Taking services to foreign markets: A taxonomy of Brazilian service firms

This study develops a taxonomy of international service firms from an emerging market, Brazil, and assesses whether there are significant differences in international performance between the groups. After an extensive literature review, a survey was carried out with a sample of international service firms located in an emerging economy, Brazil. Using as a departure point two theoretical perspectives, the internationalization process theory and industrial organization theory, in addition to service dimensions extracted from the empirical service management literature, the study identifies four groups—large traditionals, generalist neophytes, solitary traditionals, and daring differentiators—based on firm characteristics, international services delivered, internationalization process characteristics, and international strategies adopted. The findings suggest that there are significant differences in performance between the groups.     

Philippine Infrastructure and Connectivity: Challenges and Reforms

The Philippines has performed creditably well in the past few years. Ensuring better infrastructure and connectivity is crucial in attaining inclusive growth. This will require substantial investments in infrastructure. Various reforms to address the infrastructure lack were implemented but there is scope for more reforms: improving fiscal space, reforming budgetary processes, improving public‐private partnerships (PPPs) and the regulatory environment, and better policy coordination to address problems of connectivity and infrastructure. The Philippines has to continuously improve the governance framework, ensure stability and predictability of policies and regulations. Better coordination among a diverse set of governmental infrastructure bodies, and also between government and the private sector is needed to address infrastructure bottlenecks.     

Services inflation dynamics and persistence puzzle in Brazil: a time-varying parameter approach

This article analyses services inflation dynamics in Brazil, focusing on the Services Inflation Persistence Puzzle, for monthly data from January 2004 to February 2016. We apply a time-varying parameter (TVP) approach, via a Kalman filter, to estimate hybrid Phillips curves and compare inflation inertia for tradable goods and services inflation. Aggregate Brazilian Extended Consumer Price Index inflation serves as a benchmark. To justify the TVP analysis, parameter instability and structural change tests are implemented, based on OLS and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) frameworks. The main results are as follows: (i) the TVP approach is relevant due to observed instability in some parameters estimated; (ii) inflation expectation coefficients are higher than lagged inflation in all calculations, but inflation inertia is not negligible at all; (iii) services inflation persistence ranges from 27 to 36%, whereas tradable goods inflation persistence ranges from 36 to 47%, providing evidence of the Services Inflation Persistence Puzzle in Brazil; (iv) from 2009 onwards an increase in one percentage point in real wages raises monthly services inflation rate by 0.02 to 0.03 percentage point; (v) there is evidence that cost-push pressures, due to wage increases in the service sector, are more important to explain services inflation than demand pressures from early 2009 to mid-2014.     

Monitoring the board: should shareholders have direct proxy access?

Motivated by the current discussion to reform shareholder-nominated director elections, this paper presents a model that shows that, when shareholders have direct access to proxy, the quality of the board of directors improves. This is so because more independent directors—regarded as better monitors of managerial activities—will be elected. In the model, a manager maximizes his expected utility by solving the trade-off between reputation and consumption of private benefits. The board can be of high-type (independent, only cares about reputation) or low-type (non-independent, faces a trade-off similar to the manager's). When the board can signal its type at a relatively small cost, giving shareholders direct access to proxy is better than delegating the nomination of outside directors to managers: in the first alternative, only high-type boards will be kept, whereas in the second, low-type boards will predominate.     

A green Lewis development model

This paper develops an environmental extension of a Lewis dual economy model, in which the interaction between environmental quality and economic growth, in one of its several dimensions, is explicitly modeled to explore long-run effects of a pollution abatement rule in developing economies. The government requires the modern sector to dedicate a fraction of its output to pollution abatement, with such profitability-reducing fraction being endogenous to the level of environmental quality. Meanwhile, the level of environmental quality positively affects labor productivity, profits and, therefore, savings, which has a positive impact on capital accumulation. It is shown that this pollution abatement requirement, by affecting profitability in the modern sector both negatively and positively, makes for the emergence of an ecological development trap from which a developing dual economy, if left to the free play of its structural forces, never escapes. Fortunately, however, this economy can be released from such a trap not only through a standard Big Push, in the spirit of Rosenstein-Rodan, but also by means of what we call an Environmental Big Push.     

程控交换机全数字音信号及多频信号设计方法

本文以新型数字交换机系统为背景,提出了全数字音信号和多频互控信号的设计方法。讨论了电路原理、编码方式,电平设计和脉冲信号的时序关系。最后给出了电原理图和试验数据结果。     

The reputation of underwriters: A test of the bonding hypothesis

In the spirit of the Bonding Hypothesis proposed by Stulz (1999) and Coffee (1999, 2002), I find that foreign firms that cross-list in the U.S. and undertake IPOs are more likely to employ reputable underwriters if the firms come from countries with poor shareholder protection. The additional monitoring provided by reputable underwriters may help overcome the skepticism of U.S. investors, and partially explains the higher valuation these firms obtain after the offering. There is, however, a price to pay for this bonding benefit. I find that issuers from countries with weaker shareholder protection tend to be more underpriced if they are sponsored by prestigious underwriters.     

Intel公司单片机及微处理器在测控系统中的应用

本文讨论用Intel公司的单片机及微处理器构成的大、中、小型测控系统。有数百个单片机、处理器构成的分布式热力网大型测控系统;有10～20单片机处理器组成的分布式四足步行机器人伺服控制系统;也有一个单片机组成的微型测控点。本文介绍十几种我们已开发出并付诸工程应用的系统,说明其简要原理及应用Intel的单片机的优点。     

可编程通用阵列逻辑器件应用技术讲座

本讲座通过介绍专用集成电路(ASIC)入手,简叙可编程逻辑器件(PLD)的原理和结构,从应用角度介绍通用阵列逻辑器件(GAL)的结构和特点,着重阐述PLD的编程技术,最后给出几个PLD器件应用编程实例.