Export Growth and Economic Development in Colonial British America

This paper analyzes the dynamic relationship between tobacco and the rest of the economy in the colonial Chesapeake to test the staple theory version of the export-led growth hypothesis. The paper adopts a multivariate time-series approach which accommodates the presence of cointegration and contemporaneous correlations among innovations. The empirical evidence strongly supports the staple theory. British demand for tobacco is statistically exogenous and found to induce cyclical fluctuations in the colonial price of tobacco as well as temporary over- or underproduction, as measured by a long-term cointegration relationship between the British demand for tobacco and the colonial price of land.     

The Great Forgotten Issue: Vindicating Ethics in the European Qualifications Framework (EQF)

Various international authorities have insisted on the importance of ethical learning in higher education for would-be professionals, including students of Business Administration. As the process of creating the European Higher Education Area gathers pace, first steps have been taken to explicitly incorporate ethics in the common European Qualifications Framework (EQF). However, the authors of this study show how in the course of the EQF development process, the consideration given to ethical qualifications has been curtailed and subjected to serious limitations. In this article, the authors review the historical development and the main elements of the EQF. Then, they analyze the gradual elimination of ethics within the EQF. Finally, they highlight the implications of this gradual elimination and propose avenues for further research. Manuel Guillén is Senior Lecturer in Management, at the University of Valencia (Spain). Prof. Guillén earned his PhD in Management with a specialization in ethics and strategic management integration. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota (USA), at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA, and guest Visiting Student at IESE Business School doctoral program, in Barcelona. He has presented some of his research at the top conferences in the field and has published in business ethics and management journals. Since 1997 he has taught Business Ethics courses in different business schools, institutions, and companies. Joan Fontrodona is an Associate Professor of Business Ethics and Academic Director of the Center for Business in Society at IESE Business School. He is member of the Academic Board of EABIS, Chairman of EBEN-Spain, and Member of the Executive Committee of ASEPAM, the Spanish Local Network of the Global Compact. He has published several books and papers on business ethics, corporate social responsibility, philosophy, and management. Alfredo Rodríguez-Sedano holds a PhD in Philosophy and a PhD in Business Administration. He is Professor of Sociology at the Education Department of the University of Navarre (Spain). He is also Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of the West (El Salvador). He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Andes (Chile) and Regular Professor at the Catholic University of Sacred Conception (Chile). He has published 16 books, 12 book chapters, and 15 articles on different subjects in the fields of management, philosophy, and education.     

The demise of the American hegemony in international business research has been greatly exaggerated

The drivers for the internationalization of business teaching and research were multinational corporations, the Cold War, and the relative price advantage of non-America business schools. Yet, the internationalization largely failed to reflect local contexts. The consequent paucity of original local business thought, international or not, exposes non-American business schools to the raid of American-based massive open online courses which will prune off the mainstay courses at emerging market business schools. Deprived of a substantial share of their fee-paying students, the remaining docents at those schools will be less likely to publish altogether, including in fields that might sustain independent thought. Therefore, American-like international business research is likely to have a longer life, more narrowly focused on English-speaking countries and Europe, with even less of a contribution from emerging markets.     

Entrepreneurial by Design: How Organizational Design Affects Family and Non‐family Firms’ Opportunity Exploitation

Opportunity exploitation is a key aspect of the corporate entrepreneurship process and is particularly important to maintain a family firm through multiple generations. Drawing on an organizational design perspective, we investigate opportunity exploitation in family versus non‐family firms. The empirical analyses on survey data from a sample of 224 Italian firms reveal that family firms exploit significantly fewer opportunities than non‐family firms, and this result is fully mediated by the organization of their TMT. Our findings show that how family firms organize is crucial for opportunity exploitation, thus extending and enriching prior corporate entrepreneurship research, highlighting the importance of bringing an organizational design perspective to corporate entrepreneurship and family business studies.     

Policy impact assessment in developing countries using Social Accounting Matrices: The Kenya SAM 2014

This paper describes the structure and estimation of a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of Kenya for the year 2014. Among its specificities, this SAM includes a very high disaggregation of the agri‐food sector and accounts for the double role of households as producers and consumers. Accounting for these characteristics is crucial to provide robust socioeconomic analysis in the context of developing countries. Indeed, this type of database is valuable to perform ex‐ante evaluations of economic policies with various economic models and techniques. In this paper, we present an application with a linear multiplier analysis (backward linkages and value chain decomposition). The results show the capacity of the primary sector in Kenya to generate value added and employment, with this growth distributed more intensely in rural households whose main livelihood is semi‐subsistence agriculture.     

Public Capital Formation and Regional Development in Spain

This paper uses a vector autoregression (VAR) approach to evaluate the effects of public investment on private sector performance in Spain. Empirical results suggest that public investment positively affected private investment, employment, and output at both aggregate and regional levels. The regions that benefited the most from public investment in the last two decades were Cataluña, Madrid, and Pais Vasco. These regions are among the largest economic areas in the country and among the ones with the highest GDP per capita. Accordingly, public investment, while an important factor for aggregate economic growth, has also been a source of increasing regional asymmetries.     

Outward FDI and Local Employment Growth in Italy

Using several data sources, we assess the impact of Italy’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) on local employment growth between 1996 and 2001 for 12 manufacturing industries and 103 administrative provinces. Our main result is that, controlling for the local industrial structure and area fixed effects, FDI is associated with faster local employment growth, relatively to the national industry average. We also find that employment in small plants is not negatively influenced by higher levels of FDI. Our findings do not support therefore the idea that FDI is detrimental to local employment growth in the home country. JEL no.  C21, F21, F23