Economic Nexus Research Articles

The Tensions of Modernity: Skálholt During the 17th and 18th Centuries

Between 2002 and 2007, large-scale excavations at the episcopal manor and school of Skálholt in the southwest of Iceland unearthed a massive assemblage of material culture dating from the mid-17th to late 18th century. One of the key questions this paper will address is the position this settlement had within the wider religious, cultural, and economic changes that were taking place over this time period, both within Iceland and the North Atlantic. Special emphasis will be placed on understanding how ideology and the economic nexus were intertwined, and the contradictions that may have emerged over time between these different elements. Skálholt led the Reformation in Iceland, but it was also in the vanguard of the consumer revolution, being one of the most populous settlements in the country before the foundation of Reykjavik as a town in the late 18th century. This paper explores what an archaeology of modernity might look like for Iceland, and in particular, focuses on the relation between spatial organization and ideologies of community which were undergoing major change at this time.

The Institution ICT Economic Development Nexus: Two Cases

ICT projects and institutions in developing countries superimpose in a complex interaction. The acceptance of an ICT project by various stakeholders and the contribution to economic development are functions of such interaction. In general, a successful implementation of an ICT project undertaken in a developing country requires significant institutional adjustments. Drawing upon institutional theories, this paper investigates how regulative, normative and cognitive legitimacy in developing countries influences the ICT economic development nexus. We use a multiple case study research design. The findings of this paper suggests that the root causes of success or failure of ICT projects are nature of institutional components such as sanctioning and monitoring power, social norms and cognitive programs of stakeholders. We have examined interrelationships among orientation of an ICT project (economic elite centered vs. socially disadvantaged group centered); the nature of institutions and institutional adjustments associated with the project; diffusion pattern of the technology and resulting contribution to development.

2002 Amendment to Indiana Financial Institutions Tax: Has the Unitary Principle Been Abandoned in Favor of Reliance on Economic Nexus?

2002 Amendment to Indiana Financial Institutions Tax: Has the Unitary Principle Been Abandoned in Favor of Reliance on Economic Nexus?

How Should a Subnational Corporate Income Tax on Multistate Businesses Be Structured?

This paper provides an economic evaluation of the state corporate income tax (CIT) in an open economy environment characterized by highly mobile capital. We find little economic justification for the state CIT, but recognize that it is not likely to be replaced in the foreseeable future. The current CIT structure provides the potential for significant tax-induced distortions and tax planning opportunities. To lessen distortions, we recommend a broad economic nexus standard, combined reporting, and an entity level tax on limited liability companies. To reduce-origin based taxation, states should increase the weight of the sales factor for formula apportionment, but not adopt a throwback rule.

The emergence of regional economies in China and its implications, with special reference to Hong Kong and Guangdong

China's continental physical expanse has been a dominant, shaping influence of its political, social and economic development throughout its modern history. Thanks to its relative ethnic homogeneity, as well as the absence of political reform, it has – unlike the former Soviet Union – preserved its unity as a state. Nevertheless, regionalism remains a powerful counterpoint to centralisation in China. In particular, under the impact of post-1978 economic reforms, differentials and tensions between provinces and regions have emerged as a potent force, threatening the authority and power of Beijing. This article begins by seeking to explore some of the regional forms in which economic change has manifested itself during the last two decades. It highlights the unique problems faced by an economy that is still in transition in a country as large as China. Brief consideration is also given to the wider regional context in which China is sometimes placed as the central player – namely, that of `Greater China'. At the heart of the article is a case study that examines the evolution of a particular kind of regionalism, captured in the economic integration – even symbiosis - between Hong Kong and Guangdong. The question is addressed whether the form of regionalism contained within the forging of an ever-closer economic relationship between these two areas of South China can be a model for the integration of other regions both within and across China's national boundaries. Hong Kong's transformation from a tiny, dependent, colonial enclave into one of the most successful economies in the world is one of the most remarkable stories of post-World War II economic history. During the 1960s and 1970s, Hong Kong's growth record was unmatched anywhere else in the world. But by the beginning of the 1980s, high land rents and spiralling wages started to erode the international competitiveness that had been the basis of Hong Kong's previous economic success. By a happy coincidence, however, the emergence of such pressures coincided with the opening of China to the outside world. China's `open door' policy thereby made available to Hong Kong entrepreneurs a huge, hitherto untapped reservoir of cheap labour and gave them access to inexpensive factory sites just across the border in Guangdong. It was a lifeline to which they responded eagerly and, through the relocation of their factories, provided the means whereby Hong Kong manufacturers discovered a new lease of life. The benefits associated with this process accrued not only to Hong Kong through the regeneration of its manufacturing industry. Rather, it was a two-way process that also facilitated economic growth, structural transformation and improvements in living standards in Guangdong (above all, in the Pearl River Delta). In short, the process became the basis of deepening integration between the economies of the two regions. Indeed, it was the key element in the emergence of a new regional economic grouping, known as `Greater China' – an informal triangular partnership between Hong Kong, Taiwan and two southern Chinese provinces (Guangdong and Fujian). The emergence of `Greater China' can be regarded as a particular manifestation of the coastal bias that has so strongly characterised China's economic trajectory under reform. To this day, the triangular economic nexus between Hong Kong, Taiwan and South China remains an important dimension of China's external economic relations, even if developments in other coastal provinces have caused it to weaken. To what extent recent and future developments have challenged and will continue to challenge the regionalism inherent in the original notion of Greater China is something that deserves close attention. Not least, the strategic initiative of opening up China's western regions poses interesting and important questions that touch on future developments of `trans-nationalism' and `trans-regionalism' affecting China.

