A tale of two regions:comparative versus competitive approaches to economic restructuring

In April 2004 Mitsubishi announced the closure of its Lonsdale plant in South Australia. Almost a year later, MG Rover went into administration, resulting in the immediate closure of its Longbridge plant just outside Birmingham, England. Both closures were expected to have a considerable impact on their regional economies through the loss of employment and associated economic activity. However, governments in Australia and England responded in significantly different ways: in England the focus was on competitive advantage through the modernisation of the auto cluster and the diversification of the regional economy into new, high-technology industries. In Australia, the national and state governments introduced policy responses based on the pursuit of comparative advantage. This paper compares and contrasts the two sets of government responses and examines the capacity of each to deliver long-term benefits to their affected communities.

Entrepreneurship in the neighborhood:shifting patterns of economic activities in residential neighborhoods in five dutch cities

Cities are oftentimes seen as undergoing a process of "emergence" in the "new economy." However, this process has largely remained empirically underdetermined. This article examines the intra-city geography of emerging businesses in newly dominant sectors of the urban economy. The change in dominant sectors coincides with a shift towards small- and medium-sized businesses, creating new economic opportunities for urban residential areas. The residential neighborhood is introduced as a place where supply and demand side drivers operate to attract or limit such new economic activity. Allen Scott's perspective of the cognitive-cultural economy is used to analyze which neighborhoods are flourishing sites of the cognitive-cultural sectors. His perspective on industries that are on the rise in urban environments and their growth potential proves very valuable. Social demographic characteristics on the level of the neighborhood are used as predictors of the composition of the local economy. The analyses show that in particular wealthy, gentrified neighborhoods are more prone than others to becoming "hubs" of the cognitive-cultural economy. However, disadvantaged neighborhoods may under certain conditions serve as incubators for business start-ups as they offer low-rent office spaces. This has important consequences for their future economic growth potential as well as the distribution of successful businesses in the city. © 2013 Urban Affairs Association.

Business cycles, long waves, and company langevity in Birmingham area metal industries 1780-1980

This doctoral thesis originates from an observational incongruence between the perennial aims and aspirations of economic endeavour and actually recorded outcomes, which frequently seem contrary to those intended and of a recurrent, cyclical type. The research hypothesizes parallel movement between unstable business environments through time, as expressed by periodically fluctuating levels of economic activity, and the precipitation rates of industrial production companies. A major problem arose from the need to provide theoretical and empirical cohesion from the conflicting, partial and fragmented interpretations of several hundred historians and economists, without which the research question would remain unanswerable. An attempt to discover a master cycle, or superimposition theorem, failed, but was replaced by minute analysis of both the concept of cycles and their underlying data-bases. A novel technique of congregational analysis emerged, resulting in an integrated matrix of numerical history. Two centuries of industrial revolution history in England and Wales was then explored and recomposed for the first time in a single account of change, thereby providing a factual basis for the matrix. The accompanying history of the Birmingham area provided the context of research into the failure rates and longevities of firms in the city's staple metal industries. Sample specific results are obtained for company longevities in the Birmingham area. Some novel presentational forms are deployed for results of a postal questionnaire to surviving firms. Practical demonstration of the new index of national economic activity (INEA) in relation to company insolvencies leads to conclusions and suggestions for further applications of research into the tempo of change, substantial Appendices support the thesis and provide a compendium of information covering immediately contiguous domains.

Internationalizing sales research:current status, opportunities and challenges

With economic activity in emerging markets growing at 40 percent, and with 10 percent and more of the firms in the Global Fortune 500 now headquartered in emerging economies, intense interest lies in the globalization of business activities, including the sales function. This systematic review of the international sales literature in a selection of the most influential journals explains, consolidates, and analyzes current knowledge. This paper also explores the challenges inherent in conducting international sales research, including conceptualization, research management, and data collection issues. Finally, we suggest ways to move forward for researchers in this field, including pertinent topics and how methodological and practical constraints might be addressed.

The economics of copyright

The copyright industries — such as music, film, software and publishing — occupy a significant and growing share of economic activity. Current copyright law protects the creator for up to 70 years after their death, significantly longer than patent protection (20 years after invention). Copyright law aims to balance the incentive to create new work against the costs associated with high prices and restricted access to this work. This paper reviews the economic issues behind copyright and how these are challenged by changes in technology and market structure. While economics provides a powerful conceptual framework for understanding the trade-offs involved, the paper argues that our empirical knowledge base is very weak. Much more empirical analysis is needed to understand the impacts of changes to copyright legislation. Without such analysis, policy and legal debates will continue to be based largely on anecdote and rhetoric.

