INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS: A WINNING COMBINATION Generating a World’s View based on Buckley and Casson and Hirschman’s Books

Much of the discussion in economics is concerned with growth. Economic growth can be discussed and measured in terms of a national state. It can be also discussed and measured in terms of a corporation, (often using the term value rather than growth). Development Economics is concerned with growth of countries run by governments; International Business is concerned with the behavior and the value of multinational enterprises run by management. This paper is about the interface between the two. The vehicle used in this paper to explore the interface is a comparative analysis between two very influential books; “The Strategy of Development” by Hirschman, (1958), and the “Future of the Multinational Enterprise” by Buckley and Casson, (1976). The main argument of the paper is that Development Economics and International Business do approach a very similar issue, but they do it from two different dimensions perpendicular to each other. Looking at the whole picture, (the matrix as a whole rather than along the two separate vectors), gives the observer a more meaningful picture. This is done in the paper through a critical comparison of the two texts focusing on the two dimensions on internalization, growth and internalization, investment choices and strategies, and multinational enterprises and the dynamics of development.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40111/3/wp725.pd

IMPORTING HIGH-RISK CAPITAL AND REVEALING HIDDEN COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGES

The comparative advantage of a country is determined by its factor intensity. In many cases factors of production can be accumulated over time and thus effect a change in the comparative advantage of a given country. The changes in the accumulation of factors can be a policy decision, or it can arise from other economic developments. The change in the comparative advantage of Israel in the last decade of the 20th century where the country has become a center for innovative new technology was affected by the globalization of the US capital market and the ability of Israeli companies and service organization to build an informational infrastructure that has made it possible to import high-risk specific sector capital to Israel. Importing this type of capital has completed the already existing human capital and makes a potential, hidden, advantage into a business reality. The Israeli experience is evidence to the contribution of international capital movements to economic growth of a small country. It also shows the relations between the international finance model of capital movements and the development economics case for the changing pattern of the comparative advantages of small countries, and the contribution of the capital markets to the process.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40110/3/wp724.pd

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS: A WINNING COMBINATION Generating a World’s View based on Buckley and Casson and Hirschman’s Books

Much of the discussion in economics is concerned with growth. Economic growth can be discussed and measured in terms of a national state. It can be also discussed and measured in terms of a corporation, (often using the term value rather than growth). Development Economics is concerned with growth of countries run by governments; International Business is concerned with the behavior and the value of multinational enterprises run by management. This paper is about the interface between the two. The vehicle used in this paper to explore the interface is a comparative analysis between two very influential books; “The Strategy of Development” by Hirschman, (1958), and the “Future of the Multinational Enterprise” by Buckley and Casson, (1976). The main argument of the paper is that Development Economics and International Business do approach a very similar issue, but they do it from two different dimensions perpendicular to each other. Looking at the whole picture, (the matrix as a whole rather than along the two separate vectors), gives the observer a more meaningful picture. This is done in the paper through a critical comparison of the two texts focusing on the two dimensions on internalization, growth and internalization, investment choices and strategies, and multinational enterprises and the dynamics of development.Development Strategy, International Business Theory

IMPORTING HIGH-RISK CAPITAL AND REVEALING HIDDEN COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGES

The comparative advantage of a country is determined by its factor intensity. In many cases factors of production can be accumulated over time and thus effect a change in the comparative advantage of a given country. The changes in the accumulation of factors can be a policy decision, or it can arise from other economic developments. The change in the comparative advantage of Israel in the last decade of the 20th century where the country has become a center for innovative new technology was affected by the globalization of the US capital market and the ability of Israeli companies and service organization to build an informational infrastructure that has made it possible to import high-risk specific sector capital to Israel. Importing this type of capital has completed the already existing human capital and makes a potential, hidden, advantage into a business reality. The Israeli experience is evidence to the contribution of international capital movements to economic growth of a small country. It also shows the relations between the international finance model of capital movements and the development economics case for the changing pattern of the comparative advantages of small countries, and the contribution of the capital markets to the process.International capital movements, globalization of capital markets, and comparativea dvantage of small countries

Identification of the prebiotic translation apparatus within the contemporary ribosome

