Degree Of Ownership Research Articles

Community sports projects and effective community empowerment: a case study in Rochdale

How can community empowerment be most effectively achieved through the use of sport? In a case study of a bespoke voluntary sector project, an action research approach revealed insights into effective community empowerment. Although focused on a comparatively small project within a provincial UK town, the issues addressed and lessons learned can be generalised and transferred much more universally to community-based sports delivery. Detached from mainstream providers, and more agile and responsive to local needs, the project succeeded in achieving a very local degree of ownership and control. The study revealed the limitations of much mainstream provision and some of the sustainability vulnerabilities of small-scale projects, with funding dependencies in delivering broader structural change. The project challenged many of the values and approaches of its larger statutory neighbours and signified exemplary good practice. It demonstrated how to achieve sustainable community development despite its own funding being in jeopardy. And it further challenged its statutory neighbours to consider adopting its practices, investing in the project's long-term future or presiding over its eventual demise.

Party competition and positions on immigration: Strategic advantages and spatial locations

The literature on party competition suggests that traditional conflict lines have either become obsolete or been replaced by new, less stable, ones. This development points to how political conflict has changed but also to how certain policy positions can be problematic to explain when these are linked to parties’ location on ‘Old’ and ‘New’ conflict dimensions. A particularly difficult issue has been party position(s) on immigration. Solely focusing on parties’ spatial location – on either conflict dimension – is insufficient for understanding the position that parties adopt. The article argues that a more fruitful approach is to simultaneously consider the degree of ownership – the strategic advantage – that parties have on particular conflict dimensions and parties’ spatial location therein. Comparing parties in Britain and Sweden, the article explores the extent to which this framework explains party positioning in two institutionally different contexts.

The Role of Country-of-Origin Characteristics for Foreign Direct Investment and Technical Cooperation in Post-Reform India

The decisions of foreign investors on technical cooperation versus equity engagements and on the degree of ownership in FDI projects are likely to depend on their relative bargaining position vis-a-vis the host country. India provides an interesting case for analyzing the interplay between country-of origin-characteristics and host-country-characteristics and their respective effects on ownership decisions since opening up its economy to FDI in the early 1990s. We perform negative binominal regressions by making use of a unique dataset on about 24,500 technical cooperation and FDI projects by investors from 45 countries of origin over the 1991-2004 period. We find that relative market size, relative financial market development, relative risk, relative endowment of human capital and previous international experience significantly affect the type of engagement by foreign investors in post-reform India.

Seychelles - Assessment Letter for the African Development Bank

Macroeconomic performance of Seychelles under the Stand-by Arrangement (SBA) has been favorable and the reforms continue to be pursued with a high degree of ownership and broad public support. The liberalization of the exchange regime, a strong fiscal adjustment, and prudent monetary policies have contributed to restoring macroeconomic stability. Program implementation has been exemplary and talks to restructure public external debt are progressing well. A debt restructuring agreement with commercial creditors, on terms comparable to those agreed with Paris Club creditors, is a crucial element in reestablishing a sustainable public debt outlook and supporting economic recovery.

Haiti and the Dilemmas of Local Ownership

On 14 May 2006, Rene Preval was inaugurated - for the second time- - as Haiti's president. While Preval' s first term, from 1996 to 2000, was notable primarily for the fact that Preval became the first democratically elected Haitian president to peacefully serve out his full mandate, his current term has been seen by many as Haiti's last, best chance to escape the cycle of turmoil that has engulfed it for the better part of the past two decades.For both Haiti and the broader international community, Preval' s election was a stroke of good fortune. Between the February 2004 uprising that pushed former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office and the 2006 elections that propelled Preval back into power, Haiti had drifted badly under an interim government widely viewed as both ineffective and illegitimate. Frequently at odds with MINUSTAH, the latest in a long series of UN peacekeeping missions in Haiti, the interim government of Gerard Latortue achieved little in terms of improved governance or enhanced security during its two years in office, and if anything deepened the divide between pro- and anti-Aristide constituencies. Amid widespread concern that national elections would further unsettle a polarized citizenry, Preval entered the presidential race late, campaigned quietly, and emerged as the winner only after a heated controversy over vote counting and ballot burning.Preval' s inauguration marked the beginning of a new era of hope and optimism - however guarded - concerning Haiti's future. Not only did the election of the former Aristide protege moderate tensions lingering from Aristide's own controversial demise, but it also put into place a government that enjoyed broad legitimacy both within Haiti and abroad; moreover, the new government's priorities aligned with those of the international community. Advances made since Preval· s inauguration - while still fragile and far from irreversible - have been considerable, particularly in the security realm. With Preval in power, the international presence in Haiti began to feel less like an occupation and more like a partnership between the international community and the sovereign Haitian government, with the latter exercising at least some degree of ownership over what could now legitimately be referred to as a process.Recent events, however, have signalled an end to the Preval honeymoon and raised serious questions about whether the window of stability opened by his presidency is now closing. Indeed, 2008 was an especially cruel year for both Haiti and Haitians, marked as it was by food riots, serial hurricanes, an extended and paralyzing prime ministerial crisis, and a tragic school collapse. The country's recent parade of misfortune has also served as a stark reminder that the underlying structural obstacles to sustainable peace in Haiti - from environmental degradation to economic collapse to the yawning gulf between rich and poor - remain both daunting and unaddressed. Years of conflict, repression, and brain drain have also taken their toll on state institutions, which remain notoriously corrupt and largely incapable of delivering even the most basic of public services.Beyond the broader question of Haiti's current political trajectory, recent Haitian history highlights both the importance of, and the barriers to, local ownership in peacebuilding processes. On the one hand, the contrast between an ineffectual Latortue administration and a comparatively dynamic Preval government suggests that even in the case of extremely weak, fragile states, the conimitment and engagement of local actors remains an essential ingrethent in successful peacebuilding. On the other hand, contemporary Haiti also underlines that the core factors underpinning local ownership including a widespread social consensus on the shape of the peace to be built and a convergence of capacity and political will in support of this vision - are rarely present in any postconflict context. …

