Suchergebnisse

We examine the supply-side characteristics - unskilled labor, imported input intensity, dependence on inputs from China, production complexity - that determine different potential vulnerabilities of traded products to the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on monthly exports at the product level by all countries to the United States, Japan, and all 27 European Union countries from January 2018 to December 2020, we estimate a difference-in-differences specification of the COVID-19 incidence (deaths per capita) mediated by product vulnerabilities. We account for the precise lag between when the COVID-19 shock hit the exporting country and when exports reach their destination country relying on the products' type of transportation and distance between exporter and importer countries. Higher reliance on foreign inputs, on China as input supplier, on unskilled labor and a lower degree of complexity negatively affected exports as a result of this shock.

We study how diversity evolves at a firm with entry-level and upper-level employees who vary in ability and "type" (gender or ethnicity). The ability of entry-level employees is increased by mentoring. An employee receives more mentoring when more upper-level employees have the same type. Optimal promotions are biased by type, and this bias may favor either the minority or the majority. We characterize possible steady states, including a "glass ceiling," where the upper level remains less diverse than the entry level. A firm may have multiple steady states, whereby temporary affirmative-action policies have a long-run impact. (JEL J71, J41, D20)

State-owned companies are typically trapped in a bureaucratic system that means they expe-rience difficulties undertaking changes and adapting to environmental changes. Whenever these com-panies attempt a strategic maneuver, a series of complex bureaucratic procedures must be followed. As a result, the companies are late in responding to environmental changes. This study discusses how the state-owned companies transform their organization with the support of dynamic capabilities. XT Square, a company owned by the local government in Indonesia, is used as the subject of analysis. XT Square is engaged in property. During the course of its organizational transformation, the company found it difficult to fit with customers' needs because of the difficulties in understanding market condi-tions. The company then established alliances with other firms to overcome resource shortages. The re-sults of the analysis demonstrate that the process of building these alliances was not linear; rather, it was iterative in nature. At a certain level, XT Square is required to undertake trial and error. At the end of the paper, a suggestion for further research is provided.

The defense of unlimited economic growth as the main objective to be achieved has been questioned for decades and with even more intensity in recent years. In this context, the Sharing Economy's initiatives have dramatically increased. This study expands our current understanding of driving factors of the Collaborative Consumption in European Union member countries, focusing on the case of Spain. A cluster analysis was run, involving two methods: the hierarchical and the iterative. The results obtained were compared with the available scarce data and the position of the main stakeholders. The analysis has shown that the northwest in Europe is the best position to develop activities as part of a Sharing Economy. However, data have shown that there are countries as Spain, in the southwest, with a lot of initiatives: the consequences of the economic crisis and the need to save money have been shown as the main drivers of these new models of business in these states. On the other hand, the favorable attitude of the institutions of the European Union to the Collaborative Economy has to be highlighted and its rejection of increased regulation that would hinder its development.

One of the aims of the internationally funded Investment Compact of the Balkan Stability Pact is to reduce investment risk in the region and lay the foundations for the inflow of private capital. This paper discusses the situation of foreign direct investment (FDI) in South-East European countries (SEECs). It also draws lessons from the experience of Central European transition countries (CEECs) to make conclusions and policy recommendations for SEECs. It provides an insight into some crucial areas - foreign penetration in the manufacturing sector, FDI-related policies and privatization as a vehicle of FDI. The paper comes to the conclusion that the countries can transform and grow faster if they rely on foreign direct investment. The pace of restructuring has been fastest in countries where FDI was attracted also by privatization. Technologies relevant for growth are principally developed by multinationals and can only be accessed within their networks. A comparison of the performance of domestic-owned and foreign-owned enterprises in CEECs proves the overall positive effects of FDI in terms of structural upgrading and increasing competitiveness. But foreign direct investment inflows cannot be treated as unrequited transfers they finance profit-oriented ventures whose foreign owners expect to realize and, to a smaller or larger extent, also to repatriate the generated profit. Current account deficits are in part produced by FDI inflows. The experience with public policies in SEECs has been disappointing for reasons connected with weak states and corrupt practices. Strengthening public institutions and building credibility can be development targets of their own. In the given situation, policy recommendations must keep in mind that these countries can only cope with simple policies; they are unable to run very sophisticated programmes or apply complicated tools. In the future, supporting regional re-integration and easing border controls can reduce transaction costs and increase the size of attainable markets. Investment promotion policies must become more stable and transparent. Restructuring and privatization of ailing industries, restructuring and capitalization of the banking system as well as policies directed at the promotion of small and medium-size businesses are necessary to strengthen market-economy rule. The legal system must become more transparent and less corruptible. Simple legislation and institutions (smaller governments) are usually less corruptible than more complex, fuzzy ones.

