Economic growth and foreign aid

Japan’s metamorphosis from a less developed country to one of the world’s most Important industrial nations was closely connected with increasing foreign pressures. Where did they result from and what will be their consequences for the country’s economic policy?     

The case against foreign aid

In the words of the author: “The arguments of this article go counter to widely held notions. If they are shown to be wrong they will have to be reconsidered, but their unfashionable nature alone is no ground for doing so.” We believe that this article could be the beginning of a discussion on development policy.     

Israel as a foreign aid donor

The formation of Israel and the growth of its economy have astounded the nations of the world. The world “miraculous” has often been used to describe the way in which a tiny nation, born in a hostile neighborhood in 1948, not only managed to survive but became a source of valuable technical assistance to other emerging nations and, in many cases, to nations that have existed many times longer than it has. The objective of this analysis is to examine the purpose, history and scope of the technical assistance that Israel is extending to some 60 nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia.     

Western aid and trade policy trends

The Third Development Decade of the United Nations opened with a promising outlook for the developing countries. The economic situation of the OECD countries had improved during 1979 and the “North-South dialogue” seemed to be making progress. But the further course of 1980 and the subsequent years revealed that the extent and long-term effects of the slump in world economic activity had been seriously underestimated. A large number of developing countries continue to be heavily dependent on development aid. The following article outlines current trends in aid and the likely prospects for the future.     

Recent trends in foreign direct investment

Global investment strategies have become a central issue in international business and in international economics. The worldwide stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) can be estimated at over US $ 1500 billion in 1990—three times the value of the 1980 stock. The following article discusses the driving forces behind this trend and identifies some recent changes in the pattern of FDI.     

Challenges from new trends in foreign direct investment

Foreign direct investment flows to developing countries have undergone major changes in recent years, both regarding their scope and their determinants. This article reviews some new trends in this area and focuses specifically on their implications for export processing zones which in the past have been a widely used instrument to attract foreign investment. How are they affected by the new developments and what can be their role in the future?     

A transaction cost perspective on foreign market entry strategies of US and Japanese firms

A large scale survey of top US and Japanese executives is conducted in order to assess the power of transaction cost economics (TCE) in explaining a firm's choice of entry mode (e.g., joint venture vs. full ownership) when it enters a foreign market. Results suggest that several TCE tenets are useful in explaining US firms' choice of entry mode. However, TCE predictions were not supported by the entry mode choices of Japanese firms. Implications of these findings for researchers and managers are discussed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

An institutional analysis of the US foreign sales corporation

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how institutional analysis can be applied to the study of an evolving institution—the Foreign Sales Corporation (FSC). The FSC was created by the US government to provide a tax incentive to domestic exporters. It has a checkered history because the European Union views it as an export subsidy. After establishing that the FSC is definitely an institution, Scott’s institutional synthesis is utilized as a conceptual prism to demonstrate how his framework can be utilized to examine complex phenomena. The study also tests a crucial proposition for institutional theory and explores a research question critical to the continuing development of the theory. That question deals with the persistence of the FSC as an institution.     

The determinants of foreign giving: An exploratory empirical investigation of US manufacturing firms

To date, there is ample evidence on the determinants of domestic charitable contributions made by US firms. However, to the best of our knowledge, no one has investigated the determinants of foreign charitable contributions made by US firms. Using the Socrates KLD database and the US M&A data for the 2004–2010 period, we find evidence that foreign giving by US manufacturing firms is linked to certain key variables. Specifically, we find evidence that variables found significant in the domestic giving literature (pre entry return on assets, size, debt to asset ratio, market to book ratio, and research and development expense as a function of sales) are also found significant for foreign giving. However, and notably, cultural distance and foreign sales percentage have been found to be important discriminators between manufacturing firms who give abroad and those who do not. It appears that high international business experience (proxied by the foreign sales ratio) and operations in culturally distant countries motivate foreign giving. Finally, subsample analysis involving developed and developing countries suggests that cultural distance matters for developing countries, but does not for the developed country subsample. Firm level profitability matters for developed countries, but not for developing countries. Future research may be expanded to include the dollar amounts of giving and a bigger sample size. Differences in foreign giving patterns between manufacturing and non-manufacturing firms, and by firms in countries other than the US, may also be explored.     

