The determinants of FDI location choice in China: a discrete-choice analysis

This study addresses two questions: What are the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) location choice in China? What are the factors that determine investors’ choice between ‘Economic zones’ in China on one hand, and ‘other cities’ of China on the other hand? This study shows that FDI location choice is sensitive both on the endowment conditions in different regions/cities/economic zones in China as well as on the country of origin of the FDI. Based on a data set of 1218 observations, the results of the binary logit regressions indicate that the protection of intellectual rights, agglomeration economies, investments in education and gross regional product affect the location choice of FDI in China. This choices, however, varies depending on the origin of the FDI. Policy makers can use these findings to channel FDI to targeted regions/ cities.     

Sustainable resource use,economic development,and public regulation

The role of production technology for sustainable economic growth and resource management in the multispecies renewable resources industries is a neglected issue, particularly in complex tropical ecosystems. Given the still rudimentary understanding of biological interactions among species, even in most temperate ecosystems, the importance of under-standing the technological and economic interactions is heightened for sustainable economic growth and public regulation. This paper evaluates these interactions for the multiproduct gill net fisheries of Peninsular Malaysia. Standard price and quantity controls may have little promise. Gear regulations, a policy of constant escapement, and managing the entire mix of species as a single stock for economic rather than biomass yield appear the most promising management tools given the limited regulatory options.     

Balanced wealth creation across cooperative economics

Cooperation is a necessary condition, along with competition, for the creation of wealth, innovation and knowledge. We briefly re-visit and critique certain neo-classical arguments in regards to pure competition and profit maximization that continue to be carried forward by current neo-liberal thought. We also attempt to illustrate the unbalanced and damaging outcomes of neo-liberal logic across the lens of enactment; as well as across our own discernment of holographic analogies to the individualism–collectivism dyad that exist within our complex environments. Within the spirit of evolutionary economics and complexity theory, early and more recent theoretical and empirical underpinnings for cooperation are presented, with the argument that it, combined with competition, leads to more well-balanced wealth creation—be it regional, national or global in character. Finally, we review competitive vs cooperative economic approaches across the lens of emergent complex systems. We then present two possible ‘future’ scenarios: one extreme outcome occurring as a result of truncating or de-balancing the individual vs collective dyad and its holographic analogies; while another outcome attempts to integrate a more inherent balance within these same dyads.     

Compound gamma bivariate distributions

Summary Bivariate distributions, which may be of special relevance to the lifetimes of two components of a system, are derived using the following approach. As the two components are part of one system and therefore exposed to similar conditions of service, there will be similarity between their lifetimes that is not shared by components belonging to different systems. The lifetime distribution for a given system is assumed to be Gamma in form (this includes the exponential as a special case; extension to the Stacey distribution, which includes the Weibull distribution, is straightforward). The scale parameter of this distribution is itself a random variable, with a Gamma distribution. We thus obtain what might be termed a compound Gamma-Gamma bivariate distribution. The cumulative distribution function of this may be expressed in terms of one of the double hypergeometric functions of Appell.Generalised hypergeometric functions play an important part in this paper, and one of Saran's triple hypergeometric functions is obtained when generalising the above model to permit the scale parameters of the distributions for the two components to be correlated, rather than identical.Work started while the author was with the Transport Studies Group, University College London.