Foreign direct investment and the SME sector

Purpose: Although foreign direct investment (FDI) and entrepreneurship are potential routes to recovery (Girma and Wakelin, 2001; Lyon et al., 2002), existing literature is divided on the relationship between the two. This study examines the influence of foreign investment on the local SME sector after the 2008 financial crisis. Design/methodology/approach: Local authority district data from Great Britain is used to examine the influence of foreign firm employment on the size of the local SME sector as a proportion of all firms, and foreign firm influence on firm births in the locality. In order to control for local geographical, infrastructural, and economic conditions regression analysis is used to examine the relationship between foreign business employment and indigenous business activities. Findings: The potential for technological spillovers and spinout activities appears to dominate with firm birth rates higher where there is greater foreign firm employment. However, there is also evidence of crowding out in relation to the existing SME sector, which is found to be reduced in size where foreign influence through employment is greater. Research Implications: The results here indicating a complementarity relationship between foreign influence on employment and firm births is important for policy makers looking to revive struggling local economies. However, the relevant support needs to be in place to maximise the benefit from the supply of new entrepreneurs generated. Originality/value: Unlike many other studies the relationship between the SME sector, firm births and foreign influence is considered at a local level and where economic conditions are more uncertain and economic recovery is less taken for granted. A better understanding of the relationship allows more appropriate policy to be developed in order to aid local economies to recover

Evaluating methodological issues in the tourism literature: UK outgoing tourism and trade links

This paper evaluates the importance of trade in goods when modelling demand for tourism. It is argued that the limited literature testing causality between trade in goods and tourism does not consider the appropriate variables. This study utilises bilateral data for 16 UK tourist destinations in order to test Granger causality between trade in goods and tourism expenditure. UK imports, exports and total trade are tested separately, whilst controlling for real GDP and real bilateral exchange rates. The novelty of this paper is the variable specification, as well as testing the causal relationship for the case of UK outgoing tourists. Our findings suggest a causal relationship between the tourism expenditure of UK residents and trade in goods. These results support the inclusion of a trade in goods variable when estimating tourism demand, as well as adopting appropriate methodologies to account for this causal relationship. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that the trade-tourism link is important for both the UK and host countries

A first-principle analysis of mechanical properties of carbon deficient transitional metal carbide

Refractory transition metal carbides have intriguing physical and chemical properties, especially when structured down to nanoscale. The lack of study in defected transition metal carbides, is partially due to the synthesis difficulty of refractory materials. The synthesis of defected carbide and their substitutional alloy will be even more difficult than single phase. First principle theory-based simulation can help to conceptualize the effects of substitutional defects on their mechanical properties. In this paper, we performed density functional theory (DFT) simulation of carbon defected α-MoC(1-x) phases to investigate their formation and mechanical properties for thesis sub-stoichiometric materials

Investigation of molybdenum carbides as catalyst for hydrogen evolution in PH universal environment using density functional theory simulation

Transition metal carbides (TMC) have intriguing physical and chemical properties, especially when structured down to nanoscale. The temperature and chemical resilience of this family of materials made it ideal candidate for electrochemical applications in harsh environment. Among the TMC family, molybdenum carbide has been demonstrated as efficient catalyst for hydrogen evolution reactions (HER). This paper will use density function theory to investigate of the efficiency of molybdenum and tungsten carbide as catalyst for HER in neutral and alkane environment

Foreign business ownership and domestic entrepreneurial exports

Purpose: There has been considerable debate about the impact that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has upon home grown enterprise (Pathak et al., 2015). This study examines how foreign business ownership at the local level affects the decision of individual UK entrepreneurs to export their production. Design/methodology/approach: The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data and ONS foreign firm employment data are used within this study. In order to control for entrepreneurial and firm characteristics, a multivariate approach is adopted with logit, ordered logit and multinominal logit regressions utilised. Findings: It is found that the influence of foreign firms, as captured by their share of local employment, has a negative influence on domestic entrepreneurs’ probability of exporting, but has no significant effect on the intensity of these export activities. Research Implications: The results suggest that local economies may not only become highly reliant on foreign employers, but also on local demand for domestic production. This means actions might be required to reduce this over-reliance to ensure the development of resilient local economies. Originality/value: Unlike many other studies the relationship between the SME exports and foreign influence is considered at a local level. With the current UK government seeking to increase UK firms’ exports substantially, understanding this relationship is of key importance to policy makers

Exports, imports and economic growth in South Korea and Japan: a tale of two economies

This paper investigates the relationship between exports, imports and economic growth for South Korea and Japan by constructing a vector autoregression (VAR) model. Causality is examined between real GDP, real exports and real imports. Several principal results emerge from the empirical work. Firstly, the three variables are cointegrated for both countries, implying that a long-run steady state exists. Secondly, there is evidence of bi-directional causality between imports and economic growth for both countries. Finally, Japan seems to experience export-led growth, while GDP growth in South Korea has a negative effect on export growth. These contrasting findings could result from export goods in Japan exhibiting greater non-price competitive aspects, although their success fails to trigger a virtuous circle since growth fails to lead to increased exports, whilst for South Korea, output growth leads to a decrease in export growth suggesting a strong domestic market

Detecting corrupted pages in M replicated large files

A file in a distributed database system is replicated on M sites and may contain corrupted pages. Abdel-Ghaffar and El Abbadi gave a detection scheme assuming that the number of corrupted pages f < M l 2. We replace this assumption by a much weaker one, that, for each page, the majority of copies are correct. Our schemes are based on the structure of the Reed-Solomon code, as proposed by Abdel-Ghaffar and El Abbadi for M= 2. © 1997 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Packing circuits in matroids

The purpose of this paper is to characterize all matroids M that satisfy the following minimax relation: for any nonnegative integral weight function w defined on E(M), Maximum { k: M has k circuits ,(repetition, allowed) such that each element e of M is used at most 2w(e) times by these circuits = Minimum { ∑x ∈ X w(x): X is a collection of elements (repetition allowed) of M such that every circuit in M meets X at least twice}. Our characterization contains a complete solution to a research problem on 2-edge-connected subgraph polyhedra posed by Cornuéjols, Fonlupt, and Naddef in 1985, which was independently solved by Vandenbussche and Nemhauser in Vandenbussche and Nemhauser (J. Comb. Optim. 9:357-379, 2005). © 2008 Springer-Verlag.preprin