Introduction: Reconsidering Futurism

The financial crisis hit Italy harder than many other Eurozone countries. In part this was due to the fact that the crisis came upon a system that was weakened by years of sub-par economic growth. One of the several endogenous factors that explain the stagnation of the Italian economy is the weak corporate governance in the industrial sector and parts of the financial one. A framework that was designed to maintain stability in the ownership of companies and of certain types of banking institution ultimately led to an inefficient allocation of capital and to a lack of investment, which contributed to the loss of competitiveness of Italian firms in a fast globalizing marketplace.     

Noril'sk Nickel: A Global Company?

Two specialists on Russia's minerals industries examine the evidence supporting the argument that the Russian mining conglomerate Noril'sk Nickel can be viewed as a global company. Included among the criteria they assess are the geographic dispersion of the company's markets and operations, the diversified and multinational character of its ownership, whether it has matched the performance standards set by its major international competitors, and the effect of the company's ownership presence on the management style of its foreign operations. A particular focus is on how an ongoing conflict between two major Russian oligarch shareholders (Vladimir Potanin and Oleg Deripaska) has shaped Noril'sk Nickel's ownership and management structure, which is characterized by the continued (background) presence of the state, the lack of any organized policy for training a multinational management cohort, and the absence of a major block of foreign shareholders. In the end, they conclude that Noril'sk Nickel is not a genuinely global but rather a Tier-1 Russian company, albeit one with a global scale of operations.     

旅游企业的发展模式：华侨城的实践及启示

本文以深圳华侨城控股股份有限公司为例,对其“旅游＋地产”的发展模式进行研究。结果表明,“旅游＋地产”的发展模式有效地提高了企业的经营业绩,这主要在于企业充分依据旅游业和房地产业之间的产业关联性,在一定程度上实现了产业的纵向一体化,从而促进了企业内的资源共享,形成了有效的内部资本市场,并分散了经营风脸。     

Foreign-owned Firms' Campaign Contributions in the United States: An Exploratory Study

This study extends previous empirical work on corporate political activity by examining which foreign-owned firms provide campaign contributions to United States legislators. While numerous studies have examined which domestic firms make campaign contributions, little is known about the propensity of foreign-owned firms to make contributions. Using logit and Tobit analyses, the findings suggest that firm size, legislative issues, foreign ownership, and cultural characteristics are important determinants of a foreign-owned firm's political strategy. The findings also suggest that there are strong parallels between the political strategies of foreign-owned firms and domestic firms.     

Capital's search for order: Foreign direct investment in Singapore's overseas parks in Southeast and East Asia

If countries compete for capital in the shape of foreign direct investment (FDI), from the point of view of multinational enterprises (MNEs), there is a market for the social order on offer in different nation states. MNEs seek out particular models of social order for their FDI projects. In the middle is a diverse set of organisations who mediate between supply and demand in a world market for social order. East and Southeast Asia represent interesting and complicated cases in point. Different national models of social order are also overlain and punctured by the hybrid models apparent in cross-border zones of economic integration and joint venture industrial park enclaves. This paper examines the engagement between states, MNEs and intermediaries in this variegated FDI policy landscape.     

The false developmental promise of Corporate Social Responsibility: evidence from multinational oil companies

Using the example of multinational oil companies, this article suggests that there are fundamental problems surrounding the capacity of private firms to deliver development and the aspiration of achieving development through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) may be fundamentally flawed. The article is based on an extensive twelve-month research project on the Gulf of Guinea region funded by the Nuffield Foundation. This research identified a number of constraints to a developmental role for CSR: the subservience of CSR schemes to corporate objectives; country- and context-specific issues; the failure to involve the beneficiaries of CSR; the lack of human resources; technical/managerial approaches of company staff and the lack of CSR's integration into larger development plans. But even if private companies were able to overcome practical problems, it argues that the current CSR agenda fails to address the crucial issues of governance and the negative macro-level effects that multinational companies cause in host countries. The article concludes by suggesting that a focus on CSR may divert attention from broader political, economic and social solutions for developmental problems.     

