The interplay between firms' internal organization and market behaviour is a long standing issue in industrial economics. This book examines firms' objectives in the comparatively new perspective shaped by globalization. The positive and normative aspects of theoretical analysis are developed and richly complemented by empirical studies.
The separation between ownership and control has become common practice over the last century, in most medium and large firms across the world. Throughout the twentieth century, the theory of the firm and the theory of industrial organization developed parallel and complementary views on managerial firms. This book offers a comprehensive exposition of this debate. In its survey of strategic delegation in oligopoly games, An Economic Theory of Managerial Firms is able to offer a reinterpretation of a range of standard results in the light of the fact that the control of firms is generally not in the hand of its owners. The theoretical models are supported by a wealth of real-world examples, in order to provide a study of strategic delegation that is far more in-depth than has previously been found in the literature on industrial organization. In this volume, analysis is extended in several directions to cover applications concerning the role of: managerial firms in mixed market; collusion and mergers; divisionalization and vertical relations; technical progress; product differentiation; international trade; environmental issues; and the intertemporal growth of firms. This book is of great interest to those who study industrial economics, organizational studies and industrial studies.
Understanding how firms and national economic systems respond to globalization is one of the most urgent and demanding tasks listed in the current agenda of researchers and policy makers. The papers presented in this volume tackle the theme of defining firms' objectives in this comparatively new perspective. This collection of original studies illuminates the links between the internal structure of firms, their incentives, and their performance. This volume presents theoretical and empirical papers investigating crucial aspects of firm's structure and strategies, such as cross-border mergers, outsourcing, innovation and the maximization of non-profit objectives, in connection with the new challenges posed by globalization. This book is indispensable reading for all interested in trade theory and policy, and development economics.
This volume addresses different issues related to green innovation procurement as well as exploring the challenges involved in public procurement. It offers a broad array of perspectives, addressing both general, abstract problems of optimal public procurement and concrete cases of national or even local public procurement systems.
A detailed exploration of the influence and utility of Thomas Malthus' model of population growth and economic changes in Europe since the nineteenth century. This important contribution to current discussions on theories of economic growth includes discussion of issues ranging from mortality and fertility to natural resources and the poverty trap.
This study examines five decades of Italian economists who studied or researched at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge between the years 1950 and 2000. Providing a detailed list of Italian economists associated with Hicks, Harrod, Bacharach, Flemming, Mirrlees, Sen and other distinguished dons, the authors examine eleven research lines, including the Sraffa and the neo-Ricardian school, the post-Keynesian school and the Stone’s and Goodwin’s schools. Baranzini and Mirante trace the influence of the schools in terms of 1) their fundamental role in the evolution of economic thought; 2) their promotion of four key controversies (on the measurement of technical progress, on capital theory, on income distribution and on the inter-generational transmission of wealth); 3) the counter-flow of Oxbridge scholars to academia in Italy, and 4) the invigoration of a third generation of Italian economists researching or teaching at Oxbridge today. A must-read for all those interested in the way Italian and British research has shaped the study and teaching of economics.
This book analyses the vertical relationships of firms in an international context. These relationships, Khalid Sekkat argues, have gained further relevance due to the notable increase in vertical specialization of production across borders in the past few years.
International migration and urbanization as economic processes can provide great opportunities to solve local and regional economic and social problems and lead to the leveling of global economic unfairness and multi-complexity. However, uncontrolled migration and urbanization can easily destroy market stability and create many new social and economic problems both in developed (due to migration) and developing (due to urbanization) countries. Migration and Urbanization: Local Solutions for Global Economic Challenges is a collection of innovative research that sets basic rules and patterns for state regulation of urbanization and international migration and for increasing the economic efficiency of developed and developing countries. Additionally, the book evaluates the economic impact of urbanization and international migration at the global, national, and regional levels. While highlighting topics including economic security, modern mechanisms, and migration policy, this book is ideally designed for government officials, economists, educators, policymakers, industry leaders, business managers, academicians, researchers, and students.
Economic and social progress requires a diverse ecosystem of firms that play complementary roles. Making It Big: Why Developing Countries Need More Large Firms constitutes one of the most up-to-date assessments of how large firms are created in low- and middle-income countries and their role in development. It argues that large firms advance a range of development objectives in ways that other firms do not: large firms are more likely to innovate, export, and offer training and are more likely to adopt international standards of quality, among other contributions. Their particularities are closely associated with productivity advantages and translate into improved outcomes not only for their owners but also for their workers and for smaller enterprises in their value chains. The challenge for economic development, however, is that production does not reach economic scale in low- and middle-income countries. Why are large firms scarcer in developing countries? Drawing on a rare set of data from public and private sources, as well as proprietary data from the International Finance Corporation and case studies, this book shows that large firms are often born large—or with the attributes of largeness. In other words, what is distinct about them is often in place from day one of their operations. To fill the “missing top†? of the firm-size distribution with additional large firms, governments should support the creation of such firms by opening markets to greater competition. In low-income countries, this objective can be achieved through simple policy reorientation, such as breaking oligopolies, removing unnecessary restrictions to international trade and investment, and establishing strong rules to prevent the abuse of market power. Governments should also strive to ensure that private actors have the skills, technology, intelligence, infrastructure, and finance they need to create large ventures. Additionally, they should actively work to spread the benefits from production at scale across the largest possible number of market participants. This book seeks to bring frontier thinking and evidence on the role and origins of large firms to a wide range of readers, including academics, development practitioners and policy makers.
Local functional systems that create inefficient islands of information are being replaced by expensive enterprise-wide applications that unify the functional areas; however, while we have not yet been able to completely and seamlessly integrate across functions, we find that the new islands of information are no longer functional but political, cultural, linguistic, and geographical. The global village is a reality and enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations face new issues and challenges. Enterprise Resource Planning for Global Economies: Managerial Issues and Challenges provides authoritative research on the theoretical frameworks and pragmatic discussions on global implementations of information systems, particularly ERP systems. This book offers professionals, managers, and researchers, who want to improve their understanding of the issues and challenges that arise when information systems cross national boundaries, with an authoritative, essential research resource.