A Smithean Perspective on Increasing Returns

Despite its recent re-emergence to analytical importance, the phenomenon of increasing returns remains outside the central core of neoclassical economics. The history of this idea (or set of ideas) might have been quite different if Adam Smith's explanation of the origins of trade had not been replaced by that of David Ricardo. To Adam Smith, mutually beneficial exchange emerges because of specialization, which, in its turn, implies the presence of increasing returns to the size of the exchange nexus. Even in a world of equals, trade offers mutuality of gain. There is no need for participants in the economic nexus to differ one from another. In the Ricardian logic, by contrast, trade presumably emerges because productive resources differ in their capacities to create economic value, at least among separate “goods.” Specialization is a “natural” feature of resource endowments—a feature that is exploited by trade. Comparative advantage ensures the mutuality of gain. But, in this explanation, there is no direct linkage between the size of the exchange network and the degree of specialization that is viable. There is no need to introduce increasing returns. Comparative advantage may be present even if there are constant returns to scale, both for the economy and for its separate productive sectors.

Generalized Increasing Returns, Euler's Theorem, and Competitive Equilibrium

As worked out a century ago, the neoclassical theory of distribution was analytically as well as ideologically satisfying. The simultaneous determination of input and output prices through the operation of factor and product markets seemed to close the explanatory gap left by the classical economists. Seminal contributions by Wicksteed, Wicksell, J. B. Clark, Walras, Barone, and others generated a logically rigorous explanation of the sharing of value in a competitively organized economy, at least as stylized, and served to put a quietus on Marxian claims to the effect that labor is exploited in the shortfall between product and payment. This major analytical achievement, with its profound implications for the organization of societies, was, however, attained only at considerable cost. Buying into the neoclassical theory of distribution seemed to require the abandonment of the central principle of Adam Smith?s Wealth of Nations (1776) which stressed the importance of the division of labor and its relationship to market size as a primary determinant of economic well-being. The neoclassical emplacement of a static framework for analysis?defined by fixity in the size of the resource base and in technology?left no room for direct linkage between policy action on the size of the economic nexus and the rate of growth. For any given market size, competitive organization of the economy serves to maximize value by assuring that all resources are directed to their most productive uses. But there is nothing in this idealized neoclassical model to suggest why and how market size, in itself, matters.

The Taiwan-Mainland economic nexus: Sociopolitical origins, state-society impacts, and future prospects

Most researchers on Taiwan's Mainland investment are economists who tend to focus on the economic dimension of the Taiwan-Mainland nexus. Consequently they are unable to explain both the timing (wh...

L'insaisissable entreprise de l'économie et du droit

The concept of firm is central in current theoretical and methodological developments in economic theory. The analysis of the contractual and institutional nature of the firm, which constitutes the purpose of this article, requires to refer to contractarian theories and New Institutional Economics. Based on the notions of "governance structure" and "nexus of treaties", these theories however tend to limit the collective dimensions of the firm to inter-individual relationships. As a consequence, the institutional nature of the firm is reduced to a mere collection of contracts. The search for the institutional foundations of the firm article leads to investigate the American Old Institutional Economics and current approaches to institutions and firm. The theoretical analyses of the firm are tested at a threefold level. —Can the firm be reduced to a nexus of inter-individual contracts? As a matter of fact, one can distinguish between functional (i.e.: the firm matters because it assumes functions such as coordination) and institutional viewpoints (i.e.: the firm matters as a central institution of capitalism). —If coordination reveals to be a rule governed activity, one can legitimely question the nature and significance of these rules, notably judicial ones. The firm, as a social institution, relatively detached from individual participants, provides normative patterns of behaviour largely based on the legal provision of rules. In Law, the same debate between contractarian and institutional approaches to the firm has occured, that could be fruitfully confronted to the economic debate. — The forms and the boundaries of enterprises are embedded in social and historical contexts. Considering the firm as being involved in a legal- economic nexus leads to question the processes by which the organisation and the regulation of the nexus evolve. From a theoretical survey of contractarian, evolutionary and institutional analyses of the firm, the authors proceed to an examination of the opportunities of cross-fertilization between Law and Economics for building a theoretical approach to the firm as a specific social institution.

