Political Institutions and Policy Volatility

Checks and balances that limit the discretion of policy-makers reduce the volatility of government expenditure and revenue. While this assumption is at the heart of a large body of empirical work, the association between political institutions and policy volatility has itself been the focus of only limited empirical testing. The results presented here support the existence of this link, allow for a comparison between two prominent measures of checks and balances and provide insight into the relative impact of checks and balances on the volatility of nine different types of fiscal policy both during times of macroeconomic stability and upheaval.     

Liberalisation and de-regulation of the public sector in the transition from plan to market

The above analysis allows several conclusions to be drawn:

Spinning gold: The financial returns to stakeholder engagement

We provide direct empirical evidence in support of instrumental stakeholder theory's argument that increasing stakeholder support enhances the financial valuation of a firm, holding constant the objective valuation of the physical assets under its control. We undertake this analysis using panel data on 26 gold mines owned by 19 publicly traded firms over the period 1993–2008. We code over 50,000 stakeholder events from media reports to develop an index of the degree of stakeholder conflict/cooperation for these mines. By incorporating this index in a market capitalization analysis, we reduce the discount placed by financial markets on the net present value of the physical assets controlled by these firms from 72 percent to between 37 and 13 percent. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Political hazards,experience, and sequential entry strategies: the international expansion of Japanese firms, 1980–1998

We find support for the role of experiential learning in the international expansion process by extending the stages model of internationalization to incorporate a sophisticated consideration of temporal and cross‐national variation in the credibility of the policy environment. Using a sample of 3857 international expansions of 665 Japanese manufacturing firms, we build on the concepts of uncertainty and experiential learning, to show that firms that had gathered relevant types of international experience were less sensitive to the deterring effect of uncertain policy environments on investment. One implication of our results is that research on international strategy should emphasize understanding the political institutions that constrain or enable political actors, just as entry mode research has done. A second implication is that research in the stages model of internationalization should give the same weight to the policy environment as a source of uncertainty to a firm, as it has given to cultural, social and market institutions. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Technological substitution forecasting with a model based on biological analogy

Although many models of technological substitution processes exist, only a few deal with multilevel technological substitution and still fewer may be easily applied to forecasting of real multilevel substitution processes. We propose a stochastic model of multilevel technological substitution and a forecasting method based on this model. In the author's opinion, the developed algorithm may be easily applied to forecasting various technological substitution processes. An example of the application of this algorithm to forecasting of world energy consumption is presented. The algorithm makes possible an investigation of the impact of future innovation on the system's behavior.     

Privatization of state-owned enterprises in Poland

The transition from centrally planned to market economies in Eastern Europe has become a field of debate in economic literature since the late 1980s. Privatization plays a very important role because it is also a sensitive political problem. Privatization is a key element of the several reform packages that are being applied in Poland. This paper examines the different ways that small- and medium-sized enterprises were privatized from 1990 to 1995 using statistical data of the Ministry of Privatization [1995]. Analyzed enterprises are presented by the following group of projects. Capital privatization, direct foreign investment, joint stock companies awaiting privatization, and other methods of privatization are connected with the special program designed for firms with bad financial standing.     

Internal and external determinants of export performance: Insights from Algeria

The internationalization of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) has been the focus of numerous studies. However, while the attention has thus far been on SMEs operating in developed countries, firms evolving in a developing context, including Africa, have been largely neglected. To address this, and drawing on a dual resources‐based and network‐based view, this study simultaneously investigates the importance of internal and external resources for firms’ export performance and regularity in the context of North African SMEs. Using a sample of Algerian exporters, the study reveals the superiority of discrete resources for boosting export performance and export regularity. These findings provide directions to Algerian SME managers and policymakers as to important factors driving the internationalization process in the developing Algerian context.