The determinants of foreign direct investment into European transition economies

Using a panel dataset of bilateral flows of foreign direct investment (FDI), we study the determinants of FDI from Western countries, mainly in the European Union (EU), to Central and Eastern European ones. We find the most important influences to be unit labor costs, gravity factors, market size, and proximity. Interestingly, host country risk proves not to be a significant determinant. Our empirical work also indicates that announcements about EU Accession proposals have an impact on FDI for the future member countries. Journal of Comparative Economics 32 (4) (2004) 775–787.     

Fiscal Response to a Temporary Trade Shock: The Aftermath of the Kenyan Coffee Boom

The appropriate fiscal response to a temporary terms of tradewindfall is difficult to determine, even in an unregulated economy.But controls, such as those in force during the 1976–79coffee boom in Kenya, introduce special problems. For example,foreign exchange controls make the private investment of boomincome inefficient by causing it to be undertaken too rapidly.In Kenya the boom induced a massive increase in public expenditure,far in excess of the increase in public revenue. The net effecton capital formation was negative because the fiscal responseexacerbated the rise in the relative price of nontraded capitalgoods, and because resources were preempted for government consumption.     

THE SEARCH FOR A PROPORTIONATE CARE LAW BY FORMULA FUNDING IN THE ENGLISH NHS

Although the National Health Service was created to achieve equity of access to health care in 1948, over twenty years later an 'inverse care law' was seen to operate. The 1976  Report of the Resource Allocation Working Party  laid the principles of formula funding to achieve an equitable distribution of resources, to move, over time, towards the operation of a proportionate care law. These principles have been applied ever since in England. This paper describes the context, governance and subsequent development of formulas and three persistent problems: accounting for populations, their needs and variations in the unavoidable costs of providers. The paper concludes by outlining continuing problems from the past and new challenges of formula funding in England to reduce 'avoidable' inequalities in health.     

Aid and the Supply Side: Public Investment, Export Performance, and Dutch Disease in Low-Income Countries

Contemporary policy debates on the macroeconomics of aid oftenconcentrate on short-run Dutch disease effects, ignoring thepossible supply-side impact of aid-financed public expenditure.In the simple model of aid and public expenditure presentedhere, public infrastructure generates an intertemporal productivityspillover, which may exhibit a sector-specific bias. The modelalso provides for a learning-by-doing externality, through whichtotal factor productivity in the tradable sector is an increasingfunction of past export volumes. An extended computable versionof this model is used to simulate the effect of a step increasein net aid flows. The simulations show that beyond the shortrun, when conventional demand-side Dutch disease effects arepresent, the relationship between enhanced aid flows and realexchange rates, output growth, and welfare is less straightforwardthan simple models of aid suggest. Public infrastructure investmentthat generates a productivity bias in favor of nontradable productiondelivers the largest aggregate return to aid, but at the costof a deterioration in the income distribution. Income gainsaccrue predominantly to skilled and unskilled urban households,leaving the rural poor relatively worse off. Under plausibleparameterizations of the model, the rural poor may also be worseoff in absolute terms.     

The nature of value created by UK online grocery retailers

The UK retail environment is extremely competitive, forcing retailers to constantly develop and enhance both their offerings and their formats. Probably the most significant changes taking place are coming from not the products being sold themselves, but rather when, how and where they are being sold. For example, new technologies such as the Internet, CD‐Roms, electronic kiosks and digital television are opening up new opportunities for retailers through remote purchasing and delivery. While a number of large retailers have made heavy investments into electronic retailing, such as Arcadia, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury, it is uncertain how they are going to use this technology to gain competitive or market advantages. Given the media attention which technologies such as the Internet has attracted, there is the danger that businesses may adopt an unfocussed use. This report identifies and evaluates the ways in which major UK grocery retailers are using the Internet to create value for their users over and above that which is offered by bricks and mortar stores. Web sites of three grocery retailers were evaluated via preselected criteria in order to assess how they created value for their customers. Applying Holbrook’s typology of consumer value, the findings of the research suggest that each of the retailers surveyed are similar in terms of the nature of the value they have created for consumers online, these being value‐as‐convenience and value‐as excellence.     

Building Partnerships to Create Social and Economic Value at the Base of the Global Development Pyramid

This paper builds on London and Hart’s critique that Prahalad’s best-selling book prompted a unilateral effort to find a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP). Prahalad’s instrumental, firm-centered construction suggests, perhaps unintentionally, a buccaneering style of business enterprise devoted to capturing markets rather than enabling new socially entrepreneurial ventures for those otherwise trapped in conditions of extreme poverty. London and Hart reframe Prahalad’s insight into direct global business enterprise toward “creating a fortune with the base of the pyramid” (p. xi) rather than at the BoP. This shift in language requires a recalibration of strategic focus, we argue, and will necessitate implementation of “moral imagination” to formulate new mental models that can frame the possibility of local entrepreneurs working collaboratively and discursively with development partners drawn from civil society, corporate, and government sectors. Successful partnerships will arise from interactive processes of emergent, co-creative learning within a shared problem domain or “community of practice”. We call attention to three related pluralist framings of situated learning within such communities of practice: (1) decentered stakeholder networks; (2) global action networks; and (3) a focus on “faces and places” as a cognitive lens to humanize and locally situate diverse inhabitants within base of the pyramid partnership projects.     

Managing workplace bullying experiences in nursing: the impact of the work environment

To progress our understanding of good practice in the management of workplace bullying, the authors explored the influence of work environment factors on bullying intervention. Analysis of focus group data from public hospitals in New Zealand revealed factors at multiple levels in the work environment system that influenced intervention. Many of these factors have previously been identified as antecedents to bullying, suggesting that the work environment hypothesis can also be applied to the management of workplace bullying experiences.     

Consequences of a Commodity Boom in a Controlled Economy: Accumulation and Redistribution in Kenya 1975-83

The economic theory of "Dutch disease" is extended and appliedto the 1976–79 coffee boom in Kenya in this article. Whena commodity boom is perceived as temporary, a large fractionwill tend to be saved out of transient income. The spendingeffect of the boom is supplemented by relative price changesresulting from capital stock increases. In the presence of foreignexchange and import controls, the benefits of a sudden exportprice increase may be transferred intersectorally. Using a generalequilibrium model, it is estimated that in Kenya the benefitsof the boom were largely transferred from coffee growers tourban groups.     

The impossibility of corporate ethics: for a Levinasian approach to managerial ethics

The moral philosophy of Levinas offers a stark prospectus of impossibility for corporate ethics. It differs from most traditional ethical theories in that, for Levinas, the ethical develops in a personal meeting of one with the Other, rather than residing in some internal deliberation of the moral subject. Levinasian ethics emphasises an infinite personal responsibility arising for each of us in the face of the Other and in the presence of the Third. It stresses the imperious demand we experience to be open to, prepared for and impassioned with that which we may not know, or recognise, about ourselves or about the Other. Such a demand transcends our intellectual and/or rational potential; it involves us in a carnal and somatic bodily experience of otherness. If we are to speak of Levinasian ethics in a business context, it cannot be a matter of corporate ethics but only a matter of individual managerial ethics. What such an ethics would be like is yet to be outlined. This paper proposes a series of questions and suggestions that will explicate some key terms of a practice organised around a Levinasian vocabulary of otherness, responsibility, proximity, diachrony and justice.