Could HRM support organizational innovation?

Nowadays, it has become clear that the capacity of organizations to innovate and manage their human resources can be sources of competitive advantage. Recently, literature also asserts a positive relationship between human resource management and innovation. However, very little empirical research has specifically addressed those relationships. Using structural equations modelling with data collected from 173 Spanish firms, this study analyses them. Our findings show that innovation contributes positively to business performance and that human resource management enhances innovation. Implications for both academics and managers as well as future research lines are discussed.     

Modelling Intercontinental Tourism Consumption in South Africa: A Systems‐of‐Equations Approach

This paper investigates the pattern of inbound tourists' consumption in South Africa, examining four main intercontinental markets and five different tourism goods. The empirical investigation develops an almost ideal demand system (AIDS) model and it extends recent research by allowing tourists to base their spending decision on the real effective price differences between South Africa and their home country. The results show that tourist spending in South Africa is a luxury good, and tourists react normally to a change in the relative price of goods. The cross‐price elasticities suggest that the preferences of different markets influence their view of substitutability and complementary effects between various products in South Africa.     

How Focused are the World’s Top-Rated Business Schools on Educating Women for Global Management?

Persuaded by the observed positive link between the flow of appropriately skilled and trained female talent and female presence at the upper echelons of management (Plitch, Dow Jones Newswire February 9, 2005), this study has examined current trends on women’s uptake of graduate and executive education programs in the world’s top 100 business schools and explored the extent to which these business schools promote female studentship and career advancement. It contributes by providing pioneering research insight, albeit at an exploratory level, into the emerging best practice on this important aspect of business school behavior, an area which is bound to become increasingly appreciated as more global economic actors wise up to the significant diseconomies inherent in the under-utilization of female talent, particularly in the developing world. Among the study’s main findings are that female graduate students averaged 30% in the sample business schools, a figure not achieved by a majority of the elite schools, including some of the highest ranked. Only 10% of these business schools have a specialist center for developing women business leaders, and only a third offered women-focused programs or executive education courses, including flextime options. A higher, and increasing, percentage of business schools, however, reported offering fellowships, scholarships or bursaries to prospective female students, and having affiliations with pro-women external organizations and networks that typically facilitate career-promoting on-campus events and activities. The implications of the foregoing are discussed, replete with a call on key stakeholder groups to more actively embrace the challenge of improving the supply of appropriately trained female talent, or top management prospects. Future research ideas are also suggested.     

The Phillips curve behavior over different horizons

This article examines the historical behavior of the Phillips curve over frequency bands corresponding to the short run, the business cycle and long run horizons. Data transformed using band-pass filtering methods and the Hodrick-Prescott filter suggest that a negative correlation between inflation and unemployment and a positive correlation between inflation and output growth exist within the business cycle horizon of 3 to 8 years. During the post-war period, the relationships change signs at low frequencies, indicating a positive sloped Phillips curve over long horizons. Additionally, the Phillips curve is found structurally unstable not only across frequencies, but also over time.     

An evaluation of the life cycle effects of minimum pensions on retirement behavior

In this paper we explore the effects of the minimum pension program on welfare and retirement in Spain. This is done with a stylized life cycle model which provides a convenient analytical characterization of optimal behavior. We use data from the Spanish Social Security to estimate the behavioral parameters of the model and then simulate the changes induced by the minimum pension in aggregate retirement patterns. The impact is substantial: there is a threefold increase in retirement at 60 (the age of first entitlement) with respect to the economy without minimum pensions, and total early retirement (before or at 60) is almost 50% larger. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Profits and "contestability": state-by-state evidence from banking markets

Contestability in local banking markets is tested using a structure-performance (S-P) model. OLS and TSLS tests using a 38 state sample of 5,396 banks in 1,474 markets reveal a positive concentration-profitability relationship. This implies that local banking markets are not contestable. However, tests for each state separately show that the S-P relationship exists only in approximately one-fifth of states. F-tests indicate that using a national pooled sample is inappropriate. The results suggest that market structure, including entry conditions, affect performance, consequently the theory of potential competition is more relevant than contestability theory. However, generalizations may be inaccurate.     

中国内地银行的外汇风险

本文实证研究使用资本市场法（Capital Market Approach）和14家中资上市银行的股价数据,发现银行规模和其外汇风险之间存在正相关关系。这可能反映了国内大型中资银行更多的外汇操作和交易头寸,以及因人民币汇率变动、对客户风险发生变化所带来的大量间接影响。虽然内地银行对国际市场的参与程度仍低于香港同业,但实证研究结果显示国有商业银行和股份制商业银行的平均外汇风险高于香港银行,而且大银行的外汇风险为负数的情况非常普遍,这意味着人民币升值将降低这些银行的股票价值,从而损害银行业表现。由于股价下跌一般反映违约风险上升,因此应密切监测人民币升值情况对内地银行违约风险可能发生的影响。     

The development of contract research organisations in Sweden: health care,privatisation and neo‐liberalism

This paper examines changes in local working conditions instigated by the development of contract research organisations in pharmaceutical development. These developments are seen as occurring in the context of Sweden's ‘circumscribed neoliberalization’. It is shown how staff remain ambivalent about the shifts of location and identity that these developments imply.     

International capital structure differences among the G7 nations: a current empirical view

Historical research domestically and internationally suggests that differences in capital structures exist for industry classification, firm size and nationality. However, the data for most of these previous studies are based on book values, include a limited number of countries, are not up-to-date, and specifically do not cover the period of the late 1980s when there were important developments in the globalization of financial markets. In addition, no single study specifically compares all seven of the world's major industrial nations (G7 Nations). Financial theory would suggest that in an efficient global market the capital structure of identical firms in different nations would be the same. If international market imperfections still exist through the 1980s, current capital structures and costs may be different among similar firms in different nations; and business advantages (or disadvantages) may provide profits (or costs) to firms incorporated in different countries. The intent of this research is empirically to update the literature with recent international data on both a book value and market value basis and to include for the first time in a single study all the G7 Nations. The results suggest significant financial structure differences still exist among the G7 countries. Specifically, on a market value basis France, Italy and Germany tend to use a higher proportion of total debt, US, UK, Canada and Japan tend to use less debt, and France, Italy and Canada tend to use a higher proportion of institutional debt (non-spontaneous funds) than the US, UK, Japan and Germany.