This paper follows the definition of international competitiveness of countries (nations) as defined by Trabold (1995) including the ability to sell, the ability to attract FDI and the ability to adjust - all these leading to the ability to earn. These components can be measured by specific economic indicators and brought into relationship with FDI and the performance of foreign affiliates in a country. The analysis focuses on five transition countries Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia (CEEC?5). These are the most advanced among the transition countries in terms of per capita GDP, FDI penetration and economic transformation. This paper contributes to the discussion on competitiveness by going through a number of industry competitiveness indicators attracting FDI, foreign penetration of industries, productivity levels and development, market shares in the EU. In order to measure the influence of FDI on the competitiveness in manufacturing, a unique database was set up based on company balance sheets in the five countries. The economic performance of the foreign affiliates could be compared with that of domestic enterprises. The highest share of FIEs (foreign investment enterprises) by all indicators was reached by Hungary in each year between 1993 and 1998. 70% of manufacturing sales came from FIEs, which employed 45% of the manufacturing labour force in 1998. The second place is occupied by Poland with 41% of sales and 26% of employment. The Czech Republic ranks third, with 32% and 20% respectively. The difference between Hungary on the one hand and the Czech Republic and Poland on the other was three times in 1994 and narrowed to two times in 1998. The most dynamic increase was recorded in the Czech Republic. In Slovenia and Estonia, foreign penetration is lower and increased more slowly than in the other countries. The positive link between foreign penetration and various components of international competitiveness holds true both at the aggregate and the sectoral levels. It is obvious that the activity of a strong foreign sector in manufacturing increases international competitiveness. In 1994-1998 GDP growth, productivity growth, structural change and profit rates were higher in countries with a stronger presence of FDI. The deeper the foreign penetration, the faster was the speed of structural change Hungary was first, followed by the Czech Republic and Poland in the period 1996?1998. This is relevant both for the change in the output structure and the country's exports to the EU. The size and industry distribution of foreign penetration depends on industry-specific features and on the characteristics of the privatization policy. The foreign presence remained relatively small in branches with great structural difficulties and oversized capacities, such as the steel industry. Privatization is not enough to set restructuring of these industries in motion. Sectoral policy and financial restructuring is necessary to make companies attractive for foreign take?overs. A duality between foreign- and domestic-dominated industries appeared in all countries and has been growing over time. It can be observed between modern, foreign-dominated industries on the one hand and traditional industries with both domestic and foreign companies on the other. It is also present as a foreign-domestic gap within the industries with both foreign and domestic companies. The dichotomy of productivity and profit rates between the foreign- and the domestic-owned companies in one and the same industry is largest in Hungary and smallest in Slovenia. In Slovenia the balanced relationship between the domestic and the foreign sector is coupled with a low average rate of foreign penetration and a relatively low presence of technology-intensive industries. The small gap between the foreign and the domestic sector may indicate a slow rate of technological progress and not spill?overs.

Nous avons mis en évidence, par des expériences appropriées, le fait que l'eau lourde, à la concentration qu'elle présente dans l'eau naturelle, joue un rôle fondamental dans la synthèse, au sein des organismes vivants, des radicaux libres organiques. Comme ces derniers, ainsi que nous l'avons démontré antérieurement, constituent le facteur essentiel de la sénescence, on peut en déduire que D20 est intégré dans le mécanisme de celle-ci.
Par conséquent, pour freiner le vieillissement, on peut non seulement utiliser des substances anti-oxydantes, mais aussi, désormais, éliminer l'eau lourde de l'organisme en l'alimentant avec une eau naturelle dont on l'a extraite.
De cette façon, on peut escompter que, dans l'avenir, la longévité maximale de l'homme pourra être accrue, sur cette base, de façon significative.

How migration relates to internationalization has been a prominent question in international economics for a long time and its relevance for policy has increased with the amplified political focus on migration. But the role of migration for internationalization is not as obvious as the standard theory suggests, and tightening migration could have unexpected consequences for both developing and developed countries. In this paper we review and discuss over 100 papers published about migrants' role in international trade and foreign direct investment, from pioneering country-level studies to nascent firm-level studies that utilize employer-employee data. To our knowledge, this is the first paper offering a wide-ranging review of the different strands of theory on the relationship between migration and internationalization, as well as new empirical findings. Although the evidence suggests that migration can facilitate internationalization, we also note substantial gaps and inconsistencies in the extant literature. The aim of this paper is to encourage future research and assist policymakers in their efforts to promote internationalization, and better understand the economic effects of changes in migration policy.

We study the stability properties of organizations in partition function games, describing cooperative situations with externalities. An organization is defined as a group of agents, together with a set of bilateral relations, formally, a connected graph. Because of the presence of externalities, the profitability of coalitional threats to an organization depend on the reaction of non coalitional members. This reaction is likely to depend on the links that non coalitional members maintain in the organization. We show that this directly implies that minimally connected organizations emerge under positive externalities, while the fully connected organization emerges under negative. This result is shown to hold independently of the adopted payoff imputation rule. Sharper predictions are possible for the specific case of the egalitarian rule. Here, if only coalitions that are connected in the organization can effectively object to it, the star organization prevails under positive externalities, and the wheel, a non fully connected organization, prevails under negative.