Foreign direct investment, access to finance, and innovation activity in Chinese enterprises

A recent, comprehensive database is used to investigate the link between inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and innovation activity in China. The results of the analysis suggest that private and collectively owned firms with foreign capital participation and those with good access to domestic bank loans innovate more than other firms do. Among enterprises not owned by the state, inward FDI at the sectoral level is positively associated with domestic innovative activity only among firms that engage in their own research and development or that have good access to domestic finance. At the sector level the effect of inward FDI into technology transfer is distinguished from the effect on domestic credit opportunities. FDI affecting credit is of little significance for state-owned enterprises and is independent of their access to finance. In contrast, better access to credit is an important channel through which FDI affects the innovation of domestic private and collectively owned enterprises.

Local-authority led economic regeneration strategies in the aftermath of the Foot-and-Mouth Disease crisis of 2001

The Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak of 2001 in the UK was completely unprecedented in its scale and severity, with over four million animals culled and a cost to the Exchequer of over £4 billion. Local authorities were at the front line in dealing with the outbreak, in coordinating the cull of livestock, the disposal of carcasses as well as attempting to deal with its aftermath and, in particular, the impact on the wider rural economy. This article examines the impacts of this crisis on three local authorities, Devon, Herefordshire and Cumbria. It examines how far the crisis acted as a catalyst in developing strategies to deal with a future outbreak as well as new local initiatives to promote regeneration in the areas most adversely affected. It focuses on developments that can be directly attributed to the crisis and shows that FMD had a considerable impact on communications and 'joined-up' activity within local authorities and with local stakeholders. © 2006, LEPU, South Bank University.

Corporate political activity in less developed countries:The Volta River Project in Ghana, 1958-66

The article expands existing categorisations of political and economic governance by including literature on less developed countries (LDCs). In four consecutive negotiations between the US multinational Kaisers and the US and Ghana governments in the early 1960s, it is argued that the company reached levels of influence that are at odds with existing explanations. In order to understand corporate political activities in LDCs, analysis needs to go beyond static factors (political risk) and include dynamic factors such as diplomatic relations and 'arenas of power', and consider the role of the investor's home country relative to the host economy.

Intellectual property activity by service sector and manufacturing firms in the United Kingdom, 1996-2000

This paper provides evidence from a newly constructed database of UK firms about the extent of their intellectual property acquisition activities over five years. We focus on service sector firms, which have not previously been studied, with comparisons for firms in manufacturing and other sectors, such as agriculture. The measures of IP include both trade marks, which are most important in services, and patents, which are predominantly sought by manufacturing firms. The analysis includes patents and trade marks applied for via both the UK and European routes. While IP assets sought through the UK Patent Office remained strong, more services firms were seeking European Community trade marks and more manufacturing firms were seeking patents via European Patent Office through time. Firm characteristics that are positively correlated with IP activity include larger firm size, stock market listed status and high product market diversification.

The Policy Dystopia Model:an interpretive analysis of tobacco industry political activity

BACKGROUND: Tobacco industry interference has been identified as the greatest obstacle to the implementation of evidence-based measures to reduce tobacco use. Understanding and addressing industry interference in public health policy-making is therefore crucial. Existing conceptualisations of corporate political activity (CPA) are embedded in a business perspective and do not attend to CPA's social and public health costs; most have not drawn on the unique resource represented by internal tobacco industry documents. Building on this literature, including systematic reviews, we develop a critically informed conceptual model of tobacco industry political activity. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We thematically analysed published papers included in two systematic reviews examining tobacco industry influence on taxation and marketing of tobacco; we included 45 of 46 papers in the former category and 20 of 48 papers in the latter (n = 65). We used a grounded theory approach to build taxonomies of "discursive" (argument-based) and "instrumental" (action-based) industry strategies and from these devised the Policy Dystopia Model, which shows that the industry, working through different constituencies, constructs a metanarrative to argue that proposed policies will lead to a dysfunctional future of policy failure and widely dispersed adverse social and economic consequences. Simultaneously, it uses diverse, interlocking insider and outsider instrumental strategies to disseminate this narrative and enhance its persuasiveness in order to secure its preferred policy outcomes. Limitations are that many papers were historical (some dating back to the 1970s) and focused on high-income regions. CONCLUSIONS: The model provides an evidence-based, accessible way of understanding diverse corporate political strategies. It should enable public health actors and officials to preempt these strategies and develop realistic assessments of the industry's claims.