Using history to help refine international business theory: ownership advantages and the eclectic paradigm.

In John Dunning’s eclectic paradigm firms need to have ownership, location, and internalisation advantages in order to cross borders and engage in foreign direct investment. By drawing on historical evidence on the evolution of a group of leading marketing-based multinationals in consumer goods, this paper claims that, despite its richness, the eclectic paradigm, and in particular the concept of ‘ownership advantages’, needs to be revised and extended, to take into account different levels of institutional analysis. For the eclectic paradigm to give a rounded view of the internationalising firm it needs to acknowledge the critical importance of firm-specific ownership advantages such as the role of the entrepreneur

Gamma Ray Bursts as Cosmological Probes

We discuss the prospects of using Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) as high-redshift distance estimators, and consider their use in the study of two dark energy models, the Generalized Chaplygin Gas (GCG), a model for the unification of dark energy and dark matter, and the XCDM model, a model where a generic dark energy fluid like component is described by the equation of state, $p= \omega \rho$. Given that the GRBs range of redshifts is rather high, it turns out that they are not very sensitive to the dark energy component, being however, fairly good estimators of the amount of dark matter in the Universe.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, talk presented by P.T.S. at the XV Encontro Nacional De Astronomia e Astrofisica, Lisbon, Portugal, 28-30 July 200

Acoustic interaction forces between small particles in an ideal fluid

We present a theoretical expression for the acoustic interaction force between small spherical particles suspended in an ideal fluid exposed to an external acoustic wave. The acoustic interaction force is the part of the acoustic radiation force on one given particle involving the scattered waves from the other particles. The particles, either compressible liquid droplets or elastic microspheres, are considered to be much smaller than the acoustic wavelength. In this so-called Rayleigh limit, the acoustic interaction forces between the particles are well approximated by gradients of pair-interaction potentials with no restriction on the inter-particle distance. The theory is applied to studies of the acoustic interaction force on a particle suspension in either standing or traveling plane waves. The results show aggregation regions along the wave propagation direction, while particles may attract or repel each other in the transverse direction. In addition, a mean-field approximation is developed to describe the acoustic interaction force in an emulsion of oil droplets in water.Comment: 11 pages, 5 eps figures, RevTex 4.

Heavy ion collisions at intermediate energies in a quark-gluon exchange framework

Heavy ion collisions at intermediate energies can be studied in the context of the Vlasov-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (VUU) model. One of the main features in this model is the nucleon-nucleon (NN) cross section in the collisional term. Quark interchange plays a role in the NN interaction and its effect can be observed in the cross section. We explore the possibility that quark interchange effects can appear in observables at energies lower than RHIC.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of VIII Hadron Physics 200