Scorched earth: will environmental risks in China overwhelm its opportunities?

Of all the risks of doing business in China, the greatest is the threat posed by environmental degradation. And yet it's barely discussed in corporate boardrooms. This is a serious mistake. Multinationals may be more concerned with intellectual property rights violations, corruption, and potential political instability, but the Chinese government, NGOs, and the Chinese press have been focused squarely on the country's energy shortages, soil erosion, lack of water, and pollution problems, which are so severe they might constrain GDP growth. What's more, the Chinese expect the international community to take the lead in environmental protection. If that doesn't happen, multinationals face clear risks to their operations, their workers' health, and their reputations. In factoring environmental issues into their China strategies, foreign firms need to be both defensive, taking steps to reduce harm, and proactive, investing in environmental protection efforts. Coca-Cola, for example, installed state-of-the-art bottling plants in China that operate with no net loss of water resources. Mattel increased the safety of its Barbie-manufacturing process to protect workers' health. With its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, GE is shrinking its environmental footprint in China; more proactively, GE is working closely with the Chinese government and scientists to develop clean coal, water purification, and water reuse technologies. In considering the value of such efforts, companies can not only factor in reduced risk but also increased opportunity, as they use innovations designed for the Chinese market in the rest of the world. The bottom line: How well multinationals address environmental issues in China will affect their fortunes in one of the most important economies in the world.     

用非经济手段激励员工

全世界的公司都在削减奖金激励计划,但是,鲜有公司使用其他方式去激励人才。我们认为,企业应该使用非经济手段激劢员工。大量的研究成果表明,在很多行业、工作岗位和业务环境,对于那些拥有满意薪水的员工来说,在提高其长期敬业精神方面,一些非经济激励方式比额外的现金奖励更有效。很多经济奖励主要是激发员工短期的干劲,同时,也会有出乎本意的负面后果。     

A model and measure for quality service user involvement in health research

In the UK, researchers across the health professions are increasingly being encouraged by policymakers and research commissioners to ‘involve’ service users in research. A recent review shows there is some evidence that involving patients, carers, relatives, social or community groups directly and actively as part of the research process can improve the conduct of research studies and the impact of the findings. Yet, little is known about how involvement is played out within research studies and there is a need for more critical and consistent assessment of what constitutes quality involvement. The overall purpose of this paper is to support learning about quality service user involvement in health care research. The aim is to provide service users and researchers with a structured and consistent way to reflect and report on their experiences. A range of philosophical and social theories of power and empowerment were reviewed and synthesized to create a model of quality involvement. The analysis encompassed both service user factors (what a person feels able to do, whether they feel their potential is being fulfilled and their sense of being valued) alongside research factors (research relationships, ways of doing research, research structures). A model is presented (Quality Involvement Framework), which contributes theoretically informed perspectives about the meaning and assessment of quality service user involvement in research. The model is developed as a practical measure (a Quality Involvement Questionnaire) for researchers and service users to be more reflective about the constraints and possibilities of involvement. The tools presented here could help research teams to examine personal factors and the research contexts that influence the nature and quality of service user involvement in research. They may also help to identify reoccurring issues about quality which could inform future policy, practice and research.     

Mortgage Loan Securitization and Relative Loan Performance

We compare the ex ante observable risk characteristics, the default performance, and the pricing of securitized mortgage loans to mortgage loans retained by the original lender. In our sample of loans originated between 2000 and 2007, we find that privately securitized fixed and adjustable-rate mortgages were riskier ex ante than lender-retained loans or loans securitized through the government sponsored agencies. We do not find any evidence of differential loan performance for privately securitized fixed-rate mortgages. We find evidence that privately securitized adjustable-rate mortgages performed worse than retained mortgages, although other observable factors appear to be more economically important determinants of mortgage default. We do not find any evidence of a compensating premium in the loan rates for privately securitized adjustable-rate mortgages.     

Structural asset pricing theory with wavelets

We apply Fourier and wavelet decompositions to structural asset pricing models with time non-separable utility. Through simulations, we show how Fourier decompositions of the utility function, coupled with isolating certain frequencies of the stochastic consumption process, reveal a preference for temporal allocations. We demonstrate the usefulness of wavelets by highlighting their ability to isolate frequency and time, simultaneously. While much work has been devoted to wavelet applications of financial data, we are unaware of papers that use wavelets to analyze structural aspects of asset pricing models.     

‘Mental mobility’ in the digital age: entrepreneurs and the online home‐based business

Home‐based online business ventures are an increasingly pervasive yet under‐researched phenomenon. The experiences and mindset of entrepreneurs setting up and running such enterprises require better understanding. Using data from a qualitative study of 23 online home‐based business entrepreneurs, we propose the augmented concept of ‘mental mobility’ to encapsulate how they approach their business activities. Drawing on Howard P. Becker's early theorising of mobility, together with Victor Turner's later notion of liminality, we conceptualise mental mobility as the process through which individuals navigate the liminal spaces between the physical and digital spheres of work and the overlapping home/workplace, enabling them to manipulate and partially reconcile the spatial, temporal and emotional tensions that are present in such work environments. Our research also holds important applications for alternative employment contexts and broader social orderings because of the increasingly pervasive and disruptive influence of technology on experiences of remunerated work.     

An econometric approach for evaluating the linkages between broadband and knowledge intensive firms

In addition to highlighting improvements in the availability and speed of broadband as a national priority, the National Broadband Plan also includes several recommendations for improving access and use of broadband by small businesses. The plan also recommends economic development officials include broadband in their local development strategies. While these are certainly import goals, more research is needed to evaluate how broadband impacts the regional business environment, and regional capacity to retain and attract businesses in particular industries. In order to further our understanding about the linkages between broadband and businesses, and the ability of places to retain and attract businesses in particular industries, this study will develop and estimate econometric models to better understand the linkages between broadband and firms in the knowledge intensive sector. Specifically, 54 metropolitan area specific models will be developed to examine regional variations in the linkages between broadband and firms in the knowledge intensive sector in 2004. Model results highlight the importance of broadband to knowledge firms in all but five metropolitan areas across the U.S. They also reveal variations in the impact of broadband on knowledge firm presence related to metropolitan area size and industrial legacy.     

Technology choice bias and limited liability

The effect of limited liability on debt contracts has been analysed as creating the possibility of credit rationing and hence inefficiently low levels of investment. In this paper we instead focus on restrictions on the use of debt finance to avoid moral hazard problems but which add inefficiency by removing management discretion in the investment process. Essentially, the trade-off is between rules and discretion, and can lead to the wrong choice of technology being adopted. It is shown that this inefficient technology can persist in a steady-state competitive equilibrium. The role of venture capitalists is to reduce this inefficiency both by providing equity rather than debt finance and by involvement in the firms management. The latter involvement can counteract other possible agency problems associated with the dilution of the firms equity share.Received: October 2002, Accepted: September 2003, JEL Classification: L1, G2Norman J. Ireland: The author is grateful for comments received on earlier versions of this paper from colleagues and participants of the Industrial Economics Workshop at the University of Warwick, May 2001, and from the editor and referees of this journal.