Over the past 20 years, there has been a considerable expansion in theory and research about human resource management and performance. This paper reviews progress by identifying a series of phases ...in the development of relevant theory and research. It then sets out a number of challenges for the future on issues of theory, management processes and research methodology. The main conclusion from the review is that after over two decades of extensive research, we are still unable to answer core questions about the relationship between human resource management and performance. This is largely attributed to the limited amount of research that is longitudinal and has been able to address the linkages between HRM and performance and to study the management of HR implementation.
We show that supply-side financial shocks have a large impact on firms’ investment. We develop a new methodology to separate firm borrowing shocks from bank supply shocks using a vast sample of ...matched bank-firm lending data. We decompose aggregate loan movements in Japan for the period 1990–2010 into bank, firm, industry, and common shocks. The high degree of financial institution concentration means that individual banks are large relative to the size of the economy, which creates a role for granular shocks as in Gabaix’s (2011) study. We show that idiosyncratic granular bank supply shocks explain 30–40 percent of aggregate loan and investment fluctuations.
In this article we review research on Chinese guanxi and social networking in the past twenty years and identify the major perspectives, theories, and methodologies used in guanxi research at micro ...and macro levels. We summarize the main findings of over 200 journal articles on guanxi research in terms of its conceptual definitions and measurements, its antecedents and consequences, and its dynamics and processes. Furthermore, we identify the gaps between different levels of guanxi research and discuss future directions to advance our understanding of the complex and intricate guanxi phenomenon.
We investigate how urban railroad and highway configurations have influenced urban form in Chinese cities since 1990. Each radial highway displaces 4% of central city population to surrounding ...regions, and ring roads displace about an additional 20%, with stronger effects in the richer coastal and central regions. Each radial railroad reduces central city industrial GDP by about 20%, with ring roads displacing an additional 50%. We provide evidence that radial highways decentralize service sector activity, radial railroads decentralize industrial activity, and ring roads decentralize both. Historical transportation infrastructure provides identifying variation in more recent measures of infrastructure.
EXPORTS AND FINANCIAL SHOCKS Amiti, Mary; Weinstein, David E.
The Quarterly journal of economics,
11/2011, Volume:
126, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
A striking feature of many financial crises is the collapse of exports relative to output. This article examines whether deteriorations in bank health can help explain the large drops in exports ...relative to output. Our article is the first to establish a causal link between the health of banks providing trade finance and growth in a firm's exports relative to its domestic sales. We overcome measurement and endogeneity issues by using a unique data set, covering the Japanese financial crises from 1990 through 2010, which enables us to match exporters with the main bank that provides them with trade finance. Our point estimates are economically and statistically significant, suggesting that the health of financial institutions is an important determinant of firm-level exports during crises.
We examine changes in the scope of the sell-side analyst industry and whether these changes impact information dissemination and the quality of analysts' reports. Our findings suggest that changes in ...the number of analysts covering an industry impact analyst competition and have significant spillover effects on other analysts' forecast accuracy, bias, report informativeness, and effort. These spillover industry effects are incremental to the effects of firm level changes in analyst coverage. Overall, a more significant sell-side analyst industry presence has positive externalities that can result in better functioning capital markets.
High-Skilled Migration and Agglomeration Kerr, Sari Pekkala; Kerr, William; Özden, Ça lar ...
Annual review of economics,
01/2017, Volume:
9, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This article reviews recent research regarding high-skilled migration. We adopt a data-driven perspective, bringing together and describing several ongoing research streams that range from the ...construction of global migration databases, to the legal codification of national policies regarding high-skilled migration, to the analysis of patent data regarding cross-border inventor movements. A common theme throughout this research is the importance of agglomeration economies for explaining high-skilled migration. We highlight some key recent findings and outline major gaps in the literature that we hope will be tackled in the near future.
Using population and product consumption data from the Demographic and Health Surveys, I construct comparable measures of inequality and migration for 65 countries, including some of the poorest ...countries in the world. I find that the urban-rural gap accounts for 40% of mean country inequality and much of its cross-country variation. One out of every four or five individuals raised in rural areas moves to urban areas as a young adult, where they earn much higher incomes than nonmigrant rural permanent residents. Equally, one out of every four or five individuals raised in urban areas moves to rural areas as a young adult, where they earn much lower incomes than their nonmigrant urban cousins. These flows and relative incomes are suggestive of a world where the population sorts itself geographically on the basis of its human capital and skill. I show that a simple model of this sort explains the urban-rural gap in living standards.
Global talent flows Pekkala, Sari; Kerr, William R; Özden, Çaglar ...
The Journal of economic perspectives,
10/2016, Volume:
30, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Highly skilled workers play a central and starring role in today's knowledge economy. Talented individuals make exceptional direct contributions--including breakthrough innovations and scientific ...discoveries--and coordinate and guide the actions of many others, propelling the knowledge frontier and spurring economic growth. In this process, the mobility of skilled workers becomes critical to enhancing productivity. Substantial attention has been paid to understanding the worldwide distribution of talent and how global migration flows further tilt the deck. Using newly available data, we first review the landscape of global talent mobility. We next consider the determinants of global talent flows at the individual and firm levels and sketch some important implications. Third, we review the national gatekeepers for skilled migration and broad differences in approaches used to select migrants for admission. Looking forward, the capacity of people, firms, and countries to successfully navigate this tangled web of global talent will be critical to their success.
We investigate the role of industry specialization in horizontal cross-border mergers and acquisitions. We find that acquirers from more specialized industries in a country are more likely to buy ...foreign targets in countries that are less specialized in these same industries. The role of industry specialization in foreign acquisitions is more prevalent when contracting inefficiencies and exporting costs limit arm's-length relationships. The economic gains in cross-border deals are larger when specialized acquirers purchase assets in less specialized industries. These results are consistent with an internalization motive for foreign acquisitions, through which acquirers can apply localized intangibles on foreign assets.
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