Firm-level analysis of the international diversification of small integrated stock markets: Ireland 1999-2007

Domestic market indices may not be domestic in the pure sense of the word if they contain a large number of multinational corporations (MNCs). This is particularly relevant in a small open economy like Ireland. This paper shows that Ireland's strong position in attracting FDI has resulted in the domestic market index (the ISEQ index) becoming a marginal measure of the Irish corporate sector. Further results show that Ireland is gaining international exposure through foreign MNCs but this foreign exposure is not directly related to the regions where these firms do business.     

SME internationalisation: Do the types of innovation matter?

Existing evidence suggest that innovative Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (or SMEs) are more likely to internationalise (i.e. have a greater propensity to export) than non-innovative SMEs. However, it is not yet clear whether and to what extent different types of innovation (i.e. product, service, and process) affect SME internationalisation. To address this issue, this study uses a research model that integrates the resource and institutional perspectives and empirically test it using data from the United Kingdom (UK) Longitudinal Small Business Survey. Our results confirm that SME internationalisation is more likely to occur in firms undertaking product innovation than process and/or service innovation, and a specific configuration of resource and institutional drivers influence SME internationalisation depending on the innovation type. These results lead to major policy and managerial implications in relation to promoting SME internationalisation through different types of innovation, given the UK withdrawal from the European Union.     

新中国70年对外直接投资:发展历程、理论逻辑与政策体系

通过梳理新中国成立70年以来中国对外直接投资的五个阶段,即艰难探索、尝试发展、调整发展、快速发展和全面发展的历程及其政策演变发现：动因变迁深刻影响区位与行业变迁、制度创新是中国对外直接投资特有的驱动因素、中国对外直接投资必将成功应对“逆全球化”挑战。同时,根据实践历程与理论探讨构建了对外直接投资政策体系结构图并进行分析,认为我国应加强对外直接投资法律体系建设、强化对外直接投资扶持政策、支持民营企业对外投资、提高国有企业对外投资绩效、增强政府与企业参与国际规则制定的能力。     

e‐Government in the Irish Revenue: The Revenue On‐Line Service (ROS): A Success Story?

The Revenue Online Service (ROS) is one of the first e‐government initiatives introduced in Ireland. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine this reform initiative in the Irish Revenue, assess it through the lens of the New Public Management (NPM) and e‐government literatures and to critically assess whether its implementation can be deemed ‘a success story’. Many of the components of NPM were evident in the introduction of ROS which facilitated its implementation: decentralisation, the use of private sector styles of management, an emphasis on performance measurement and a search for efficiencies. ROS has, inter alia, transformed both access to taxation information for taxpayers and their agents, and the system of tax payment and filing in Ireland. Assessing its implementation in terms of the objectives of an e‐government initiative, ROS is ‘a success story’, and the Irish Revenue organisation has clearly benefited from its introduction in many ways. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that tax/accounting practitioners are also beneficiaries of this e‐government initiative. However, a critical analysis of the findings of this study contests the idea that ROS is an unqualified success story.     

爱尔兰房地产泡沫的教训与启示

20世纪90年代至2007年，爱尔兰经济快速发展、外资大量流人带动爱尔兰房地产价格不断攀升，在财政货币政策、监管放松等多项因素作用下，房地产市场走向非理性繁荣，造成资源配置扭曲，损害本国的出口竞争力。文章通过数据建模，检验了这一时期爱尔兰房价和进出口贸易对经济的拉动作用，从计量分析角度揭示片面发展房地产业对放大经济波动的影响；指出应正确处理房地产与政府税收之间的关系，避免房地产价格泡沫损害实体经济，并在逆周期的宏观审·l真政策框架中纳入杠杆率等监测指标，防范经济顺周期风险。     

Elections and Capital Flows

This paper investigates the extent to which elections affect capital flows. I find little evidence of political capital flow cycles in advanced economies. In emerging and developing countries, however, presidential elections significantly lower preelection foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows but have no effect on other types of capital flows. Furthermore, I find evidence that these cycles are not caused by economic crises related to elections or preelection manipulation of policy variables. These results suggest that uncertainty about future government policies, which should have greater impact on more irreversible forms of capital flows like FDI, may be an important factor in generating this cycle.     

中部地区利用外资承接产业转移的博弈分析(英文)

FDI is crucial to macroeconomic development of a region. The paper analyzes the FDI utilization performance of the central regions in recent years. It points the adverse effects out that the local central governments regard preferential policies as the main means to attract FDI. We use static game theory and dynamic game with complete information to analyze preferential policy strategy of the central region, thus obtaining its pragmatic impacts on FDI attraction. On this basis, some policies and recommendations are given to improve the means of FDI attraction to ensure that local governments achieve mutually beneficial results.     

Do regulatory policies matter to corporate innovation?

