Foreign Direct Investment,Regulations and Growth

The paper explores the linkage between income growth rates and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. So far the evidence is rather mixed, as no robust relationship between FDI and income growth has been established. We argue that countries need a sound business environment in the form of good government regulations to be able to benefit from FDI. Using a comprehensive data set for regulations, we test this hypothesis and find evidence that excessive regulations restrict growth through FDI only in the most regulated economies. This result is robust to different specifications of the econometric model.     

EU/ACP Economic Partnership Agreements: Impact, Options and Prerequisites

The EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP) are presently renegotiating their trade relations. Behind these negotiations are the fundamental conflict between the existing arrangement and multilateral trade rules, the frustration regarding poor ACP trade performance, the ineffectiveness of trade and trade-related ACP policies, and the inefficiency of corresponding EU assistance. This article highlights the fundamentals of the envisaged Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and the ACP countries, sums up previous estimates of their probable economic impact, discusses policy options for ACP countries and sheds light on basic prerequisites, particularly on institutional conditions, that should be fulfilled to ensure the success of EPAs.     

Global Sourcing Decision‐Making Processes: Politics,Intuition, and Procedural Rationality

Global sourcing (GS) is a firmly established phenomenon in modern business practice that requires specific expertise from different organizational functions, such as purchasing, production, logistics, and research and development to analyze and select sourcing alternatives effectively. In this context, global sourcing decision‐making (GSDM) processes pose major challenges because two dimensions of functional politics, namely goal misalignment and power imbalance across functions, appear to influence procedural rationality in a manner not understood to date. Likewise, intuition also seems to play a role for the procedural rationality of GSDM processes. To elucidate the conditions under which procedural rationality is hampered or enhanced by politics and intuition, we studied five cross‐functional GSDM processes, in front of extant strategic decision‐making literature. We derive formal propositions on how functional politics and intuition influence the procedural rationality and present contingencies for the divergent role of intuition as well as functional politics in GDSM processes. Our research contributes to existing GS literature by providing a theoretical model of important microfoundations of how GSDM processes evolve. The findings also guide managers on how to structure GSDM processes such that GS projects can be conducted in a more rational fashion.     

Shaping the Societal Bill: past and future trends in education, pensions and healthcare expenditure

Education, pensions and healthcare are the main components of the Societal Bill in Europe. Here we analyse the principal trends and trend breaks that will shape the bill in the next decades. Population ageing, changes in household structure, technological progress, new organisation of work and leisure, changes in market labour structure and regulation and increasing migration flows are the main factors that will call for a reform of social systems in Europe. Understanding how all these variables relate each other is a complex challenge that needs to be tackled with both quantitative and qualitative forecasting methods.     

VI. Writschaftslehre der Unternehmungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung