The Impact of Market Orientation on the Internationalization of Retailing Firms: Tesco in Eastern Europe

This paper investigates a Western retailer's market orientation levels in two emerging markets. We examine whether the market orientation-company performance link holds true for retailers in emerging economies, despite environmental differences. By using concepts from key studies we have assimilated a fully representative model - applied through interviews with top management from Tesco and its subsidiaries and affiliates in Hungary and Slovenia. Using this example, we find that the market orientation-business performance link is valid for Western retailers in emerging economies. Here, the retailer applied market orientation predominately through; the use of matching with suppliers of own brand goods; top management emphasis on market orientation and risk taking. Intelligence generation and dissemination was exercised via global processes such as brand review.     

Accession of the Czech Republic,Hungary and Poland to the European Union: Impacts on Agricultural Markets

We analyse the consequences on agricultural markets of enlargement of the European Union (EU) to include the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. We produce a market outlook up to 2010 for two enlargement scenarios assuming different policy restrictions on grain and dairy production in the acceding countries. Accession of the three Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) leads to a permanent but moderate decrease in EU prices for most commodities. In the three acceding CEECs, domestic prices increase drastically, final consumption of agricultural products decreases in most instances, while production increases. Higher domestic prices in the CEECs reduce exports of most commodities to non‐union countries. Consequently, excess supplies are placed in stocks or exported to the original 15 member countries. Supply management mechanisms in the dairy and grain sectors would reduce the build‐up of surpluses in the new member states, but limit their ability to take advantage of the expanded market. Accession of the three CEECs would increase the CAP budget over its proposed maximum if area payments are extended to incoming crop producers.     

The Impact of Exports on Economic Growth: It's the Market Form

This paper unites explanations about the growth effects from various trade characteristics, proposing the market form into which a country exports as the main driver. Exporting into concentrated world markets (oligopolies or monopolies) leads to higher profit margins, similar to fundamental microeconomic logic. The paper develops an index measuring the average market form of a country's exports. This index produces a positive and statistically significant coefficient in conventional growth regressions. A one standard deviation increase is suggested to raise growth by 0.885 percentage points. This result holds for numerous extensions and seems particularly important for developing economics.     

Strategic Responses of Multinational Corporations to the Opening of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: And Their Impact on Competing Developing Countries

No abstract available for this article.     

The EBRD: Redundant,or an important actor in the transformation of Eastern Europe?

Now in its second year of operation, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development was the first new institution set up by the West to cope with the historical challenge of helping to transform the centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe into market economies. Strongly criticized for its lack of funds and its redundant profile when compared to the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, the “European Bank” is still struggling to assume an independent role in the transformation process and remains a controversial institution.     

Industrial Policy: Past, Diversity, Future; Introduction to the Special Issue on the Future of Industrial Policy

Industrial policy is one of the most controversial policy fields. Its scope, instruments and rational vary across countries, changing over time; intentions and outcomes often differ. This volume brings together reports on countries, highlighting specific problems and concepts. Most papers explicitly state that there has recently been renewed interest in industrial policy, be it the new “matrix” approach in the EU, or other strategies in Japan, the US and France. Problems and solutions differ between frontier countries like Finland and the catching-up economies of the new EU member countries, or the policy strategies in developing countries designed to foster economic growth or complement globalisation. The upcoming new approach to industrial policy all hints at a more systemic industrial policy, forward looking and emphasizing the synergies with other policy areas, but also fine-tuning to specific needs, comparative advantages and future technologies.     

