CONSUMER SERVICES PROVIDED BY BUSINESS THROUGH ADVERTISING-SUPPORTED MEDIA IN THE UNITED STATES

The purpose of this paper is to examine and attempt to solve a longstanding “puzzle” in national economic accounting. Radio and television broadcasting are services clearly designed for and used by consumers but not purchased by them and, consequently, not counted in personal consumption expenditures (PCE); the costs of broadcasting (and a part of the costs of newspaper and magazine publication) are not counted in final product but are counted as intermediate expenses in the manufacture and distribution of advertised products. An important result of this treatment is that an increase in broadcasting services will not increase real product, but will be reflected as price increases in advertised goods. Are consumer services provided by advertisers properly handled in the conventional accounts? How should they be valued? If their value is to be added to PCE, where does the offsetting income originate? The paper argues that the puzzle is resolved by recognizing the nonmarket exchange between the consumer and the broadcaster; the consumer provides the reception and display of audiovisual advertisements in his home in return for broadcast entertainment. The exchange rate-e.g. 501/2 minutes of entertainment for 91 minutes of commercial messages in “prime time”-is established in the United States by the National Association of Broadcasters. Similar exchanges occur between consumers and radio broadcasters, newspaper and magazine publishers. This concept is used as the basis for a new treatment shown in abbreviated sample accounts. Estimates for the U.S. in 1976 are included.     

从“书斋”到“田野”：民族器乐教育的转向

“田野工作”是人类学研究的主要内容。它改变了以往纯粹书斋式研究的不足,开创了从“书斋”到“田野”的研究范式转向。以此视角来审视当前的民族器乐教育,书斋式的民族器乐教育呈现的是科学理性的僭越、音乐教学的封闭性、民族器乐教育与生活世界的分离。而走向“田野工作”的民族器乐教育则表现为人文精神的建构、音乐教学的开放性和民族器乐教育与生活世界的统一,这无疑是对“书斋式”民族器乐教育的超越。     

Networked Assemblages and Geopolitical Media: Governance,Infrastructure and Sites in BBC Radio

ABSTRACT

The development of radio as a communication and broadcasting technology has been vital to popular, formal and practical geopolitics. This paper contributes to the nascent literature on assemblage thought in geopolitics by considering radio as a historical iteration of “the media”. Through this dialogue, it is suggested that British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio is both a material and discursive assemblage, operating at multiple scales, sites and intensities of governance. The paper argues that radio cannot be seen simply as a vehicle for producing popular geopolitical imaginaries, nor as a neutral military or cultural diplomatic tool. Contributing to the use of assemblage and actor–network thought in historical-popular geopolitics, the paper begins by articulating the benefits of certain elements of these theoretical registers to the sub-field in general, before moving onto a series of empirical fragments from the archive to illustrate these abstractions in a more concrete manner. First, it does so by considering the early governance and regulation of radio in the 1920s, then the forces producing the BBC’s Middle Eastern Relay network during the late 1960s. The paper concludes with a further call to take materiality seriously, particularly in future popular geopolitical research dealing with media networks.     

改革开放以来我国研究机构"走出去"的探索与实践

系统回顾了改革开放40年来中国研究机构“走出去”的演变历程、特征、动因、进入模式、组织结构及成效等内容。研究发现,中国研究机构“走出去”经历了“萌芽→起步→调整→加快”4个发展阶段,呈现出投资规模增长迅速、投资主体多元、领域日益拓展、形式丰富多样、转向“一带一路”沿线国家等主要特征。拓展国际市场,追踪、获取技术前沿,培育国内研发人才,规避母国和东道国的政治、经济、文化、科技差异风险是中国研究机构“走出去”的主要动因。跨国公司结合自身实力,普遍采取并购、绿地投资、共建研发联盟等模式进入东道国,且呈现出综合研发网络等多元化组织结构类型。最后,结合当前中国研究机构“走出去”面临的困境,从模式转型、组织战略变革、新兴经济体间合作、政策整合与集成方面提出研究展望。     

Reserve accumulation and financial crises: From individual protection to systemic risk

This paper provides a new perspective on the relationship between countries׳ international reserve holdings and financial crises: while the “local” view holds that reserves may prevent domestic crises, it overlooks that the accumulation of reserves relaxes the financing constraint of the reserve currency country and may cause a financial crisis in the centre, which is transmitted globally. According to this “global” view reserve accumulation might destabilize the international financial system. Since the crisis affects all countries alike, the accumulation of reserves imposes a negative externality on non-accumulating countries.We integrate this idea in a theoretical model of the optimal amount of reserves and illustrate the gap between local and global optimality: the consideration of systemic risk lowers the demand for reserves. Moreover, if a supranational authority determines the optimal level of reserves, it internalizes the negative externality and accumulates fewer reserves. A macroprudential tax on reserve hoardings might implement the socially optimal solution. Our calibration analysis shows that these considerations are economically significant: they lower the optimal amount of reserves in the benchmark case by 45%.     

