Does Foreign Direct Investment Promote Economic Growth? Evidence from a Threshold Regression Analysis

Using threshold regression techniques developed by Caner and Hansen(2004),this paper examines whether the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth is dependent upon different absorptive capacities. There are three absorptive capacities, namely, initial GDP, human capital and the volume of trade, that are used as threshold variables in our paper. The empirical analysis shows that FDI alone plays an ambiguous role in contributing to economic growth based on a sample of 62 countries covering the period from 1975 through 2000. Under the threshold regression, we find that initial GDP and human capital are important factors in explaining FDI. FDI is found to have a positive and significant impact on growth when host countries have better levels of initial GDP and human capital.

Gravitational radiations of generic isolated horizons and non-rotating dynamical horizons from asymptotic expansions

Instead of using a three dimensional analysis on quasi-local horizons, we adopt a four dimensional asymptotic expansion analysis to study the next order contributions from the nonlinearity of general relativity. From the similarity between null infinity and horizons, the proper reference frames are chosen from the compatible constant spinors for an observer to measure the energy-momentum and flux near quasi-local horizons. In particular, we focus on the similarity of Bondi-Sachs gravitational radiation for the quasi-local horizons and compare our results to Ashtekar-Kirshnan flux formular. The quasi-local energy momentum and flux of generic isolated horizons and non-rotating dynamical horizons are discussed in this paper.Comment: PRD, 15 page

How Social Anxiety and Social Factors Influence and Moderate Social Commerce

Following the fast growth of social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in the cyber world recently, social commerce has become an important emerging issue on the Internet. Researchers have studied not only online factors but also offline factors, according to the offline-to-online consumer-behavior model. Hence, this study applied approaches to social anxiety, online social interaction and online social support to comprehend the influences of social commerce intentions. After the research survey collected data from SNS (Facebook) users for one month, the researcher analyzed the data and made several findings. First, social anxiety positively moderates the relationship between online social support and social commerce intention. Second, online social interaction directly and indirectly affects social commerce intention through online social support. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are also discussed, providing several future research directions and suggestions for scholars and SNS operators, respectively