Joint ventures in Eastern European countries: A survey of legislation

Conclusions The legal framework for joint ventures recently established in Eastern European countries is somewhat contradictory and vague; yet it corresponds to the difficulties these countries are meeting in their transition to the market system. In any case, the lack of a market-based economy and general economic, political and social crises hinder those foreign agents who may wish to invest in former CMEA economies.One of the major problems is represented by the lack of previous experience of private investments in Eastern European countries which initially led to considerable bureaucratic hindrances to foreign free enterprise. Secondly, there is the question of currency convertibility that some countries have yet to completely resolve. As a consequence, real capital participation by all partners is difficult to evaluate, relations with local firms and banks are unduly complex and the full repatriation of profits often problematic.Thirdly, investors may be concerned by a set of questions such as supply, investment safety, scarce and obsolete equipment, outdated technology or low-quality products. For these reasons it is almost impossible to purchase goods in the local market and cooperate with local concerns. Lastly, other drawbacks such as inefficient transport and telecommunications make the life of a joint enterprise extremely difficult.Without doubt, the question that most concerns foreign investors is that of the safety of investments made in areas of great economic and political instability. Several inter-governmental agreements, now being drafted, aim to address just such issues by securing adequate protection for foreign investments.     

Delegation of Authority In Business Organizations: An Empirical Test

This paper tests the predictions of economic theory on the determinants of the allocation of decision-making power through the estimates of ordered probit models with random effects. Our findings show that the complexity of plants' operations and organization, the characteristics of the communication technologies in use, the ownership status of plants and the product mix of their parent companies figure prominently in explaining whether authority is delegated to the plant manager or not. In addition, the nature of the decision under consideration turns out to affect the allocation of authority.     

Vaporware as a Means of Entry Deterrence

Firms in the computer industry are often accused of vaporware, the untruthful pre-announcement of a new version of their product. By claiming they have a new product, critics argue, these firms try to deter potential entrants. The paper analyzes this phenomenon. It shows that vaporware is an equilibrium strategy in a signaling game in which the possibility to market a new product is private information. In this model, the possibility of vaporware can hurt consumers, also in the case the incumbent does have a new version of its product. The welfare effects of vaporware are ambiguous.     

Priors from General Equilibrium Models for VARS*

This article uses a simple New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model as a prior for a vector autoregression, and shows that the resulting model is competitive with standard benchmarks in terms of forecasting, and can be used for policy analysis.     

Risk aversion and risk loving in the small: a decomposition of the multivariate risk premium

This note proposes a decomposition of the familiar scalar multivariate risk premium into components which can be easily interpreted in the context of consumer theory. The premium under consideration is the standard one used to ascertain the impact of price and income risk on consumer welfare. This proposed premium decomposition allows for a more intuitive identification of the detrimental and beneficial effects that arise from income and price risk. As an illustrative example, this decomposition is used to ascertain the welfare effects arising from the price fluctuations experienced by UK households over the period 1963–97.     

基于PKPM对多伸缩缝结构的建模方法的研究

本文主要对多伸缩缝结构在利用PKPM系列软件进行结构建模计算时的各种方法进行阐述,包含对整个工程模型一次性全部输入的整体建模和按照伸缩缝把结构模型分开输入的分开建模。并通过一个工程实例对两种建模方法的计算结果和配筋信息进行对比,发现并不相同,整体建模计算时的配筋结果比分开建模计算时要大一些。通过对比分析两种不同的计算方法得到的结果和配筋信息,发现分开建模是更准确的建模方法。本文的研究为设计人员计算多伸缩缝结构时提供一个参考。     

国内外风电发展现状

在各类新能源中,风力发电技术相对成熟、最具大规模商业开发条件、成本相对较低,具有巨大的优越性,受到各国的普遍重视,目前风力发电已经发展成为一个成熟的产业,我国将成为未来全球风电市场的中心。文章通过对国内外风电发展现状进行研究,为风电产业的战略制定提供一点有益的参考。     

Clusters and rivalry: does localization really matter?

This exploratory study addresses the link between rivalry—which we regard as a cognitive social dimension of competition— and localization. We adopt a visual-mapping technique to collect data on firms belonging to the packaging-machinery geographical cluster in Northern Italy.We can summarize our results as follows. Entrepreneurs identifying rivals within the cluster also tend to cite a larger number of rivals altogether. A firm's proximity to its rivals is a key to a deeper comparison with them. Geographical distance represents a tool for scanning the competitive environment; it is not used as a criterion by which to classify rivalry. From these results, we generate a few propositions that shed a new light on the relationship between rivalry and localization.     

Understanding China's move into Africa: an empirical analysis

An important new issue on the international scene is the upsurge in market and non-market South–South relations. The aim of this paper is to understand the dynamics that lie behind the recent Chinese move into Africa by empirically exploring the determinants of Sino-African relationships. In order to have a comprehensive picture, the analysis takes into consideration the main channels of commercial and political interactions: outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), trade and aid (international economic cooperation). The empirical analysis utilises a panel data set, from 1998 to 2005, for 43 African countries. The econometric estimates for three simultaneous equations are based on an instrumental variables method. Results show that the Chinese move into Africa is driven by strategic interaction among the three channels (FDI, trade and economic cooperation) as well as by pull factors, i.e. the characteristics of the receiving countries in terms of natural resource endowments and their market potential.