基于空间计量模型的市域出口对企业TFP影响的实证分析——以泛长三角53个市为例

本文基于企业微观层面数据,测度了2000-2007年泛长三角53市的工业企业TFP,统计分析了这些企业TFP的空间自相关性;运用空间面板计量模型,实证分析了TFP空间自相关条件下出口对TFP的作用。结果表明:各地市工业企业TFP形成了以沪浙苏为核心、以赣皖为外围的空间分布格局和显著的空间自相关性,不仅本市域出口而且邻近市域出口对本市域企业TFP有显著促进作用,沪浙苏各市之间的TFP空间自相关程度是赣皖各市TFP空间自相关程度的二倍。因此,为提高TFP和缩小区域间TFP的差距,不仅要增加出口,而且要加快赣皖地区内部一体化建设,还要加快赣皖与沪浙苏地区的对接与合作。     

Trading with Conditions: The Effect of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures on the Agricultural Exports from Low‐income Countries

Market access for agricultural products is increasingly determined by capability to comply with a wide array of regulatory measures. From a trade perspective, one of the most important aspects of such regulatory measures is their potential distortionary effect, as their cost of compliance is often asymmetrical across countries. This paper investigates the effect of the European Union's sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures on the exports from low income countries. This study finds that SPS measures result in relatively higher burden for low income countries but that membership in deep trade agreements seems to reduce the difficulties related to compliance with SPS measures. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that while many middle and high income countries have the internal capacity to comply with SPS measures, most low income countries do not.     

Bilateral Free Trade Agreements and Customs Unions: The Impact of the EU Republic of South Africa Free Trade Agreement on Botswana

The EU has indicated that after 2008 its trade relationships with developing countries will be dominated by the development of preferential trade agreements. Although not a consequence of the Cotonou Agreement, the free trade agreement between the EU and the Republic of South Africa (EU RSA FTA) was clearly one of the first fruits of this approach to trade relationships. However, there is no evidence that the design of the EU RSA FTA incorporated a comprehensive general equilibrium evaluation of the agreement for either the signatories or the other southern African nations. The analyses reported here indicate that while the EU RSA FTA may substantially benefit the signatories, there are appreciable negative impacts for other states, especially the Republic of South Africa's immediate neighbours. Moreover, the analyses indicate that the structural adjustments for African economies signalled by the FTA are substantial, which implies that there will be substantial economic costs associated with the FTA.     

优惠贸易协定对出口二元边际的异质性影响——基于2002-2018年BACI数据库的数据分析

本文匹配2002-2018年BACI数据库的HS-6分位5219种产品152个国家(地区)之间的双边贸易及WTO数据库的优惠贸易协定大样本数据,采用泊松拟极大似然估计技术,实证检验优惠贸易协定对出口二元边际的异质性影响。结果表明：签订及深化优惠贸易协定均能显著促进出口的集约边际和广延边际,且对集约边际的效应大于广延边际。该影响效应存在着条款、国别以及产品三维度的异质性。协定条款中的边界深度对集约边际和广延边际都有显著的促进作用,而边界后深度只对集约边际有促进作用而对广延边际没有产生影响。从不同类型的国别贸易上看,签订优惠贸易协定对发达国家和发展中国家均为帕累托改进,但对不同类型国家出口二元边际的影响存在异质性。从产品层面上看,“北北型”“南北型”和“南南型”优惠贸易协定对于同质化和差异化产品以及不同技术密集度的产品的出口二元边际的影响也存在异质性。本文为不同国家间签订恰当的贸易协定和选择合适的缔约国提供了实证支持和政策启示。     

The Politicisation of EC Anti‐dumping Policy: Member States,Their Votes and the European Commission

This paper examines one political‐economy aspect of the European Communities’ (EC) anti‐dumping policy that has tended to be overlooked in prior studies; namely, the role that member states play in deciding whether to impose definitive duties on imports that have been found to be dumped and that are deemed to have injured a European industry. We find that, in the late 1990s, numerous disagreements between member states occurred over the merits of imposing anti‐dumping duties. These disagreements may well have been partly responsible for the strong decline in the number of European anti‐dumping investigations initiated after 1999.     

