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.     

The impact of culture on HRM styles and firm performance: evidence from Japanese parents,Japanese subsidiaries/joint ventures and South Asian local companies

This paper investigates national and organizational cultural influences among managers in three types of companies: Japanese companies in Japan, South Asian domestic companies and Japanese subsidiaries/joint ventures in South Asia. The findings suggest that a Japanese parent company's culture tends to have a much stronger influence with Japanese companies operating in Japan. Japanese parent company culture tends to have less influence than the South Asian national culture in shaping the HRM styles and practices in Japanese subsidiaries/joint ventures operating in South Asia. While some South Asian firms are in the initial stages of learning about participative HRM from foreign companies, most still tend to maintain their national culture and traditional ways in the operating systems of their organizations.     

Fiscal Decentralization and Poverty Alleviation in a Transitional Economy: The Case of Viet Nam

Intergovernmental fiscal arrangements may play an important role in ameliorating poverty in many countries. Successful poverty alleviation generally requires both ‘capacity improving’ and ‘safety net’ policies, and both types of policies may, to some extent, be implemented through, or affected by, intergovernmental transfers. From this perspective, we analyse the efficacy of intergovernmental fiscal arrangements in poverty alleviation in a transitional economy, Viet Nam. We argue that both general and specific transfers are needed for this purpose: the former to enable all provinces to provide a given basket of public services at a given tax-price by offsetting their revenue and cost disabilities and the latter to ensure that minimum levels of those public services provided by lower levels of government are targeted to the poor throughout the country.     

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.     

THE WEALTH EFFECTS OF INCOME INSURANCE

Precautionary savings models suggest that wealth should rise with income risk. Risk is reduced by means-tested transfers, however, which implies that transfer programs should discourage private wealth accumulation. We offer a comprehensive empirical assessment based on variation across states in the generosity of a number of programs, specifically unemployment insurance and means-tested transfers (Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Food Stamps). We use monthly data on married couples from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to regress wealth on income, income risk, and various measures of transfer generosity. The results support the precaution-ary savings model and reveal moderate negative wealth effects of both unemployment insurance and means-tested transfers, with an elasticity of about −0.18.     

Regional influences on the prevalence of family versus non-family start-ups

We integrate insights from family business and organizational ecology into the entrepreneurship field by constructing a theoretical framework that explains how the regional context impacts family and non-family start-ups in differing ways. Regional count data models based on a rich longitudinal dataset reveal that while economic factors such as population size and growth in regions are primarily associated with the number of non-family start-ups, factors related to regional embeddedness, such as pre-existing small family businesses as well as favorable community attitudes toward small businesses, are more strongly associated with the number of family start-ups. Our research provides support for the notion that ‘the regional context’ is an important yet under-theorized area for research on venture creation and family business.     

Cultural tendencies in negotiation: A comparison of Finland, India, Mexico, Turkey, and the United States

In this era of increased global cooperation, a growing number of negotiators conduct business in multiple countries and, therefore, need access to a systematic comparison of negotiating tendencies across a wide range of countries. Empirical work systematically comparing variations across a range of cultures is scarce. A comparative analysis of negotiating tendencies in five countries is presented. This study establishes the utility of the [Salacuse, J. (1998) Ten ways that culture affects negotiating style: Some survey results. Negotiation Journal, 14(3): 221–235] framework in identifying country differences across five countries, representing five cultural clusters. Significant differences in negotiation orientations both between and within cultures were revealed at a level of complexity not found in previous empirical studies.