International trade in financial services

International trade in financial services is a topic of some importance both to the financial services sector itself and in international trade negotiations. Unfortunately, intrinsic problems in defining and measuring trade in services, combined with a lack of data in many countries, have made empirical analysis of trade in financial services difficult. Recent improvements in data, although still providing only a limited coverage, do now provide a basis for analysis. In this paper, we use data from the OECD International Trade in Services Statistics 2001 database to conduct an analysis of trade in financial services based on standard theories and empirical techniques for international trade. Our results suggest that the key concepts of international trade are of use in understanding international trade flows in financial services. In particular, we find evidence of significant volumes of intra-industry trade in financial services, as well as significant volumes of inter-industry trade for some countries, including the UK. Using Balassa's ‘revealed comparative advantage’ index, the most highly ranked countries are Belgium-Luxembourg, Italy, Switzerland, the UK, the USA and Greece. Using the ‘net export ratio’, the countries that are ranked highest include Germany, Switzerland, the UK, the USA and Belgium-Luxembourg.     

Linking individual performance to business strategy: The people process model

During the last five years, a team of researchers has worked with the senior human resource (HR) teams of seven large companies with United Kingdom operations. This research initiative has focused on a number of aims, one of which has been to understand and model how business strategies are translated through human resource strategies and people processes into individual and organizational performance. This article summarizes the key findings, provides a map of how this translation takes place in these companies, and discusses why some people processes are more strongly linked to business strategy. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Endogenous International Technology Spillovers and Biased Technical Change in Agriculture

This paper analyzes trade-related knowledge flows from an innovating country to other countries. It is assumed that knowledge is embodied in commodities traded between countries and that the potential productivity of this knowledge is determined by the local usability of foreign technologies. The usability of foreign knowledge is dependent on the local absorption capacity (such as knowledge infrastructure and human capital) and on structural differences (factor endowments or climate) between countries. In agriculture, a large portion of the knowledge is embodied in inputs which cause factor-biased technical change in the receiving sectors. Trade-related knowledge transmission is introduced in an applied multi-region general equilibrium model (GTAP) to study the macro-economic and sectoral impacts of knowledge spillovers and of trade policies. Endogenous embodied technology spillovers bear some important implications for trade policy, because protective measures preclude countries not only from cheaper imports but also from foreign technologies.     

DISTRIBUTIONS OF FINANCIAL RATIOS IN THE COMMERCIAL BANKING INDUSTRY

Much research in banking assumes that the data are normally distributed. There has been little empirical confirmation of this assumption. In this paper, the normality assumption is subjected to an extensive test using data for virtually all U.S. commercial banks for several years. The statistical characteristics of 11 common financial ratios are investigated. The findings reject any broad assumption of population normality.     

Absence Management in the Public Sector: An Integrative Model?

Workforce absence rates in Britain have been found to be higher in the public sector than the private. The Government has set ambitious targets for the reduction of public sector absence rates and published a range of recommendations. The authors look at the ways the two sectors manage long-term absence. Although many public sector organizations, as well as some large private services ones, have systems in place, this article shows that these often contain structural weaknesses, and frequently do not operate in an integrated way. It is therefore concluded that many public organizations have some way to go to achieve the holistic approach to absence management advocated by the Government.     

Spatial structure and network behaviour of strategic airline groups: A comparison between Europe and the United States

The Gini-index has gained in legitimacy when measuring traffic distributions of air traffic as compared to other more established measures, such as Herfindahl's. In order to render the index more meaningful for policy-makers, a partial decomposition into strategic groups of airlines along distinct geopolitical scopes of air traffic is suggested. Air traffic across airports is considered an aggregate of complex networks that are subject to multiple constraints, such as geopolitics or technology. A multi-layered analytic approach accounts for network operators as economic agents that behave in strategic ways within these constraints. Our approach allows for comparing traffic distributions in Europe with that of the US and, in particular, introduces a normative component by isolating patterns in airlines’ strategies that are likely to induce different degrees of spatial concentration and balanced traffic distributions within these common markets.     

Consumer demand with variable preferences in taiwan: an application of the generalized Fechner-Thurstone direct utility function

Time series data on five consumer commodity groups for Taiwan are analyzed using the generalized Fechner-Thurstone direct utility function. Income and price-demand elasticities are derived from unconstrained maximum likelihood estimates of the constant elasticities of marginal rates of substitutions. The elasticities are similar to those obtained for Taiwan using a translog indirect utility function. However, the estimates obtained for Taiwan are significantly different from those reported by other researchers for South Korea and the United States which serves as an indication of differences in the stages of economic development between the economies.     

Using sequential tree analysis to search for ‘bundles’ of HR practices

This article reviews progress in the search for a ‘bundle’ of HR practices, using the work of MacDuffie as a starting point for the analysis of the concept of a bundle. The different methods by which bundles might be identified are reviewed and sequential tree analysis is presented as a possible alternative approach. It is then tested alongside factor analysis and regression on accounts of HR practices and aspects of performance provided by a sample of 1,308 managers. The results show that sequential tree analysis does identify a relatively parsimonious set of practices; these overlap partly with those identified in factor analysis and more extensively with those occurring in regression analysis but are more interpretable and therefore potentially more useful for policy‐makers.     

Transforming South Africa's cities: Prospects for the economic development of urban townships

This article identifies and evaluates the range of strategies being used to generate economic activity close to and within townships, focusing on the three metropolitan areas of Gauteng, the Durban Functional Region and metropolitan Cape Town. After placing townships in the context of the larger city and the overall strategy of local economic development, the article examines the various types of strategies that have been proposed to stimulate and support economic activity: the currently dominant spatial strategies, the provision of services infrastructure, the development of economic infrastructure, small business support services, and public works.