Purpose – This paper aims at providing a new point of view in the comparison between the sectoral specialization of Italian firms and that of companies of some emerging countries, both apparently concentrating on so‐called traditional sectors. What is argued in this paper is that, even if...

Purpose This paper aims to examine the accuracy of the trade statistics between the People’s Republic of China and 20 Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine if the simultaneous openness to trade and capital account can promote financial sector development. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a sample of 12 Arab countries over the period from 1985 to 2011, the data were analyzed using the...

Abstract The paper investigates the impact of automatic horizontal fiscal transfers on risk sharing and consumption smoothing in a 2-country DSGE model of monetary union. In particular, it uses the Asdrubali et al. (1996) approach to quantify and decompose the strength of consumption...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine whether current account imbalances – surpluses or deficits – are “excessive” and hence constitute a valid concern. The second objective is to assess the degree of capital mobility by comparing the variance of the current account...

Summary The rise of the East-German economy in the 1950s and 1960s and its decline in the 1970s and 1980s is difficult to explain by neoclassical economics. However; the observed life cycle may be explained by the inclusion of concepts from old and new institutional economics and from functional...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine the nature of the wage gap between genders and sexual orientation. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses OLS on pooled repeated cross-sections. Findings The differences in wages between gay/straight men and women mirror what would be...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of evolution of medical autonomy as an analytic and historical aspect of the medical work organization in a public bureaucracy. Design/methodology/approach – The authors draw on the analytic concept of organizational...

Purpose – The paper aims to apply the ideas found in the paper of Adam Smith, the pre‐eminent eighteenth century economist, to the field of management. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a brief biography of Smith, summarizes his main contributions, and then applies them to...

Purpose By drawing on a detailed case study of the work of tax consultants, the purpose of this paper is to develop a more detailed understanding of the role of ambiguity in professional work, and its relationship to the division of labour in professional service firms (PSFs)....