The Globalization of Innovation: Pharmaceuticals

Analyzes trends in the global pharmaceutical industry, with a focus on intellectual property creation, business relationships, value-chain activity, and opportunities in India and China. Includes profiles of Indian and Chinese pharmaceutical firms

International films and international markets: the globalisation of Hollywood entertainment, c.1921-1951

The international appeal of Hollywood films through the twentieth century has been a subject of interest to economic and film historians alike. This paper employs some of the methods of the economic historian to evaluate key arguments within the film history literature explaining the global success of American films. Through careful analysis of both existing and newly constructed data sets, the paper examines the extent to which Hollywood's foreign earnings were affected by: film production costs; the extent of global distribution networks; and also the international orientation of the films themselves. The paper finds that these factors influenced foreign earnings in quite distinct ways, and that their relative importance changed over time. The evidence presented here suggests a degree of interaction between the production and distribution arms of the major US film companies in their pursuit of foreign markets that would benefit from further archival-based investigation

The film business in the United States and Britain during the 1930s

Film was a most important product in the lives of the people during the 1930s. This paper sets out to analyse the underlying economic arrangements of the film industries of the U.S. and Britain during the decade in producing and diffusing this commodity-type to the population at large. In doing this, the paper finds a highly competitive industry that was built around showing films that audiences wanted to see, irrespective of the extent of vertical integration. It also examines the nature of the inter-relationship between the two industries and finds an asymmetry between the popularity of British films in the American market and that of American films in the British market. Our explanation for this is that the efforts of British firms on the American market were not sufficiently sustained to make a significant impact on American audiences

Online social networking and trade union membership: what the Facebook phenomenon truly means for labor organizers

Union membership has declined precipitously in a number of countries, including in the United States, over the past fifty years. Can anything be done to stem this decline? This article argues that union voice is a positive attribute (among others) of union membership that is experiential in nature and that, unlike the costs of unionization, can be discerned only after exposure to a union. This makes the act of 'selling' unionism to workers (and to some extent firms as well) difficult. Supportive social trends and social customs are required in order to make unionization's hard-to-observe benefits easier to discern. Most membership-based institutions face the same dilemma. However, recent social networking organizations such as Facebook have been rather successful in attracting millions of active members in a relatively short period of time. The question of whether the union movement can appropriate some of these lessons is discussed with reference to historical and contemporary examples

Architects, stadia and sport spectacles: Notes on the role of architects in the building of sport stadia and making of world-class cities

From the point of view of the production of consumption this article considers a less often researched aspect of sport spectacles and mega-events: who the agents and institutions are that assemble, build and design the material infrastructure — especially the stadia and facilities. The article seeks to dig below the surface of the reified world of the material infrastructure of global cities to discuss the creators of the emblematic buildings and the leisure and sport spaces constructed to assist in the pursuit or maintenance of ‘world-class’ status. It provides a necessarily brief overview of architects and the architecture field, explores the global spread of stadium and sport facility building and the role of architects in this process. It provides an initial exploration of some issues rather than an account of fieldwork or empirical research.The conclusion summarizes the discussion and identifies future research questions