The attractiveness of nations in global competition : an empirical assessment of the effects of country attractiveness on the success of strategy for hosting international sports events, 1990-2012

This dissertation aims to investigate empirical evidence on the importance and influence of attractiveness of nations in global competition. The notion of country attractiveness, which has been widely developed in the research areas of international business, tourism and migration, is a multi-dimensional construct to measure a country's characteristics with regard to its market or destination that attract international investors, tourists and migrants. This analytical concept provides an account of the mechanism as to how potential stakeholders evaluate more attractive countries based on certain criteria. Thus, in the field of international sport-event bidding, do international sport event owners also have specific country attractiveness for their sport event hosts? The dissertation attempts to address this research question by statistically assessing the effects of country attractiveness on the success of strategy for hosting international sports events. Based on theories of signaling and soft power, country attractiveness is defined and measured as the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social, and environmental attractiveness. This thesis proceeds to examine the concept of sport-event-hosting strategy and explore multi-level factors affecting the success in international sport-event bidding. By exploring past history of the Olympic Movement from theoretical perspectives, the thesis proposes and tests the hypotheses that economic, social and environmental attractiveness of a country may be correlated with its bid wins or the success of sport-event-hosting strategy. Quantitative analytical methods with various robustness checks are employed with using collected data on bidding results of major events in Olympic sports during the period from 1990 to 2012. The analysis results reveal that event owners of international Olympic sports are likely to prefer countries that have higher economic, social, and environmental attractiveness. The empirical assessment of this thesis suggests that high country attractiveness can be an essential element of prerequisites for a city/country to secure in order to bid with an increased chance of success.

Les recommandations de prix en droit suisse et en droit européen de la concurrence

Les recommandations de prix sont de natures très variées : horizontales, verticales, plurilatérales, unilatérales, apparemment unilatérales, émises par des entreprises individuelles ou au sein d'associations d'entreprises ; elles établissent notamment des prix fixes, minimums ou maximums, ou portent sur des éléments du prix. Cette grande diversité est source de deux difficultés principales, qui concernent la qualification et le traitement des recommandations de prix. Ainsi, après avoir situé l'étude dans son contexte historique, juridique et économique, nous consacrons de larges développements à ces deux problématiques centrales. Sont traitées en détails les conditions auxquelles les recommandations de prix horizontales et verticales peuvent être rattachées à chacune des formes d'ententes connues du droit suisse et du droit européen. Les critères qui prévalent en matière d'ententes horizontales et verticales sont recensés, étudiés et critiqués. La dernière partie est dédiée à l'examen du traitement matériel des recommandations de prix horizontales et verticales. Les dispositions topiques de la LCart et duTFUE sont analysées, comme le sont également les autres textes suisses et européens pertinents dans le cadre du traitement des recommandations de prix et de leur justification économique.

Annual Review of the European Football Players' Labour Market / Etude annuelle du marché du travail européen des footballeurs

The key reference on the labour market and the logics of squad formation in the big-5 European leagues. One hundred richly coloured pages, illustrated by graphics, maps, rankings, statistical models and analysis in French and English which inform managers about potential strategies to put their clubs on the road to success help managers of federations and players' unions to understand current trends and to take decisions ... suggest to journalists new lines of investigation likely to interest the general public allow researchers and students to benefit from reliable and comparable sources, developed with the greatest possible rigour ... give fans the possibility to understand in detail the dynamics at work in their favourite sport and club.