Extracting sovereignty: Capital, territory, and gold mining in Tanzania

In contemporary discussions of “resource nationalism,” sovereignty is often imagined as the exclusive control of national states over internal resources in opposition to external foreign capital. In this paper, we seek to draw attention to the specifically national territorial forms of sovereignty that - rather than hindering the flow of capital - become constitutive to the accumulation of resource wealth by states and capital alike. Drawing from political geographical theorizations of sovereignty, we argue that resource sovereignty cannot be territorially circumscribed within national space and institutionally circumscribed within the state apparatus. Rather, sovereignty must be understood in relational terms to take into account the global geography of non-state actors that shape access to and control over natural resources. Specifically, we engage national-scale state sovereignty over subterranean mineral resources in the form of legal property regimes and examine the mutually constitutive set of interdependencies between mining capital and landlord states in the accumulation of resource wealth. Using Tanzania as a case study, we argue that national-scale ownership of subterranean mineral resources has been critical to attracting global flows of mining capital from colonial to contemporary times. We first examine the history of the colonial state in Tanganyika to illustrate how land and mineral rights were adjudicated through the power of the colonial state with the hopes of attracting foreign capital investment in the mining sector. We then examine contemporary efforts on the part of the independent United Republic of Tanzania to again enact legislation meant to attract foreign mining companies - and the consequences for local populations living near sites of extraction.     

The geography of venture capital investments in the UK

The role of venture capital in economic development increasingly is recognized as central to the development of an entrepreneurial economy. However, the supply of venture capital is not distributed evenly across the space economy. In the UK, evidence for the 1980s demonstrated that venture capital investments were highly concentrated in Greater London and the South East, reinforcing the existing patterns of regional concentration of economic activity. This paper reviews the regional distribution of venture capital investments in the UK in the 1990s, a period of massive growth in venture capital investment activity. It concludes that the regional concentration of venture capital investment has been considerably reduced since the 1980s. However, more detailed analysis of the data demonstrates that this shift towards a less unequal regional distribution has been driven by so–called 'merchant' venture capital – investments in large–scale management buy–outs and buy–ins which facilitate corporate restructuring through ownership change and often have adverse consequences for employment. 'Classic' venture capital – investments in young entrepreneurial companies with high growth potential – remains highly concentrated in London and the South East, and also in Scotland. This reflects both supply– and demand–side factors. The Government's new regional venture capital funds are unlikely to be effective in closing this regional finance gap. An alternative approach to intervention, in the context of the increasing globalization of venture capital investments, is to seek to attract venture capital money and expertise from elsewhere.     

外资流动的动力学研究——以广东省为例

资本流动受推力、引力和阻力作用,在空间上先向中心城市和交通干线集聚,然后沿城市体系和交通干线作"蛙跳"式、点线式推进,最后向乡村面状扩散。资本流动对流入地区产生正负两方面的影响。投资环境建设和引资工作应针对不同阶段资本流动的特点和驱动因素,采取相应的政策,调控外资流动,减少负面影响,使利用结构合理化。     

Market Rules and Spatial Outcomes: Insights from the Corporate Restructuring of U.S. Food Retailing

In this paper a study of the corporate restructuring of the U.S. food retail industry, during and following the period of regulatory relaxation and high-leverage capital transformations of the 1980s, is used to interrogate the complex relationships between market regulation, investment regimes, corporate strategies, and spatial outcomes. It is shown that changes in the “rules” governing investment and competition in the United States in the 1980s triggered countervailing spatial processes in the food retail industry. Those processes took more than a decade to work themselves through, but by the late 1990s a radically altered corporate landscape was beginning to emerge. In particular, consolidation of the industry had finally gained momentum–creating an industry whose leading firms are likely by 2002 to have a market share double the level of the early 1990s. The paper concludes by considering the insights which a consideration of corporate restructuring and regulation in this U.S. industry offers for some important areas of conceptual debate in economic geography. In particular, it is argued that industries in which capital structure transformations of the firm must be confronted and treated as a central issue have an intrinsic, but until recently neglected, importance in theoretical debate in the discipline.     

