Mobility and the Role of Education as a Commitment Device

In closed economies, human capital investment faces a hold-up problem of excessive redistributive taxation. Increased international labor mobility, however, changes the constraints which affect optimal education and tax policy. We show that in a non-altruistic, gerontocratic world, investments in human capital which increase the mobility of the young generation can be interpreted as a commitment device overcoming the hold-up problem. This is in line with Kehoe (1989) who derives a similar result with respect to capital mobility.     

Tourism and community resilience in the Anthropocene: accentuating temporal overtourism

Abstract

Global tourism growth is unprecedented. Consequently, this has elevated the sector as a key plank for economic development, and its utility is deeply embedded in political, economic and social-ecological discourse. Where the expansion of the sector leverages natural and cultural landscapes, this applies pressure to social and ecological underpinnings that if not reconciled, can become problematic. The way this plays out in Australia’s Shipwreck Coast and the wider Great Ocean Road region, especially the implications for community resilience, is the focus. Emphasis is placed on the vulnerability of peripheral coastal areas to development that withdraws from destination endowments, yet fails to provide commensurate economic yield as a suitable trade-off. This is obvious where tourism intensification has led to concerns about the breach of normative carrying capacities. Temporal overtourism driven by seasonal overcrowding is countenanced as emblematic of tourism in the Anthropocene where focus tends to be largely growth-oriented, with much less attention given to bolstering social-ecological resilience, especially community resilience. At stake is the resilience of regional areas and their communities, who in the absence of garnering commensurate economic returns from tourism expansion find themselves in social and ecological deficit.     

International trade,job training,and labor reallocation

A large literature studies the impact of increased import competition on workers' outcomes, however, relatively few studies examine which policies can aid workers displaced by trade. In this article, we evaluate the impact of an industrial job training program in Brazil on workers displaced from manufacturing sectors. We find that industrial training increases the probability of re-entry into the formal labor market 1 year after displacement by about 17 percentage points and is even more effective for workers displaced from sectors exposed to high import competition. This effect is mainly associated with workers switching sectors and occupations after training.     

Hypothesis of Price Formation in Input–Output Tables

The goal of this paper is to check if different theoretical approaches to price formation can be verified in the structure of empirical input–output tables. From a propositive point of view, the hypothesis is made of two different markets (the ‘industrial’ market of intermediate and investment goods; and the ‘commercial’ market of final consumption goods), with two different mechanisms of price formation. The consequences of this hypothesis are outlined as regards deflation procedures. An empirical test of the theories about price formation and of the method of deflation suggested by the two-market hypothesis is made using 1985 Italian input–output tables at 1980 prices.     

Mergers with interfirm bundling: a case of pharmaceutical cocktails

Pharmaceutical cocktails often consist of two or more drugs produced by competing firms. The component drugs are often also sold as stand‐alone products. We analyze the effects of a merger between two pharmaceutical firms selling complements for colorectal cancer treatment. In this setting there are two merger effects: the standard upward pricing pressure due to firms internalizing the substitution between the stand‐alone products, and an additional effect where the firms internalize the impact of selling complements and reduce the price of the cocktail product. The net impact of a merger is a modest price increase, or even a price decrease.     

WHEN SHAREHOLDERS CHOOSE NOT TO MAXIMIZE VALUE: THE UNION BANK OF SWITZERLAND'S 1994 PROXY FIGHT

This paper examines the fight over a share reunification plan that pitted Swiss financier Martin Ebner against Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), once the largest Swiss bank and a global leader in asset management. In the U.S. corporate governance debate, large shareholders are often held up as a possible solution to corporate governance problems. But this examination of the UBS proxy fight shows why some large shareholders can themselves be a source of governance problems. The share reunification plan was designed to combine the firm's two classes of stock: registered (voting) shares and bearer (non-voting) shares. As its motive for the plan, the UBS board cited a desire both to increase liquidity and to prevent a control change. The majority of the holders of the company's registered stock—many of whom had other financial ties to the bank—ended up voting for a proposal that caused them to lose 11% of the value of their shares during the three trading days following its announcement, and eventually almost twice as much. Moreover, even the holders of the bearer stock hurt themselves by approving the reunification plan. Although the plan clearly transferred value from the registered to the bearer shares, the redistribution benefits from the plan for the bearer shareholders were not sufficient to offset their losses from the reduced probability of a control change. Although it did not succeed in accomplishing its immediate goal, the UBS proxy fight is today recognized as a watershed event in Swiss corporate governance. Until recently, Switzerland's economy has been dominated by cartels, with closely overlapping boards of directors. Hostile takeovers were essentially unheard of, and criticism of management by shareholders was highly unusual. Ebner's activities have had the effect of stimulating public debate about shareholders' rights and shareholder activism. In so doing, they have made it more acceptable for shareholders to criticize management and established shareholder value as a “politically correct” goal for Swiss corporations.     

Chinese and Indian Multinationals: A Firm-Level Analysis of their Investments in Europe

Abstract

This paper contributes to the literature on Chinese and Indian multinationals investing in Europe through an empirical investigation about their identity, their characteristics and the association between their features and their international strategies. The investigation exploits a database, named EMENDATA (Emerging Multinationals’ Events and Networks DATAbase), at the level of the investing firms. In relation to the mode of entry, we find that greenfield investments are a more likely option for large-sized companies. Moreover a high propensity for innovation is associated with a high probability to enter with an acquisition and with technological asset-seeking investments. Finally, high profitability is needed to invest in the EU-core countries.     

TERRITORIAL PLANNING AND TOURISM DEVELOPMENT TAX

An economic model of land taxation involving a local government and a private developer constitutes the theoretical framework in this research. The model hinges around a two-tier approach including both a conservation and an efficiency criterion. The analysis indicates that sustainable tourism calls for the use of land taxation and planning legislation simultaneously geared to the achievement of efficiency and the signaling of the government’s commitment to conservation policies. To provide support for the theoretical conclusions, an Italian case study is discussed, showing how the local government chose not to yield to a developer’s requests by not changing a norm prohibiting construction near of the coastline.     

Groupware and teamwork in R&D: limits to learning and innovation

In recent years the re-engineering of R&D functions in large multinationals has often been accompanied by the emergence of groupware applications as strategic decision-making tools, while the organization of work has shifted towards various forms of teamworking. There is however, little empirical evidence on the conditions and processes through which groupware and teamworking practices can be efficiently linked. This paper examines the experience in groupware adoption by two large multinationals, Hoffmann la Roche and Unilever, in selected areas of new product development: the final New Drug Application phase for a new anti AIDS drug in Roche and the development along an 'innovation funnel' of new oral care products in Unilever. Despite the variety of tasks, organizations, missions and technology deployed, similar themes seem to emerge regarding how large organizations are able to 'host' the new groupware applications. Learning processes seem to play a key role in the final integration of the technology in the workflow. Still, what seems to emerge is that despite its critical role, learning is not a sufficiently valued competence, at least in the organizations examined. As a consequence, the innovations tend to drift, lead to unexpected outcomes and many opportunities for learning from (mistakes and) innovations are simply missed. Factors responsible for such a state of affairs seem to be the power of the hierarchical context into which groupware and teamwork are introduced; the continuous jolts to which such context must undergo because of radical shifts in management and R&D strategy; the dialectics between local and global changes.