Are we living at the expense of the developing countries?

The industrial nations are often accused of achieving their relative affluence by using natural resources at the expense of the developing countries. Is this accusation justified? Would it really be in the developing countries' interests if the industrial nations drastically reduced their consumption of natural resources, as is so often demanded?     

Do we need a European lender of last resort?

During a financial crisis, pressure on Central banks to act as a lender of last resort (LLR) and to offer emergency liquidity assistance to troubled banks increases. The European Central Bank, however, has announced that it does not regard it as its principal task to provide emergency liquidity to troubled banks and that it does not wish to disclose the conditions and practicalities of emergency liquidity assistance arrangements. In this paper, we investigate the benefi ts and the costs of centralising the LLR function in a monetary union and ask whether establishing an LLR in Europe could be useful.     

How can we reliably measure the occurrence of non-fatal injury?

Introduction In England, there is no reliable indicator for measuring the occurrence of non-fatal injury. As a consequence, we do not know whether the rates of non-fatal injury are increasing or decreasing. Purpose This paper addresses two questions: what criteria should an indicator of non-fatal injury satisfy, and can we identify an indicator that satisfies these criteria? Method Criteria for a good indicator of non-fatal injury are postulated, and an indicator based on serious long-bone fractures is proposed. Inferences from the literature and the various non-fatal injury data to which we have access are used to justify the criteria, and to test the proposed indicator of serious injury against the criteria. Findings There is significant evidence to justify the use of the following criteria to assess indicators of non-fatal injury: the indicator should reflect the occurrence of injury satisfying some case definition of anatomical damage; the injury cases ascertained should be important in terms of incapacity, impairment, disability, quality of life, cost, and/or threat-to-life; cases should be completely ascertained from routinely or easily collected data; and the probability of a case being ascertained should be independent of social, health services supply and access factors. Our analysis indicates that an indicator based on serious long-bone fracture admitted to hospital is likely to satisfy each of these criteria for a good indicator. Conclusion An indicator of non-fatal injury occurrence based on serious long-bone fractures exhibits favourable characteristics when judged against our criteria for a good indicator.     

Revisiting the construction of the Empire State Building: Have we forgotten something?

What’s past is prologue. Or is it? The construction of the Empire State Building (ESB) was not only the fastest erection of a skyscraper ever, but the construction company that took on the job allegedly began with no equipment or supplies that would be adequate for the job. The project was completed ahead of schedule and under budget; instead of 1 year and 6 months as anticipated, it only took 1 year and 45 days. The costs totaled $24.7 million instead of the estimated $43 million. So, we ask, how was this possible and is there something we could learn? Based on a review of existing literature describing the history and construction of the ESB, we outline strategic, operational, and contextual explanations for what appears to be a truly successful megaproject. We illustrate how, for example, inspiration from Henry Ford’s assembly line technique, the uniqueness of the logistics during the construction period, the economic decline of the Depression, and early ideas of concurrent engineering and fast-track construction enabled the success. Our conclusion is that there are lessons to be learned in going back to basics when tackling a megaproject.     

What do we know about the capital structure of small firms?

Firm data from ten Western European countries is used in this paper to contrast the sources of leverage across small and large, as well as across listed and unlisted firms. Specifically, the explanatory power of firm-specific, country of incorporation institutional, and macroeconomic factors is evaluated. Using data that is more comprehensive in coverage than that used in the existing research the stylized facts of the capital structure literature for large and listed firms is confirmed, but contrasting evidence is obtained for smaller companies. First, the country of incorporation carries much more information for small firms, supporting the idea that small firms are more financially constrained and face non-firm-specific hurdles in their capital structure choice. Second, using two different leverage measures it is shown that the relationship of firm size and tangibility to leverage is robust to the measure used for listed, but not for unlisted firms.     

