Does the Degree of Development Matter in the Impact of Banking Crises on International Trade?

This paper analyzes how a country's degree of economic development affects the impact of banking crises on international trade. To this end, we estimate a gravity model of trade using a sample of 139 countries over the period 1975–2012. Our results show that middle income countries are generally the most negatively affected. In contrast, financial turmoil appears to have less impact on bilateral trade flows among high income countries and, more specially, among low income nations. The level of financial development, contract enforcement, as well as the extent of the use of banking credit within international trade all help to explain our findings.     

Measuring the market power in the ceramic tile industry: An international comparison

This paper measures the degree of competition faced by Spanish and Italian exporters of ceramic tiles in several European Union member states. The results indicate that Spanish producers have a substantial market power while Italian exporters face a high degree of competition. This finding is consistent with the significant gain (loss) in the world production and export shares that Spanish (Italian) producers experienced during the 1990s. The results are also consistent with accounting data. Furthermore, comparisons in the extent of market power across source countries and European destination markets reveal that most variation in the data is related to the source country. JEL no. F12, F14, L13, L60     

Do cross-country differences in bank efficiency support a policy of “national champions”?

As banking consolidation proceeds and Europe moves toward a single market, cross-country differences in banking efficiency can affect the future competitive position of a country’s financial market, helping to determine which European money centers may expand or contract. Looking at large banks across 10 countries, we find they are roughly equally efficient after controlling for differences in business environment, banking costs, and bank productivity. As no country seems to have a strong efficiency advantage, it seems likely that state efforts to promote “national champions” through favorable mergers which expand scale and market share may determine the outcome.     

Top management roles in R&D projects

The work described in the paper is aimed at a better understanding of decision processes in ‘directed’ R&D. Specifically it focusses on the questions: What aspects of innovation does top management influence significantly?, and What are the effects of this influence? The kinds of influences looked at include technological, financial. marketing, timeliness and personnel factors as well as company characteristics. The overall hypothesis was that top management would be interested not only in ultimate objectives but also in intermediate objectives of shorter timespan. The research material consisted of answers to a 29-item questionnaire given by 107 management-level respondents in 13 sites. The questionnaires related to data on 154 projects including the degree of success data achieved. The results were analyzed to bring out main-effect factors on success and intercorrelations between factors. Overall the results supported the initial hypothesis that top management is concerned with shorter-term R&D matters as well as with the effects of R&D on long-term strategy. The influence appears to be more marked during early some stages the of factors projects than later. Interestingly of correlated with economic success are not correlated with top management support, although support is correlated directly with succes. On the whole, top management intervention appears to be operational rather than primarily strategic. The authors interpret observations as meaning that top management intervenes at irreversible decision points and on matters that affect other functions of the company but keeps out of some important issues that are beyond their control.     

A Renewable Resource-based Ramsey Model with Costly Resource Extraction

This paper derives the analytical solution of arenewable resource-based Ramsey economy withcostly resource extraction. The goal is toascertain whether costly resource extractioncan induce nonlinear dynamical properties in the system. We find that the solution for a model with constant technology can exhibit multiple steady states,and the comparative statics effects for consumption,utility, and the stock of nature capital areambiguous in a number of different cases. Moreover, thesolution for a model with exogenous technological progress exhibits unusual comparative dynamics andthe possibility of multiple balanced growthpaths. An increase in the rate of technologicalprogress induces a long-run growth rate in per capitaconsumption that depends on parameters of the productionfunction. Overall, technological progress inthe model can be less beneficial than in the standardeconomic growth model in which resourceextraction is costless.     

Price discovery and volatility spillovers in index futures markets: Some evidence from Mexico

This paper investigates the hypotheses that the recently established Mexican stock index futures market effectively serves the price discovery function, and that the introduction of futures trading has provoked volatility in the underlying spot market. We test both hypotheses simultaneously with daily data from Mexico in the context of a modified EGARCH model that also incorporates possible cointegration between the futures and spot markets. The evidence supports both hypotheses, suggesting that the futures market in Mexico is a useful price discovery vehicle, although futures trading has also been a source of instability for the spot market. Several managerial implications are derived and discussed.     

Changes in the intellectual structure of strategic management research: a bibliometric study of the Strategic Management Journal, 1980–2000

The aim of this paper is to identify the works that have had the greatest impact on strategic management research and to analyze the changes that have taken place in the intellectual structure of this discipline. The methodology is based on the bibliometric techniques of citation and co‐citation analysis which are applied to all the articles published in the Strategic Management Journal from its first issue in 1980 through 2000. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Re-Examination of the Effect of GATT/WTO on Trade

The empirical literature on the effect of the GATT/WTO on trade provides ambiguous results. This paper sheds new light on this issue by re-examining the ex post (partial) effect of GATT/WTO membership on trade using multiple econometric specifications of the gravity equation and analysing several potential asymmetries of the GATT/WTO system. Our results show an uneven but pervasive evidence that membership in GATT/WTO have had an economically significant effect on members’ bilateral trade. Moreover, we find that the GATT/WTO effect operates through both trade margins but mainly through the intensive margin.