Corruption and subsidiary profitability: US MNC subsidiaries in the Asia Pacific region

Would multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries be more profitable in host countries where corruption is less severe? Would MNC subsidiaries be more profitable in less corrupt countries if they focus on local sales? This paper examines the impact of the level of corruption on the profitability of US MNCs in the Asia Pacific region. Using foreign direct investment (FDI) data archived by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and corruption data reported by the World Bank, we find that MNC subsidiaries located in countries with a lower level of corruption are more profitable. In addition, MNC subsidiaries with a greater focus on local sales are more profitable when the corruption level is low. This study contributes to the literature by showing that when local sales are important to MNC subsidiaries, a lower level of corruption by host countries positively affects the profitability of the MNC subsidiaries.

The making of a void sovereignty: political implications of the military checkpoints in the West Bank

Research on the Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank has emphasized not only that these checkpoints have dire implications for the Palestinians living there, at the personal, familial, and communal levels, and devastating eff ects on the Palestinian economy, but also that they have far-reaching consequences for the ability of the Palestinians to establish an independent political entity. At the same time, analysis of the Israeli forms of domination over the Palestinians has also stressed the role of a Palestinian governing authority in sustaining the Israeli rule, since the former relieves the latter of its responsibility to care for the occupied Palestinian population. This paper aims to address this apparent contradiction claiming that a comprehensive analysis of Israeli forms of domination requires a spatial examination of the operation of sovereignty with an assessment of governmentalizing arrays. This combined analysis suggests that a Palestinian sovereignty, but one which is emptied of its actual ruling power, is construed at the checkpoints as an epiphenomenon of Israeli apparatuses of control. © 2013 Pion and its Licensors.

How Do We Find Out What's Going On in the World?

This textbook chapter critically examines the role of the media in International Relations, and introduces students to the main debates over how the media represents global affairs

Geographies of Communality, Colonialism, and Capitalism: Ecology and the World-System

Drawing upon recent reworkings of world systems theory and Marx’s concept of metabolic rift, this paper attempts to ground early nineteenth-century Ireland more clearly within these metanarratives, which take the historical-ecological dynamics of the development of capitalism as their point of departure. In order to unravel the socio-spatial complexities of Irish agricultural production throughout this time, attention must be given to the prevalence of customary legal tenure, institutions of communal governance, and their interaction with the colonial apparatus, as an essential feature of Ireland’s historical geography often neglected by famine scholars. This spatially differentiated legacy of communality, embedded within a country-wide system of colonial rent, and burgeoning capitalist system of global trade, gave rise to profound regional differentiations and ecological contradictions, which became central to the distribution of distress during the Great Famine (1845-1852). Contrary to accounts which depict it as a case of discrete transition from feudalism to capitalism, Ireland’s pre-famine ecology must be understood through an analysis which emphasises these socio-spatial complexities. Consequently, this structure must be conceptualised as one in which communality, colonialism, and capitalism interact dynamically, and in varying stages of development and devolution, according to space and time.

An anthropometric history of the World, 1810-1980: did migration and globalization influence country trends?

We find that regional height levels around the world were fairly uniform throughout most of the 19th century, with two exceptions: above-average levels in Anglo-Saxon settlement regions and below-average levels in Southeast Asia. After 1880, substantial diver- gences began to differentiate other regions -- making the world population taller, but more unequal. During the late 19th century and 20th century, heights between world regions devi- ated significantly, when incomes also became very unequal. Interestingly, during the “breaking point period” between the two regimes, heights declined significantly in the cattle-rich New World countries, whereas they started to increase in Old Europe. We discuss in this study whether immigration was a core factor to influence the height decline in the “Anthropometric Decline of the Cowboy and Gaucho Empires”.

Forgoing primacy: Damaging democratic policing in the West Bank

Since the Oslo Accords were signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in September 1993, the international community has supported civil policing programmes. It has done so as part of its development commitments to Palestinian state-building. Such programmes were, until the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000, largely regarded as successful in terms of supporting the establishment of a Palestinian civil police (PCP). Such programmes were essentially Western imported models which loosely mixed community and public order policing approaches. With re-engagement in the Palestinian security sector (PSS) in the West Bank in 2007, the international community has once again sought to play a major role in PSS reform. This role includes supporting rehabilitation and retraining of the PCP as a principal institution of state-building. Such activities alongside the so-called transformation efforts within the wider realm of the PSS have re-established as their goal law and order. Within the transformation agenda, there are inherent demands with respect to Israel and the Palestinian National Authority's security and counterterrorism agendas. This analysis examines these activities, and accompanying political intent to contend that such approaches are undermining principles of democratic policing including civil police primacy (CPP). CPP reinforces police universality and means supporting rule of law by putting security under governmental control with proper mechanisms of accountability. This article argues that support to the security sector in the West Bank has increasingly only paid lip service or sought to subvert normative approaches to democratic policing.

Listening to the World Through New Ears:Reinvention of the soundtrack in the works of Lucrecia Martel and Sofia Coppola

This paper explores the production and post-production techniques and tensions in designing sound for film. Considering the films of Lucrecia Martel and Sofia Coppola, amongst others, Greene and Yang will discuss how the soundtrack takes on a primary role in these films and becomes a medium for symbolism, reflection, characterisation, as well as storytelling. There will be a close examination of the processes involved in creating character-orientated soundscapes. These processes are sensitive to the effects sound has on an audience. Exploring how these filmmakers (with their sound teams) utilise the listening experience, including attention to point of audition and sound perception, this paper will critically unpick how such creative decisions are arrived at during various stages of the production process. Outlining the use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound and the potential musicality of sound effect design, issues of reverberation, noise and intent are discussed to highlight the sonic framing of these creative teams. Greene will approach these soundtracks from a production/post-production perspective, while Yang will explore the composer’s/designer’s ear.

Proxemics: The World is a Deaf Machine

A multi-channel sound installation involving fixed loudspeakers and multiple mp3 players, commissioned by the Sainsbury Centre of Visual Arts, Norwich as a response to the sculpture of Ian Tyson and the architecture of Denys Lasdun.

All the World's a Stage: Facilitating Discovery Science and Improved Cancer Care through the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health

The recent explosion of genetic and clinical data generated from tumor genome analysis presents an unparalleled opportunity to enhance our understanding of cancer, but this opportunity is compromised by the reluctance of many in the scientific community to share datasets and the lack of interoperability between different data platforms. The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health is addressing these barriers and challenges through a cooperative framework that encourages "team science" and responsible data sharing, complemented by the development of a series of application program interfaces that link different data platforms, thus breaking down traditional silos and liberating the data to enable new discoveries and ultimately benefit patients.