Corporate governance has become an important issue in all industrial economies. It relates to the internal organization and power structure of the firm, the functioning of the board of directors both in the one-tier and the two-tier system, the ownership structure of the firm, and the interrelationships among management, board, shareholders and possibly stakeholders, in particular the workforce of the enterprise and the creditors. These interrelationships include monitoring of the management by the board and external supervisors, and shareholders activism. This book has grown out of a conference entitled "Comparative Corporate Governance, An International Conference, United States - Japan - Western Europe" which was held in Brussels on 14 June 1995. It was organized by the Financial Law Institute of the University of Ghent, and the Study Centre on Groups of Enterprises in Brussels under the scientific direction of Eddy Wymeersch. The book contains the contributions by the speakers in an enlarged and updated form together with source material and references. The editors have collected a selection of 18 documents on corporate governance from seven countries (United Kingdom, USA, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium). These documents date from the 1990s, most of them from 1995 and 1996, and are to be made available more easily to business and academia in other countries than the one in which they have been elaborated. They offer a wealth of data, insights, self-regulatory experiences and legislative proposals which show that, despite all the national deep-rooted differences, the core problems are very similar indeed.

This series provides overviews and case studies of states and sectors, classes and companies in the new international division of labour. These embrace political economy as both focus and mode of analysis. The series treats polity-economy dialects at global, regional and national levels and examines novel contradictions and coalitions between and within each. There is a special emphasis on national bourgeoisies and capitalisms, on newly industrializing or influential countries and on novel strategies and technologies.;The concentration throughout is on uneven patterns of power and production, authority and distribution, hegemony and reaction. Attention is paid to redefinitions of class and security, basic needs and self-reliance and the range of critical analysis includes gender, population, resources, environment, militarization, food and finance.;This particular volume looks at the industrialization of Singapore and challenges the dominant understanding of Singapore as a case where "correct" policies have made rapid industrialization possible and raises questions about the possibility and appropriateness of its emulation. The study focuses on the relationship between internationa

Economists have long studied the efficiency of firms, industries, and entire economies. This volume brings together leading scholars to make connections between efficiency and a number of diverse areas of current interest to economists, including an examination of the efficiency of tax systems across generations that overlap, and the efficiency of firm mergers that highlights the tradeoff between the synergy of the merger and the problem of managerial oversight in the now larger firm. An empirical look at productivity growth of states uses a tripartite decomposition of labor productivity into technological innovation, improvement in efficiency, and the capital deepening brought about by new business investment, shedding light on important debates on their relative importance. The efficiency of patent laws is examined in a modern model of economic growth. These contributions are complemented by analyses of methodological problems involved in the measurement, estimation and aggregation of efficiency indices.

Ernest Aves (1857-1917) was an influential social analyst and civil servant. This title, first published in 1907, during Aves' work for the Board of Trade, investigates the different forms of industrial co-operation within Britain; the fundamental principle of this is stated as "equitable association", leading to increased profitability and the strengthening of industry. Chapters discuss such areas as centralisation, co-operative production and co-operative agriculture. This interesting reissue will be of particular value to students of economics with an interest in co-operative industry and the history of economic thought.

How do small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) adopt environmental innovations? Do they have the necessary internal competence? Is any support offered by external parties (i.e. network involvement)? What are the policy implications? This book is based on extensive fieldwork, conducted in four traditional industrial sectors: offset printing, electroplating, textile finishing, and industrial painting. The work was carried out in Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK. Twenty company-based case studies were analyzed and a telephone survey was conducted among 527 companies. As a result, the Innovation Triangle came to be formulated, which is presented here, defining and combining the determinants of SME innovativeness. The Innovation Triangle distinguishes three major determinants of innovativeness: business competence, environmental orientation, and network involvement. The Innovation Triangle allows one to diagnose current environmental and innovation policies, indicating which policy measures might be effective in increasing the adoption of environmentally friendly technologies, allowing environmental objectives to be achieved.