A structural element that could have existed independently in the prebiotic era was identified at the active site of the contemporary ribosome. It is suggested to have functioned as a proto-ribosome catalyzing peptide bond formation and non-coded elongation in the same manner that contemporary ribosomes exert positional catalysis, namely by accommodating the reactants in stereochemistry favourable for inline nucleophilic attack. This simple apparatus is a dimer of self-folding RNA units that could have assembled spontaneously into a symmetrical pocket-like structure, sufficiently efficient to be preserved throughout evolution as the active site of modern ribosomes, thus presenting a conceivable starting point for translation.Here we discuss the proto-ribosome emergence hypothesis and show that the tendency for dimerization, a prerequisite for obtaining the catalytic centre, is linked to the fold of its two components, indicating functional selection at the molecular level in the prebiotic era and supporting the existence of dimeric proto-ribosome

Market Globalization by Firms from Emerging Markets and Small Countries: an Application of the Neoclassical Trade Model

The changes in globalization and in the world of international business make it necessary to rethink the basic model of the economics of international business. For most of the 2nd half of the 20th centuryinternational business was about how large companies in the developed countries increase their valuevia international business activities. Not surprisingly the research in the economics of international business from Caves, Kindleberger, and Hymer to Buckley and Casson, Dunning, and many others was based on models of industrial organization. The world has changed and international business has become a two-way street where firms and governments from emerging markets and small countries are as active as the developed countries MNEs and their governments. In this paper the basic international trade model is used to gain insights of the new world of international business. In particular, a dynamic model of changing factor intensity and of creating local specific competitive and comparative advantages for firms and governments from emerging markets is presented and discussed.Economics of international business, international trade models, emerging markets

Solving M-theory with the Conformal Bootstrap

We use the conformal bootstrap to perform a precision study of 3d maximally supersymmetric ($\mathcal{N}=8$) SCFTs that describe the IR physics on $N$ coincident M2-branes placed either in flat space or at a \C^4/\Z_2 singularity. First, using the explicit Lagrangians of ABJ(M) \cite{Aharony:2008ug,Aharony:2008gk} and recent supersymmetric localization results, we calculate certain half and quarter-BPS OPE coefficients, both exactly at small $N$, and approximately in a large $N$ expansion that we perform to all orders in $1/N$. Comparing these values with the numerical bootstrap bounds leads us to conjecture that some of these theories obey an OPE coefficient minimization principle. We then use this conjecture as well as the extremal functional method to reconstruct the first few low-lying scaling dimensions and OPE coefficients for both protected and unprotected multiplets that appear in the OPE of two stress tensor multiplets for all values of $N$. We also calculate the half and quarter-BPS operator OPE coefficients in the $SU(2)_k \times SU(2)_{-k}$ BLG theory for all values of the Chern-Simons coupling $k$, and show that generically they do not obey the same OPE coefficient minimization principle.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures, v2 submitted for publicatio

Emergence of Periodic Structure from Maximizing the Lifetime of a Bound State Coupled to Radiation

Consider a system governed by the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation in its ground state. When subjected to weak (size $\epsilon$) parametric forcing by an "ionizing field" (time-varying), the state decays with advancing time due to coupling of the bound state to radiation modes. The decay-rate of this metastable state is governed by {\it Fermi's Golden Rule}, $\Gamma[V]$, which depends on the potential $V$ and the details of the forcing. We pose the potential design problem: find $V_{opt}$ which minimizes $\Gamma[V]$ (maximizes the lifetime of the state) over an admissible class of potentials with fixed spatial support. We formulate this problem as a constrained optimization problem and prove that an admissible optimal solution exists. Then, using quasi-Newton methods, we compute locally optimal potentials. These have the structure of a truncated periodic potential with a localized defect. In contrast to optimal structures for other spectral optimization problems, our optimizing potentials appear to be interior points of the constraint set and to be smooth. The multi-scale structures that emerge incorporate the physical mechanisms of energy confinement via material contrast and interference effects. An analysis of locally optimal potentials reveals local optimality is attained via two mechanisms: (i) decreasing the density of states near a resonant frequency in the continuum and (ii) tuning the oscillations of extended states to make $\Gamma[V]$, an oscillatory integral, small. Our approach achieves lifetimes, $\sim (\epsilon^2\Gamma[V])^{-1}$, for locally optimal potentials with $\Gamma^{-1}\sim\mathcal{O}(10^{9})$ as compared with $\Gamma^{-1}\sim \mathcal{O}(10^{2})$ for a typical potential. Finally, we explore the performance of optimal potentials via simulations of the time-evolution.Comment: 33 pages, 6 figure