Is there an S in urban housing supply? or What on earth happened in Detroit?

This article examines the substantial housing stock declines between 2000 and 2010 in many major US central cities. It updates an analysis first formulated in the 1970s, of an S-shaped housing supply curve, to explain decreases in absolute housing stocks. Explanatory variables include Metropolitan Statistical Area standardized rents, center city prior occupancy rates, regional unemployment rates, and a set of regional and state dummy variables. The analysis provides strong evidence of a lower tail of the S, and more tentative evidence of an upper tail. Market fundamentals explain a considerable portion of the large housing stock losses, but in several cities loss of dwelling units and housing abandonment were worse than could be explained by the fundamentals.     

Blockchain and investment: An Austrian approach

The Review of Austrian Economics - Investment is a function of expected profit, which involves calculation of the cost of trust. Blockchain technology is a new institutional technology (Davidson et...     

跨国公司工效学：跨国公司人力资源管理新学派

本文在文献回顾的基础上，从四个方面来研究跨国公司工效学（Ergonomicg）：首先，介绍跨国公司战略，包括所期望的能力（expected capabilitie9）、“心智矩阵”（mind matrix）、潜在优势（potential advantages）以及应用的难点，进而讨论宏观人力资源的六大战略的应用，在此基础上，文章探讨了跨国管理的三种新角色，即全球文化大师（global culture guru）、区域的良师益友和推动力（regional mentor and expediter）、当地的企业家（local entrepreneur），最后，文章从六个微观人力资源问题的角度讨论这三种角色的应用问题。     

Market games with asymmetric information: the core

This paper concerns cores of economies with asymmetric information. Alternative definitions of the information available to traders in coalitions and the cooperative games they generate are analyzed. An important technical result states that such NTU games in characteristic function form are well defined. Properties of various cores with asymmetric information are examined. Sufficient conditions on information sharing rules are provided for the induced games to be totally balanced or balanced, so that their cores are nonempty. Incentive compatibility issues are considered. Finally, a perspective on this research area is provided.     

High-investment HR values and firm performance among local firms and U.S. MNCs’ subsidiaries in South Asia: a comparative study

Grounded in institutional theory, this study investigates the differential adoption and internalization of high-investment human resource (HR) values by local companies and by subsidiaries of US firms located throughout South Asia; and the impact of these HR values on firms’ performance. In line with our predictions, results suggest that US subsidiaries have a greater rate of adoption of high-investment HR values compared to local South Asian firms. Contrary to our predictions, however, both types of firms are similar in the level of internalization of their respective HR values. Finally, while greater levels of high-investment HR value adoption is associated with firm performance across the board, this relationship tends to be stronger for US MNCs’ subsidiaries compared to local South Asian companies. Theoretical and practical implications for the transfer and diffusion of high-investment HR values in institutionally and culturally distant contexts are discussed.     

Complex Systems and the Merger Process

This paper considers how some of the generic principles that have emerged in the course of recent study and thinking around complex systems might be applied in a helpful way to the particular context of understanding the nature of the merger process. Theoretically, the paper stresses the connections between the processual and time-dependent nature of learning and knowledge acquisition and the systemic nature of socio-economic development and transformation. When carried into the substantive domain of mergers and their contribution to restructuring in the pharmaceuticals industry, we suggest that the complex systems approach provides a fruitful complement to alternative conceptual frameworks, albeit one which is still at an early stage of development in terms of this particular application.     

“We are Sitting on a Time Bomb”: A Multiperspectival Approach to Inter-National Development at an East African Border

Recent discussion in critical border studies has reaffirmed the validity and necessity of multiperspectival approaches which move beyond state-centric outlooks to include diverse viewpoints of people at or on borders. One understudied aspect of everyday border life involves how international development organisations fit within wider dynamics of cross-border activities. Drawing upon experiences of development projects at a key border crossing between Kenya and Uganda, I explore (1) how perceptions of risk and danger contribute to constructions of the border towns as places in need of development interventions, and (2) how this border also adds to practical and logistical concerns already held by development organisations as they deliver these interventions. I argue that the place-based mix of location, material forms, and perceptions or practices impacts how ‘inter-national development’ is rationalised in border regions.     

The growth of relative wealth and the Kelly criterion

We propose an evolutionary framework for optimal portfolio growth theory in which investors subject to environmental pressures allocate their wealth between two assets. By considering both absolute wealth and relative wealth between investors, we show that different investor behaviors survive in different environments. When investors maximize their relative wealth, the Kelly criterion is optimal only under certain conditions, which are identified. The initial relative wealth plays a critical role in determining the deviation of optimal behavior from the Kelly criterion regardless of whether the investor is myopic across a single time period or maximizing wealth over an infinite horizon. We relate these results to population genetics, and discuss testable consequences of these findings using experimental evolution.     

Who Counts in Crises? The New Geopolitics of International Migration and Refugee Governance

Recent migration ‘crises’ raise important geopolitical questions. Who is ‘the migrant’ that contemporary politics are fixated on? How are answers to ‘who counts as a migrant’ changing? Who gets to do that counting, and under what circumstances? This forum responds to, as well as questions, the current saliency of migration by examining how categories of migration hold geopolitical significance—not only in how they are constructed and by whom, but also in how they are challenged and subverted. Furthermore, by examining how the very concepts of ‘migrant’ and ‘refugee’ are used in different contexts, and for a variety of purposes, it opens up critical questions about mobility, citizenship and the nation state. Collectively, these contributions aim to demonstrate how problematising migration and its categorisation can be a tool of enquiry into other phenomena and processes.     

Productivity Growth in the Western Hemisphere (1978–94): The Caribbean in Perspective

Productivity growth, technical efficiency change, and technological change were measured for a sample of 30 countries in the Western Hemisphere for the 1978–1994 period using the Malmquist index. The Caribbean compared unfavorably with North America and the Latin American regions. Evidence indicated some support for the convergence hypothesis. Regression analysis indicated that productivity growth in the Caribbean was positively associated with civil, economic, and political liberty.