Growth in the International Reserves of Russia,China, and India: A Comparison of Underlying Mechanisms

A noted international specialist on the Russian economy compares the different mechanisms by which the emerging powerful economies of Russia, China, and India accumulated substantial foreign reserves during the 2000s in the lead-up to the global financial crisis. He also investigates the costs incurred by these countries of intervention into exchange markets to maintain exchange rate regimes supporting such accumulation, as well as measures undertaken after the crisis to address sudden and massive outflows of foreign private capital and considerable decreases in demand for imports in developed countries. The author argues that each of the three countries can be viewed as a prototype for a particular means of reserve accumulation among emerging market countries that has led to the revival of the Bretton Woods international monetary system.     

Store Wars: Changing Retail Ownership in Beijing

Two U.S.-based economic geographers analyze recent changes in retailing activity in Beijing, focusing on changes in store ownership. More specifically, they investigate declines in state ownership in the retail sector since the early 1980s in conjunction with the rapid growth of the domestic private sector and foreign ownership. The paper outlines a new geography of successful (and not-so-successful) retailers that has emerged due to rationalization of the industry, marketization, globalization, as well as government policies at a variety of levels. Changes in store ownership provide insights into the complexity of China's transition, the evolving relations between state and capital, and the role of the local state in the country's economic reforms. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: D23, L20, L81, O18. 2 figures, 3 tables, 1 appendix, 114 references.     

Getting the China Story Right: Insights from National Economic Censuses

Two Hong Kong-based geographers critically interrogate competing interpretations of the nature and dynamics of China's ongoing economic transformation. Based on the data gathered from China's first and second national economic censuses, they examine the pattern and process of ownership transformation in the Chinese economy, focusing on employment, capital assets, and output as well as productivity and industrial innovation. Emphasis is placed on the following critical issues: (1) after three decades of opening, China's national economy continues to be dominated by domestic enterprises (with foreign and overseas Chinese-invested enterprises limited to only a few industrial sectors and highly specific locales); (2) the bulk of capital assets and key large-scale industrial sectors remain in state ownership; and (3) spontaneous, bottom-up privatization of the labor market has occurred without a corresponding privatization of the capital market. In examining these and other issues, the authors argue that the evolving, complex "China story" can be better understood only after abandoning reliance on preconceived theoretical models derived primarily from Western experience. They support their case by first challenging the conventional neoliberal view of privatization as an independent force or predetermined condition, arguing instead that it is conditioned by prevailing social and political influences. Likewise, they posit that rapid expansion of private and individual businesses at the grassroots level has owed more to relaxed state control than to active state involvement envisioned by the thesis of state corporatism. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: E22, E23, E24, O11, P20. 8 figures, 6 tables, 87 references.     

我国旅游上市公司股权结构与经营绩效的实证分析

股权结构是公司治理结构的基础,公司治理结构又决定公司经营绩效。只有股权结构合理,才能形成完善的公司治理结构,进而才能保证公司取得良好的经营业绩。本文以目前已在深圳和上海证券交易所挂牌的旅游上市公司作为研究样本,通过对样本数据的描述性统计和回归分析,发现旅游上市公司股权结构和企业经营绩效并不显著相关,从而为国有旅游企业改制提供参考。     

宋代中央客馆制度

宋代在京城设有都亭驿、都亭西驿、同文馆、礼宾院、怀远驿等中央客馆作为馆待周边各族朝贡使节的馆舍与机构。诸客馆不仅是各族使节居住的场所,还是周边各族与宋进行经济贸易的场所及周边各族了解华夏礼仪文化的场所。中央客馆制度是宋对入京的周边各族使节接待与管理制度的重要组成部分。对维护和发展宋与周边各族的关系起着积极的作用。     

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT,INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT AND THE CHANGING POLISH PIG INDUSTRY