This paper examines the relationship between regulation and innovation from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. The theoretical model focuses on the role of competition policy (measured by increases in the number of firms) and the strength of intellectual property rights in fostering cost-reducing R&D, under both R&D competition and R&D cooperation. It is shown that, theoretically, competition policy and intellectual property rights are complements under R&D competition, while they are substitutes under R&D cooperation. Moreover, under R&D competition, innovation is maximized through strict competition policy and strong intellectual property rights; whereas under R&D cooperation, innovation is maximized through strict competition policy and weak intellectual property rights. The empirical model tests the effect of several regulatory policies on innovation in several MENA countries. The results of dynamic panel data regressions point that competition policy and intellectual property rights are complements. In addition to competition policy and intellectual property rights protection, the following country/regulation characteristics are considered: human capital, government efficiency, foreign direct investment, natural resources dependence, labor market regulations, and GDP level. The paper finds that the extent of regulations in all categories has statistically significant effects on R&D, except FDI. One explanation is that most FDI to the MENA region flows to natural resources and non-tradable sectors, which are less relevant to R&D than other sectors (e.g., manufacturing and information and communications technology sectors).     

Fiscal incentives, corporate structure and financial aspects of treasury management operations

This paper presents evidence that tax policy affects corporate structure and intra-group financial flows, using a data base of Irish registered firms. How MNC's corporate structure and financial flows react to tax policy is complex. Fiscal incentives play a key role in Irish industrial policy. The paper examines certain financial characteristics of financial subsidiaries (those managing group treasury functions) in Ireland. These characteristics are a tax haven connection, high ratios of revenues to pre-tax profits (in some cases greater than 100%), high intra-group borrowing or lending, large gross assets (in excess of €500 million) and low or zero employment. While these firms pay corporation tax in Ireland (at reduced rates), there is considerable loss to other exchequers. The paper concludes that such tax haven type activities are unlikely to remain a viable part of future industrial policy in Ireland.     

Foreign Direct Investment and Debt Financing in Emerging Economies

The rich dynamics of capital flows is an important characteristic of business cycles in emerging market economies. In the data external debt is always procyclical, while FDI is procyclical only in normal times. We provide a microfounded rationale for this pattern by linking financial shocks to capital flows. For this purpose, we build a small open economy model in which firms are subject to borrowing constraints, and are either owned domestically or by foreign investors who purchase firms through FDI. During a financial crisis, the valuation gap per unit net worth between foreign and domestic investors widens, which triggers more FDI inflow. Our model produces business cycle moments consistent with empirical observations.     

基于技术获取目标的我国利用FDI策略研究

当前,我国利用FDI的经济环境已经发生了巨大变化,利用FDI的主要目标是要着力发挥外资的"技术溢出效应",获取国外的先进技术。然而,由于我国企业技术吸收能力较差、外资企业不愿技术扩散,以及我国不利的外部环境等多方面原因,导致我国获取FDI技术的效果一直不明显。因此,必须从政府和国内企业两个层面着手,通过制定有利于技术获取的引资政策、营造高度竞争的市场环境、提高国内企业对技术的学习和吸收能力等措施,以促进技术获取目标的实现。     

International Professional Labour Markets and the Narratives of Accountants

This paper analyses the emergence of an international labour market in accountancy and the role it plays in the careers of Big Six Irish accountants. It suggests that within Irish accountancy an international hierarchy has arisen which places sites such as London above areas like Bermuda. The justifications for this hierarchy are often technical, i.e. one learns new accounting techniques in London but not in Bermuda. However, although technical justifications play a role in this hierarchy, the paper argues that its emergence has more to do with narrative than with technical factors. That is, it is argued that Irish accountants perceive core sites as being more “progressive” than peripheral areas and in order to display their ambition and adherence to “progressive” accounting values they migrate to the core and not the periphery. This narrative coincides with a wider narrative in Ireland, which claims professional migration is a good thing because it means Irish professionals learn new skills in the core and bring these back thus enabling the state, and the firms they work for, become competitive in an increasingly global economy. This narrative rejects the concept that professional migration is a reflection of Ireland's economic dependence in favour of viewing it as a sign of progress.     

An International Perspective for Mortgage Market Reform

The United States and certain European countries (e.g., Ireland and Spain) have recently experienced serious distress in their residential mortgage markets. Public policy has responded with interventions to limit the deadweight costs of mortgage foreclosures, but with limited success. There are also open questions with respect to long‐term reforms in mortgage market structures. In this paper, I make use of the important differences that exist between U.S. and European mortgage markets to help identify those aspects of residential mortgage markets that are most in need of reform.     

Real exchange rate dynamics revisited: A case with financial market imperfections

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between real exchange rate dynamics and financial market imperfections. For this purpose, we first construct a New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model that incorporates staggered loan contracts as a simple form of the financial market imperfections. Our model with such a financial market friction replicates persistent, volatile, and realistic hump-shaped responses of real exchange rates, which have been thought very difficult to materialize in standard NOEM models. Remarkably, these realistic responses can materialize even with both supply and demand shocks, such as cost-push, loan rate, and monetary policy shocks. This implies that the financial market development is a key element for understanding real exchange rate dynamics.     

