ECONOMIC TRANSITION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE: THE CONSEQUENCES FOR TRADE STRUCTURE AND TRADE VOLUME

The foreign policy literature typically sees Congress abdicating its policy making role to the executive, implying a presidential dominance model is superior to other policy process models (joint participation, congressional dominance, and bureaucratic dominance). This article uses two theoretical approaches to investigate who actually makes U.S. trade policy: a political economy approach and an institutional approach. We look at the 1985 96 period and at individual presidencies: Reagan (1985-88), Bush (1989-92), and Clinton (1993-96). Contrary to the literature, we find strong evidence that Congress is an active participant in the trade policy making process. Using a variety of empirical techniques (crosstabs, the Index of Revealed Comparative Advantage, pairwise correlations, and stepwise logistic regressions), we confirm that the trade policy process for product-industry-specific policies tends to be dominated by Congress whereas the executive branch is more influential in the policy process for country-specific policies. We conclude by noting the advantage of integrating aspects of both the political economy of trade and institu tional literatures to understand the nuances of U.S. foreign trade policy making.     

Resource allocation in a general equilibrium model of production under uncertainty: The case of variable supply of labor

This paper examines the effects of a marginal change in uncertainty on resource allocation and factor rewards by relaxing the assumption of factor inelasticity. We demonstrate that integrating a variable labor supply into Batra's two-sector uncertainty model can mitigate or reverse many of the earlier results. Specifically, a marginal increase in uncertainty may trigger the resource to move from the certainty sector to the uncertainty sector in the presence of a backward-bending labor supply curve.     

Trade liberalization, foreign ownership, and the environment in a small open economy

This paper examines the effects of trade liberalization on firm ownership and the environment for a small open economy. It is found that trade liberalization via tariff reductions can result in a dramatic switch in firm ownership from domestic to foreign, coupled with a lower pollution tax.     

The Production,Transfer and Spillover of Technology: Comparing Large and Small Multinationals as Technology Producers

Multinational enterprises are, sina qua non, the world's technology producers. In this paper, we explore the concept of technology production by multinationals, focusing on three aspects: (i) technology as a firm-specific advantage, (ii) the costs of technology transfer, and (iii) technology spillovers. In each case, we outline current views and debates in the field about the role played by large multinationals in technology production. Finally, we compare MNEs with small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) as technology producers. We conclude that SMEs face certain constraints, due to small size and inadequate financing, that raise their costs of technology production and transfer, relative to the costs for MNEs. On the other hand, their flexibility and use of unconventional methods can create successful mini-nationals in niche markets.     

Trends in European Research on Entrepreneurship at the Turn of the Century

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue on Entrepreneurship Research in Europe, a selection of papers from the XIVth RENT conference held in Prague, the Czech Republic, November 23–24, 2000. It provides an overview of the articles and also discusses some of the themes that bind them together: Networking and the diffusion of innovations and family business. In addition, the paper includes a short section highlighting advances in the Italian entrepreneurship climate as evidenced by data provided by several of the papers in this issue carried out by Italian researchers on Italian SMEs.     

No man's land: ‘gender and the geopolitics of mobility in west Belfast,northern Ireland

It is the intent of this article to deconstruct the practices of border crossers, whereby the political identities of women have been relegated to the domestic/private sphere rendering them political innocents. However in West Belfast, women's designation to the home is what facilitated their ability to not only to transcend the borders of West Belfast but also to transgress women's confinement to the home. By contrast, taxi drivers are perceived as unrespectable wild men, cowboys and societal misfits who have been tainted by their border crossings. Interestingly, these groups would never be considered political subjects, as would an IRA volunteer, or resistance protester. However by way of their everyday practices of shopping and driving a taxi, these individuals are not only destabilising the boundary lines of West Belfast but also those of the nation. To this end, the sociospatial practices of these border crossers, which constitutes the expansion and restriction of public and private space, raises the possibilities of a new form of geopolitics determined between gender, politics and mobility.     

Modelling the influence of decision makers on the future

The article describes attempts to use futures research in a specific framework: the development of a model to be used as a basis for action within a UK local authority. The model is thus designed to explore the ramifications of the decision-making activities of real people within a specific organisation. It represents an original attempt to include explicitly the acts of human endeavour which influence the direction of the future within a model for indicating possible futures. The author describes the current state of the model-building activity which is intended to depict the policy-making process. The model is based upon concepts drawn from the fields of cognitive psychology and sociology.     

Industrial Targeting and Non‐shiftable Capital in the Harris–Todaro Model*

This paper shows that, in the 2 × 3 sector‐specific capital Harris–Todaro model, capital growth owing to either domestic or foreign investment always enhances the welfare of the country (i.e. non‐immiserizing), and this result of non‐immiserizing foreign investment holds regardless of initial holdings of foreign capital; the policy of industrial targeting via capital investment is more effective vis‐à‐vis the (neoclassical) 2 × 2 mobile‐capital Harris–Todaro model or the Heckscher–Ohlin model; in contrast to the recent generalization by Marjit and Beladi (2003 ), capital growth cannot be immiserizing in the present model, even if it destroys the “envelope theorem.”     

World Ranking of Real Estate Research: Recent Changes in School Competitiveness and Research Institutions

Real estate programs are ranked based upon page counts of articles published in three major real estate journals. The page counts are employed to capture many variations in the length of articles. For each author, his/her most recent affiliation is used to evaluate the school competitiveness of current faculty members rather than a perceived school reputation of the past. In this study, we find that top-tier schools in real estate research are not necessarily the most famous schools in economics and finance; progressive universities specializing in real estate research hold the top ranks. Furthermore, school competitiveness has changed substantially in the United States. The changes are mainly because of a mobility of faculty members. The results also show that U.S. institutions dominate research in real estate.