The world's meat market has had tremendous growth in the past decades. Global meat producers, particularly in developed economies, have grown bigger through expansion, mergers and acquisitions. The livestock markets in less developed countries are particularly the prime targets for investments by these producers. This article looks at foreign direct investment in a transitional economy, using Poland's pig industry as the empirical case study. It argues that such investments not only bring significant changes in the method of producing meat in the host country; they also have particular socio‐political impacts and have thus been met with some level of resistance by local communities. Our study suggests that the relations of foreign firms to the local community are crucial for their long term presence; and these relations are in turn dependent on a gamut of place specific features and the firms' broader corporate philosophy and strategy. In general, foreign firms need to find ways to replicate the kinds of deep social‐economic links between the livestock industry and places that existed in the socialist era. The case studies of American‐owned Agri Plus and Danish‐owned Poldanor illustrate some of the difficulties involved in the foreign investment in the meat industries while demonstrating the viability and possibility of such companies becoming more accepted and welcomed in the local communities.     

面对被侵略的共同体认——晚清经济民族主义思潮发生缘由蠡测

赔款、外债造成的晚清财政负担最终转嫁到国民身上,洋货与洋企的肆虐使民众利益进一步受损,国人共同的维权诉求愈来愈强,从而在公司制框架之下,演绎了资本联合,共赴国难的历史活剧。从根本上讲,晚清经济民族主义是国人感受民族危机的结果,而不是"想象的共同体"。     

Multilevel (mis)governance of palm oil production

The palm oil industry exemplifies the ‘regionalisation without regionalism’ pattern seen in other industries in Asia: extensive, regionally concentrated transnational economic integration accompanied by a low level of formal regional institution-building. Production is concentrated in Malaysia and Indonesia, and Asian countries account for a major share of the market for intermediate products. The ownership structure of palm oil production reflects the dominance of transnational Malaysian and Singaporean firms. There is no authoritative regional institution governing production, investment standards or labour in the industry. A patchwork of both enabling and regulatory governance institutions supports the industry. These are formal and informal, public and private, and are situated at multiple levels: within, below and across the nation state. Although the governance structure surrounding the palm oil industry has supported it well in terms of production volumes and profits, large externalities—environmental and social costs—persist. This article argues that the governance failures associated with the industry stem from different stakeholders' competing interests in contexts of highly unequal wealth and power distribution. Misgovernance is not an unintended consequence of institutions failing to keep up with markets in scale and scope, but is embedded in the multilevel governance regime that supports, and partially regulates, the industry.     

中国现代经济发展的初始条件

中华民族历史悠久、文化统一,其文化凝聚力和生存延续力的深度是民族复兴、实现现代化的根基。统一的独立自主的社会主义国家的建立,为在一个经济落后、长期分裂的国家进行现代化建设创造了基本的政治前提条件。丰富的劳动力资源、较高的社会整合能力以及社会一体化水平是中国推进现代化的独特的组织资源优势。中国领导人具有强烈的工业化和现代化意识,而且中国作为一个后起的现代化国家,具有诸多的后发优势。但是,中国工业化启动时间晚,经济发展起点低下,工业基础薄弱,物质和资本资源短缺;人口数量多、增长快,城乡差异巨大,各地区发展极不平衡,教育事业落后,医疗卫生条件差,科学技术水平低,缺乏启动工业化的技术创新力量和吸收新技术的能力。由于中国工业化和现代化的初始条件与发达国家差异很大,决定了中国的现代化将是一个由不断量变的积累进而部分质变的长期过程,中国至少要花100年的时间甚至更长的时间才能逐步缩小与发达国家的绝对差距。     

新中国华侨捐资兴学政策演变及其特征

受私有制、资本主义及外资利用等一系列重大理论问题的困扰,也受国内外政治经济形势及侨情等客观环境的限制,新中国成立以来的华侨捐资兴学政策一波三折。至20世纪50年代中期,各级政府才正式出台了鼓励华侨捐资兴学的政策,之后这些政策又因种种原因,在实践中未能持续下去。改革开放之后,华侨捐资兴学政策重新步入正轨,并体现出注重保护捐赠人、制度化特征明显、地方先行先试等特点。