Does translation hinder integration?

2006 and 2007 saw renewed debates about rising costs of public sector translation and interpreting. One argument put forward was that the provision of such services for the immigrant population is deterring community cohesion in the UK. For example, the former education secretary Ruth Kelly raised the question of whether we are providing a ‘crutch’ by making translations available to immigrants, thus not giving them the incentive to learn English. The paper will address this question in the context of language policies and language ideologies in the UK. It will be argued that the debate about translation services has been instrumentalised for the discursive construction of identities.

Do Keiretsu really hinder FDI into Japanese manufacturing?

This paper examines an issue that has received a good deal of comment in the literature, but little analysis. It has been often argued that the presence of the Keiretsu in Japan has been instrumental in deterring multinational firms from entering Japan, though evidence for this is patchy. We therefore present some new analysis of this issue, evaluating the links between Keiretsu presence and inward investment penetration across sectors in Japan. We show that Keiretsu presence is associated with inward investment penetration. Once one allows for factors such as market structure, then Keiretsu attract rather than deter FDI. We further offer some explanation of why this may be, and contrast our findings with earlier work. RP0816.

Do Keiretsu really hinder FDI into Japanese manufacturing?

This paper examines an issue that has received considerable comment but little analysis. It has often been argued that the presence of the keiretsu in Japan has been instrumental in deterring multinational firms from entering Japan, though evidence for this is patchy. We present some new analysis of this issue, thereby evaluating the effects of keiretsu on inward investment penetration in Japan. In contrast to previous work in this area, our results suggest that there is little relationship between inward FDI and keiretsu networks, once one controls for endogeneity and unobservable heterogeneity. The results illustrate some important interaction effects between keiretsu and other explanatory variables that explain differences in inward investment penetration. © 2012 Copyright International Journal of the Economics of Business.