The external wealth of nations mark II: Revised and extended estimates of foreign assets and liabilities, 1970-2004

We construct estimates of external assets and liabilities for 145 countries for 1970-2004. We describe our estimation methods and key features of the data at the country and global level. We focus on trends in net and gross external positions, and the composition of international portfolios. We document the increasing importance of equity financing and the improvement in the external position for emerging markets, and the differing pace of financial integration between advanced and developing economies. We also show the existence of a global discrepancy between estimated foreign assets and liabilities, and identify the asset categories accounting for this discrepancy.     

Entrepreneurial types and economic growth

Most literature on economic growth focuses on expenditure in research and development (R&D) because of its ability to produce technological change. Models based on this principle, however, fail to account for the exceptional growth exhibited in recent year by country such as China where R&D expenditure is virtually non-existing and for the lack of growth observed in countries such as Japan where R&D expenditure is significant. We propose a model in which entrepreneurs may be research-based (those incurring R&D expenditure) or imitators (those not incurring R&D expenditure) and show that, when the returns to R&D expenditure are low, such as in many emerging economies, the presence of a high number of imitative entrepreneurs who increase competition and product supply is sufficient to generate economic growth regardless of the distribution of activity between research-based and imitative and in spite of low R&D expenditure.     

Consumer acceptance of quick-cooking rice as food for use in a disaster

The consumer acceptability of a Philippine cultivar quick-cooking rice (QCR) as food for use in a disaster was studied. Test feeding in an evacuation centre involved random selection of 50 young adults and adult evacuees, rehydration of QCR and distribution of test rice samples for sensory evaluation test. The sensory evaluation results showed that more than 90% of the evacuee participants found the colour, texture, taste and overall qualities of the rehydrated QCR to be acceptable. Eighty per cent of the participants described the rehydrated rice to be adequately soft and neither undercooked nor overcooked. The test QCR samples were described by the community kitchen personnel of the evacuation centre as easy to prepare, requiring minimum cooking time and exhibiting homogeneity in doneness when cooked.     

Crafting customer insight: What we can learn from the revival of the vinyl record

The recent resurgence of the vinyl record and the proliferation of so-called craft and artisanal products offer unique opportunities to observe ongoing shifts in the contemporary consumer’s values and attitudes. In this article, we explore such thought-provoking market developments and their implications by contrasting them with the conventional understanding of markets and consumers. This understanding can lead to marketing myopia as it works from the utility-oriented assumption that what ultimately matters for both the company and the customer is cost efficiency and convenience. Against this backdrop, in this article, we discuss how market developments representing the contemporary consumer’s mindset prove valuable in creating customer insight that highlights aspects often obscured by an exaggerated focus on cost efficiency and convenience. We provide an alternative approach to evaluating markets and consumers that encourages companies to build their customer-centric market strategies around questions of context, authenticity, story, and resonance. This will help them narrow the gap between their market offerings and the actual wants and needs of their customer, and consequently allow them to revitalize their market.     

The Importance of gender Across Cultures in Ethical Decision-making

Business ethics attracts increasing attention from business practitioners and academic researchers. Concerns over fraudulent behavior keep attentionfocused on ethics in businesses. The accounting profession pays particularattention to matters of ethical judgment. The profession has adopted a strictcode of conduct and many states require the passage of an ethics exam to gaincertification. The more that is understood about the relationship of gender and ethics, the better chance of education and training programs will bedesigned to improve ethical awareness and sensitivity. Prior studies have found that personal characteristics are an important aspect of cultural norms.This study analyzes the responses of students from eight different countries toquestions on their probable actions to an ethical dilemma.     

“One of these days,things are going to change!” How do you make sense of market disruption?

The significance of mindsets is apparent in everyday business life. As today’s managers and companies face uncertainty and disruptive change in the business environment and markets, there is a growing need to understand and strategically address such change. This becomes challenging when disruptive market forces confront the institutional logic or rules of the game based on collectively acquired experience of doing business in the given field. In overcoming such challenges, managers’ hidden reasoning remains an untapped potential while their existing mindset influences what they attend to and what they decide to do. This article elaborates a diagnostic framework, accompanied by a tool to help managers make sense of disruptive markets and reflect individually and collectively on possible courses of action. The framework has two principal dimensions—strategic scope and focus—that are further divided into three business elements of strategic market-oriented management: offering, customer, and market. The tool offers a practical means of profiling individuals’ mindsets. In increasingly dynamic business environments, reflection capabilities represent a new source of competitive advantage.     

Do interest groups affect US immigration policy?

While anecdotal evidence suggests that interest groups play a key role in shaping immigration policy, there is no systematic empirical analysis of this issue. In this paper, we construct an industry-level dataset for the United States, by combining information on the number of temporary work visas with data on lobbying activity associated with immigration. We find robust evidence that both pro- and anti-immigration interest groups play a statistically significant and economically relevant role in shaping migration policy across sectors. Barriers to migration are lower in sectors in which business interest groups incur larger lobbying expenditures and higher in sectors where labor unions are more important.