How Foreign Direct Investment Promotes Development: The Case of the People's Republic of China's Inward and Outward FDI

In the last 33 years after the People's Republic of China's (PRC) openness and reform, huge amounts of foreign direct investment (FDI) flowed into the PRC. The capital inflow and technology spillover in turn enabled outward FDI from the PRC. This paper gives a brief introduction to the PRC's inward and outward FDI, including their determinants, motives, main characteristics, and impact on the PRC and host countries. Inward FDI contributes to the PRC's economic growth and industry development, increases tax revenue, and improves labor quality. The contribution of inward FDI to gross domestic product averages around 3%–6%. At the same time, outward FDI improves the PRC's dynamic efficiency, and helps the host countries with capital inflow and infrastructure improvement. Based on the PRC's experience, four policy issues are proposed: dynamic mechanism inside FDI, investment liberalization, international coordination, and trade-related policy

How does Brazil measure up? Comparing rankings through the lenses of nation brand indexes

A considerable amount of literature has been published on nation brand and yet not much regarding measurement. The purpose of this paper is to examine nation brand indexes and explore the unbalanced outcomes of a country’s position in these recognized instruments. Although research has been carried out on nation brand, no single study exists comparing a country in four diverse nation brand indexes, which are the reputable ones by Anholt (2007), Fetscherin (2010), Fombrun (2014) and Anholt and Govers (2014). This paper also reflects on the critical studies perspective of the place branding research domain, discussed by Lucarelli and Berg (2011). After a qualitative approach applied to Brazil, it is believed that these indexes mutually support and complement each other - even though they use different approaches, methodologies, samples, and data. Moreover, each of them has their own strengths and weaknesses in terms of accuracy and rationality. Findings from this paper’s evaluation may guide nation brand managers, governments, and researchers to recognize that indexes should be taken into account when analysing a nation brand and its complex image. Therefore, this paper contributes to existing knowledge on the critical studies perspective of the contemporary theoretical structure of the place branding research domain by providing a comparative study based on real data-based rankings of nation brand indexes

Going means trouble and staying makes it double: the value of licensing recorded music online

This paper discusses whether a copyright compensation system (CCS) for recorded music—endowing private Internet subscribers with the right to download and use works in return for a fee—would be welfare increasing. It reports on the results of a discrete choice experiment conducted with a representative sample of the Dutch population consisting of 4986 participants. Under some conservative assumptions, we find that applied only to recorded music, a mandatory CCS could increase the welfare of rights holders and users in the Netherlands by over €600 million per year (over €35 per capita). This far exceeds current rights holder revenues from the market of recorded music of ca. €144 million per year. A monthly CCS fee of ca. €1.74 as a surcharge on Dutch Internet subscriptions would raise the same amount of revenues to rights holders as the current market for recorded music. With a voluntary CCS, the estimated welfare gains to users and rights holders are even greater for CCS fees below €20 on the user side. A voluntary CCS would also perform better in the long run, as it could retain a greater extent of market coordination. The results of our choice experiment indicate that a well-designed CCS for recorded music would simultaneously make users and rights holders better off. This result holds even if we correct for frequently observed rates of overestimation in contingent valuation studies

Investigating political brand reputation with qualitative projective techniques from the perspective of young adults

Capturing and understanding the images and reputations external stakeholders assign to brands can be confusing and challenging. This is reinforced by explicit calls for more pragmatic tools and methods to comprehend the external orientation of brands. We respond by investigating the applicability of qualitative projective techniques in exploration of the external current image and long-term reputation of the UK Conservative Party corporate brand from the perspective of young voters aged 18-24 years. This is achieved by comparing and contrasting the external brand images prior the 2015 UK General Election with the findings collected before the 2010 UK General Election. We demonstrate that qualitative projective techniques are useful applications to capture, deconstruct and understand current image and long-term reputation of political brands. Organisations including those beyond the political context will be able to use this paper as a guide to generate a deeper understanding of their brands image and consistency of their reputation

In search of tools for the use of Country-Image (CI) in the brand

Existing country image (CI) literature tends to focus on consumer behaviour. In contrast, this paper approaches CI from the point of view of the firm. In doing so, it seeks to identify the means by which international companies associate a brand with a specific country of origin in order to build brand values. In particular, it looks at the use of CI cues in brand strategies. The paper is based on exploratory research comprising a case study of two contrasting companies from the cosmetics industry, Natura, a domestic company, and the French-owned L’Occitane, both of which draw on images of Brazil to build their brands. Specific elements of CI used in branding are identified, and the extent to which the use of these differs depending on the origin of the owning company is explored. The cases suggest that CI can be exploited in different contexts. Through analysis of the elements used by both companies to build strong brands associated with the Brazilian CI—Natura Cosméticos and L’Occitane au Brésil—six tools are identified that can be combined by firms to deliver brand values, derived from any country, through the use of CI