Domestic and Foreign Earnings, Stock Return Variability, and the Impact of Investor Sophistication

We examine whether domestic or foreign earnings contribute more to the variability of unexpected stock returns for a sample of U.S. multinationals and consider the role of investor sophistication. We use a variance decomposition methodology that measures the contribution of each earnings component (and expected future discount rates) to the variance of unexpected returns. We show that the contribution of each earnings component to the variance of unexpected returns depends both on the variance of the earnings component and on its persistence. We document that domestic earnings contribute significantly more to the variability of unexpected returns than do foreign earnings. We further find that the relative variance contribution of foreign earnings is an increasing function of the degree of investor sophistication. Finally, when we classify institutional investors as short-term and long-term following Bushee (1998), we find that the relative variance contribution of foreign earnings increases with the level of investment by long-term investors. In contrast, there is no significant relation between the degree of ownership by short-term (or transient) investors and the relative variance contribution of domestic and foreign earnings. Overall, our results are consistent with Thomas' (1999) finding that investors on average underestimate the persistence of foreign earnings due to lack of understanding of firms' foreign operations caused in part by poor disclosure.

Domestic and Foreign Earnings, Stock Return Variability, and the Impact of Investor Sophistication

We examine the importance of foreign earnings relative to domestic earnings for a sample of U.S. multinationals using variance decomposition. Our methodology represents an alternative and complementary approach over the prior literature, which is based on traditional regressions and earnings response coefficients. We document that domestic earnings are more important in explaining the variance of unexpected returns than are foreign earnings and that the relative importance of domestic earnings is a decreasing function of investor sophistication. Last, we classify institutional investors as either short- or long-term oriented following Bushee [1998]. We find that the variance contribution of foreign earnings increases with the level of investment by long-term investors. In contrast, there is no significant relation between the degree of ownership by short-term (or transient) investors and the variance contribution of domestic and foreign earnings. Overall, our results are consistent with Thomas's [1999] finding that investors on average underestimate the persistence of foreign earnings.

The Valuation of Domestic and Foreign Earnings and the Impact of Investor Sophistication

Although several studies have examined how investors value domestic versus foreign earnings, the results are inconsistent. We re-examine this question employing a variance decomposition model which, in contrast to previous research, explicitly considers expectation models for domestic and foreign earnings and allows for time varying discount rates. We document that investors value domestic earnings significantly higher than foreign earnings. We further find that the relative valuation of foreign earnings is an increasing function of the degree of investor sophistication, measured as either the percentage of institutional holdings or the number of institutional owners. Finally, when we classify institutional investors as short-term and long-term following Bushee (1998), we find that the relative valuation of foreign earnings increases with the level of investment by long-term investors. In contrast, there is no significant relation between the degree of ownership by short-term (or transient) investors and the relative valuation of domestic and foreign earnings. Overall, our results are consistent with Thomas' (1999) finding that investors on average underestimate the persistence of foreign earnings due to lack of understanding of firms' foreign operations caused in part by poor disclosure.

On investment performance, value creation, management and corporate governance: The French case

This paper studies corporate governance, investment, value creation and their effects on corporate performance in some European countries and in particular in France. It accounts for specific aspects of investment performance, governance, management and entrepreneurship. Corporate governance systems can be identified by the degree of ownership and control and the identity of controlling shareholders. In outsider systems characterized by wide dispersed ownership as in the U.S and UK, the main specificity is the conflict of interest between strong managers and widely-dispersed weak shareholders. In insider systems characterized by concentrated ownership or control as in Germany and Japan, the main specificity is the conflict of interest between controlling shareholders (or block holders) and weak minority shareholders. There are several models of corporate governance since each country has developed a variety of mechanisms to overcome agency problems arising from the separation of ownership and control. Some results are reported using a data base conceived by IPAG students.

