International Terrorism: Causes,Consequences and Cures

A popular view is that international terrorism is on the increase, that it is religiously motivated and that it has important adverse consequences. This paper investigates this view. It examines the empirical evidence on the causes of international terrorism from the late 1960s to the early 2000s and discovers that, while religion has had a part to play, explanations based on economics and politics appear to be consistent with the facts. Terrorists come from relatively poor and undemocratic countries and commit attacks in relatively rich and democratic ones. The paper then examines the micro, macro and global economic effects of international terrorism from both a theoretical and empirical angle, and discovers that the negative effect on domestic aggregate demand is temporary and the effect on aggregate supply insignificant. Finally, the paper explores policies to deal with international terrorism and demonstrates that this is complex. Analogies with conventional crime may be unhelpful.     

Online R&D management: the way forward

The development of an intranet system in BT delivered far greater savings in 1996 than was originally estimated. BT decided to look at the advantages of online R&D management processes. Various features of the evolving system are described, including the proposal submission system or project requirements document, and tools and techniques to manage a global virtual laboratory.     

GROWTH,AUTONOMOUS DEMAND AND A JOINT‐PRODUCT TREATMENT OF FIXED CAPITAL

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the idea of demand‐led growth by exploring the relation between growth and autonomous demands in a two‐sector model that includes fixed capital with variable efficiency. The paper considers disequilibrium only in relation to quantities, with prices set at their long‐period levels. Results of computer simulations suggest that where producers' expectations of future growth allow for dispersion in past growth rates, as well future growth in autonomous demand, this may have a significant stabilizing effect on the dynamics of output and demand.     

Rainfall variability in tropical Africa: Some implications for policy

Rain is the basic ingredient for the existence of Africa and its people. This article introduces the ‘baseline’ rainfall climatology of Africa and looks at examples of fluctuations in the last 50 years. The author then puts forward some suggestions on the implications of such variability for planning and policy making.     

The political economy of participation in IMF programs: a disaggregated empirical analysis

What factors determine whether or not countries have programs with the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? The existing literature suggests that a number of economic and political variables are important, but there is disagreement about their relative significance. Moreover, the fit of general participation models is not particularly good. An increasingly popular view in the recent literature is that the pattern of IMF lending is politically driven and that it reflects the interests of the Fund’s leading shareholders; the US is seen as exerting a powerful influence. Using both quantitative and qualitative techniques, and based on an informal analytical framework, we examine in detail the factors that may be at work. We cover the period from 1984 to 2008. We discover considerable variation across the nature of programs (concessional and non-concessional), income levels, geographic regions, and time periods. The degree of observed variation means that it is unsafe to use one general participation model as the basis for evaluating the effects of IMF programs. It also means that the design of policy needs to reflect the nuances that the data reveal.     

Non-Governmental Organizations, Shareholder Activism, and Socially Responsible Investments: Ethical, Strategic, and Governance Implications

In this article, we document the growing influence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the realm of socially responsible investing (SRI). Drawing from ethical and economic perspectives on stakeholder management and agency theory, we develop a framework to understand how and when NGOs will be most influential in shaping the ethical and social responsibility orientations of business using the emergence of SRI as the primary influencing vehicle. We find that NGOs have opportunities to influence corporate conduct via direct, indirect, and interactive influences on the investment community, and that the overall influence of NGOs as major actors in socially responsible investment is growing, with attendant consequences for corporate strategy, governance, and social performance.     

Ethical Orientation and Awareness of Tourism Students

The tourism industry is one of the largest industries in the world, and despite recent events that have made its operating environment more complex, the industry continues to grow [Theobald, 2005, Global Tourism, 3rd edn., Butterworth-Heinemann/Elsevier]. Commensurate to the size of the industry is a growth in the number of students pursuing degree courses in tourism around the world. Despite an increasingly sophisticated literature, the relative recency of the industry and its study has meant little attention has been paid in the ethics literature to the dilemmas facing tourism managers and its students. Based on interviews with senior members of the tourism industry six scenarios are developed with pertinence to the challenges faced by industry practitioners today. This paper then applies the Multidimensional Ethics Scale [Reidenbach and Robin, 1990, Journal of Business Ethics, 9, 639–653] to tourism students at three prominent universities in the U.K., Canada and Australia. In total, 438 responses are achieved. The results have importance for the instruction of tourism students for the future, but also in informing decisions about the tools tourism destinations can effectively employ to control the future direction of the industry     

The ethical benefits of trust-based partnering: the example of the construction industry

As inter-organisational relations represent an increasingly important element in business the ability to build sustainable relationships becomes a key skill. To achieve sustainable relationships parties need to move from a low trust/low ethics base to a high trust/high ethics base in their relating. This paper uses data from a study into trust-based partnering in the construction industry to demonstrate that ethics is integral to trust building. The data supports the proposition that ethical partnering, which is characterised by reliability, delivery of promises, open and honest communications, respect and reciprocity, and a willingness to act reasonably towards each other, is the most effective model for parties seeking to build sustainable relationships.     

Agrarian movements and rural populism in Indonesia

In this article, we reflect on the changing trajectories of agrarian movements in Indonesia. In the two decades after independence, a left-populist alliance of peasants, plantation workers, and other affiliate organizations achieved a mass following and were embraced by President Sukarno. In the aftermath of their violent destruction, the Suharto regime reordered agrarian movements into a single corporatist model. Suharto's downfall opened the way for the re-emergence of agrarian organizations and movements. But two decades later, they remain small and fragmented, with little influence at the national level. In the changing conditions of rural life, and the increasingly authoritarian political context, progressive rural movements face dilemmas on questions both of their focus and goals and of tactical alliances with other progressive movements and political elites. A broader, more inclusive progressive populist alliance is a possibility, but with the continuing danger of co-optation by forces of the populist right.     

Evaluation of medical costs associated with use of new oral anticoagulants compared with standard therapy among venous thromboembolism patients

Objective:

This study evaluated differences in medical costs associated with clinical end-points from randomized clinical trials that compared the new oral anticoagulants (NOACs), dabigatran, rivaroxaban, apixaban, and edoxaban, to standard therapy for treatment of patients with venous thromboembolism (VTE).

Research design and methods:

Event rates of efficacy and safety end-points from the clinical trials (RE-COVER, RE-COVER II, EINSTEIN-Pooled, AMPLIFY, Hokusai-VTE trial) were obtained from published literature. Incremental annual medical costs among patients with clinical events from a US payer perspective were obtained from the literature or healthcare claims databases and inflation adjusted to 2013 costs. Differences in total medical costs associated with clinical end-points for the NOACs vs standard therapy were then estimated. One-way and Monte Carlo sensitivity analyses were carried out.

Results:

A lower rate of major bleedings was associated with use of any of the NOACs vs standard therapy. Except for dabigatran, use of NOACs was also associated with a lower rate of recurrent VTE/death. As a result of the reduction in clinical event rates, the overall medical cost differences were ?$146, ?$482, ?$918, and ?$344 for VTE patients treated with dabigatran, rivaroxaban, apixaban, and edoxaban, respectively, vs patients treated with standard therapy.

Conclusions:

When any of the four NOACs are used instead of standard therapy for acute VTE, treatment medical costs are reduced. Apixaban is associated with the greatest reduction in medical costs, which is driven by medical cost reductions associated with both efficacy and safety end-points. Further evaluation may be needed to validate these results in the real-world setting.