Retraction Note: Analyzing of innovations influence on economic growth by fuzzy system

Quality & Quantity - The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article (Mladenovi? et al. 2017) because validity of the content of this article cannot be verified. This article showed...     

Reconceptualizing Informal Work Practices: Some Observations from an Ethnic Minority Community in Urban UK

Whilst paid informal work has been conceptualized as a form of paid employment imbued with solely economic motivations, this article critically argues that such a market‐­oriented reading fails to take into account alternative explanations for the existence of informal work practices. Using evidence from 50 interviews conducted within a Pakistani urban community in a northern UK city, this article, uses a mixed‐embeddedness perspective to highlight the importance of predominantly socially and culturally driven motives in the decision to engage in informal work. The findings highlight that participation in informal work, whilst a product of marginalization due to certain institutional and structural factors, is also driven by a range of non‐monetary motives—a result of certain socially embedded work relations between ethnic minority workers and their employers. It is this social embeddedness of the employer–employee relationship in the Pakistani ethnic minority community that explains the continuation of informal work practices in the face of prevailing laws and regulations. The findings add weight to the understanding of informal work as being about more than just economics and constraints, offering these ethnic minority workers opportunities, even status, and giving them agency in an otherwise disempowered situation.     

Chinese Farmers in the Russian Far East and Local Rural Development

The Russian Far East (RFE) is still a backward region of Russia. Per capita agricultural output is lower than the national average. Chinese agricultural entrepreneurs are farming in the region. The business environment is challenging for both Chinese and Russians. We analyze possible ways for agriculture to develop in the RFE with Chinese agricultural entrepreneurs as the main agents of development. We discuss the investment environment in the RFE, the role and impact of Chinese agricultural entrepreneurs, their ability to assist in rural development, and the challenges they face. We examine the current state of agriculture in the RFE, the experience of Chinese and Russian farmers, and the impact of Chinese farmers on Russian farmers. Agriculture can improve in the RFE with better communication and better coordination mechanisms among governments and with more training to help businesses understand existing policies and regulations.     

Earnings management around founder CEO reappointments and successions in family firms

This paper studies reappointment of a chief executive officer (CEO) and succession events in listed family firms with an incumbent family CEO. We explore whether family firms with a founder CEO are more likely to engage in earnings management preevent than other family firms. We find evidence of preevent upward earnings management for firms that reappoint their founder CEO but no for other family firms. These findings suggest that the costs and benefits from earnings management change around founder CEO reappointments in family firms. Investors, auditors, policymakers and regulators should be aware of the temptation of founder CEOs to inflate earnings preceding their reappointment.     

Three Primary Trust Pathways Underlying Ethical Considerations

The role of trust pathways in achieving a competitive advantage is becoming increasingly important for effective ethical consideration policies in all business and non-business sectors. This paper argues that there are three primary trust pathways of rational choice, rule-based trust, and category-based trust that underscore the basis of trust relationships. The implementation of these primary trust pathways is strongly influenced by expertise level, incomplete information, rapidly shifting environments, and/or time-pressure. The refinement of the interaction of information exchange and framing of problems can produce three secondary higher-level trust pathways of third party-based trust, role-based trust, and knowledge-based trust. These six different trust pathways that guide ethical consideration issues are discussed with a Throughput Modeling theoretical approach.     

有效发挥跨国企业绩效的文化衔接

来自文化差异的挑战 太多的合并、收购以及合资经营没有达到预期目标.做出"联姻"决策的两家企业往往出于深思熟虑的战略动机,双方希望建立起便于共同实施管理的共享愿景和方式.在尽职调查阶段,各方面的专家会指出存在的问题或潜在的风险,尽管有关决策是在深入调查的基础上做出的,但仍免不了失败的可能.     

Seasonal and stochastic effects in commodity forward curves

In this paper we develop a new model for the dynamics of forward curves of commodities exhibiting seasonalities, such as natural gas, electricity or agricultural commodities. In the existing literature on the subject, the first state variable in multi-factor models is the commodity price, which combines seasonal and stochastic features and may be unobservable. We propose to use instead the average forward price, which is devoid of seasonality and conveys a more robust representation of the current forward curve level. The second factor in the model is a quantity analogous to the stochastic convenience yield, which accounts for the random changes in the forward curve shape. The well-known cost-of-carry relationship is significantly improved by introducing a deterministic seasonal premium within the convenience yield. We develop model estimation procedures and apply them to a number of energy markets.     

Population,employment and poverty in the Philippines

This paper briefly describes a medium- to long-term dynamic simulation model of economic-demographic interrelationships in a developing country that was developed by researchers in the International Labour Office. The model, applied to the Philippines, is illustrated by providing some examples of the effects of policy changes (e.g. migration policies, nationalization, public works, education policies, etc.), in the model on population growth, poverty, employment, and other aspects of Philippine development. The central thesis of the work is that economic-demographic inter-relationships are complex, and must therefore be modelled in some detail before meaningful statements on the effects of demographic change on economic development can be made.