Does foreign direct investment expand the capability set in the host economy? A sectoral analysis

Most empirical studies examining the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic development use aggregate monetary-based measures such as GDP or TFP growth as indicators for development. We deviate from this approach and use instead the recently developed economic complexity index; this measure summarises the complexity of the productive structure of an economy, and its values can be interpreted as the number of capabilities present in a country. These capabilities are units of productive knowledge necessary for the production of goods, and goods differ in the number of necessary capabilities. Furthermore, we use sectoral FDI data to take differences between sectors of an economy into account, since the number of necessary capabilities also varies between the sectors. In our empirical analysis, covering 63 developing and developed countries over the period 2005–14, we find that FDI in the tertiary sector has a statistically significant and robust positive effect on the number of capabilities, whereas FDI in the primary and secondary sectors generally does not increase the capability set of an economy.     

Do we need a new financial architecture?

The financial crises in Asia have shown the dangers resulting from globalised financial markets without an appropriate international legal and political framework. Effective regulations and supervisory mechanisms are called for. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A02GP124 00004     

Does the EU need a tax of its own?

The demand has been raised in various quarters recently that the EU should have a tax of its own. What are the reasons behind this demand? And what are the arguments of its opponents?     

How Does a Product Gain the Status of a Necessity? An Analysis of Necessitation Narratives

The consumer perception of how products gain the status of necessities is characterized by complexity, laden with idiosyncratic consumer experiences, and driven by personally relevant historical developments. This study pushes the theoretical boundaries of understanding consumer necessities by reaching beyond the classification of products into traditional dichotomies such as necessity–luxury and need–want. It focuses on how consumers experience and recount emotion‐laden events in their lives whereby certain products move to being perceived as necessities over time. An analysis of narratives reveals that product necessitation encompasses five stages: familiarization, transformation in the form of redemption or contamination, memorialization, (re)integration and reconstruction, and solidification. Comprehending necessitation experiences is of great interest to marketers in creating effective marketing strategies as well as to public policymakers in ensuring that their citizens have access to life necessities.     

The end of the world as we know it? The influence of online channels on the luxury customer experience

Luxury brands claim to offer consumers pleasure and prestige and deliver high profits to retailers. While the global demand for luxury goods is increasing, consumers expect that the purchasing process these goods will accommodate their preferences on how, where, and when they want to purchase them. The changing nature of luxury markets and customers' purchasing behavior makes it necessary to understand why customers would choose an online channel to purchase luxury offerings. What are the features that make so appealing, attracting consumers towards them? Our study explores customers' motivations, the benefits and the experiences they are expecting and perceiving from the Online Luxury Experience (OLX). We examine the OLX and establish three corresponding luxury customer segments using online channels to purchase their luxury goods and services: the purists, opportunists, and e-lux. We highlight the differences between the segment's customer journeys and the implications for theory and luxury customer experience management.     

Does the origin of a succession CEO matter in the market value of innovation? Disentangling the origin of internal CEOs

This study complements previous research regarding CEO origin and family businesses by incorporating upper echelons theory with the perspective of family effect as well as disentangling CEO origin to provide a better understanding of how external, unrelated internal, and family succession CEOs affect innovation performance. We further reveal how a family founder helps improve the value of innovations undertaken by family heirs. The results show that firms with unrelated internal succession CEOs experience higher (lower) stock market reactions to innovation announcements than those with family (external) succession CEOs. Founders serving on the board reduce the negative effect between family heirs and innovation performance. Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What can we learn from the historic road safety performance of high-income countries?

Abstract

Road traffic deaths in high-income countries (HICs) have been steadily declining for five decades, but are rising or stable in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We use time-series cross-sectional methods to assess how age- and sex- specific death rates evolved in 20 HICs during 1955–2015, controlling for income, population density and urbanization. Past work has attributed improvements in safety in HICs to income growth, suggesting that countries intervene when they become richer (Kuznets hypothesis). In contrast, we show that HICs had statistically significant declines in road traffic injuries starting in the late 1960s that persist after controlling for income effects, and inclusion of a lagged dependent variable. These findings are consistent for all age-sex groups but the effects are strongest for the elderly and young children. We argue that the reversal in the traffic injury trend did not occur because HICs reached an income threshold. Instead, the 1960s were a period of paradigmatic change in thinking about road safety. Subsequent, safety improvements occurred because countries at different income levels established regulatory institutions that had a legislative mandate and financial resources to conduct large-scale safety interventions.