Unless a direct hedge is available, cross hedging must be used. In such circumstances portfolio theory implies that a composite hedge (the use of two or more hedging instruments to hedge a single spot position) will be beneficial. Surprisingly, the study and use of composite hedging has been...

This paper analyses the incentive properties of prospective payment systems for hospital contracts, a key feature in many health systems’ reforms. Building on current literature, the model explicitly allows for the existence of waiting time, modelled as adversely affecting patients’ utility...

The paper seeks to reformulate the ‘colourful and fluid’ early debate on the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) in two ways. Firstly, the wide range of separate specific concerns of the early debate are subsumed within four generic issues, (i) efficiency, (ii) distribution, (iii)...

The democratic accountability of policymaking institutions which are autonomous within delegated mandates has not received as much attention as their independence. We analyze in a theoretical model the effects of accountability inthe form of possible overriding of economic policy decisions by...

In 1950 poultry was a rare luxury in Britain, only one per cent of the total meat consumption. But over the next thirty years chicken consumption grew at the remarkable (compound) rate of 10 per cent per annum, while the overall consumption of meat remained stagnant from the 1950s to the 1980s....

Promotional activity proved key to the success of department stores in fending off competition from the expanding chain stores by drawing in customers to their large, central, premises. This paper uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative archival data to examine the promotional methods...

The outsourcing and supplier relations literature focuses primarily on initial designs while ignoring how superior implementation skills can drive competitive advantage. The concept of external span of control, defined as a firm’s overall capability to manage multiple and varying relations...

The paper first introduces typologies of the production subsidiaries and R & D laboratories through which MNEs activate global competitive and creative strategies. These are used to describe, and assess the implications of, the diverse ways in which MNEs paricipate in the national system of...