Using data and examples from all over the world, this book explores how the symbiotic relationships between the aircraft industry and national governments have arisen, how they influence all facets of aircraft manufacture, and what implications they have for the future. The authors outline the production patterns and markets for both civil and military aircraft, as well as government's role as agent in both these areas. They also show how the government of a nation influences the location of aircraft plants, provides the bulk of R & D funds necessary to maintain the industry's technological progress, and frequently offers an alternative form of business organization to that available in free enterprise.

This book is a collection of the best papers presented at the Seventh International Conference on the Management of Technology held in Orlando, Florida, February 16th to 20th 1998. All papers were evaluated by at least two referees and both referees needed to agree on the high quality of a paper for it to be included in these proceedings. The papers cover a vast array of topics and the authors come from the four corners of the globe. This is a strong indication that technology management is a very real preoccupation in many countries.
The book is divided into four major sections. The first section brings together the conceptual papers, papers that deal with the management of technology as a whole, its definition, its evolution, its applications, and some of its specificities. The second section embraces other preoccupations with a very fundamental, recurring issue in the field: management of research and development, which continues to be a major concern for companies, governments and industries. The third and largest section includes papers on innovation and technology transfer. In a world where regional disparities are great, technology transfer constitutes an important lever that can be used to narrow the gap between the rich and poor countries. The topic of commercialization, or how to profit from innovation, is dealt with in the last section of the book.

In this volume, three respected business leaders examine fundamental issues involving American business and the economy. Michael J. Solomon, President, Warner Brothers International Television Distribution, addresses international telecommunications, describing its growth and significance and highlighting the changes to come with new technologies such as HDTV and laser disk technology. Edward E. Barr, President and Chief Executive Officer, Sun Chemical Corporation and DIC Americas, Inc., outlines an industrial strategy to help maintain America's competitive economic position and an education strategy that reworks a major precept--the priority and purpose of educating our youth. Finally, Shelley Schwab, President, MCA TV Universal Studios, examines television in the nineties and the ramifications of new approaches to the medium, including interactive programming, video on demand, and virtual reality. The Joseph I. Lubin Memorial Lectures were established through the generosity of the late Joseph I. Lubin, a distinguished business, philanthropic, and civic leader. The lectures are presented by the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University.

This book provides new insights into the performance of key economies in the Asia-Pacific region during the last three decades. It critically examines productivity growth, factor accumulation and economic efficiency at both the macro and micro levels. The authors use a variety of empirical techniques to measure the sources of economic growth in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and China. The techniques employed range from traditional growth accounting to econometric frontier estimation and data envelopment analysis. As a comparison to the Asia-Pacific region, the growth experiences of G7 and 18 OECD countries are analyzed. The authors consider, among other issues, the influential role of trade in the region, macroeconomic management, income, capital, labor productivity, technology and investment. This innovative new book will be of interest to students and scholars of growth economics, public policy and Asian studies.

This book takes a close look at the contribution of small firms to the U.S. economy and at the contrasts between traditional development policies and those often recommended to help the small enterprise. The book offers systematic guidelines that will assist economic developers, policy makers, and private citizens in their efforts to promote entrepreneurship and assure sound economic development at local and state levels. "Recent Publications on Governmental ProblemS"

The widespread interest in entrepreneurship as a means of creating jobs and raising incomes has resulted in a growing demand for an economic and political environment that will nurture small business ventures. Accordingly, the promotion of entrepreneurship has taken its place alongside industrial recruitment as a component of economic developement policy. In this study, Benjamin Mokry considers whether it makes sense to devise such policies without first exploring more thoroughly the dynamics of entrepreneurship and the possible impact of government initiatives. In a careful analysis based on in-depth research on state and local development policies, he points up existing information gaps and suggests a realistic framework for approaching policy design in this area.

