Measuring the growth potential of towns in the Western Cape,South Africa

Urban settlements in the Western Cape sustain regional development and are vital to the national spatial economy, but because not all contribute or participate equally they do not grow at the same rate – some flourish while others decline. The Provincial Administration of the Western Cape therefore commissioned a study to evaluate and monitor their functions and performance. This paper assesses the study's methodology and procedures. It describes the variables used and explains how the raw data were transformed into comparative indices and combined into a single composite development potential index. It evaluates the sub-indices and the composite index by mapping the results and uses multivariate statistical techniques to explore the logic and validity of the results. It confirms that the indices created for measuring urban growth potential were well chosen and constructed, laying a sound theoretical and methodological base for future decisions about public investment in rural towns.     

Embracing the foreign: Cultural attractiveness and international strategy

Research summary : Prior research focused on cultural differences and their impact on foreign direct investment (FDI), neglecting other potentially relevant variables attesting to the cultural interaction between a multinational enterprise and its host environment. In this article, we draw on interpersonal attraction research to develop a positive approach to cross‐cultural interaction with the cultural attractiveness (CA) construct, whereby members of a focal culture view another culture as desirable. We create a CA measure and establish its predictive validity with country reputation data. Using FDI data for 41 nations from 1985 to 2012 and performance data for 8,519 cross‐border acquisitions (CBA) for 40 nations from 1990 to 2009, we find that CA is a predictor of FDI inflows and CBA outcomes, whose explanatory power is superior to cultural difference measures. Managerial summary : Practitioners have traditionally emphasized potential difficulties of cross‐cultural interaction when dealing with culturally distant countries. In contrast, our study addresses the positive aspects of cultural differences and suggests that a lot can be gained from dealing with attractive cultures, even when they are different. This insight can be helpful, for example, in contemplating/managing international M&As. Managers of acquiring/merging firms can use our approach to identify whether their employees find the partner's culture desirable, and if they do, proceed with the takeover and then adopt the partner's organizational routines during post‐merger integration. This approach can help avoid conflicts, improve performance of home country expatriates, and ultimately, create value for acquiring firms. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Rationality Behind Immigration Policy Preferences

Summary What drives stated policy preferences about the number of foreigners? Is it self-interest, as stressed by the political economy of immigration? Does social interaction affect this preference, or is the immigration policy preference completely in line with the preference for the aggregate population size? In this paper we distinguish each of these categories and show, for the case of the Netherlands, that each of these elements applies, although the effect of population size preference and self-interest are the most important elements. There is a clear divide across educational levels, as the less educated are more strongly opposed to immigration than the highly educated: the less educated are more likely to think there are too many foreigners. Experience with foreigners arising from social contact matters in positively appreciating immigrants, especially if people meet non-Western foreigners at work and school. Contact with foreigners while going out decreases peoples preference for immigrants. The ethnic concentration of the neighbourhood in which people live does not exert a noticeable effect on the evaluation of the number of foreigners present. The biggest effect on immigration policy preferences is, however, the aggregate population size preference of respondents.JEL classification F22, J15, J61Comments by Frans Willekens, Aat Liefbroer, and two anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged.     

Being pro-environmentally oriented SMEs: Understanding the entrepreneur's explicit and implicit power motives

The increased number of environmental problems caused by business activities put higher pressures on entrepreneurs to implement pro-environmental policies within their businesses. However, studies show that SMEs are less engaged with sustainable and pro-environmental policies. Hence, it is important to understand the barriers and drivers of implementing a pro-environmental strategy in SMEs from an entrepreneur's perspective. In a study with Indonesian SME owners, we find that environmental sustainability orientation (ESO) is driven by an entrepreneur's explicit and implicit power motives. Using polynomial regression with surface analysis, we also reveal that a high level of SME's ESO is affected by power motive discrepancy. We discuss implementations for policymakers, entrepreneurs, and educational programs in entrepreneurship.     

Corporate Tax Consolidation and Enhanced Cooperation in the European Union*

We assess the economic impact of introducing consolidation with formula apportionment in the European Union and consider alternative enhanced cooperation agreements. We find that the consolidation is likely to yield a small aggregate welfare gain in Europe. However, not all countries benefit. A coalition of winning countries reduces the welfare gain and may induce a process of adverse selection which destroys the possibility of cooperation. We find that a coalition of similar countries (in terms of the size of their multinational sector) is more feasible in achieving agreement and is actually preferred by those countries over a Europe‐wide reform.     

Are Labour Provisions in Free Trade Agreements Improving Labour Conditions?

Open Economies Review - This paper investigates the impact of labour provisions in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on labour market conditions in the ratifying countries. Using panel data for up to 96...     

Broke,Ill, and Obese: Is There an Effect of Household Debt on Health?

We analyze the association between household indebtedness and different health outcomes using data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel from 1999 to 2009. We control for unobserved heterogeneity by applying fixed‐effects methods and furthermore use a subsample of constantly employed individuals plus lagged debt variables to reduce problems of reverse causality. We apply different measures of household indebtedness, such as the percentage shares of household income spent on consumer credit and home loan repayments (which indicate the severity of household indebtedness) and a binary variable of relative overindebtedness (which indicates a precarious debt situation). We find all debt measures to be strongly correlated with health satisfaction, mental health, and obesity. This relationship vanishes for obesity after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity while it stays significant with respect to worse physical and mental health.