Venture capital in China: Past,present, and future

This article reviews the literature on venture capital in China and examines where China’s venture capital industry has been and where it is likely to go in the future. Since the 1980s, venture capital in China has grown steadily alongside the robust national economy. The future is likely to offer even greater opportunities, as entrepreneurs are encouraged and property rights improve. However, there will also be a period of transition as the market continues to mature and as new legal structures and commercial arrangements emerge. Venture capital in China has many interesting differences from that in Western countries. The venture capital industry is shaped by the institutional context and China is no exception to this. This article also examines some specific differences between the system in China and that of the United States. Future prospects for venture capital are also appraised as China continues its transition to a market economy.

A cross-country comparison of the demand for labour in Europe

A Cross-Country Comparison of the Demand for Labour in Europe.-This paper investigates structural differences in the demand for labour in France, Germany, and the UK. It finds substantial differences in the sensitivity of the demand for labour to international product demand and factor prices in all three countries. In particular, it reacts to domestic factor prices in Germany but international cost competitiveness in France and the UK; it depends upon European-wide product demand in France and Germany and a wider measure of product demand in the UK. The authors attribute these differences to product market conditions and institutional factors rather than to differences in the production technology.     

LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION POLICIES AND MEAT PROCESSING MARGINS: THE CASE OF NEW ZEALAND, 1967-1988*

The New Zealand export meat industry has been through a considerable number of changes in the 1980s. The deregulation of export slaughter facilities, Supplementary Minimum Prices, Producer Board intervention, declining livestock numbers and domestic cost pressures have all affected the performance of the domestically based processing sector. Major changes in market access and demand have influenced off-shore marketing operations, particularly for sheepmeats. Additionally, there has been a change in the type of meat exported with a greater proportion of further processed product shipped in recent years. As an example of the impact of these developments on livestock producers, the producer share of the United Kingdom wholesale market return for a representative prime lamb carcase has fallen from 40 per cent in 1978 to 25 per cent in 1988. In this article the pattern of intervention in the New Zealand pastoral meat industries from the mid-1960s is detailed, emphasising the different environments of the beef and sheepmeat enterprises. Then the principal factors influencing domestic processing margins for these products are empirically examined. Alternative model specifications and alternative estimation techniques are compared and contrasted. The results of these analyses are discussed in terms of the historical patterns of assistance and structural change, and in terms of current rationalisation pressures on the meat processing sector.     

Working part time: by choice or by constraint

The selection of workers into part-time jobs and the wages they earn are analysed using the 1989 Labour Market Activity Survey. We focus on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary part-time workers, since involuntary part-time workers earn substantially lower wages than other workers. We find that the selection of individuals into involuntary part-time work is more closely tied to job characteristics than personal or human capital characteristics. The lower wage earned by involuntary part-time workers is largely due to differences in returns and selection effects, rather than differences in endowments. JEL Classification: J22, J23, J31     

Religion and identity in India’s heritage tourism

The growing worth of heritage in the renegotiation and dissemination of identities has intensified conflicts over whose voice dominates heritage tourism representations. Therefore, this study compares the way India’s heritage is represented by the Indian government, by the domestic tourism trade media and by the popular tourism media. The findings reveal that India is consistently represented as an ethnically diverse nation in which Hinduism preceded and prevailed over all other ethnicities/religions; a portrayal that consolidates the state’s secular nationalist narrative. Furthermore, the trade and popular media emphasize nostalgic experiences of a sanitized colonial history while the government emphasizes accounts of resistance against colonial powers and of suffering due to Muslim atrocities.     

The integration of human resource and operation management practices and its link with performance: A longitudinal latent class study

This paper reviews the literature on the association between lean production and performance. From this, propositions on the integration and evolution of operation and human resource management practices associated with the lean production concept are developed. Using 24 years of data on the use of seven core OM and HRM practices in British manufacturing firms, the potential link between integration in the use of practices and productivity is tested. In each year, three latent clusters are identified via ordered restricted latent class models; the cluster that consistently makes a more integrated use of practices outperforms the others. Furthermore, the longitudinal nature of the data permits modeling the growth curves of each practice in the sample, recognizing any similarity in growth and investigating whether or not an early integration in adoption of practices is associated with higher final productivity. The results show that pioneers are more productive, thus suggesting that the head start in integrating core OM and HRM practices associated with the lean production concept has paid off.