Media coverage and location choice

Emphasizing the importance of informed location choice, prior strategy research has examined how private information about locations affects foreign direct investment. Publicly available media information has received little attention, however, perhaps because its impact on location choice is expected to be trivial. This study examines the relationship between the extent of a location's media coverage and the number of entering foreign firms in Russia, using a novel instrumental variable for media coverage, a major anniversary of a city's establishment date. The results suggest that extensive foreign media coverage of a city increases the number of foreign entrants. This effect is stronger for firms with less private information about Russian cities; i.e., more socially and geographically distant firms and foreign entrepreneurs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ex post Merger Evaluation in the U.K. Retail Market for Books

This paper evaluates the price effects of the merger of two major U.K. book retailers. We use a dataset containing monthly scanner data on a sample of 200 books in 50 local markets for four years around the merger. We compare the price changes after the merger in shops located in areas where both chains were present before the merger and in areas where only one chain was present. We also investigate the country‐wide effect of the merger. We find that the merger did not result in any price increase either at the local or at the national level.     

Gains from resistance: rejection of a new digital technology in a healthcare sector workplace

The issue of spaces for non-organised employee resistance has attracted renewed attention due to the diffusion of new digital technologies in the workplace. The ability of new technologies to measure and restrict employee behaviour in new ways requires explanations of resistance that account for both technology’s material characteristics and employee agency, without descending into technological determinism. This article is based on a case of effective resistance to a new data reporting technology introduced in home nursing in Denmark and explores the causes, forms and outcomes of the resistance. In this study, labour process theory is complemented with Edwards and Ramirez’s classification of dimensions of technological change. The study argues that two dimensions are important for effective employee resistance to technology: contestation of the unintended rather than the intended effects of the technology and the non-immanence of the effects in the technology, which allows the employees to reconstitute it in use.     

Mapping Biodiversity Indicators and Assessing Biodiversity Values in Global Forests

Biodiversity loss is a problem of global concern affecting ecosystem functioning and services provided to humans. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is built on a conceptual framework that links biodiversity with the services ecosystems provide to society and human welfare. Numerous empirical studies have measured ecosystem goods and services in terms of economic values; however, less evidence is available of the indirect effect of biodiversity on these values. Based on this, we first compile market and non-market forest valuation studies and, secondly, explore the potential of an econometric modelling exercise by conducting a worldwide meta-analysis. This exercise aims to highlight the role of biodiversity indicators on valuation. In this way, we can study the underlying transmission mechanisms that explain to what extent biodiversity is related to human welfare. Furthermore, we also propose to evaluate the magnitudes of the respective distributional impacts, including the different ecosystem goods and services under consideration. Our results show that biodiversity indicators may have an underlying effect on forest ecosystem values, which also depend on the type of ecosystem services. Lastly, the results are discussed and analysed with respect to their policy implications concerning biodiversity conservation.     

Impacts of China's Accession to the World Trade Organization

This article presents estimates of the impact of China's accessionto the World Trade Organization. China is estimated to be thebiggest beneficiary (US$31 billion a year from trade reformsin preparation for accession and additional gains of $10 billiona year from reforms after accession), followed by its majortrading partners that also undertake liberalization, includingthe economies in North America, Western Europe, and Taiwan (China).Accession will boost manufacturing sectors in China, especiallytextiles and apparel, which will benefit directly from the removalof export quotas. Developing economies competing with Chinain third markets may suffer small losses. Accession will haveimportant distributional consequences for China, with the wagesof skilled and unskilled nonfarm workers rising in real termsand relative to those of farm workers. Possible policy changes,including reductions in barriers to labor mobility and improvementsin rural education, could more than offset these negative impactsand facilitate the development of China's economy.     

Efficiency and Stock Performance in European Banking

Abstract:   Recent competitive pressures have progressively driven banks to strategically focus on generating returns to shareholders. Therefore, the investigation of the determinants of bank performance and their relationship with share prices has become increasingly important. This paper extends the literature on market‐based accounting to examine the relationship between stock prices and efficiency. Specifically, it investigates if changes in stock performance can be explained by changes in operating efficiency, derived by parametric and non‐parametric methods. Results seem to suggest that changes in efficiency are reflected in changes in stock prices and that stocks of cost efficient banks tend to outperform their inefficient counterparts.     

Offensive Advertising,Public Policy,and the Law: The Rulings on the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Zagorka </Emphasis>Case

This paper examines the case of a controversial beer advertisement which was promulgated in Bulgaria in 2001, and which provoked eight lawsuits against the brewery, its advertising agency, and the Bulgarian National Television. The case set a precedent in Bulgaria and generated considerable public interest and debate. To the best of the authors knowledge this is the first case in Eastern Europe when individuals have challenged companies in the courts of law because of offence caused by an advertisement. The present study discusses how the public bodies responsible for protecting consumer interests and the courts of first instance assessed the advertisement in the context of Bulgarian public policy regarding offensive advertising.     

Extralegal payments to state officials in Russia, 1750s–1830s: assessing the burden of corruption

This article uses the records of expenditures from a set of estates that belonged to the Golitsyn family to assess the level of ‘routine corruption’ in Imperial Russia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The data from these books allow us to identify individual cases of unofficial facilitation payments made by the estates and by peasant communes to district‐level officials; to delimit key types of payment situations; and to calculate the sums expended for payments by a given estate in a given year. The resulting numbers are compared to the overall volume of obligations borne by the serfs to the state and to their landlords. Our conclusion is that while the facilitation payments were ubiquitous and accompanied any interaction with the state, the volume of these ‘routine’ payments (as opposed to other forms of extraction) was quite low and they did not put a significant burden on the peasants, while at the same time securing hefty extra incomes for top district officials. Rather, by the last decades of the eighteenth century Russian Imperial officials at the district level might have switched from a tribute‐like extortion from the population at large to acquiring vast sums by collecting unofficial payments in more targeted ways.     

Training does not imply learning: the individual’s perspective

Using recent empirical findings from an in-depth study in the Financial Services Sector in the UK, this article provides new insights into the association between training and learning from the individual’s perspective. The analysis provides an account of the perceptions of individual managers across three Retail Banks regarding the role, significance and impact of training as a learning opportunity and shows the multiplicity of factors affecting whether individuals actually learn from training. The findings challenge some of the assumptions which have guided our thinking in the management training and development field. The implications of the findings for research and practice are considered.     

Sustainable transport challenges in a suburban university: The case of the Autonomous University of Barcelona

This paper provides detailed accounts of the transport patterns at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), including its motivations, barriers and user preferences, and explores the main transport challenges faced by the UAB campus. This suburban university is an important transport activity generator in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region, which is committed to achieving sustainable transportation. Results have been obtained through a personal survey (n=5525) of members of the university community. These show that the main limitations for changing travel mode from private means to non-motorised or public modes of transport are: the lack of adequate infrastructure, the marginal role of walking and cycling as a means of transport, and the longer time involved using public transport.