Horizontal Oil and Gas Wells: the Engineering and Economic Nexus

Horizontal oil and gas well drilling is booming while, overall, development drilling is declining. The engineering parameters and how they affect the economics of horizontal drilling, compared to vertical drilling, are examined here. As a new applied technology, horizontal drilling can promise economic advantages over vertical drilling, but with incremental risks that must be weighed carefully. In the long term, horizontal drilling will merge into the ever-growing inventory of technologies that create the economics that extend the lives of, and yield more reserves from, oil and gas fields that would otherwise decline. The result is the persisting pattern of fields yielding more production than early estimates even as it remains impossible to count which particular new technology gave rise to so much more production.

The economic role of a work ethic

This paper explores the extent to which a cultural work ethic can improve the performance of an economy. It argues that a variety of technological and institutional features of labor markets tend to cause Pareto sub-optimal amounts of labor to be supplied to the economic nexus. As a consequence, a proper work ethic can improve economic efficiency as well as material well being. “A man does not ‘by nature’ wish to earn more and more money but simply to live as he is accustomed to live and to earn as much as is necessary for that purpose. Wherever modern capitalism has begun its work of increasing the productivity of human labor by increasing its intensity, it has encountered this leading trait of pre-capitalistic labor.” Max Weber [ The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904/1984, p. 60)]. ‘Sacred to the city, however, is the work ethic; office workers think nothing of leaving for work at 6a.m. and staying on to 9 or 10 at night. That, rather than economic management, is the explanation for the Brazilian miracle of the past 40 years’. The Economist (April 25, 1987), p. 22. 1 1 Also see for example Max Weber (1927), Daniel Bell (1976) or Gerhard Ditz (1980).

Women's perspectives on chronic illness: Ethnicity, ideology and restructuring of life

This inquiry into the lives of women living with a chronic illness brings to attention the complex processes that frame the existential meanings of illness. Data from immigrant Chinese and Anglo-Canadian women with diabetes are used to show that illness is constructed in a complex social, political and economic nexus. When the circumstances of women's lives are examined, styles of managing illness that could be attributed to ethnicity, become recognizable as pragmatic ways of dealing with the harsh realities of material existence. It is argued that the trends toward individualizing social problems, and shifting the responsibility for caretaking from the state to the individual, obfuscate the social context of illness, and exclude the socially disadvantaged from adequate health care.

The Trade-Off: The Economic Nexus

The Trade-Off: The Economic Nexus

Paying for the Public Infrastructure in Urban Development — A Review Article*

BEFORE the present style of land-use planning legislation was introduced in Britain, developers often built new housing estates along the edges of the main roads leading out of established towns, giving rise to the term In present-day U.S.A., the highway traveller entering a small midWestern or Western community might well encounter a significant announcement at the city limit: Hicksville: population 1346. We're only small but we're growing fast. In contrast, residents in some affluent low-density suburban or semi-rural communities in the East and in California are fighting hard to prevent further development in their localities. And in present-day Britain, city councils still sometimes welcome new office blocks because of the major contribution to the city coffers from the high level of rates (taxes) levied on such buildings. The common element in these four situations is the economic nexus between the development and the local community. Specifically, the community at large is (or should be) interested not only in the receipts from local taxes payable as a result of the development and in community expenditures incurred because of the additional demand for community services ranging from education to sewage, but also in the other external effects of the development such as increased employment and business opportunites, pollution and congestion. Attitudes and actions both on the part of the community and on the part of the developer depend on institutional arrangements as well as on the degree of information and understanding possessed by participants. In Britain, the developer has long been required to pay the capital costs of new roads fronting new properties, and this helps to explain his preference for the old style of ribbon development. The city councillor who welcomes a new office block to a crowded city does so (if he is sincere) because he perceives the direct benefit of rates paid to the city, while finding it all too easy to overlook the indirect costs, not only the service costs incurred by the city administration but also congestion costs, etc. directly affecting the community at large. The other important feature in both countries is the tendency for developers, builders, estate agents and the like to seek, and to secure, elected office in local

The Assimilation of Immigrants

Immigrants and persons of recent immigrant stock are more quickly assimilated in American small towns than in cities for at least one quite evident reason. The size and complex organisation of the city allow immigrants to group together and continue in the practice of their folkways. Almost any American city of sufficient size has a number of ‘sections’—Italian, Hungarian, Polish, or other—the inhabitants of which continue to whatever extent is practicable the language, social customs, and even diet of their homelands. In the small town there do not exist the facilities for special ethnic ghettoes of this kind, and the person of foreign origin is compelled to make an adaptation to American ways of doing things simply as a matter of survival. In the ‘foreign sections’ of even small cities one will find persons who came in with the last great wave of immigration in the early 1900’s who still do not speak English—they live in a species of Limbo, without particular allegiance to their place of origin as a political and national entity, and enjoy only an economic nexus with their country of adoption. There is the classic story of the Chinaman who settled in the Polish quarter of Chicago and opened a laundry. After three years he felt that he had sufficiently mastered English to go on a sightseeing tour of the city. When he left his familiar neighbourhood he found that what he spoke was good idiomatic Polish.