Innovation and competitiveness: a review

Increasing interest has been shown by governments in maintaining the competitiveness of their economies by the use of policies designed to encourage advances in science and technohgy, and the adoption of new tachniques by industry. This paper is the result of a literature review and a sumvey of researchers on the concepts of innovation and competitiveness, the relationships between them and the efficiency ofpolicies to promote them. Those policies an considered in the context of alternative economic perspectives, as is the (rather limited) empirical euidence available. Conclusions are drawn on the current stab of the art of innovation policy research.     

An analysis of management buy-out failure

Management but-outs are an important aspect of corporate restructuring. In order to understand their longer-term impact there is a need to examine their effects in recessionary conditions. In this context, the paper analyses the factors which lead to management buy-out failure using both financial and non-financial information. The evidence is consistent with the view that some mechanisms introduced to deal with agency cost problems, particularly management incentives and undertaking restructuring activity in a timely fashion are associated with a lower probability of failure. Excessive leverage and delays in restructuring are associated with a higher probability of failure.     

PURCHASING AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT: INTERACTIONS,POLICIES AND OPPORTUNITIES

The mechanisms are examined by which environmentally informed business practices and technologies may diffuse through industry as a result of the ‘greening’ of purchasing and supply. The efforts of official bodies in the UK to raise environmental awareness among industrial purchasers are reviewed. It is then argued that the supply chain model is an important way of interpreting the industrial landscape from a green perspective and that it is in some ways a more hopeful and positive starting point for achieving industrial transformation. The results of an analysis of some UK companies practices in using their purchasing policies to ‘green’ their supply chains are presented and opportunities for further research indicated.     

Human resources in Vietnam: The global challenge

This article takes a critical look at the management of people in Vietnam. It examines the prevailing business environment and the reform process and their implications for skill formation and the development of managerial expertise. The analysis then proceeds to examine on a thematic basis some specific human resource practices in four firms based in Hanoi—two state‐owned enterprises and two multinationals. The article analyzes the traditional and emergent human resource practices showing how they reflect industrial and historical‐cultural contextual factors. The discussion also considers the suitability and adequacy of these practices while locating them within the international human resource management debate. This article thus contributes to the critique of global human resource management by exploring the relevance of mainstream human resource theory and practice to the Vietnamese case, especially given the increasing role of multinational firms in the Vietnamese economy. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Quality variations and the choice between foreign and indigenous goods or technology

In this paper, different production techniques are distinguished by both their resource requirements and the quality of their outputs. The optimal choice of production methods depends upon demand conditions, as well as the economy's capital-labor endowment and the technical characteristics of the alternatives. When product quality improvement is possible through the adoption of a foreign, advanced, capital-intensive technique, at most two techniques should be employed and the more closely matched are the capital-labor requirement of the advanced method and the aggregate capital-labor ratio, the greater the extent of adoption. The presence of a competing quality-improving activity using the indigenous technology reduces the range of aggregate capital-labor endowments for which the advanced technique should be employed. We consider quality inspection of units which reduces the amount of tradable output produced by given inputs as its market value increases. Economies of scale, in that the per unit cost of a given quality improvement falls with increasing sectoral output, are included.     

Rosemary Feurer. Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950

For more than a decade, workers in the Midwest electrical manufacturingindustry, as well as many other blue-collar workers in the Americanheartland, rallied around an openly Communist union organizerwho promised to deliver an alternative vision of democracy andeconomic development. William Sentner's ability to thrive inwhat one would expect to be a hostile environment for Leftistsrested on a community-based organizing strategy attuned moreto local conditions than national or international events. Thisstory, Rosemary Feurer suggests, holds     

Advertising and male nudity: An experimental investigation

This study examines the predictive capability of Peterson and Kerin's product/model congruency hypothesis when extended to the use of male models. The results indicate that too little male nudity and too much male nudity operate against the liking and belief of an ad. This is some-what consistent with the product/model congruency hypothesis but however, is not predictable. The authors conclude that the use of male nudity in advertising is a practice which requires further investigation before any consistent generalizations can be made.     

A Closer Look at Barrier Exchange Options

A barrier exchange option is an exchange option that is knocked out the first time the prices of two underlying assets become equal. Lindset, S., & Persson, S.‐A. (2006) present a simple dynamic replication argument to show that, in the absence of arbitrage, the current value of the barrier exchange option is equal to the difference in the current prices of the underlying assets and that this pricing formula applies irrespective of whether the option is European or American. In this study, we take a closer look at barrier exchange options and show, despite the simplicity of the pricing formula presented by Lindset, S., & Persson, S.‐A. (2006), that the barrier exchange option in fact involves a surprising array of key concepts associated with the pricing of derivative securities including: put–call parity, barrier in–out parity, static vs. dynamic replication, martingale pricing, continuous vs. discontinuous price processes, and numeraires. We provide valuable intuition behind the pricing formula which explains its apparent simplicity. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 33:29–43, 2013     

Transplants and Implants: The Economics of Self‐Improvement

This article examines equilibrium self‐improvement and marriage proposal strategies in a two‐sided search model with nontransferable utility. Singles are vertically differentiated—some make better marriage partners than others. A complete characterization of equilibrium is provided. It is shown there are two externalities to self‐improvement decisions. Further, these externalities may support multiple Pareto rankable equilibria. By encouraging everybody to self‐improve, society can create a situation where everybody is forced to improve to remain “acceptable.” But a preferred equilibrium may exist where there is less (costly) self‐improvement.