More than just national cultural distance: Testing new distance scales on FDI in Slovakia

Over the past decade, numerous calls have been made within the international business literature for a broader conceptualization and measurement of non-geographic forms distance amongst countries. One promising response to this call has been a set of psychic distance stimuli scales put forward by Dow, D., & Karunaratna, A. (2006). Developing a multidimensional instrument to measure psychic distance stimuli. Journal of International Business Studies, 37(5), 575–577. However, to date, these new scales have only been tested in one very limited setting – predicting bi-lateral trade flows. This paper extends the generalizability of the Dow and Karunaratna scales by testing their criterion-related validity with respect to three specific foreign direct investment (FDI) issues: predicting market selection, entry mode choice and performance. The results indicate that the Dow and Karunaratna scales are significantly stronger predictors of market selection and FDI performance than the traditional Kogut and Singh index; and that researchers should go beyond using national cultural distance as their sole measure of distance amongst countries. The results for predicting entry mode choice are more ambiguous; however, the authors argue that the ambiguity may reflect the inadequacies of the classic TCE-based approach to predicting entry mode, rather than shortcomings in the measurement of the distance construct.     

Arbitrage, hedging, and financial innovation

I consider the costs and benefits of introducing a new securityin a standard framework where uninformed traders with hedgingneeds interact with risk-averse informed traders. Opening anew market may make everybody worse off, even when the new securityis traded in equilibrium. This article emphasizes cross-marketlinks between hedging and speculative demands: risk-averse arbitrageurscan use the new market to hedge their positions in the preexistingsecurity, which can affect liquidity in the old market. Moregenerally, the availability of such hedging opportunities willinfluence the strategies to which traders will direct resources.     

Internal bargaining and strategic innovation in the theory of the firm

The transaction cost analysis of the firm has identified asset idiosyncrasy and the risk of ex post opportunism as key determinants of organizational form. Simultaneously, several writers have modeled the distribution of quasi-rents among input suppliers as a bargaining game. These complementary ideas are used to formalize the notion of strategic innovation, where capital and labor attempt to redistribute firm income after specialized assets are in place, through unilateral modifications in production technology. Because strategic behavior can enlarge the quasi-rent component of fifirm income, this process may persist in equilibrium. Asset idiosyncrasy therefore creates room for an autonomous theory of organizational dynamics, partially insulated from events at the market level of analysis.     

The economist’s oath: a review Essay

George DeMartino’s 2011 monograph, The Economist’s Oath: On the Need for and Content of Professional Economic Ethics, provides an excellent basis for the development of a discourse on the ethics of economists. This review focuses on the way in which mainstream economists’ arguments against consideration of ethics follow from their presentation of economics as a purely technical subject, and the implication that this pretense itself is unethical. The complexity of ethical issues within a pluralist approach to economics is explored, ranging from the institutional environment within which economists practice to epistemological questions.     

CEO Incentives and Corporate Social Performance

This paper examines the relationship between CEO incentives and strong and weak corporate social performance. Using the KLD database we find that incentives have no significant relationship with strong social performance. Salary and long-term incentives have a positive association with weak social performance.     

Formalism, logic and reality: a Keynesian analysis

It is the purpose of this paper to elaborate on the argumentthat formalism is non-neutral; analyses which today would bedescribed as informal turn into something quite different whenformalised. The reasons for non-neutrality refer to the choiceof assumptions or axioms, the choice of method, the type oflogic employed and closure. Focusing on the last three of these,the paper addresses the question of how to move from resultsobtained with formal methods under conditions of closure tothe reality one is attempting to model. We explore the needfor provisional closure to analyse open systems and for a rangeof methods to complement formal modelling in the attempt tounderstand the complex reality of an economic system.     

VARIETY OF METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH IN ECONOMICS

Abstract.  It has been argued by some that the distinction between orthodox economics and heterodox economics does not fit the growing variety in economic theory, unified by a common methodological approach. On the other hand, it remains a central characteristic of heterodox economics that it does not share this methodological approach, but rather represents a range of alternative methodological approaches. The paper explores the evidence, and arguments, for variety in economics at different levels, and a range of issues which arise. This requires in turn a discussion of the meaning of variety in economics at the different levels of reality, methodology, method and theory. It is concluded that there is scope for more, rather than less, variety in economic methodologies, as well as within methodologies. Further, if variety is not to take the form of 'anything goes', then critical discussion by economists of different approaches to economics, and of variety itself, is required.     

Replicating Walrasian equilibria using markets for membership in labor-managed firms

In standard models of the labor-managed firm, labor is misallocated in the short run. This problem can be eliminated by introducing a market for membership in each firm. These markets substitute for the capitalist labor market and support equilibria isomorphic to Walrasian equilibria. Such LMFs resemble familiar Ward-Domar-Vanek LMFs by ensuring that firm sizes are optimal for ex post members, but they also have the property that firm sizes are optimal for workers endowed with ex ante membership rights.