Fiscal Prudence and Growth Sustainability: An Analysis of China's Public Debts

This paper analyses and assesses China's current fiscal system, including its basic institutional arrangements, the relationship between central and local governments, and the fiscal balance and public debt. This paper pays special attention to the local government borrowings that have increased dramatically in recent years, and tries to measure the “overall public debt risk” by including all kinds of eligible debts. This paper finds that although the large expansion of local government debt during the fiscal stimulation response to the global financial crisis was devastating, the all‐inclusive total public debt to gross domestic product ratio remains under 50%, and as long as the local debt stops growing, the risk is quite manageable. This paper also points out that more attention should be paid to improving and reforming the Chinese fiscal system, particularly the reform of the fiscal relationship between central and local governments, and the legal framework for local government debt management.     

Piracy or promotion? The impact of broadband Internet penetration on DVD sales

The Internet provides copyright holders with new sales and promotional channels for their content, while also providing consumers with new opportunities to illegally obtain free copies of this content. Unfortunately, disentangling these two effects is extremely difficult.In this paper we attempt to disentangle these two effects by applying fixed effects and first difference models to a new dataset quantifying changes in broadband Internet penetration and DVD sales at a local level from 2000 to 2003. We then compare our results to those reported in Liebowitz (2008), who uses similar models in a similar time period on a similar product category: music CDs.Unlike Liebowitz, who finds a strong negative impact of broadband penetration on music sales, our results show that increased broadband penetration leads to a significant increase in DVD sales. Using the most conservative results, 9.3% of the $14.1 billion increase in DVD sales during our study period can be attributed to increased broadband penetration. One interpretation of these results is that the difference arises from differences in the ability to pirate these two types of content: while Internet music piracy was easy and rampant from 2000 to 2003, Internet movie piracy was difficult and of generally low quality in this time period. If this interpretation is true it would suggest that, in the absence of piracy, the Internet has an overall strong positive impact on media sales.     

Origin of FDI and Intra‐Industry Domestic Spillovers: The Case of Greek and European FDI in Bulgaria

This paper uses firm‐level data to assess the horizontal impact of foreign firm ownership on domestic productivity in Bulgaria. We identify a theoretical tradeoff between technological distance (of domestic versus foreign firms) and internalization capacity (of spillovers) and examine the extent to which this is reflected in the impact on the domestic economy of different types and origins of FDI. Emphasis is placed upon the effects of Greek FDI, which is known to be of a distinctively “regional” character. We find that Greek FDI produces significantly larger positive spillovers, which appear more suitable for the Bulgarian context of transition and economic restructuring. We also unveil some notable “hysteresis” and “technology bias” effects for FDI spillovers of all origins, as well as some country‐specific ownership‐structure and threshold effects.     

Behavioral Factors Affecting the Home Bias Phenomenon: Experimental Tests

Although international portfolio theory states that an optimal portfolio should be well diversified, in practice, investors tend to invest excessively in domestic assets. This tendency, which is commonly referred to in the finance literature as “home bias” (HB), has puzzled economists for many decades. This research develops and presents experiments designed to test the behavioral factors related to HB discussed in the literature. In particular, these experiments test whether the factors of “familiarity” and “fluency” (ease of pronunciation) affect HB. In addition, using a method of controlled experiments, we examine the willingness to take risk as a basic source of HB. We also examine HB under three different market conditions (normal, bear and bull markets). Results indicate that subjects tended to take less risk with foreign, unfamiliar and nonfluent (difficult to pronounce) assets compared with local, familiar and fluent assets. This tendency increased significantly when the three factors were present together (foreign, unfamiliar and nonfluent assets) compared with when only one of the three factors was present. The results also revealed that HB increased during bear market periods.     

The Boom and Bust of the RMB's Internationalization: A Perspective from Cross‐Border Arbitrage

The RMB's internationalization developed very quickly from 2010 to 2015H1, but it slowed down significantly since 2015H2. This paper argues that cross‐border arbitraging activities played a significant role in both the boom and the bust of the RMB's internationalization. A slower pace of the RMB's internationalization based more on real demand might become a new norm in the future. To pursue a more sustainable RMB internationalization in the next decade, the Chinese government should maintain a relatively high economic growth rate, avoid the burst of systemic financial crisis, continue to liberalize the capital account in a gradual and cautious way, accelerate the reform and opening up of the domestic financial market, and integrate the RMB's internationalization with Asian monetary cooperation.     

Real-World Economics Today:The New Complexity,Co-ordination and Policy

More realistic economics has to start out from the most basic socio-economic phenomena and processes, i.e. dilemma-prone interdependencies and strong uncertainty among agents that have become ubiquitous phenomena in the world today. In the reality of the “new” economy these are represented by functional and spatial fragmentation of value-added chains, global de-regulation and disembedding of the most powerful economic agents, on one hand, and increasing complexity and high integration of goods and services and net-based tele-IC-technologies on the other hand. All these rather new phenomena entail ubiquitous actual or potential co-ordination failure, either in the form of conventional “market failure”, with a complete mutual blockage of action, or of “wrong” co-ordination, or technological “lock-in”. Both forms are indicative of an insufficient capacity of the co-ordinated action required. In contrast, capability of sustainable innovative action in a broad sense requires new forms of co-ordination beyond “market” and “hierarchy”. Economics thus has to be defined more than ever as a science of effective co-ordination and the generation of innovative and sustainable collective action capacity. The global corporate economy has developed individualist arrangements to cope with that new co-ordination problem, such as local clusters and hub&spoke networks, which all have severe shortcomings. Against this background, the paper develops a setting with ubiquitous direct interdependencies, net-externalities, “strategic” strong uncertainty and ubiquitous (latent) social-dilemma problems. It discusses the possibility of an ideal decentralized and spontaneous co-ordination through emergent institutionalized collective action, specifically of “well-governed” network co-operation. In conclusion, it is argued that only a hybrid system of networks together with a new public policy role, supporting collective learning and emergent institutional co-ordination, i.e. an “interactive” and “institutional” policy approach, is capable of solving the co-ordination problems of the “new” economy.     

A calm investigation into Mr Ricardo's principles of international trade

Abstract

This paper deals with some difficulties presented by Ricardo's texts on international trade, taking seriously Ricardo's account of the systematic interaction of real and monetary phenomena. After a brief reassessment of the main features of Ricardo's views on foreign trade, some basic questions are examined, concerning the method of analysis and the alleged invalidity of the labour theory of value at the international level. The enquiry goes on to state that, for Ricardo, there are no significant differences between domestic and international exchanges, and on this basis, proposes a simple and general rule explaining the flows of trade. The “principle of comparative advantage” and the “gains from trade” thus appear as simple unintended consequences of the decisions of agents in free markets. Finally, the characteristics of an international equilibrium and the nature and impact of destabilising shocks are analysed.     

Geopolitics and the Genealogy of Free Trade Zones in the Persian Gulf

Free trade zones have been championed by policy makers as important mechanisms for the “economic liberalisation” and “globalisation” of the Middle East. While a growing number of political economists have begun to investigate the performance of these projects, few have considered why states voluntarily limit their sovereign powers by establishing these liberalised territories. To address this question, this paper studies the Jebel Ali free trade zone in Dubai (UAE) and the Kish free trade zone in Iran, two of the earliest such projects in the region. Rather than being products of neoliberal ideology or pressure from advanced industrial economies, the essay argues that paradoxically these zones were developed by the Iranian state and Dubai emirate to project territorial sovereignty in turbulent geostrategic settings and moments as well as nodes to circulate rent to domestic and international members of ruling coalitions. The geostrategic and state-building logics informed when, where, and how these projects were developed. More generally, this analysis illustrates that the Middle East is neither absent from the process of globalisation, nor does it simply respond passively and reactively to this complex process. Free trade zones are an example of local strategies working in consort with international processes to fashion new forms of economic and political interconnectedness.     

Home bias in divestment decisions of multinational corporations in the EU

We empirically investigate the claim that multinational corporations (MNCs) suffer from a “home bias” in divestment decisions: MNCs prefer to divest from foreign subsidiaries because the “emotional involvement” and the commitment in divesting from domestic subsidiaries is larger. This issue has not been yet empirically explored in the economic literature, although it is quite recurrent in the political debate on MNCs and FDI. Using detailed company‐level data on the EU corporate groups during the economic crisis (2008–2014), we show that, in spite of prima facie empirical evidence of a home bias, the bias disappears when firm‐, country‐, and sector‐specific factors are accounted for.     

Consumers’ preferences for a local food product: a real choice experiment

This paper analyses consumers’ preferences for a local food in Spain and assesses their willingness to pay (WTP) using a real choice experiment to mitigate possible hypothetical bias. In particular, preferences for fresh lamb meat were investigated and two attributes evaluated, “locally grown” and the type of lamb meat. Data came from an experiment conducted in Spain during 2009. An error component random Parameter model with correlated errors was used to estimate the effect of the attributes on consumers’ utility and derive their WTP. Results suggest that consumers positively value both attributes and are willing to pay a premium of 9 % price increase for the “locally grown” lamb meat (“Ojinegra from Teruel”) and 13 % price increase for the “Ternasco” lamb meat. If we assume a market where only “Ternasco” lamb meat without indication of the local origin is sold, and then a new “Ternasco” lamb is introduced in the market with the “Ojinegra from Teruel” label, this new local lamb meat would capture 18 % of the market if the package is assumed to be sold at 3.5 \(\hbox {C}\!\!\!\!\!=\) and a 10 % market share if the package is assumed to be sold at 4 \(\hbox {C}\!\!\!\!\!=\) .     

The Reverse Direct Investment: The Case of the Korean Consumer Electronics Industry

This paper discusses the nature of foreign direct investments by firms from developing countries in industrialized country markets, which is coined as “reverse direct investment.” On the basis of the experiences of the Korean consumer electronics firms operating in the U.S., this paper identifies the nature of the investment as “defensive” and “premature“ strategic moves of firms in their internationalization process. There investment are made not to exploit firms' monopolistic firm-specific advantages, but to protect their export markets at an earlier time than economic forces might have led them to do. However, in the process, firms try to convert their home country-specific advantage (e.g. low labor cost) into firm-specific ones as much as possible. [440]     

Identifying the “financialization” of the nonfinancial corporation in the U.S. economy: A decomposition of firm-level balance sheets

This paper develops the concept of the “financialization” of the nonfinancial corporation (NFC) by laying out the key stylized facts describing NFC financial behavior between 1950 and 2014 via a detailed decomposition of firm-level balance sheets. In the existing literature, the concept of the “financialization of the nonfinancial corporation” remains ambiguous; as such, clarification of the trends that have occurred in NFC financial behavior is an important prerequisite for analyses of why NFC behavior has changed and with what consequences. By systematically delineating the evidence for the “financialization” of NFCs, this paper contributes to the literature by establishing precisely how NFC financial behavior has changed in the post-1980 U.S. economy. The growing “financialization” of nonfinancial corporations is summarized by an increased share of financial assets in NFC portfolios, increasing indebtedness and equity repurchases among large firms, and deleveraging among smaller firms. The paper concludes by introducing the behavioral insights gained by approaching these stylized facts from a conceptual standpoint emphasizing the interdependence of portfolio and financing decisions and, thus, the links between the changes in financial behavior across NFC balance sheets.     

Cornelius Castoriadis on the Scope and Content of Neoclassical and Marxian Economics

The paper presents the thought of the political philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis on economic methodology and the neoclassical and Marxian traditions. Castoriadis suggested that the scope of economic theory includes the identification of “local” regularities and not the search for invariant “laws.” He criticized the use of equilibrium and the utilitarian framework in the neoclassical tradition and proposed to approach human agency based on the Aristotelian concept of the “social individual.” In addition, he criticized the deterministic nature of the Marxian “laws.” According to Castoriadis, the use of concepts such as the “production function” and “capital” presents a number of caveats.     

产业集群竞争力分析:以浙江纺织业集群为例

在经济全球化背景下,我国企业面临日益加剧的国际竞争。当前理论界的研究主要局限于企业、产业竞争力角度,对于产业集群竞争力的研究尚缺乏。对于普遍缺乏核心竞争力的中小企业来说,产业集群是提升中小企业竞争力的一种有效组织形式,是WTO环境下贯彻十六大“走新型工业化道路”精神的重要载体。本文在大量深入调研基础上,借鉴波特的国家竞争优势理论框架,构建产业集群竞争力“新钻石模型”,对具典型意义的浙江省纺织产业集群竞争力进行了实证分析,对于提升我国产业集群竞争力,促进我国中小企业国际化发展有战略意义。     

Policy, Markets and Knowledge: Strategic Synergies in Indian Pharmaceutical Firms

This paper addresses the question of how Indian pharmaceutical firms have transformed themselves from reverse-engineering firms focused on the domestic market to research-driven firms with global presence. It analyses the crucial and changing role of national, then international, innovation and regulatory policies and their impact on growth, performance and technology evolution of Indian pharmaceutical firms. The paper argues that although public policy increased market turbulence, it also provided new opportunities for firms to expand and build new technology, knowledge and market capabilities. From the 1950s Indian firms have pursued a variety of research, marketing and internationalization strategies to tackle changes prompted by policy, markets and knowledge complexities. The paper traces firm strategies that vary both in time and by firm, and argues that the successful firms have evolved substantively towards knowledge-based strategies. The paper then attempts to identify future directions for strategy, knowledge and markets.