Control in Multinational Corporations (MNCs): The Case of Korean Manufacturing Subsidiaries

Using both agency theory and comparative national culture frameworks, this study investigated factors determining the degree and type of control used by American and Japanese MNCs on their Korean subsidiaries. Two characteristics of MNCs affected the control they exerted—the degree of MNCs’ ownership, which affected the amount of control, and the nationality of the MNC’s headquarters, which affected the type of control exerted. As predicted, the size of the subsidiary relative to the MNC, moderated the relationship between the degree of ownership and amount of output control the MNC exerted. Overall, the study supported the usefulness of agency theory in explaining the degree of management control exerted, while national culture accounted for the type of control exerted.

Technology transfer and spillovers: Does local participation with multinationals matter?

This paper examines the effects on technology transfer and spillovers deriving from ownership sharing of foreign multinational affiliates. More specifically, we try to answer two questions, using unpublished Indonesian micro data. Firstly, do establishments with minority and majority ownership differ in terms of productivity levels? Secondly, does the degree of spillover differ with the degree of ownership in the FDI? Our results show that foreign establishments have comparable high levels of labor productivity and that domestic establishments benefit from spillovers. However, the degree of foreign ownership does neither affect the level of labor productivity in foreign establishments, nor the degree of spillovers.

Control in multinational corporations (MNCS): the case of Korean manufacturing subsidiaries

Using both agency theory and comparative national culture frameworks, this study investigated factors determining the degree and type of control used by American and Japanese MNCs on their Korean subsidiaries. Two characteristics of MNCs affected the control they exerted—the degree of MNCs’ ownership, which affected the amount of control, and the nationality of the MNC’s headquarters, which affected the type of control exerted. As predicted, the size of the subsidiary relative to the MNC, moderated the relationship between the degree of ownership and amount of output control the MNC exerted. Overall, the study supported the usefulness of agency theory in explaining the degree of management control exerted, while national culture accounted for the type of control exerted.

The chartered patient and the damaged doctor

What's up Doc? Has it really come to this? Doctors becoming patients in large numbers, and all stress related? Is the nation's health in the custody of a tribe of wimps? Stress of some degree some of the time is part of life in any line of medicine, but this is something more. We live in an age of medical activism which has severely distorted the traditional relationship between doctor and patient. A lot of what is up, Doc, is that there are three in the bed, and one of these is neither the patient nor the doctor. The traditional relationship, taught to me as recently as the early 1960s, required an individual patient to make a positive decision to seek medical advice. The patient would never have been sought out, importuned, or bribed to visit the doctor. The arrival of an individual at the door of the doctor of his or her choice created a professional relationship and an unspoken contract whereby the individual vested in the doctor a degree of ownership of his or her medical problem and created a set of obligations on the part of the doctor. There was no perception that any individual had an obligation to become a patient, and good health was not considered a right, but more likely the blessing of good fortune. Failure of treatment would have been considered bad luck, rather than incompetence and bad faith on the …

The Transaction Costs Theory of Joint Ventures: An Empirical Study of Japanese Subsidiaries in the United States

This paper offers the first large sample empirical study of the factors which influence the choice of Japanese firms between full or partial ownership of their U.S. manufacturing subsidiaries. It studies for the first time the ownership policies of investors of a single home country in a single host country, thus keeping variations within home and host countries constant. One methodological improvement over previous studies is the use as independent variables of the relevant characteristics of the investing firms. These had been proxied in previous studies by data on U.S. industries entered. The results suggest that the degree of ownership taken by Japanese manufacturing investors in their American subsidiaries is driven by the same general transaction costs variables that determine the choices made by their U.S. counterparts: Japanese parents joint venture when they need to combine with other firms intermediate inputs which are subject to high market transaction costs. An intriguing result, however, is the lack of significance of two variables which, in the U.S. case, strongly push towards full control of foreign subsidiaries. In this study neither the Japanese parent's R&D nor its advertising intensities had any significant impact on their ownership policies.

Transport state enterprises: the Canadian experience

Abstract In most economies, the ownership and control of state enterprises has been an important government policy instrument. This has been particularly true in the transportation sector in which governments have intervened extensively through the acquisition and creation of state enterprises. While the genesis of and rationale for transportation state enterprises have varied from country to country and even from time to time within each country, at present, most governments do exercise a significant degree of ownership and control in transportation. Some of these enterprises enjoy monopoly status and others are in competition with and behave similarly to their private sector counterparts. Consequently, and in recent years, questions have been raised about government intervention in the market‐place as it relates to effective management control and accountability of state enterprises. Questions have also been raised about the continuing need for transportation state enterprises and some governments have ...