WHY DO MANDATED INTERNATIONAL JOINT VENTURES STILL EXIST?

It is widely believed that restrictions against foreign direct investment (FDI) should be eliminated altogether. However, local equity requirements (LERs) that effectively mandate multinational enterprises (MNEs) to enter through international joint ventures (IJVs) are still common and are seemingly persistent. We seek to understand why and how governments are motivated to adopt LERs. We demonstrate that LERs can in fact be host governments' optimal choices when regulating the entry of MNEs into domestic markets formerly dominated by public firms. (JEL F13, F23, L32)     

WHY IS THERE NO CELLPHONE DIRECTORY?

“Directoryassistance.Whatcityandstate,please?”“Operator,help!I’mstuckintraffic,andI’mlateforameetingwithanextremelyimportantclient.Thiswoman’snameisstrictlyA-list—Imean,shegetsmoreGooglehitsthanDonaldTrump—andI’llbeinserioustroubleifIdon'treachhe     

AID,POLICIES, AND GROWTH: WHY SO MUCH CONFUSION?

We revisit the highly debated aid‐policy‐growth association. Our results overturn Burnside and Dollar's original findings by simply using new data over the same countries and years. Marginal effects from the extended sample (1962–2013) provide weak evidence that aid can promote growth in the presence of good policies. Post‐Cold War (1990–2013) analysis, however, reveals that aid can decrease growth at any level of policy. The overwhelming majority of the results suggest aid conditional on policy is ineffective. This debate continues because the results are highly sensitive to country‐year selection, choice of methodology, measurement of institutional quality, and growth rate measurement. (JEL F35, O23, O40)     

IS THERE A (DOWNWARD SLOPING) DEMAND CURVE FOR VOLUNTEER LABOUR?

ABSTRACT * * I would like to thank the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy and the Irwin Foundation for financial support for my dissertation, which led to many of the ideas contained in this paper, as well as my dissertation advisors at Boston College. I would also like to thank my colleagues at John Carroll University and at the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Case Western Reserve University, for their advice and comments on previous versions of this paper. All errors, however, remain my own responsibility.
: Are organizations that use volunteers content to accept all of the volunteer labour offered to them, or do they make some sort of demand-side decision as to how much volunteer labour to use? This paper looks for evidence of such a demand curve for volunteer labour in data collected by the Urban Institute in the early 1980s. Evidence is found that organizations are consistent over time in their use of volunteer labour.     

信息系统外包(IS Outsourcing)探讨研究

信息系统外包具有很高的战略价值、经济价值和管理价值,信息系统外包的实践发展要求更高的理论指导和综合分析。本文分析了信息系统外包的演进关系;以经济理论整合观点研究了信息外包的理论架构;为了确保外包的质量,探讨了基于流程的信息系统外包重要研究议题。     

IS ECONOMIC GROWTH IN COTE D'IVOIRE PRO‐POOR? EVIDENCE FROM LSMS DATA: A NOTE

This paper analyses the impact of the economic growth in Cote d'Ivoire on the poor people. We use household data from two LSMS (1992 and 2002) led by the National Statistical Office of Côte d'Ivoire. We show that the situation in this country is characterized by a trickle‐down growth: the poverty growth curve and the growth incidence curve computed show that growth reduces poverty but the poor people receive proportionally fewer benefits than the non‐poor.     

IS THE BALANCING ITEM FOR AUSTRALIA SUSTAINABLE? EVIDENCE FROM A THRESHOLD AUTOREGRESSIVE MODEL WITH AN AUTOREGRESSIVE UNIT ROOT

This article applies an unrestricted two-regime threshold autoregressive (TAR) model with an autoregressive unit root to examine the sustainability of the balancing item of the balance of payments for Australia from the first quarter 1960 to the second quarter 2006. The main finding is that the balancing item of the balance of payments in Australia is characterised by a non-linear, but stationary, series meaning that the balancing item is sustainable. This result implies that short-run volatility in the balancing item has no effect on the reliability of reporting of the balancing item in the long-run.     

基于信息熵的企业信息系统(IS)协同治理的必要性研究

企业是一个复杂的开放系统,属于耗散结构。按照热力学第二定律,遵循熵增原理,企业系统需要不断地从外界获取负熵。依照传统信息论中"信息是负熵"的负熵原理,企业可以通过尽可能多地利用企业信息系统(IS)从外界获取信息,以便引入更多的负熵流来促进企业的有序化发展,因此越来越多的企业加大了对IS的投资,而忽视了IS与企业的资源要素的协同和匹配,这也就造成了企业IS的失败率高居不下。本文从信息熵的定义入手,通过分析负熵原理的不合理性,证明信息既可能是负熵,也可能是正熵,证实了企业加强IS协同治理的必要性。     

IS MARKET‐ORIENTED REFORM PRODUCING A ‘TWO‐TRACK’ EUROPE? EVIDENCE FROM ELECTRICITY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

ABSTRACT: The European Commission has formally recognized that adequate provision of basic household services, including energy, communications, water and transport, is key to ensuring equity, social cohesion and solidarity. Yet little research has been done on the impact of the reform of these services in this regard. This article offers an innovative way to explore such questions by analyzing and contrasting stated and revealed preferences on citizen satisfaction with and expenditure on two services, telecommunications and electricity, in two large countries, Spain and the UK. We find evidence that in telecommunications, but not in electricity, reform has led to a ‘two‐track’ Europe, where citizens who are elderly, not working or the less‐educated behave differently in the market, with the result that they are less satisfied with these services than their younger, working, better‐educated, counterparts.     

IS THERE A CURSE OF RELOCATION? ANALYSING THE CAUSAL LINK BETWEEN OFFSHORING AND THE INNOVATION PERFORMANCE OF (SMALL) FIRMS

We analyse the empirical link between offshoring activities and different dimensions of innovation performance at the firm‐level. In order to identify causal effects running from offshoring to innovation, we use a quasi‐experimental comparison group approach by means of (conditional) difference‐in‐difference estimations applied to German establishment‐level data for firms that conducted offshoring activities in the period 2007–13. We find that the international relocation of business functions has a negative impact on the firms’ propensity to be innovative in terms of product and process innovations as well as product improvements. While for larger firms the reduction in process innovations is most striking, potentially due to a lack of resources, stagnation in expertise and a reduction in intra‐organizational learning‐by‐doing associated with the relocation of some business activities, for small and medium‐sized enterprises we particularly observe a reduction in product innovations after the offshoring activity has taken place. When interpreting this ‘pessimistic’ picture on the link between offshoring and the innovation performance of firms, the reader should note that our findings for German establishments have to be assessed through the lens of a global economy in economic recession after 2008, which may have intensified the negative impact of offshoring on the firms’ innovation performance.     

国际贸易对环境的影响:中国各省的二氧化硫(SO2)工业排放

为了更好地理解贸易对环境的影响,我们建立了一个四方程联立系统,其中SO2排放由规模、结构、技术这三个经济因素决定,并直接由贸易影响。然后我们利用中国29个省份1993—2001年期间工业SO2排放的面板数据来估计模型。我们的估计结果显示,出口和制造品进口在工业SO2排放的决定中起了完全相反的作用。结果不支持污染庇护地假说;出口企业所面对的市场竞争增强,是促进污染治理技术进步的积极因素。     

首席执行官(CEO)是领导者还是经理人?

关于首席执行官(CEO)的权力与义务一直是困惑中国企业所有者与经营者的问题。如何赋予CEO适当的权力,从而使CEO与所有者目标趋于一致成为这一问题的核心。而中国现实的问题是在法人主体缺位的情况下,CEO往往既充当所有者,又是经营者,这种权力与义务的"模糊"使CEO与所有者的目标难以一致。因此,无论从CEO还是从所有者,都对现行企业管理提出制度上的改革要求。笔者认为,CEO必须通过适当的组织制度来释放和化解这种由于法人主体缺位造成的压力,而建立"透明"的企业内部组织制度是CEO惟一的最佳选择。     

Who Dares to Care? (In the World of Finance)

This study argues that gendered barriers to care are limiting the progress of socially responsible investment (SRI). Anchored within the world of finance – an industry predicated on mathematical theorizing, neoclassical economic thought, and omission of relational values – the inclusion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting, a commonly used term for nonfinancial information in SRI, in investment decision making confronts several barriers. One such barrier concerns care: who cares for what, and where. In an environment where an atomistic-individualistic ontology dominates, and a relational-values ontology is omitted, the study investigates the possibilities for ESG to have a wider uptake. It considers the changes required to align the inherently relational aspect of care within a culture of economic reasoning reliant on the exclusion of care. It concludes with suggestions for how a relational caring perspective can be incorporated to accommodate and encourage SRI in the world of financial management.     

The risk elicitation puzzle revisited: Across-methods (in)consistency?

Experimental Economics - With the rise of experimental research in the social sciences, numerous methods to elicit and classify people’s risk attitudes in the laboratory have evolved....     

我是谁?珠三角必须回答的问题(下篇)

我是谁 王志刚:作为一个广东籍的学者,能够看出这么深刻的问题不容易.15年前我就对广东说了一句话,广东人敏于行而拙于思,广东人动手快,讲求落袋为安.往好里说这叫实干,没有形而上的约束,而且就近有香港为师,香港怎么整咱们怎么整,不就完了嘛.但是刚才你这个问题说到了点子上.本来,中央说放开福建和广东,结果广东成功了,福建没有成功,这其中有很多客观原因,但是其中有一个很重要的原因就是受中原文化的约束比较少,敏于行嘛.     

我是谁?珠三角必须回答的问题(下篇)

我是谁 　　王志刚:作为一个广东籍的学者,能够看出这么深刻的问题不容易.15年前我就对广东说了一句话,广东人敏于行而拙于思,广东人动手快,讲求落袋为安.往好里说这叫实干,没有形而上的约束,而且就近有香港为师,香港怎么整咱们怎么整,不就完了嘛.但是刚才你这个问题说到了点子上.本来,中央说放开福建和广东,结果广东成功了,福建没有成功,这其中有很多客观原因,但是其中有一个很重要的原因就是受中原文化的约束比较少,敏于行嘛.……     

What (if any) are the returns to computer use?

Using North American data, we revisit the question first broached by Krueger (1993 Krueger, AB. 1993. How computers have changed the wage structure: evidence from microdata. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108: 33–60. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and re-examined by DiNardo and Pischke (1997 DiNardo, JE and Pischke, J-S. 1997. The returns to computer use revisited: have pencils changed the wage structure too?. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112: 291–303. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) of whether there exists a real wage differential associated with computer use. Employing a mixed effects model with matched employer–employee data to correct for the fact that workers and workplaces that use computers are self-selected, we find that computer users enjoy an almost 4% wage premium over nonusers. Failure to correct for worker and workplace selection effect leads to a more than twofold overestimate of this premium.     

EASY MONEY OR HARD TIMES? HEALTH AND 401(k) LOANS

Rising health care costs and declining personal savings rates are nearly synonymous with household medical debt. For some, defined contribution (DC) retirement savings plans provide a ready source of funds to meet these medical debts. We examine whether health status and health insurance coverage predict the likelihood of having a DC loan using data from the Federal Reserve's triennial Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) from 1989 to 2007. We find that poor health raises the likelihood that a household will borrow from their DC plans, even controlling for other forms of debt, access to credit, and whether households are covered by health insurance. Our estimates of the amount of the DC loan, taking selection effects into account, indicate that DC loan amounts are also influenced by health status; those with poor health borrow more from their DC plans. Apart from health status, once a household decides to borrow from their retirement funds, race and education also influence how much to borrow. We argue that public policy can improve the long‐term financial retirement security of households by offering more opportunities to save for medical emergencies, while cautiously maintaining the opportunity to borrow from DC plans. (JEL D12, D14, D91)