中国对美国高新技术产品出口结构——基于贸易二元边际的研究

中国对美国高新技术产品出口呈现波动性增长,金融危机更暴露了出口增长面临外部冲击的脆弱性.利用2003-2009年HS-8位数贸易数据,文章分解了中国对美国高新技术产品出口的增长结构,结果显示:无论从整体角度还是从具体技术类别角度,中国对美国高新技术产品出口增长均沿着集约边际实现,扩展边际的贡献较小,在提高出口临界值时,扩展边际所占比重提升也较为有限.内部出口结构失衡以及扩展边际的有限发展,成为中国对美国高新技术产品在低技术水平上大幅度波动增长的主要原因.因此,中国应该努力实现从集约边际向扩展边际的转变,调整出口结构,以提升出口产品的技术水平.     

The Effects of Competition,Liquidity and Exports on Markups: Evidence from the UK Food and Beverages Sector

This study investigates the pricing decisions of the UK food and beverages sector over 2007–2016. The markup model formulated by Hall (1988) and Roeger (1995) is employed where market power is expressed in terms of pricing decisions reflected by the difference between the price level and the marginal cost of production. The analysis is conducted under three steps: the first step estimates the markup ratio of the UK food and beverages sector over 2007–2016; the second step provides the price-cost margin of the 32 4 digit level NACE Rev.2 constituent industries over 2007–2016; and the last step tests the relationship between the cross-sectional estimates of market power and the structural effects of concentration, liquidity and exports over 2009, 2011, 2015 and 2016. The results suggest the presence of imperfect competitive conduct in the sector, while the three structural effects appear to have a significant influence on the pricing decisions of the UK food and beverages industries.     

Introduction to Special Issue on "The Invisible Part of the Iceberg: Research Issues in Industrial Organization and Small Business"

Small Business Economics -     

The impact of household life‐cycle stages on subjective well‐being: Considering the effect of household expenditures in Hungary

The household life‐cycle stage is a significant contributor to the perception of subjective well‐being; however, the effect of household expenditures of life‐cycles on subjective well‐being has not been thoroughly explored. The life‐course perspective, specifically the study of family/household life‐cycles, emphasizes the understanding of subjective well‐being across the entire life‐span. Accordingly, in the literature subjective well‐being is often studied at different life‐stages considering the influence of variables such as age, cohabitation and fertility. The present study evaluates the level of subjective well‐being across the various life‐cycle stages using a matching method on a Hungarian national sample. This approach is appropriate for studies using observational data because the administration of a true experimental design is usually not feasible for this type of research. The main finding of the article is that controlling for the expenditure structure significantly modifies the effect of life‐cycle on subjective well‐being, which is varied across life‐cycle stages and shown to be highly dependent on household expenditures.     

The Impact of Peer,Politician, and Celebrity Endorsements on Volunteering: A Field Experiment with English Students

Endorsement is used by charitable organizations to stimulate public support, including monetary donations. This article reports a field experiment that examined the effect of leader and peer endorsement on student volunteering. The experiment was conducted with over 100,000 students from five UK universities and compared the effect on volunteering rates of email endorsements by politicians, celebrities, and peers, to a control group that received an email but no endorsement. We examined outcomes seven weeks after the original e-mails, including click-throughs to volunteering unit websites, attendance at volunteering training, registration with volunteering units, and actual volunteering. Peer endorsements reduced click-throughs to volunteering unit websites. There were positive treatment effects for endorsement by politicians on subsequent training but no significant effects of any of the endorsements on our other outcome measures. Overall, we found little support for the provision of leader and celebrity endorsement, and confirm negative effects for peer endorsement.     

The Impact of Ambidextrous Leadership on the Internationalization of Emerging‐Market Firms: The Case of India

Ambidextrous leadership is a key factor in the success of emerging market firms’ venturing into advanced economies. Although the definition of ambidextrous leadership is universal, its operationalization is culturally contingent. This conceptual paper examines Indian companies, increasingly recognized for their ambidexterity, and aims to explain this phenomenon by using Indian cultural dimensions. Five propositions relating to charisma, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, and Indian ambidextrous leadership are developed. We show that the seven cultural variables characterizing Indian ambidextrous leadership (nurturant, personal touch, expertise, simple living and high thinking, loyalty, self‐sacrifice, and the giving model of motivation) reinforce the recent successful internationalization by Indian companies. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.