Foreign Investors in The Netherlands: Heterogeneous Employment and Productivity Effects

Recent academic research suggests that the effects of inward foreign direct investment for productivity and employment may vary across foreign investors with different characteristics. Using a newly created dataset that integrates micro-level information from The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency and Statistics Netherlands, this paper explores the role of several of these characteristics, including e.g. the country of origin, activities and tasks, age and strategic role of foreign affiliates in The Netherlands in the 2000–2007 period. Our analysis shows that important employment and productivity differences exist for nearly all these dimensions.     

Class Struggle or Embedded Markets? Marx,Polanyi and the Meanings and Possibilities of Social Transformation

Marx and Polanyi both held that socialism, in one form or another, was a preferable and possible alternative to capitalism. Their ideas are seen to offer theoretical tools to understand the tensions and contradictions of capitalism, and to inform ways to overcome them. This paper discusses Polanyi's work from a Marxist perspective in order to illuminate his strengths and weaknesses. Its main focus is to discuss Polanyi's juxtaposing of commodification against exploitation, in diagnosing the problems of capitalist expansion. We suggest that by juxtaposing these two moments, Polanyi not only misses out on a crucial arena of capitalist activity (exploitation), but also undermines his own explication of processes of commodification. This has deleterious consequences for his understanding of the prevalence of poverty under capitalism. It also means that his vision of social transformation and of socialism is profoundly different, and potentially antithetical, to that of Marx. We suggest that for Polanyi's conception of de-commodification to gain greater traction it needs to be combined with Marx's analysis of exploitation and class struggle.     

A case study using forecasting as a decision-making aid

By experimenting with forecasting techniques, potential users can broaden their time horizons and improve their understanding of possible future outcomes. This paper describes the aims, structure and results of a seminar on Public Administration performed at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, in September, 1969. The primary techniques used were the Delphi method and the Cross-impact matrix technique.     

Neither feast nor famine: World food 20 years on

The authors summarize the results of a modelling exercise designed to examine future problems in the world food system. The alternatives resulting from the interactive analysis are presented and the impact of some of these alternatives on American business and society are discussed. Their conclusions include the likelihood that world food conditions in the next 20 years will not follow the trends of the last 20 years; that the rising level of food imports of poor regions will not be sustained; that self-reliance holds the key to a stable future; that food reserves are essential and US policy on them needs to be reassessed; and that the measures needed in poor countries could conflict with the present concern of the US government for human rights.