The virtual economy argument for Russia suggests that barter allows the parties to pretend that the manufacturing sector is producing value added by enabling this sector to sell its output at a higher price than its market value. We confront this prediction with the actual pricing behaviour of industrial sectors in Ukraine in 1997. Based on the pricing data of 165 barter deals we find no systematic difference in the pricing behaviour in non‐cash transactions across sectors. What appears to matter for the pricing behaviour is whether the firm is on the selling or buying end of the barter transaction. We offer a model that sees this pricing behaviour as a mechanism to deal with the absence of trust and liquidity in the economy.JEL classification: D20, G30, O10, P30.

This paper assesses the merits of using surveys of business perceptions of growth constraints as a guide to growth-enhancing fiscal policy reforms. Using endogenous growth models in which the government levies an income tax to provide public inputs to the production of private firms, the paper demonstrates that business perceptions of growth constraints are subject to systematic biases except when firms compare different types of public services or different types of public capital. In particular firms can be expected to systematically over-estimate the growth-enhancing effects of lower tax rates, and under-estimate the growth-enhancing effects of greater provision of public capital. It is then shown that these theoretical predictions regarding how firms rank constraints correspond closely to the observed ranking of constraints by firms in the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys.

Recent developments have revealed that (i) advanced transition countries have received most of the FDI to date, especially greenfield projects; (ii) more countries than in the mid?1990s are resorting to FDI in order to accelerate privatization (Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia); and (iii) countries in South-Eastern Europe are lagging behind in terms of attracting FDI. The impact of FDI on the balance of payments shows that this inflow of capital also creates related outflows. It can further be seen that (i) FDI may increase the trade deficit and the service sector deficit; (ii) FDI-related income outflows may become high; and (iii) problems related to deficit-financing can be avoided by maintaining a country's attractiveness to further investment and encouraging export-oriented investments and spillover effects. With respect to the impact of FDI on the government budget, we conclude that (i) FDI incentives are no substitute for a favourable investment environment; (ii) general investment incentives do not solve regional and labour market problems; (iii) government revenue increases in the wake of FDI on account of high profit rates in the foreign sector; (iv) government revenues can be lost on account of tax allowances; and (v) economic growth and income generation through FDI increase the tax base. Structural change in manufacturing is closely linked to the penetration of foreign capital. Most recent 1999 data show that (i) foreign penetration is high in Hungary and increasing in Poland and the Czech Republic, while remaining low in Slovenia; (ii) the foreign sector enjoys advantages in terms of labour productivity, export propensity, investment propensity and profit rates; (iii) Hungary lies ahead of other countries where the upgrading of export structure is concerned; (iv) the foreign sector specializes in high-tech and export-oriented industries, the domestic sector in low-tech and domestic-market-oriented industries, thus leading to the emergence of an unhealthy duality; and (v) research confirms the existence of technology transfer through FDI, but finds no productivity spillover to the domestic sector.

Dans la lignée des travaux de Davis et Haltiwanger [1999], nous étudions les pratiques d'ajustement de l'emploi des établissements français. Nous estimons les relations entre flux d'emploi (création et destruction) et de salariés (entrées et sorties) à l'appui des EMMO-DMMO (une base de données des mouvements sur le marché du travail couvrant les établissements privés de 10 salariés ou plus) pour la période 1999-2010. Nos estimations montrent la contribution importante des entrées et sorties en contrats à durée indéterminée (CDI) aux ajustements de l'emploi. En période de croissance des effectifs, les entrées en contrats à durée déterminée (CDD), comme celles en CDI, ont un poids important. Mais en période de diminution des effectifs, les deux types de flux s'ajustent différemment : les entrées en CDD ralentissent mais ce sont surtout les fins de CDI qui s'intensifient. Classification JEL : J63, J23, D20, E24.

To insure a proper and meaningful productivity assessment of DMUs with different production technologies, this article develops a difference-based profit metafrontier Luenberger productivity indicator. Adopting the proposed model, we empirically measure the profit inefficiency and examine the profit productivity convergence for samples banks consisting of 31 Taiwanese banks and 50 Chinese city banks over 2010–2014. Empirical results show that Chinese banks perform better in profit efficiency than Taiwanese banks. While Chinese banks have better technology in profit creation than Taiwanese banks, the latter may reap much higher profit gain than the former if they can adopt the profit metafrontier. The results of the profit metafrontier Luenberger productivity indicator analysis show that both Chinese and Taiwanese banks have experienced declines in profit productivity. However, the results also indicate a divergence in productivity growth for Chinese city banks and a convergent productivity growth for Taiwanese banks. JEL CLASSIFICATION: D20, G21, P34