from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan (HMT) and non-HMT countries generate positive spillovers of similar magnitudes.     

Aid allocation rules

This paper studies an aid allocation rule used by major development agencies, and investigates optimal allocations when recipients are neoclassical economies undergoing transition dynamics. When recipients face aid absorption constraints, allocations that favor poorer recipients are not always optimal, contrary to what is assumed in assessments of donor performance. The most quantitatively significant factors that determine the optimal sensitivity to recipient characteristics are the generosity of the aid budget and the extent of absorption constraints. In neoclassical recipients, aid can only accelerate growth where there is already growth, so the optimal rule places little weight on growth and optimality is largely a matter of balancing recipient need against absorption constraints.     

国外人力资源会计研究的学术倾向——基于国际权威会计期刊的数据分析

文章以目前会计界公认的5份顶尖国际学术期刊2000年至2009年所刊载的人力资源会计的53篇文章作为研究对象,对国外人力资源会计学术界的研究现状进行分析,反映进入21世纪以来国外人力资源会计研究的演进特征与变化,进而探讨国外人力资源会计研究的学术倾向.     

FDI and inequality in Vietnam: An approach with census data

We investigate the effects of inward FDI on income distribution and absolute living standards in Vietnam using census data from 1989 to 2009. We compute the number of employees of foreign establishments in each of Vietnam's provinces for each year, and use that as a measure of local FDI. We estimate the effects of FDI on local households’ living standards as reported in the data, broken down by educational background to allow us to analyze effects on inequality. Estimates based on the repeated cross section indicate that rising FDI in a province is associated with a slight decline in living standards for households there if they do not have a member employed by the foreign enterprises, with only modest gains for households who do have a member employed by the foreign enterprises. These estimates may reflect composition effects, however, since we find large movements of people toward the provinces receiving the FDI. The findings show that measuring the effect of FDI on household welfare is more difficult than measuring the effect of trade policy, and may pose a difficulty for the view of FDI as a general anti-poverty strategy.     

Rewarding the introduction of multiparty elections

Do aid donors reward the adoption of multiparty elections? Are multiparty elections rewarded in both democracies and electoral authoritarian regimes? How do the rewards for institutional reforms compare to the rewards for substantive improvements in governance and political rights? These questions are of particular interest given both the spread of democracy and the emergence of autocracies with multiparty elections for the executive and legislature as the modal form of authoritarianism. To answer these questions, we examine temporal dynamics in aid flows before and after transitions to multiparty elections and the strategic allocation of aid rewards to specific sectors depending upon electoral competition and substantive improvements in governance and political rights. We find that, in the post-Cold War era, bilateral and multilateral donors reward the adoption of multiparty elections in both democracies and electoral authoritarian regimes while also rewarding substantive improvements in governance and political rights. Sector specific analyses reveal that multiparty elections are rewarded with greater democracy aid and economic aid in both democratic and electoral authoritarian regimes. Nevertheless, the quality of elections matters: the adoption of democratic elections receives greater aid gains than the adoption of authoritarian elections.     

'More is not necessarily better': the relationship between the quantity and quality of training efforts

International comparisons indicate that, on average, Belgian companies spend less on training than their French, German and Dutch counterparts. Encouraging companies to commit to training has consequently been an important policy goal over the last few years. One notable aspect of the policy to encourage training efforts by companies is that the effort is always represented in terms of the resources invested (input), not in terms of the learning achieved (output) or the quality of training programmes (throughput). Government policy is aimed at increasing the level of investment in company training. One of the questions we wish to investigate is whether this input-oriented approach to the training issue is actually effective. Whether companies will succeed in raising human capital to ever-increasing levels may depend not only (and maybe not even chiefly) on the extent of financial investment in training. The investment level does not necessarily determine the quality of the training processes developed by companies. Therefore, this paper focuses on the following research questions: (1) to what extent do companies monitor the systematic development of sufficiently effective training processes? In other words, is qualitative under-investment an issue, alongside financial under-investment? (2) Is the level of financial investment in company training correlated to the quality of training processes? The empirical data confirm that a kind of 'qualitative' under-investment can be reported and that the relationship between the level of investment in training and the quality of the training programmes is weak.     

The advanced experience of foreign countries on China＇s land leasing management

土地出让金在有效利用国土资源、调节收入分配、增加公共财政等方面发挥了积极的作用。但是，分税制改革后地方政府对土地买卖的过分依赖带来的野蛮拆迁、房价虚高等问题也随之成为阻碍城市化进程健康发展的重要因素。如何对土地出让金进行合理征收和科学管理成为当下执政者亟特解决的问题。     

The Increased Role of Foreign Capital in the Peruvian Financial System

Summary

Foreign investment has played a very important role in developing Peru's banking sector since 1990. Indeed, as of June 1998, half of all bank assets were foreign-controlled. Much of this increased participation by outside entities can be traced to the privatization drive and to discriminatory reserve requirements on domestic deposits. Despite financial deepening, the analysis conducted here finds that the financial sector has not become more efficient in lowering the cost of intermediation as measured by the interest spread between loans and deposits.     

外国直接投资与中国区域经济发展的实证分析

20世纪90年代以来FDI对中国经济发展影响越来越大。本文利用1991-2003年时间序列和横断面数据,就FDI对中国区域经济发展的短期效应和长期效应进行实证分析。结果表明在这段时间里FDI对中国区域经济非均衡发展有显著的影响,FDI促进中国区域经济发展,但是在区域间的非均衡分布又加剧了区域经济的非均衡发展。最后提出吸引更多的FDI到中西部地区、缩小区域经济差距、促进区域经济均衡发展的政策建议。