Adaptive Economic Models

The growth literature has identified four channels of transmission by which the abundance of natural resources can negatively affect economic growth. In this article, I suggest ideology as a fifth transmission channel. To test this hypothesis, I exploit the geography of Bolivia whose western regions have natural resources that differ considerably from its eastern regions. I find that regions with predominantly extractive natural resources tend to choose redistributive and interventionist rather than laissez-faire policies. Additionally, I identify two effects on growth depending upon the type of natural resource that a region possesses in abundance.     

Institutionalism and the New Classical Economics

Neoliberalism has transformed markets supplying public goods. Analysis of five real-world Australian markets reveals the eligibility rules for access and ongoing participation, interaction of participants, the role of intermediaries and government, the extent of competition, complex regulatory regimes shaping and controlling these markets, and key market outcomes. Contrary to neoliberalism's free market rhetoric and the view promulgated by mainstream economics, a spectrum of market configurations and governance regimes were found along with participation being highly dependent on technology access and skills, market outcomes inconsistent with policy rhetoric, market interrelationships posing adverse cumulative impacts, and government is strongly interventionist through multiple roles.     

Business models and their relationship with marketing: A systematic literature review

The purpose of this paper is to identify the degree to which the marketing discipline has hitherto engaged with business model literature. The results of a systematic review of business model literature are presented and utilise both the citation counts and the h-index to objectively demonstrate the limited engagement that the marketing discipline has had with business model literature, and the limited degree that the discipline has influenced that literature. The key findings reveal a growing, but formative body of literature that, hitherto, has been dominated by non-marketing disciplines and which has only just begun to be addressed by present day marketing scholars. Using the most influential articles identified in the analysis, the paper concludes with a case for the empirical development of the business model concept with industrial marketing scholarship. Such development is argued to be grounded in the potential of open business models, co-created with multiple stakeholders in a supply chain and the end users of a value proposition.     

Issues in Macroeconomics

This is a study of the nature of internal diversity within liberal and collaborative market economies. Based on large scale comparative survey data, we assess the extent to which specific clusters of practices are associated with specific varieties of capitalism. Given that recent literature has pointed to internal diversity within specific national contexts, we explore the nature of internal diversity within both liberal and collaborative market economies, and what makes each variety of capitalism distinct. We find that more than one cluster of practices is indeed likely to be encountered in a particular national context, but that this diversity was bounded: only a limited number of alternative paradigms are likely to emerge and persist. The survey findings not only shed light on the nature of this internal diversity, but also reveal the fact that liberal and collaborative markets remain distinct, with the rights accruing to employees being more deeply embedded in a wide cross section of firms within the latter.     

Real-time forecasts of economic activity for Latin American economies

Macroeconomic policy decisions in real-time are based on the assessment of current and future economic conditions. Crucially, these assessments are made difficult by the presence of incomplete and noisy data. The problem is more acute for emerging market economies, where most economic data are released infrequently with a (sometimes substantial) lag. This paper evaluates nowcasts and forecasts of real GDP growth using five models for ten Latin American countries. The results indicate the flow of monthly data helps to improve forecast accuracy, and the dynamic factor model consistently produces more accurate nowcasts and forecasts relative to other model specifications, across most of the countries we consider.     

Risk-neutral compatibility with option prices

A common problem is to choose a “risk-neutral” measure in an incomplete market in asset pricing models. We show in this paper that in some circumstances it is possible to choose a unique “equivalent local martingale measure” by completing the market with option prices. We do this by modeling the behavior of the stock price X, together with the behavior of the option prices for a relevant family of options which are (or can theoretically be) effectively traded. In doing so, we need to ensure a kind of “compatibility” between X and the prices of our options, and this poses some significant mathematical difficulties.     

Development Regimes in the City Fringe: The Case of Discover Islington,London

There is a growing recognition of the importance of inter-organisational collaborations, or partnerships, for tourism development at various geographical and sectoral levels. Academic studies of the phenomenon are, in part, a reflection of the increasing number and forms of partnership arrangements being established in a range of settings to develop tourism. This paper examines a particular case of inter-organisational collaboration for local tourism development for the London inner city fringe. Established in 1991, Discover Islington provides an illustration of an agency involving representation from diverse stakeholders with an interest in tourism within a single administrative district. The agency has been innovative in its approach to local tourism development in the inner city fringe, but it is confronted by issues that may affect its longer-term viability. The perspectives and experiences of the partners represented on the Board of Discover Islington are pertinent to the study of comparable collaborative arrangements for local tourism development in other urban fringe contexts. The analysis is based on interviews with Board members and their policy and strategy documents within a theoretical framework that draws on regime theory. Implications for other inner city fringe tourism development partnerships are offered in the conclusion of this paper.     

Managerial Selection Decisions in Multinational Corporations: Teaching International Business Using Problem-Based Learning

Companies face many challenges as they staff managerial positions in overseas operations, including decisions on whether to staff using expatriates, host-country nationals, or third-country nationals. We developed an exercise—designed to help students understand the differences between these three groups of employees—that requires students to develop a set of criteria that would form the basis for choosing the candidate they deem to be the best one. In addition, the exercise can serve as a springboard to discussion of the different training and compensation requirements for each of the three different types of employee. The steps involved in the exercise are presented together with suggestions for debriefing the exercise.     

Information-based trade

We study the possibility of trade for purely informational reasons. We depart from previous analyses (e.g. Grossman and Stiglitz (1980) [22] and Milgrom and Stokey (1982) [32]) by allowing the final payoff of the asset being traded to depend on an action taken by its eventual owner. We characterize conditions under which equilibria with trade exist.