政治风险、文化距离和双边关系对中国对外直接投资的影响——基于“一带一路”沿线主要国家的研究

随着“一带一路”战略的实施，中国对外直接投资（OFDI）规模将会持续扩大，也面临各种各样的风险。根据2003-2014年中国对“一带一路”沿线主要43个国家直接投资的面板数据，运用面板矫正误差（PCSE）方法估计，重点研究东道国政治风险、文化距离和双边关系对我国对外直接投资的影响，并将样本分为“新海上丝绸之路”和“丝绸之路经济带”，比较两条路线上的异同。研究发现：双边政治关系与我国OFDI显著正相关；中国对“一带一路”的OFDI一般集中于政治风险高、文化距离近、自然资源丰富的国家，原因在于东道国丰富的自然资源和与东道国良好的双边关系降低了投资风险；地理距离对中国投资有负影响，中国对东道国出口对OFDI有促进作用。此外，政治风险、文化距离和地理距离对OFDI的影响在“一带一路”两条路线上表现出明显差异。     

On the discrepancy in the social efficiency measures between parametric and non-parametric production technology identification

In conventional social productive efficiency measurements that consider the production of undesirable outputs such as CO2, a DEA-based non-parametric method of production possibility frontier (PPF) identification coupled with the directional distance-function approach a-la Luenberger (1992) is typically employed. This paper shows that the discrepancy between parametric and non-parametric methods of PPF identification in social inefficiency measures can be non-negligibly large when the number of observations is small or the data are not well-scattered. By using the same data as Ha et al. (2011), who used non-parametric PPF identification to measure the social efficiency of Japan's inter-city transport services with lifecycle CO2 as the undesirable output, this paper demonstrates that adopting parametric PPF identification instead can result in considerably higher inefficiency measures for decision making units (DMUs) with relatively large undesirable outputs.     

Analysis of interregional industry linkage and economic distance in China: evidence from the mining industry

The mining industry is an important sector of the national economy, which provides essential support for energy and other resources for economic development. Industrial linkage and economic distance are two different concepts in measuring the correlationship of different industries, in this article, we apply the model that combines both of them to analyse the industries significantly influence the mining industry. We find that electricity and heating industry, and the mining industry itself from forward linkages have greatly influenced the mining industry, and the industries from backward linkages affect mining industry are changing with industrial economic transformation. We also find resources can flow across several regions only after 2007, which means the role of geographical factors limiting long-range transportation of resources is weakening after 2007. And we explain how resources flow among various regions during 1997 ~ 2007. Based on the findings above, policy implications from the empirical results obtained are discussed.     

The evolution of inter-organisational social capital with foreign customers: Its direct and interactive effects on SMEs’ foreign performance

Taking a longitudinal approach, we analyze how the evolution of different dimensions of social capital between an SME (Small and Medium enterprise) and its key foreign customers directly influences the firm’s foreign performance growth. Moreover, we utilize a contingency approach by introducing two dyad-specific characteristics into the analysis: psychic and geographic interorganizational distances. Our findings contribute to the international business literature on social capital and suggest that while an investment in social capital with distant foreign customers always reinforces SMEs’ foreign performance development, relational and cognitive social capital have the same positive effects only for low levels of interorganizational psychic distance.     

Me,myself and I: The role of CEO narcissism in internationalization decisions

Internationalization decisions represent major objects of international business research; in this context, the respective role of decision-makers, i.e., strategic actors has been under study for now nearly 50 years. However, some important individual characteristics of strategic actors, which seem to influence individual decision-making in a significant way, have been – in contrast to general management research – widely disregarded. Among those characteristics, narcissism plays a decisive role. Trying to provide a first attempt to fill this research gap our paper aims at theorizing on as well as empirically analyzing potential relationships between narcissistic tendencies of CEOs and their internationalization decisions. The empirical study of major German manufacturing firms over the period 2004–2013 shows that CEOs with a high degree of narcissism tend to intensify business activities abroad in general while the expected effect on intensified activities in markets with a high psychic distance cannot be identified. These research results help to better understand the drivers of firms’ internationalization, stress the importance of recognizing managerial decision-making in the context of analyzing business activities abroad, and improve the prediction of CEOs’ decision-making behavior in general.     

