This paper explores the nature of the relationship between Head Office and stores in a large British supermarket chain. It focuses on the role played by a range of technological tools available for managing the stock and connecting different parts of the productive system and the implications...

This paper provides a detailed analysis of the evolving relationship between the British trading company John Swire and Sons and its Chinese partners involved in the distribution of its products, notably sugar. From the nineteenth century, Swire had utilised the Chinese system of the Comprador....

This paper outlines the development of international firms over the period from 1870 to 1945. It shows how British and other European trading firms developed international investment operations using the medium of free-standing companies. This was the origin of Royal Dutch Shell amongst other...

This paper is motivated by the difficulties faced by forecasters in predicting the decline in the growth rate of consumers': expenditure in the late 1980s. The econometric specifications of four competing explanations are replicated and the static forecasts compared with the actual outturns. The...

This paper examines the extent to which the remuneration levels of non-owner managers employed by UK small and medium size enterprises (SME) can be explained empirically by a number of firm specific, human capital and job history characteristics. The UK SME sector is very heterogeneous and we...

This paper examines euro preparations by U.K. SMEs with trading links with the euro currency area. It suggests, notwithstanding the U.K.'s decision not to join the euro in the first wave, that SMEs with euro area trade links are particularly likely to have had to make some adjustments for the...

This paper develops a new set of models for projecting labour market activity rates for the UK economy. The Department of Employment currently publishes annual projections with a 10-15 year time horizon. The present research was aimed at improving the methodology used for these forecasts. The...

This paper defines a new class of multivariate state space models which combine the power steady model of Smith (Smith, J.Q., 1981, The multiparameter steady model, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 43, 255-260; 1990, Non-linear state-space models with partially specified...

This paper uses time-series analysis to model explicitly the take-up rate of the UK Government's Loan Guarantee Scheme over the 1980s. In doing so we consider the rationale for the scheme in the context of empirical and theoretical research into the financing of small businesses and in...

Makridakis and Hibon (2000) summarize four main implications of the latest forecasting competition, which we paraphrase as: (a) 'simple methods do best'; (b) 'the accuracy measure matters'; (c) 'pooling helps'; and (d) 'the evaluation horizon matters'. We applaud the detailed empirical...