Obtaining Bounds on The Sum of Divergent Series in Physics

Under certain circumstances, some of which are made explicit here, one can deduce bounds on the full sum of a perturbation series of a physical quantity by using a variational Borel map on the partial series. The method is illustrated by applying it to various examples, physical and mathematical.Comment: 33 pages, Journal Versio

The international growth of emerging market firms : evidence from a natural experiment

The recent international growth of some firms from emerging markets has attracted the attention of academics and managers alike. How do such emerging market firms achieve growth in international markets despite lacking foreign market knowledge and international competitiveness, and despite facing weak institutions in their home countries? The authors address this question by proposing a new concept—global market capital, the set of assets that prepare emerging market firms to compete globally. Global market capital consists of three elements: leadership capital (at the individual level), foreign marketing and financial capital (at the firm level), and network capital (at the inter-firm level). The authors argue that, taken together, these elements enable emerging market firms to overcome their weaknesses in foreign market knowledge, international competitiveness and home institutions. In particular, the authors highlight the prominent role that leadership capital, specifically CEOs’ foreign market experience, plays in helping emerging market firms grow internationally. The authors test their thesis using uniquely compiled data on Indian firms from the Bombay Stock Exchange 500 index. The Indian context helps to set up a natural experiment in which the independent variables of interest are measured prior to a major sudden and unanticipated regulatory shift in India’s outward investment policy and the dependent variable (international growth) is measured after this policy shift. Results from the paper highlight the crucial role of leadership capital in driving international growth both directly and through its synergistic interaction with the other elements of global market capital

Public Policy and Social Good: Theory, Practice and Beyond

In this paper I argue that the most fundamental goal of any public policy is to assist the realization of social good. I take it that the idea of social good has developed differently in different political and moral traditions, and focus my analysis on the interplay of liberalism, virtue ethics and the Capability Approach. I argue that the liberal conception of social good, as espoused by its leading exponents, is somewhat problematic, and that it fails to account for meaningful civic associations. Even though liberal thinkers often prioritize an individual’s freedom and autonomy, they do not provide us with concreto principles that can facilitate the realization of these goals. I draw upon the practical functioning of leading liberal democracies, including the United States, Canada and India, emphasizing the role of normative political constraints in policy making. I conclude that the liberal conception of social good stands in an acute need of a fresh principle that can rectify the above anomalies and reinvigorate its moral force, and that such a principle can probably be constructed with the help of Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach and Aristotle’s Virtue Theory.The “Annales. Ethics in Economic Life” is affiliated and co-financed by the Faculty of Economics and Sociology of the University of Lodz