What has dictated the rate and direction of technological change? How central has it been to industrial progress? How has it related to other determinants of economic growth and development?In Technology and Industrial Progress, Nick von Tunzelmann examines theoretical views on the nature and contribution of technology, and the empirical evidence from the major industrializing countries from the eighteenth century to the present day. The experiences of countries regarded in their time as the leaders of industrialization - Britain in the eighteenth century, the United States in the nineteenth century and Japan in the twentieth century - are critically compared by the author. The following chapters study the transfer of each of these patterns of technology and growth to later industrializers, such as continental Europe, the Soviet Union, and today's newly industrializing countries. Adopting approaches drawn from evolutionary economics, Dr von Tunzelmann links micro-level phenomena relating to individual firms and technologies to macro-level outcomes as reflected in economic growth and development. This long-awaited book is exceptional both in the range of countries surveyed and the breadth of topics analysed, encompassing changes in production processes, products and marketing, management and finance.

Both economists and popular writers have once more run away with some fragments of reality they happened to grasp. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 1942. 1. Rational Behaviour and Economics Never in the history of mankind has there been such unlimited belief intheabilitiesofthehumanmindasintheAgeofReasoninthe?rsthalf of the eighteenth century. The likes of Mozart, Goethe, and Rousseau ensured a new era of optimism and creativity in both the arts and the sciences. In mathematics, the theory of probability was re?ned and its laws were believed to be good descriptions of human reasoning and 1 decision making. The French Revolution was the logical conclusion of theAgeofReasonandEnlightenment. Italsobroughtaboutitspolitical and social downfall, ending in an age of terror; a victim of its own success. In the early nineteenth century, however, most ?elds of science abandoned many ideas from the era of Enlightenment. Nevertheless, in psychology and economics the probabilistic approach to describing a human being as a fully rational homo economicus remained popular as ever. 1 In Rousseau (1762, p. 97), for example, one ?nds: "Calculateurs, c'est maintenant votre a? aire; comptez, mesurez, comparez". 1 2 INVESTMENT, COALITION SPILLOVERS, AND EVOLUTION Most of contemporary economics still uses the axiom of rational e- nomic agents, where agents are believed to maximise expected utility. Expectations are often assumed to be based on objective probabilities. Expected utility with objective probabilities has been axiomatised by Von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944).

The authors of this book link productivity change, trade competitiveness, networks of interaction and cooperation and income growth in developing Asian countries with the complex evolutionary processes of economic development and international trade. They take an innovative approach to simulating the complex micro-dynamics of competitiveness in order to distinguish those trade-related microeconomic dynamics and institutional reforms vital to leading countries out of institutional and poverty traps.Real competitiveness changes in six countries (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan and Thailand) are measured from 1991 to 2000 with detailed international export unit value comparisons, to detect structural changes towards technology and knowledge intensive goods in trade patterns. No significant structural change was detected in the six countries during that period. Evolutionary trade theory is presented in two models and is calibrated with transaction and trade data from West Bengal and Nepal. These reveal that lower transport costs - resulting from investment in transport and institutional reforms related to the investment and trade environment - result initially in small productivity differences that can be amplified in a non-linear evolutionary system and eventually lead to a spatial restructuring of the system, and to a structural change in the trade patterns. The models in this path-breaking book can be used to explore the impact of a variety of interventions and policies. Productivity, Competitiveness and Incomes in Asia will be of interest to academics and researchers in Asian Studies, industrial economics, evolutionary economics and international business development. The book will also appeal to policy makers responsible for economic growth.

Cultural Economics and Cultural Policies offers a unique guide to the state of the art in cultural economics. First, it alerts scholars and students to the necessity for careful definition and measurement of the cultural sector'. Second, it affords examples of how economic analysis can shed light on the motivation of creative and performing artists and of artistic enterprises. Third, Cultural Economics and Cultural Policies widens the discussion of public policy towards the arts beyond general economic appraisal of arguments for government financial support. It does so by considering the government's role in defining property rights in artistic products and in regulating as well as financing the arts; examining how the criteria for government support are actually applied. Cultural Economics and Cultural Policies will be of interest to economists, students and policy makers.

Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments effectively transfers an environmental property right, the difference in unrestricted emissions and the yearly endowment, 3 from certain fIrms to the public domain. Phase I is to reduce annual SOz emissions of 261 large (100 MW or more) utility generating units with emissions greater than 2. 5 IbslmmBtu. The yearly endowment during Phase I is equal to 2. 51bslmmBtu times the 1985-1987 baseline energy usage. Phase I standards are required to be met by 1995, an exception being units that install certain control technologies. In this case, units may postpone compliance until 1997 and may receive bonus 4 allowances. Phase II begins in the year 2000 and applies to any utility units (25 MW or more) with emissions above 1. 2 Ibs/mmBtu. The endowment is 1. 2 Ibs/mmBtu times baseline fuel use (U. S. Environmental Protection Agency 1990). 5 Hahn and Noll (1982), Bohi and Burtraw (1992), Lock and Harkawik (1991), and Walther (1991) discuss interactions between traditional rate-of-return regula tion and overlaying environmental regulations, particularly tradable emission allowances, in the electric utility industry. Lock and Harkawik (1991) and Niemeyer (1991) discuss utility planning in this regard. Bohi and Burtraw (1992) fmd that a utility's environmental investment incentives will vary depending on cost recovery rules and argue that symmetry in treatment of investments in allowances and control technology is necessary if the utility is to be provided with the incentive to minimize costs of compliance."

This book critically examines the phenomenon and the consequences of the increasing inter-dependence between industry, universities and national laboratories. It explores the contrasts and similarities between the patterns of formal and informal links in a technologically dynamic industry (electronic components) with those in a traditional industry (flow measurement) in the UK, France and Belgium. It uses evidence from interviews with firms, academics and industry organisations in the three countries to identify the major factors which regulate links.

Fisher expertly describes and analyzes the growing non-governmental movement throughout the Third World in relation to the global issue of sustainable development, highlighted by the recent Rio Conference. An estimated 200,000 or more indigenous NGOs (non-governmental organizations) at both the grassroots and intermediary levels help fill the void created by the failure of governments to adequately address the escalating, intertwined crises of poverty, environmental degradation, and population. NGOs, a number of which Fisher examines in detail, address the myriad problems associated with dire poverty, environmental destruction, pervasive unemployment, and the grinding exploitation of women. The stimulus to action and group effort is typically the basic need for life's fundamentals--food, shelter, and safety. Fisher points out, however, that NGOs focusing on population have grown less rapidly than those concentrating on enterprise development and/or environmental degradation. Fisher identifies the core abilities within and among NGOs that help them develop effective short-term strategies and also enhance their institutional sustainability in the long run. She demonstrates that this grassroots movement is a vital, growing force in the vast majority of Third World countries, with the potential to undermine the politics of repression and inequality. The international importance of NGOs is increasingly evident, given their ability to network and support one another. Fisher offers a comprehensive, insightful, and substantive assessment of what may be the most hopeful institutional resource available for the sustainable development of the Third World and, therefore, our ultimate survival as a species.

Little discussion about "globalization" has concerned one of the truly global forces--the management of multi-national and large domestic corporations--and the significance of modern management practices for workers in the developing world. This book examines the nature of work in the modern corporate sector in Turkey with special reference to three industries, white goods, cars and textiles. Based on extensive interviews, it questions some common assumptions in the modern western social science literature, especially in North America and Britain.

The author addresses the neglected issue of the relations between the functioning of powerful state industrial firms and the town under socialism. As they strived for labor force, the manufacturing and mining employers in Central and Eastern Europe became prominent gatekeepers controlling access to scarce goods and services, which reflected a specific labor market segmentation. The distribution of social benefits and burdens they generated enhanced life chances of certain groups by and large at the cost of the underprivileged--women and the elderly in particular. This socialist industry contributed to social injustice and deprivation as well as the reproduction of entrapping spatial settings such as factory colonies and areas reserved for potential expansion.