Preparing for distant collaboration: Antecedents to potential absorptive capacity in cross-industry innovation

Cross-industry innovation entails distinctive innovation opportunities and challenges according to the knowledge heterogeneity between the collaborating firms. This heterogeneity yields increases in organizational-level cognitive distance. Whereas recent theory suggests cognitive distance is positively related to exploratory innovation, too much distance can hinder efficient knowledge absorption and results in a reduced effect on novelty value. This paper focuses on the research question of how to build potential absorptive capacity for distant collaboration beyond established industry boundaries to gain radical rather than incremental results. To address this question, we mapped a cross-industry network using survey data on 215 bilateral cross-industry collaborations between firms from a variety of industries and captured cognitive proximity (the inverse of distance) in terms of overall knowledge redundancy between firms. This approach introduces a new method to infer organizational-level cognitive distance from network analysis. Subsequently, based on results from the network analysis, we examined coordination antecedents to potential absorptive capacity for cross-industry innovation with partners at moderate and high distance applying case study analysis. Our study revealed three alternative approaches to coordination antecedents that drive a firm?s potential absorptive capacity for distant collaboration. These findings extend research on absorptive capacity to the field of cross-industry innovation.     

Unbundling the differences between Psychic and Cultural Distance: An empirical examination of the existing measures

The diversity between the country-scores of Hofstede, Schwartz, GLOBE, Håkanson and Ambos and Dow and Karunaratna is the main focus of this study. To investigate the correlation between the country-scores of these CD (Cultural Distance), pPD (perceived Psychic Distance) and PDs (Psychic Distance stimuli) instruments we apply the Mantel test, a test predominantly used in anthropology and genetics, which can be particularly insightful when examining “distance” data. The matrix correlation findings provide evidence supporting the high diversity between these measures and their lack of consistent results for the same countries. Therefore, despite the similarity between the way of conceptualizing and operationalizing CD that Hofstede, Schwartz and GLOBE share, these CD measures do not report consistent findings. Consistently, the lack of correlation, between the PDs measure of Dow & Karunaratna and pPD of Håkanson & Ambos, indicates the diversity between PD stimuli measures and perceived PD measures. At the same time, while the two Psychic Distance (PD) measures indicate high correlation in some cases, overall they are highly diverse from the CD measures. We argue, therefore, that identical studies could reach significantly different conclusions by simply using different measures of CD,pPD&PDs which then denotes significant implications for the reliability of research findings. Additionally, we point out potential weaknesses of these measures when examining culturally proximate countries and multicultural nations.     

An estimation of returns to scale of airport airsides under multiple optimal solutions in DEA

The returns to scale (RTS) nature of 37 Chinese airport airsides are investigated in this paper. Multiple optimal solutions in DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) models may lead to error RTS estimation. To address this problem, we use the (Zhu and Shen, 1995) RTS method. The empirical study shows that all those airsides with two runways operate under decreasing RTS and those airsides with only one runway either operate in the area of increasing RTS or in the area of constant RTS.     

Calibration Weighting Methods for Complex Surveys

This paper presents a careful investigation of the three popular calibration weighting methods: (i) generalised regression; (ii) generalised exponential tilting and (iii) generalised pseudo empirical likelihood, with a major focus on computational aspects of the methods and some empirical evidences on calibrated weights. We also propose a simple weight trimming method for range‐restricted calibration. The finite sample behaviour of the weights obtained by the three calibration weighting methods and the effectiveness of the proposed weight trimming method are examined through limited simulation studies.     

Financial development and barriers to the cross-border diffusion of financial innovation

This paper explores the determinants of financial development by focusing on the role played by barriers to the diffusion of financial technology. These barriers are measured using human genetic distance from the technology frontier. The results based on cross-sectional data for 123 countries suggest that genetic distance to the global frontier has an economically and statistically significant effect on financial development, in that countries that are genetically far from the technology leader tend to have lower levels of financial development. Genetic distance is found to have the largest effect, even after controlling for other determinants of financial development established in the literature. These findings indicate that cultural barriers to the diffusion of financial technology across borders impact financial development by influencing the follower countries’ ability to adopt and adapt innovations from the frontier.