Making Chile Visible: Purposes,Operationalisation and Audiences from the Perspective of Nation Branding Practitioners

Chile has become the paradigm of nation branding in Latin America, employing branding initiatives to try to shake off the uncomfortable past of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, as well as to create a ‘new’ image that fits into a globalised and neoliberal world. Whilst there has previously been some analysis of Chile’s branding efforts, the viewpoints of the local actors involved in these initiatives have largely been ignored. This article addresses this issue, examining the tensions faced by different individuals who have taken part in nation branding in the country. Drawing on interviews with some of these individuals, this article examines three areas of tension: (1) the conflicting purposes guiding the practice of nation branding, (2) the difficulties around the operationalisation of nation branding and (3) the controversies regarding the intended audiences for their efforts.     

Country Differences in Material Deprivation in Europe

This paper assesses to what extent differences in the characteristics of individuals (micro‐level perspective) and country‐specific factors (macro‐level perspective) can explain country differences with respect to material deprivation levels. Thus, our work aims to simultaneously consider the macro dimension and the predominantly individually‐oriented study field of material deprivation using multilevel techniques. We make use of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Our results show that country‐specific factors seem to be much more relevant than individual effects in explaining country differences in material deprivation. We estimate that the introduction of country‐specific factors reduces the proportion of total variance due to between‐country differences in deprivation by 72.7 percent, while individual‐level variables reduce this proportion by only 9.4 percent. We also show, through interaction variables, that the effect of sociodemographic characteristics can be shaped by institutional and structural factors, especially by the level of GDP.     

Strategic Capabilities and Performance in Women‐Owned Businesses in Mexico

The dire economic situation in Mexico, with its high rate of unemployment, makes it necessary for many women to find some form of economic activity to provide income for their families. Although such conditions could encourage the creation of new firms, the results of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2006 Report show a gap between the number of women involved in nascent and young entrepreneurship initiatives and the number who owns established firms. This gap may indicate that the firms created need to improve their competitiveness and their ability to survive. The model proposed adopts the resource‐based view of the firm as a theoretical framework from which to study how entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation, and learning orientation, as well as the interactions between them, influence the achievement of competitive advantage and superior performance in businesses owned by women. Our investigation analyzes businesses established and managed by women in Mexico and registered with the Asociación Mexicana de Mujeres Empresarias A.C. (Mexican Association of Business Women) and the Red de Empresarias del Instituto Nacional de Mujeres (Women Entrepreneurs Network of the National Women's Institute). To gather the information needed, the study used a questionnaire as a measuring instrument. The results are based on the 90 complete answers received from the questionnaires distributed. The results show that all of relationships in our model are positive except the hypothesis that learning orientation mediates in the relationship between market orientation and performance. The results suggest that entrepreneurial orientation reinforces the effect of two capabilities, market orientation and learning orientation, on firm performance. They also reaffirm that the three capabilities assessed may lead an organization to differentiate itself from its competitors by improving its performance. In addition to contributing to the literature on female entrepreneurship, the results have important implications for management. Understanding the relationships between capabilities and the performance of women‐owned businesses in Mexico can permit the identification of areas for improvement to promote the growth and survival of this type of firm.     

A Representative Committee by Approval Balloting

A new voting rule for electing committees is described. Specifically, we use approval balloting and propose a new voting procedure that guarantees that if there is a committee that represents (with a given proportion of representatives) all of the existing voters, then the selected committee has to represent all of voters in at least the same proportion. This property is a way of selecting a committee that represents completely all of voters when such a committee exists. The usual voting rules in this context do not satisfy this condition.     

The α-stable processes and their relationship with the exponent of self-similarity: Exchange rates of USA Dollar,Canadian Dollar,Euro and Yen

This research work analyzes the yields of the exchange rate parities of the American dollar, Canadian dollar, Euro, and Yen; estimates the basic statistics and the α-stables; carries out the Kolmogorov–Smirnov, Anderson–Darling, and Lilliefors goodness of fit tests; estimates the self-similar exponents and carries out the t and F tests, ruling out that the series of parities are multifractal. It also estimates the confidence intervals of the exchange rate parities and concludes that the estimated α-stable distributions are more efficient than the Gaussian distribution to quantify the risks of the market, and that the series are self-similar. Through the ? index, we can infer the risk of the events, indicating that the parities are anti-persistent and thus have short-term memory, mean reversion, and a negative correlation with the high risk in the short and medium term. The estimation and validation of the α-stable distributions and the self-similar exponent are important in the evaluation and creation of innovative investment instruments through financial engineering, risk administration, and the evaluation of derived products.     

Information and Investor Behavior Surrounding Earnings Announcements

The goal of this paper is to analyze the impact of annual earnings announcements on the market through the order flow data in addition to the usual transaction data. In this respect, examining order flow data can potentially reveal valuable information that is not available from transaction data. In fact, the data allow us to test hypotheses about asymmetric information and investor behavior and to test if the behavior varies with investor sophistication. In addition, the paper tries to identify the determinants of the impact on a firm's value using assumptions about investor behavior.     

Competition and collaboration between public and private sectors: the historical construction of the Spanish hospital system, 1942–86

Throughout history, healthcare, along with diet, has been an essential component of life and a country's welfare. In particular, a country's hospital system is a key indicator for analysing the level of welfare achieved by health coverage. From an economic history perspective, the study of hospital systems is relevant since they stem from public and private investment and produce positive externalities by creating employment and stimulating other economic sectors such as construction and health. Spain provides a significant case study for determining the factors of backwardness in the construction of a modern hospital system in a country on the European periphery. Moreover, it also helps us understand how, despite initial obstacles, this system had attained a significant degree of quality by the end of the twentieth century, as confirmed by its current international hospital rankings and even by the phenomenon of health tourism. The study analyses the creation of the Spanish hospital system during Franco's dictatorship and the transition to democracy. It reveals how the maintenance of a regressive tax system, the use of health policy as political propaganda, and disputes within the political elite of the dictatorship led to an inadequate and fragmented public hospital system, which had to collaborate with the private hospital system, was full of financial holes and tainted by corruption, and remained at the service of privileged groups.