The study reveals a great diversity of mechanisms of industrial control over and exploitation of socialist towns in Poland. Spatial organization of local activities and facilities exhibited the power of industrial gatekeepers, and in several cases became a mediating element facilitating achievement of the firM's objectives. The residents' sense of place was permeated by the company through its multiple involvement outside the factory gates, which could justify its dominant position and conceal sources of social inequalities and conflicts. The legacy of socialist factory paternalism bears heavily upon post-socialist society, which is evident in anti-egalitarian attitudes and social closure attempts demonstrated by the beneficiaries of the gatekeepers' allocation.

This second edition of The Limits to Certainty has been thoroughly revised and edited. A new chapter on Facing Social Uncertainty' has been added, while the section on Value and Time in the Service Economy: The Notion of Utilization' has been extended in order to include the conclusions of recent research conducted by the authors on the subject of waste prevention on the product level, i.e. making a better use of resources during the utilization of goods. The key to economic progress has always been the better allocation of resources, and the majority of resources available today are in the form of service activities. In order to measure and exploit such resources, one needs a theoretical frame of reference based on the notions of risk and uncertainty, rather than on the 'certain' equilibrium of the present economic system. Service means performances, in real periods of time, which means that the identification of values must be based on probabilities: the assessment of the probability and cost of a distribution of events in the future. The Limits to Certainty, with a Preface by Ilya Prigogine and a Foreword by Alexander King, is thus about the economic foundations of the Service Economy. The Limits to Certainty is published under the auspices of the Club of Rome and is, in fact, a follow-up to a report published by the Club in 1980, Dialogue on Wealth and Welfare, in which is was proposed that the limits to growth were the limits of a specific type of economic growth that had successfully been developed voer a period of two centuries. This earlier report went on to propose that a new economic growth needed to integrate economic and ecological factors, in practice as well as in theoryand therefore revise the notion of economic value. This economic transition developed parallel to a growing movement at a more fundamental philosophical level favoring indeterminism against determinism: the notions of risks and uncertainty are increasingly considered as the realm of the new challenges, as compared to a perception - typical of the deterministic era - according to which risk and uncertainty reflect a level of imperfect knowledge' which science would or should eliminate: a positive versus a negative connotation of risk and uncertainty.

The objective of this book is to present the problems and possibilities of transferring technology from the developed countries to the developing countries to raise their standard of living. It develops the conceptual issues, legal ramifications, empirical testing of mathematical models and case studies of different industries in many countries. It contains articles by distinguished scholars in the field, practitioners and government officials. It is an important supplement to the hands-on approach used by many private industries and national and international organizations. The unique feature of this book is that it is multidisciplinary and that it has a balanced combination of abstract theoretical approaches and practical considerations.

Made in Italy holds a highly significant position in the global luxury market, as an economic, cultural and social phenomenon and textbook example of the country-of-origin effect. Whilst in the past luxury was conceptualised as an exclusive benefit of the few, it is now a highly diversified ecosystem with disruptive challenges to its identity and authenticity, led by new customer segments. This book - through an analysis of diverse cases - answers the key issues in the industry of the new Made in Italy luxury, with a particular focus on sustainability. The book provides an in-depth view into luxury Made in Italy, from historical roots, heritage and tradition to major forces of change and innovative, entrepreneurial adaptations in the twenty-first century. It situates Made in Italy in the broader global context of change, with regards to the call for sustainable manufacturing and consumption. Written by an international pool of academics and experts in luxury brand management, the book presents a series of case studies to explore how the industry is responding to new consumer expectations and demand to maintain competitive advantage. This unique collection will be of interest for academics, scholars and upper-level students across the fields of luxury management and marketing, brand management, consumer behaviour as well as sustainability.