Search results for "Market economy"
showing 10 items of 138 documents
Outward Foreign Direct Investment by Chinese National Oil Companies
2015
Developed countries have become increasingly suspicious about the rapid growth of Chinese investments in their home countries and abroad, commonly citing potential threats to national security and global governance as the main sources of anxieties. As a result, policy measures in some developed markets have been put in place to create additional regulation and oversight, specifically in highly regulated and strategic industries, such as the oil sector. This article refutes a number of popular myths about Chinese investments in the global oil industry, and suggests a more rigorous dialogue with the Chinese authorities relating to their integration into international institutions.
Dialogue in the Dark: Shedding Light on the Development of Social Enterprises in China
2015
International audience; The application of for-profit business practices to nonprofit organizations, social enterprises are a way for nonprofit organizations to find funding in a time of rising costs, falling donations, and increased competition from for-profit businesses in the social sector. Although well established in the mature economies of the West, these enterprises are a novelty in the emerging economies of Asia and in the transitional economies of the former communist world. The experiences of Dialogue in the Dark, a social enterprise concerned with the problems associated with blindness, highlight the unique challenges that social enterprises face in China and offer lessons for en…
Labour Mobility in Construction: European Implications of the Laval un Partneri Dispute with Swedish Labour
2006
The accession to the European Union of new member states from central and eastern Europe, with weak trade union movements, poorly developed social dialogue and inferior working conditions, has been viewed as a threat to regulated labour standards in the EU-15. This article examines a high-profile labour dispute arising from the conditions of Latvian construction contract labour in Sweden. The dispute exposes weaknesses in the protective floor of minimum standards offered by the posted workers Directive. It also goes to the core of the debate about the preservation of a ‘European social model’ and the proposed Services Directive.
Return on capital in Spanish tourism businesses: A comparative analysis of family vs non-family businesses
2016
The analysis of the keys to competitiveness in the tourism sector has an unquestionable justification for its importance in the Spanish economy and its global growth prospects. The need for a better understanding of the keys to the competitiveness of the tourism firm is also fuelled by the magnitude of the challenges that it faces and by the sector structure, characterised by a notable weight of family-owned businesses. The objective of this research lies precisely in developing a diagnosis of the return on capital of the tourism sector and the determinants of its evolution in the family business (FB) vs non-family business (NFB). Specifically, this study focuses on the analysis of both fir…
More planet and less profit? The ethical dilemma of an oil producing nation
2019
Every oil producing nation is confronted with a complex and fundamental ethical dilemma. On the one hand, there are moral arguments for the nation to use the petroleum resource for the benefit of society and make it available for countries who do not have this natural resource endowment. On the other hand, there are moral arguments for not extracting and using fossil fuels because of CO2 emissions. In short, this creates tension between the need for government revenues to finance welfare benefits and the objective of preserving the environment. A complicating factor is that a nation's domestic oil and gas activities are in its nature global because the activities have a direct impact on the…
The Protection of the Weaker Parties in the Platform Economy
2018
Known by many names – platform, sharing, peer-to-peer (p2p), collaborative economy, and so on - entirely new business models have emerged in recent years, whereby online platforms use digital technologies to connect distinct groups of users in order to facilitate transactions for the exchange of assets and services. This dramatic shift in business organisation and market structure has opened an intense debate on the persisting need for those regulatory measures that typically protect the weaker party in bilateral business-to-consumer transactions. Widespread calls for a more “levelled playing field” makes a strong argument for reconsidering the scope of regulation and delegating regulatory …
The impact of international influence on microbanks’ performance: A global survey
2011
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in International Business Review. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in International Business Review, 20(2), 163-176. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ibusrev.2010.07.006 Microbanks serve micro-enterprises and poor people with financial services. This study examines how various aspects of international influence affect microbanks' financi…
Obstacles Facing Smaller Business in Developing Countries
2003
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a central role in economic growth and poverty alleviation in developing countries and transition economies. Yet small and medium-scale enterprise may suffer from a number of disadvantages compared with larger firms. Market imperfections, notably those caused by underdeveloped financial and legal systems, typically constrain small firms and severely limit their ability to grow. Economies of scale and entry cost favor large firms, and large entrepreneurs usually wield more political influence. Thus government rules and regulations may also be biased in favor of large firms. To the extent that market and government failures are more prevalent in develop…
A Two-Sided Kingdom: A Sicily of Export and Urban Wheat Supply
2021
The Sicilian victualling system sought to guarantee both the subsistence of cities and the income of the great aristocratic landowners interested in the wheat market. A set of economic mechanisms, social practices, and political conflicts unfolded around the urban victualling offices, dealing with wheat and flour distribution, bread production, contracts for the procurement of supplies, and the price system of the mete, run by political elites. North-eastern Sicily was exclusively consumer, while the central-western area produced surpluses for the foreign market and for the rest of the island, including Palermo—the capital city—and Messina—a rich and hungry city—. The centralised office of …
Modeling the enterprising character of European firms
2003
In an increasingly globalized economy, innovation pursuing the speeding up of technological changes takes a renewed interest. In this study, we attempt to show those characteristics and variables that make businesses successful, especially innovative small and medium‐sized enterprises. The article focuses on this business sector because the contribution of it to employment generation, wealth distribution and economy appraisal is frequently set to the fore in current political and economic debate. A study of 408 businesses, according to data from the European Commission and the Spanish Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial – Center for Industrial and Technological Development – (y…