Hymer and Uneven Development Revisited: Foreign Direct Investment and Regional Inequalities

Picking up on one of Hymer's key contributions, this paper examinesthe impact that inward foreign direct investment (FDI) intothe UK has on the patterns of development, both within and acrossregions. Using a panel of data for the manufacturing sector,the paper illustrates that even where one isolates the effecton the domestic sector alone, inward investment acts to increasethe demand for skilled, relative to unskilled labour, and alsogenerates the expected agglomeration effects in terms of thedemand for capital investment. The paper then goes on to drawcertain policy comparisons between these findings and the desiredaim of attracting FDI, notably to increase demand for labourin those regions suffering structural unemployment, and secondlyto reduce the disparities between regions.     

Tolerance for uncertainty and the growth of informationally opaque industries

Hofstede's [Hofstede, Geert H. 1980. Culture's consequences: international differences in work-related values. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.] cross-country psychological survey of IBM employees finds that some countries (societies) are systematically less tolerant of uncertainty, while uncertainty-tolerance is shown by some theoretic models to be essential to the growth of emerging sectors about which less is known. This paper first uses Durnev, Morck, and Yeung's [Durnev, Art, Morck, Randall, and Yeung, Bernard. 2004. Value-enhancing capital budgeting and firm-specific stock return variation. The Journal of Finance. 59(1): 65–105.] methodology to identify these informationally opaque industries. The hypothesis is then made that countries characterized by high uncertainty aversion (measured by Hofstede's indicator, and two other alternative indicators) will grow disproportionately slower in industrial sectors where information is less available. Using the Rajan and Zingales [Rajan, Raghuram G. and Zingales, Luigi. 1998. Financial Dependence and Growth. American Economic Review. Vol. 88(3): 559–586.] “difference-in-differences” methodology, which is relatively free from the endogeneity problem, the study provides robust evidence of such an industrial growth pattern in 34 countries and 36 manufacturing industries. It also shows that national uncertainty aversion is not driven by underdevelopment of financial sector, inadaptability of civil law systems, lower level of economic or human capital development, labor market inflexibility, or any of many other institutional factors. The results remain robust when religious (Catholic vs. Protestant) composition is used as an instrumental variable for national uncertainty aversion. The international evidence presented helps explain why some countries are slower in embracing “new” (vs. traditional) industries.     

What Is Fair? Experimental Evidence

There has been growing interest within the economics discipline in the role of equity concerns in the distribution of resources. This paper presents empirical evidence from controlled laboratory experiments where third-party decision makers allocate resources between two individuals. The experimental results indicate that subjects view a wide range of different allocations as the fair distribution of resources. However, regression analysis indicates that both treatment effects and a few demographic variables explain some of this variation in fairness concepts. Most significantly, decision makers rewarded subjects who earned their favorable positions, and the gender of the decision maker was an important predictor of the allocation chosen.     

Endogenous Group Formation

While the rules governing the formation of groups engaging in collective action may have significant impact on group size and behavior of members, most experiments on public goods have been conducted with the subjects in exogenously fixed groups or of fixed sizes. We study endogenous formation of groups in a public‐goods provision game by allowing subjects to change groups under three sets of rules: free entry/exit, restricted entry with free exit, and free entry with restricted exit. We find that the rules governing entry and exit do have a significant impact on individual behavior and group‐level outcomes.     

Nonlinear dynamics and competing behavioral interpretations: Evidence from intra‐day FTSE‐100 index and futures data

Extant empirical research has reported nonlinear behavior within arbitrage relationships. In this article, the authors consider potential nonlinear dynamics within FTSE‐100 index and index‐futures. Such nonlinearity can be rationalized by the existence of transactions costs or through the interaction between informed and noise traders. They consider several empirical models designed to capture these alternative dynamics. Their empirical results provide evidence of a stationary basis term, and thus cointegration between index and index‐futures, and the presence of nonlinear dynamics within that relationship. The results further suggest that noise traders typically engage in momentum trading and are more prone to this behavior type when the underlying market is rising. Fundamental, or arbitrage, traders are characterized by heterogeneity, such that there is slow movement between regimes of behavior. In particular, fundamental traders act more quickly in response to small deviations from equilibrium, but are reluctant to act quickly in response to larger mispricings that are exposed to greater noise trader price risk. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 26:343–368, 2006     

Some Evidence on the Adjustment of Producer Prices*

We document producer price adjustment using a low‐inflation micro price dataset. On average 24% of prices adjust each month, with an average increase/decrease of 6%. Producer prices adjust more frequently than consumer prices, but their size of adjustment is typically smaller. Sectoral heterogeneity in the frequency of price adjustment is strongly related to heterogeneity in the cost structure. Fluctuations in aggregate producer price inflation occur to a large extent through variation in the relative share of upward and downward price adjustment.     

成本全面上涨推动珠三角经济转型

外资企业离开世界工厂 据报道，2007年有224家外资企业离开了珠三角，另有29840家港资企业（占大约80000家港资企业的37．3％）也有同样的计划。另一方面，自2007年初至今，已有103家韩资企业离开了北方制造业中心山东。