Equilibrium parallel import policies and international market structure

In a North–South vertically differentiated duopoly we analyze (i) the effects of parallel import (PI) policies on price competition and (ii) the interdependence of national PI policies. Prices can be higher in the North if both countries permit PIs relative to when only the South does. If governments maximize national welfare and demand asymmetry across countries is sufficiently large, the North forbids PIs to ensure its firm sells in the South and international price discrimination — the South's most preferred market outcome — obtains. When demand structures are relatively similar across countries, the North permits PIs and uniform pricing — its most preferred outcome — results.     

NATIONAL TREATMENT AT THE WTO: THE ROLES OF PRODUCT AND COUNTRY HETEROGENEITY*

This paper analyzes the World Trade Organization's (WTO's) national treatment (NT) clause in a two‐country model where quality of goods and/or market size are heterogenous across countries. When market size is symmetric across countries, a reciprocal NT agreement (i) benefits the high‐quality country, (ii) hurts the low‐quality country, and (iii) delivers higher aggregate world welfare. However, such an agreement can arise in equilibrium if the high‐quality country's market is relatively bigger and the quality gap between goods is small (i.e., goods are sufficiently alike). The qualitative nature of these results does not change when quality is endogenously determined.     

The Nature of Innovative Activity and the Protection of Intellectual Property in Asia

This paper examines trends in innovative activity in several major Asian countries during the period 1997–2011 as measured by their filings and grants of various types of intellectual property (IP). By almost all measures, there has been a remarkable increase in innovative activity in China. In fact, in 2011, China accounted for roughly 25% of global patent applications. However, several indirect measures suggest that the quality of this newly created Chinese IP is not (yet) world‐class. For example, relative to residents of other major Asian countries and the USA, Chinese residents tend to file IP applications in foreign markets at a much lower rate. Similarly, the ratio of royalty payments earned by Chinese residents to the number of patents granted to them is fairly low by international standards. Finally, the ratio of patent to utility model applications (typically granted for relatively minor innovations) in China is also relatively small.     

Does intellectual property rights reform spur industrial development?

An extensive theoretical literature generates ambiguous predictions concerning the effects of intellectual property rights (IPR) reform on industrial development. The impact depends on whether multinational enterprises (MNEs) expand production in reforming countries and the extent of decline in imitative activity. We examine the responses of U.S.-based MNEs and domestic industrial production to a set of intellectual property rights reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Following reform, MNEs expand the scale of their activities. MNEs that make extensive use of intellectual property disproportionately increase their use of inputs. There is an overall expansion of industrial activity after reform, and highly disaggregated trade data indicate higher exports of new goods. These results suggest that the expansion of multinational activity more than offsets any decline in imitative activity.     

Learning to perform? A comparison of learning practices and organizational performance in profit‐ and non‐profit‐making sectors in the UK

To date, much of the research on employee development activities and organizational performance has been conducted in private sector organizations, with the largely untested assumption that the same findings will apply to other sectors. This paper addresses the deficit by describing a study comparing differences in the use of employee learning practices between profit‐making and non‐profit‐making organizations, and examining the relationship between these learning practices and multiple dimensions of organizational performance. The study data was gathered through conducting structured telephone interviews with senior training and development managers in 368 UK organizations from a range of sectors. It was found that non‐profit‐making organizations had greater engagement in individual employee learning practices than profit‐making organizations, but no differences were found in terms of team learning practices or engagement in strategic needs analysis and evaluation activities. The analyses also indicated that individual learning practices showed a stronger relationship with performance in the non‐profit‐making organizations, whereas team learning practices were more significant for the profit‐making companies. The learning practices collectively accounted for greater variance in organizational performance in the non‐profit‐making organizations. The study implies that the functional aims of organizations need to be taken into account when examining the learning practice–organizational performance relationship.     

Tariff Discrimination versus MFN under Incomplete Information

This paper presents a model of legal migration of temporary skilled workers from one source country to two host countries, both of which can control their levels of such immigration. Because of complementarities between capital and labor, the return on capital is positively related to the level of immigration. Consequently, when capital is immobile, host nations' optimal levels of immigration are positively related to their capital endowments. Further, when capital is mobile between the host nations, the common return on capital is a function of the levels of immigration in both countries, meaning that immigration is a public good. As a result, when immigration imposes costs on host countries, the Nash equilibrium results in free riding and less immigration than would occur in the cooperative equilibrium. These results are qualitatively unaltered when capital mobility extends to the source nation.     

Contemplating the future: Mutating capitalism

After the fall of international communism in the former Soviet Union, capitalism has remained the only viable option for managing the economy. Economic and financial problems of capitalism of recent times, however, have brought forth debate about the role and shape of capitalism, and mainly its future. These problems have made it very clear that unbridled capitalism may not produce the proclaimed prosperity. Some have questioned its future viability in the present form and predicated its metamorphosing into a different kind that could make it more beneficial to the people and more resilient to survive. Questions regarding its future shape and form and the reasons for such predication are the subject of this article.     

An inductively derived model of the motivation to shop

The purpose of this article is to inductively determine the relationships which underlie the motivation to shop. Specifically, a variety of exploratory analyses which have been widely used to construct theory are sequentially applied to the relationships of 10 motivational variables. The outcome of the article is the development of a model of shopping motivation which appears to have been derived through a systematic series of inductive assessment analyses.     

Political instability and capital flight: An application of event study methodology

The relationship between capital flight and political instability is investigated by using the event study methodology, which is widely used in the finance literature. The advantage of using this method is that by isolating specific instances of political instability (defined as events), one can examine the relationship more closely. An index of political instability is calculated using data on intranation political developments from the Conflict and Peace Data Bank (COPDAB). For our sample, we get mixed results, probably because the “event” could not be defined very precisely due to the volatile nature of the political index.