Information costs and home bias: an analysis of US holdings of foreign equities

We test extant hypotheses of the home bias in equity holdings using high quality cross-border holdings data and quantitative measures of barriers to international investment. The effects of direct barriers to international investment, when statistically significant, are not economically meaningful. More important are information asymmetries that owe to the poor quality and low credibility of financial information in many countries. While a direct measure of information costs is not available, some foreign firms have reduced these costs by publicly listing their securities in the United States, where investor protection regulations elicit standardized, credible financial information. A proxy for the reduction in information asymmetries—the portion of a country’s market that has a public US listing—is a major determinant of a country’s weight in US investors’ portfolios. Foreign countries whose firms do not alleviate information costs by opting into the US regulatory environment are more severely underweighted in US equity portfolios.     

继续呈缓慢提高态势--我国外贸依存度偏高的原因及未来走势

外贸依存度是指一定时期内一个国家或地区对外贸易总额相当于该国国内生产总值的比例,它是衡量一国对外开放程度的一个基本指标,也是反映一国与国际市场联系程度的标尺。外贸依存度的提高,一方面反映一个国家和地区融入世界经济的程度提高,但与此同时,其对国际市场的依赖     

国际有机食品市场及我国有机食品的发展

人们对食品质量的关注和对食品安全标准的担忧，决定着食品的消费和国际农业贸易的发展。国际有机农业和食品生产正是在这种情况下发展起来的，其目的是为了解决农产品化学污染和品质下降问题，减轻农业生产对资源和生态环境的压力。目前，国际有机农业和有机农产品的法规与管理体系主要分为联合国、国际性非政府组织和国家3个层次。我国有机食品的组织管理体系和标准体系尚不健全，国内有机食品的认证必须与国外的认证组织合作完成。     

我在美国遇到的一件小事

今年2月24日,990频道晨播:一家四口外出旅游,人手一部的手机型号不同,行李中因此就有了4个充电机。莞尔之余,我不由引起了对产品标准化问题的思考。旧金山是美国最美丽的城市之一,市区分布有40多个大大小小的山丘,错落有序,风格迥异的民间住宅成了一道     

Learning about foreign markets: A study of Czech SMEs

Drawing on the organizational learning literature, our study examines the role of foreign market knowledge and firm emphasis on technological innovation in the internationalization of small, entrepreneurial firms in the Czech Republic. It is based on a sample of 168 SMEs representing a broad range of manufacturing industries that were founded after the fall of communism and as the Czech economy was transitioning to a more market-based economy. Findings indicate that emphasis on technological innovation is associated with greater acquisition of foreign market knowledge. In addition, our results indicate that emphasis on technological innovation directly and indirectly influences the performance of such SMEs in international markets. Our findings also suggest that foreign market knowledge partially mediates the relationship between firm emphasis on technological innovation and international performance. Implications of our findings from the perspective of theory and practice are discussed.     

The measurement of foreign direct investment: A critical review

The extent of internationalization of certain countries is usually measured by trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). This article reviews state-of-the-art measurement concepts of FDI. In particular, the quality of FDI data as reported in conventional statistics is assessed and examples are given to show the limitations involved. Concepts of FDI, data sources, and measurement problems are discussed in detail. Several conclusions are drawn on related issues of improvements such as data collection, methodology and techniques, estimates versus evidence, the inclusion of new phenomena, international comparisons, and the validity of results. The difficult task is to compromise a careful analysis with innovative methodological approaches.     

Shopping orientations of US males: A generational cohort comparison

Male shoppers are recognized as an important and distinctive market segment. While initial steps to categorize and classify male shoppers have been taken, the majority of existing empirical research considers male shoppers as a single, homogeneous market segment. Recognizing that our understanding of male shoppers can be improved by identifying smaller, more homogeneous sub-segments, this exploratory study uses Generational Cohort Theory (GCT) as a framework to examine the shopping orientations of US men across four different generational cohorts: the Silent generation, the Baby Boomers, the 13th Generation, and the Millennials. The findings of this study support the use of GCT as a market segmentation tool for male shoppers and provide insight to help retailers understand how men in the four cohort groups approach shopping. Specifically, the findings suggest that male shoppers in the Millennial generation exhibit significantly higher levels of shopping enjoyment, recreational shopping tendency and market mavenism than males in the other generational cohorts.