CONSIDERING THE SOURCE: DOES THE COUNTRY OF ORIGIN OF FDI MATTER TO ECONOMIC GROWTH?*

ABSTRACT It has long been surmised that firms controlled by different countries may have unequal effects on the host economies in which they locate. By looking at the seven major source countries of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States, we provide empirical evidence that the state growth effects of FDI differ by source country. We attribute these differential growth effects to the relative differences in factor endowments between the source country and the state. The implication of this result is that technology transfer, believed to be the engine of economic growth, becomes more costly the more dissimilar the endowments.     

Value chains, networks and clusters: reframing the global automotive industry

In this article, we apply global value chain (GVC) analysisto recent trends in the global automotive industry, with specialattention paid to the case of North America. We use the threemain elements of the GVC framework—firm-level chain governance,power and institutions—to highlight some of the definingcharacteristics of this important industry. First, nationalpolitical institutions create pressure for local content, whichdrives production close to end markets, where it tends to beorganized nationally or regionally. Second, in terms of GVCgovernance, rising product complexity combined with low codifiabilityand a paucity of industry-level standards has driven buyer–supplierlinkages toward the relational form, a governance mode thatis more compatible with Japanese than American supplier relations.The outsourcing boom of the 1990s exacerbated this situation.As work shifted to the supply base, lead firms and supplierswere forced to develop relational linkages to support the exchangeof complex uncodified information and tacit knowledge. Finally,the small number of hugely powerful lead firms that drive theautomotive industry helps to explain why it has been so difficultto develop and set the industry-level standards that could underpina more loosely articulated spatial architecture. This case studyunderlines the need for an open, scalable approach to the studyof global industries.     

Narcissus's Mirror: Manufacture and Modernism in the American Great Basin—The Case of Pottery

The commodification of pottery cannot be reduced to strict econo-technological terms. Commodification is a cultural process, enmeshed in local, regional, and international systems of meaning. As Victorian Modernism eroded, anti-modern movements commodified traditional culture. These philosophies, themselves commodities, had repercussions on the pottery industry throughout the world. In both America and Australia, these processes produced art and studio potteries. In the American Great Basin, these changes were experienced very differently by potters from different cultures. The commodification and industrialization of modern pottery factories predicated the reification of a pre-industrial artisanal past.     

Not a Soldier,Not a Slacker: Conscientious Objectors and Male Citizenship in the United States during the Second World War

This essay argues that the 1940 Selective Service Act introduced new tensions between pacifism and male citizenship in the United States. Even as the draft required tens of millions of American men to answer Uncle Sam's call and promoted a new norm of male military obligation, it also specified the acceptable grounds for conscientious objection and created bureaucratic mechanisms for distinguishing between sincere objectors and ‘slackers’. Using Selective Service and organisational records, letters, diaries, interviews and the media, I suggest that male citizenship has been defined not only by idealised and gendered duties, but also by the difficulties and exceptions involved in their practical realisation.     

Geomythology and the Death of King Priam in The Aeneid,Book 2

This article examines an anomaly in Virgil’s Aeneid, book 2, and offers a possible solution based on the method known as geomythology. In this section of the poem, the narrator depicts the fatal stabbing of King Priam in front of his own altar, within the citadel of Troy, as the city is being burned by the Greeks. Immediately following this passage is a curious ‘epitaph’ for Priam, which notes that his body is huge, decapitated, and lying on a beach. Scholars have provided various explanations for this apparent discrepancy, with varying degrees of success. This article explores how a geomythological approach, focusing on the misidentification of the remains of a woolly mammoth, may resolve the issue.     

Late Holocene Human Expansion into Near and Remote Oceania: A Bayesian Model of the Chronologies of the Mariana Islands and Bismarck Archipelago

Since the investigations of Spoehr in the 1950s, most researchers have accepted a date of ～3500 BP/1500 BC for the initial human settlement of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. The relationship of this early expansion beyond Island Southeast Asia, characterized by Lapita-like pottery, to the appearance of Lapita in Near Oceania, generally was either given little thought or largely ignored. The Lapita settlement of Near Oceania is almost universally regarded as the initial expansion of Austronesian speakers into the Pacific, followed a few centuries later by a rapid migration to the east into Remote Oceania. More recently, however, radiocarbon evidence from several sites suggests that initial late Holocene expansion into the Pacific occurred in the Mariana Islands. This hypothesis needs critical evaluation. To this end, we created site- and region-level Bayesian calibration models. Results estimate that initial Lapita occupation of the Mussau Islands in the Bismarck Archipelago occurred between 3535 and 3234 cal BP (95% probability), which is 50–385 years (95% probability) earlier than the initial settlement of the Mariana Islands, dated to 3230–3085 cal BP (95% probability). Additionally, settlement of the Mariana Islands was either coeval or later (?66 to 254 years [95% probability]) than Lapita expansion out of Mussau into the greater Bismarck archipelago between 3397 and 3115 cal BP (95% probability). Radiocarbon datasets from these regions are hampered by problematic samples, and we anticipate that additional reliable radiocarbon dates will refine these estimates.     

The natural hazard sector's engagement with Indigenous peoples: a critical review of CANZUS countries

Natural hazard management agencies across the settler countries Canada, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the United States (or CANZUS countries) are presently involved in an increasing range of collaborative and consultative engagements with Indigenous peoples. However, perhaps because these engagements are diverse and relatively recent, little has been written about how they emerged and, from these agencies' perspectives, little is known about how these engagements find their motivation within government natural hazard management frameworks. In this article, we review existing academic and grey literature to categorise the origins of recent and present engagements and then identify and elaborate on the key rationales informing natural hazard management agencies' interactions with Indigenous peoples. We argue both that the broad principles of sustainability and inclusion have transformed these interactions and that developmentalist approaches and an overemphasis on Indigenous peoples' traditional knowledge can sometimes undermine this work. Incorporating critiques of settler colonialism relevant to the CANZUS context, this review aims to support established, emerging, and future collaborative engagements by investigating and analysing the literature to date.