中国吸引外国直接投资政策研究

本文对国家层面和国际层面上的外国直接投资(FDI)促进政策作了实证分析;阐述了中国吸引FDI政策中存在的超国民待遇和低国民待遇表现及其各自存在的利弊,以及政策实施中实际存在的问题;最后分析了世界各国吸引FDI的政策潮流,提出了中国吸引FDI的政策取向:实行市场友好政策,在内外资一视同仁的基础上,实施产业政策和地区经济政策,并以前者为主.     

Priorities for future innovation: Russian S&T Foresight 2030

Under the transition to a market economy Russian science, technology and innovation (STI) has changed dramatically. After the crisis of late 1990s, the government declared science and technology (S&T) as one of national priorities and started increasingly investing in this sector but it has not led to the tangible output like a bigger volume of high-tech exports or a higher share of international publications. A number of policy instruments have been introduced to increase the efficiency of STI policies. One of them is S&T Foresight.The activities aimed at identification of national S&T priorities and series of Foresight studies have helped to understand which areas are most promising for sustaining existing competitive advantages and building new ones via gradual shift from the resource-based economy towards the technology-oriented one.The paper presents the design and organisation of a large-scale Russian S&T Foresight exercise as a fully-fledged instrument of the national STI policy and discusses the achieved results and their use for policies at different levels.     

绿色信贷政策能够促进企业绿色创新吗？——基于政策效应分化的视角

本文实证检验了绿色信贷政策影响重污染企业和节能环保企业绿色创新的不同效应。研究发现,绿色信贷政策对绿色创新的影响在两类企业之间存在分化:政策能更有效提升节能环保企业的绿色创新,对重污染企业绿色创新的促进作用相对有限。从银行信贷决策视角看,政策效应的分化一定程度上源于政策对信贷融资的影响存在差异:政策使重污染企业融资规模降低、融资成本提升的同时,促进了节能环保企业融资规模的增加。从企业绿色行为决策视角看,政策效应的分化一定程度上源于政策对企业绿色行为的影响存在差异:重污染企业采用“低成本策略”,节能环保企业则采用“竞争优势策略”。绿色信贷政策的效应还受企业所有权性质、现金持有以及企业规模的影响,而竞争性的银行业结构和政府补助有助于发挥政策对重污染企业绿色创新的促进作用。本文研究对评估绿色信贷政策的经济效果,推动政策进一步精准发力具有一定参考意义。     

Competitive Bidding and Regional Development in the UK

This article examines competitive bidding among development agencies. Some commentators argue that English regions are at a disadvantage compared with Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The authors look at the evidence on the attraction of FDI to the regions of the UK and discuss some of the arguments about unfair advantage. The impact of the Regional Development Agencies on FDI and the need for a concordat are also discussed.     

外资进入自由化如何影响了中国本土企业创新?

本文以中国政府2002年对《外商投资产业指导目录》的修订所引发的外资自由化为准自然实验,采用倍差法系统评估了外资进入对本土企业创新的影响及其作用机制。研究表明,外资进入不仅显著提高了创新程度,而且还有利于延长本土企业的创新持续时间。此外,我们还发现,知识产权保护强化了外资进入对本土企业创新的促进作用,这一结论在使用专利申请数衡量创新以及采用FDI溢出指标刻画外资进入程度之后依然稳健。最后,我们进一步考察了外资进入影响本土企业创新的作用机制,发现研发能力增强与融资约束程度降低是外资进入促进本土企业创新的两个重要渠道。本文研究为客观评估中国近年来引资政策的绩效提供了微观依据,同时对于如何有效促进本土企业创新具有一定政策启示意义。     

A Comparative Study on the Impact of Revised SORP 2 on British and Irish Charities

Charities constitute an important sector in the economies of Britain and Ireland. However, despite their economic importance, charity external financial reporting has been characterised by a diversity of accounting practice and a lack of standardisation. Over the last 20 years an attempt has been made to improve this situation by the publication of a Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) for charities in 1988 and its revision in 1995. It is argued that inconsistencies in the financial statements of charities and the adoption of dubious accounting practices make it difficult for users of charity accounts to understand (and therefore use) the information provided. Previous studies have mainly looked at the impact of the original SORP (1988) on large charities in Britain. Little is known with respect to the impact on Irish charities. This paper presents the results of a comparative analysis of over 200 financial statements of Irish and British charities with respect to the recommendations contained in the revised SORP (1995). The results provide evidence that the accounts of Irish charities are considerably less compliant with the recommendations made in the revised SORP than their British counterparts. Possible reasons for this are discussed.