Foreign direct investment: a tool or a target for industrial policy in Eastern Countries?

Is there any linkage between industrial policy and the inflow of Foreign Direct Investment in Eastern European countries? This is the core question which is analysed and discussed in this paper. The transition process of Central and Eastern Europe to a market economy has raised a lot of challenging questions both to Applied Economics and to Management Science. Enterprise adjustment remains one of the most interesting and complex as it is closely related to a wide range of economic, policy and management issues. Foreign Direct Investment, privatisation and industrial policy and their sort of linkage, remain some of the most interesting factors in the transition process. It seems that no sharp distinction can be presented between FDI as a target and FDI as a tool for industrial policy, but national differences remain significant as well as enterprises adjustment capacity

Perturbation analysis of a matrix differential equation x˙=ABx\dot x=ABx

Two complex matrix pairs $(A,B)$ and $(A',B')$ are contragrediently equivalent if there are nonsingular $S$ and $R$ such that $(A',B')=(S^{-1}AR,R^{-1}BS)$. M.I. Garc\'{\i}a-Planas and V.V. Sergeichuk (1999) constructed a miniversal deformation of a canonical pair $(A,B)$ for contragredient equivalence; that is, a simple normal form to which all matrix pairs $(A + \widetilde A, B+\widetilde B)$ close to $(A,B)$ can be reduced by contragredient equivalence transformations that smoothly depend on the entries of $\widetilde A$ and $\widetilde B$. Each perturbation $(\widetilde A,\widetilde B)$ of $(A,B)$ defines the first order induced perturbation $A\widetilde{B}+\widetilde{A}B$ of the matrix $AB$, which is the first order summand in the product $(A +\widetilde{A})(B+\widetilde{B}) = AB + A\widetilde{B}+\widetilde{A}B+ \widetilde A \widetilde B$. We find all canonical matrix pairs $(A,B)$, for which the first order induced perturbations $A\widetilde{B}+\widetilde{A}B$ are nonzero for all nonzero perturbations in the normal form of Garc\'{\i}a-Planas and Sergeichuk. This problem arises in the theory of matrix differential equations $\dot x=Cx$, whose product of two matrices: $C=AB$; using the substitution $x = Sy$, one can reduce $C$ by similarity transformations $S^{-1}CS$ and $(A,B)$ by contragredient equivalence transformations $(S^{-1}AR,R^{-1}BS)$

Nutrition and the gastrointestinal tract

In this year’s issue, we again have a high-calibre collection of topical reviews. Gracie and Ford commence with an assessment of the role of symbiotics (i.e. probiotics and prebiotics given together) in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. They first review the many randomized trials of probiotics and the significant and persistent reductions in symptoms that (on balance) these yield – that may persist after the end of treatment. Pain, bloating and flatulence are all better than with placebo with a range of different regimens. However, although symbiotics appear promising, their current conclusion is that the evidence for superiority over probiotics alone is lacking. Jin and Vos then consider the pathophysiology of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and specifically the role of fructose. Their synthesis of the literature includes the conclusion that unregulated lipogenesis is key to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, linked to generalized increases in visceral adiposity – in turn probably secondary to changes in the intestinal microbiota. Dietary fructose seems an important determinant of these phenomena, and early-in-life exposure appears of most significance. Although dogmatic advice is not justified, continuing to argue for limitation of dietary fructose seems wise. Barrett et al. consider the immune response in patients on artificial nutrition in the current context wherein we aim for enteral nutrition whenever possible – thus recognizing that patients who need parenteral nutrition are then an especially high-risk group. They conclude from AQ3 a wide consideration of animal and human data that the intestinal epithelial barrier is significantly compromised and to a clinically relevant extent in patients on exclusive parenteral nutrition. They encourage targeted new work to exploit the mechanisms that have now been unearthed, such that future parenteral nutrition could be used with fewer adverse immunological consequences. Plank and Russell look at nutrition in liver transplantation incorporating new data from patients with concomitantmorbid obesity. It is of course clear that obesity is a perioperative risk factor but we lack proof that pretransplant weight loss would change this. The main issue here is probably the sarcopenic element, and weight loss without muscle preservation (or growth) would be unlikely to help. As obese patients are AQ4 being transplanted, better data are clearly needed to guide optimal nutritional strategies. After a comprehensive review on the state of the art on gluten sensitivity in the absence of coeliac disease by David Sanders, the issue finishes with a intriguing article by Murphy et al. in which they consider the evidence that chronic disease is made more likely by changes in the gut microbiota driven by a high-fat diet. Although dysbiosis is present and linked to obesity, on present evidence, this falls short of a direct causal relationship. We feel confident that readers will find plenty to provoke thought and hopefully to stimulate research in the many loci where data are sparse or inconclusive

Conditional tests for elliptical symmetry using robust estimators

This paper presents a procedure for testing the hypothesis that the underlying distribution of the data is elliptical when using robust location and scatter estimators instead of the sample mean and covariance matrix. Under mild assumptions that include elliptical distributions without first moments, we derive the test statistic asymptotic behaviour under the null hypothesis and under special alternatives. Numerical experiments allow to compare the behaviour of the tests based on the sample mean and covariance matrix with that based on robust estimators, under various elliptical distributions and different alternatives. This comparison was done looking not only at the observed level and power but we rather use the size-corrected relative exact power which provides a tool to assess the test statistic skill to detect alternatives. We also provide a numerical comparison with other competing tests.Comment: In press in Communications in Statistics: Theory and Methods, 201

Compensation and speed of advancement in executive careers through the internal and external labor markets by gender

Our study aims at exploring whether internal and external moves have a different impact on the speed of advancement in executive careers, identifying gender differences in the influence of both mobility routes and understanding the impact of speed on compensation inequality.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Exchange rate dynamics in crawling-band systems

In this note we show that an exchange rate crawling-band system can borrow a portion of those aspects of a target zone that lead to its stabilizing effects on the exchange rate, depending on the relationship between the crawl rate and the drift of the fundamentals process. If the crawl rate is sufficiently high (with respect to the drift), the crawling-band is similar to a free float regime. As the crawl rate decreases, the crawling-band system collapses to a standard target zone.crawling band