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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effect of international trade on outside director system in Korean firms. The authors expected that Korean firms highly depending on international trade would mitigate the resource provision function of outside director system in order to reduce information asymmetry among global business partners. In addition, the authors tried to find out the functions of outside director system: the control function based on agency theory and resource provision function based on resource dependence theory.

The authors tested the hypotheses by Poisson regression with 2011 and 2002 Korean-listed manufacturing firms. The dependent variable is the number of excessively appointed outside directors and independent variable is CEO type: family CEO or professional CEO. The moderating variable is the dependency on international trade measured by export proportion out of total sales.

The authors found that not control but resource provision function was a main role of outside director system in Korean firms. The authors also found negative moderating effect of dependency on international trade, which means that firms highly depending on global market tended to consider outside director system as control function, namely “global standard.”

This paper is the leading study that tries to analyze empirically the relationship between international trade and the function of governance mechanism; outside director system in Korean firms. It also confirms that Korean firms adopted outside director system on the basis of the resource dependence theory.

Countries have differences in competition policies, which are cause for friction in international trade and investment. This paper discusses those issues and develops a model to try to explain the willingness of countries to participate in a cooperative competition policy. The model suggests that countries which are economically advanced, active in trade, and already involved in trade regimes are most likely to cooperate in competition policy.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has been negatively affecting international trade between countries; however, there is a lack of empirical studies on developing countries such as Vietnam. This article aims to investigate how the COVID-19 cases and related deaths and policy response by Vietnam and trading partners to the pandemic affect Vietnam's export activities.

The authors use the monthly trade data from the General Department of Vietnam Customs and employ the Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood (PPML) estimator to empirically investigate the effects of COVID-19 and policy response to the pandemic on Vietnam's exports at aggregate and sectoral levels over a 33-month period.

In the first year of the pandemic (January–December 2020) as well as the whole study period (January 2019–September 2021), trading partners' COVID-19 burden adversely affected Vietnam's aggregate exports, and the effect of COVID-19 deaths is significantly larger than that of COVID-19 cases. In the first year of the pandemic, estimates show a negative effect of Vietnam's COVID-19 cases on its exports, while no evidence reveals the impact of Vietnam's COVID-19 deaths. However, during the entire study period, there are remarkable adverse effects of Vietnam's COVID-19 deaths on its exports. The effect of the COVID-19 burden in Vietnam and in its trading partners differs significantly across major subsectors. In the first year, there is a positive role of government response to the pandemic by Vietnam and its trading partners in Vietnam's aggregate exports, while in the whole study period, only a positive effect of Vietnam's government response is found. Economic support and free trade agreements (FTAs) have a positive effect on Vietnam's exports. In the first year of the pandemic, Vietnam's export losses due to COVID-19 outweighed its export gains from the pandemic. However, Vietnam's exports have significantly improved over the nine months of 2021.

Efforts should aim to reduce the number of COVID-19 deaths rather than focus on reducing the number of COVID-19 cases. The application of stringency measures by both exporters and importers should be minimized, or at least those measures need to be combined with health methods, such as testing policy and contact tracing, short-term investment in healthcare and especially investments in vaccines. In addition, economic support, particularly debt relief, needs to be widely applied to assist firms, especially those involved in international trade. The expansion of FTA networks and diversifying export destinations may be helpful in maintaining production networks and export activities.

In the long-term period, the application of stringency measures by both exporters and importers should be minimized, or at least those measures need to be combined with health methods such as testing policy and contact tracing, short-term investment in healthcare and especially investments in vaccines. In addition, economic assistance, particularly debt relief, needs to be widely applied to assist firms, especially those involved in international trade activities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper is among the first studies empirically investigating the impacts of COVID-19 and policy response to the pandemic on aggregate and sectoral exports from Vietnam. The paper also measures the absolute value of export gain and export loss due to the pandemic between Vietnam and trading countries.

This paper presents a model designed to evaluate the competitiveness potential of the Latin American countries and to compare the resulting rankings with the four more widely used assessment measures of a country's competitiveness, which will in turn influence its market attractiveness for investment purposes. Included here are those produced by the World Competitiveness Report, Euromoney, Institutional Investor and the Human Development Report. The proposed model is meant to assist businesses and governments in making investment location decisions for the Latin American countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss possible future pathways of the Finnish science, technology and innovation (STI) system. The paper sketches three speculative pathways for the Finnish STI system.

Theoretical considerations behind the pathways are based on analyses of the determinants and behaviour of small open economies, their innovation systems and governance. The empirical background of the paper is in the current trends of the Finnish economy and STI system. The analysis of pathways is based on three dimensions: institutionalized policy environment and economy, domestic interest groups and policy and STI institutions and funding. Changes in these dimensions are analysed by paying special attention to two variables: the position of the nation state and the general economic development.

The first future pathway outlined is based on an optimistic view by setting Finland on the basis of past success factors as an European and global STI hotspot. The second pathway is based on the assumption that the Finnish STI system will be increasingly subordinated to international structures and decision-making. The third one is geared around the assumption that the Finnish STI system will be dominated by industries.

While Finland has been seen as a European showpiece of innovation since the early 2000s, currently the country’s national economy and STI system are undergoing a critical period. The paper sheds light on this transformation and its potential future outcomes and attempts to raise debate on the options policy makers may face in the increasingly complex global environment in small countries.

The paper introduces potential future avenues for the Finnish STI system and provides a contribution to the debate of the future of small countries’ STI systems and innovation policies by emphasising the limited space of the STI policy choices and how the development paths and space for policy making evolve from the interaction of socio-economic factors between domestic and wider international context.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First to identify economic activities and broader spatial logistics functions that characterise an urban setting, and second to delineate significant spatial logistics employment clusters to represent the underlying regional geography of the logistics landscape.

Using the four-digit Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification, industries “explicitly” related to logistics were identified and aggregated with respect to employment. A principal component analysis was conducted to capture the functional interdependence of inter-related industries and measures of spatial autocorrelation were also applied to identify spatial logistics employment clusters.

The results show that the logistics sector accounts for 3.57 per cent of total employment and that road freight, postal services, and air and space transport are major employers of logistics managers. The research shows significant spatial clustering of logistics employment in the western and southern corridors of Melbourne, associated spatially with manufacturing, service industry and retail hubs in those areas.

This research offers empirically informed insights into the composition of spatial logistics employment clusters to regions that lack a means of production that would otherwise support the economy. Inability to measure the size of the logistics sector due to overlaps with other sectors such as manufacturing is a limitation of the data used.

The research offers policymakers and practitioners an empirically founded basis on which decisions about future infrastructure investment can be evaluated to support cluster development and achieve economies of agglomeration.

The key value of this research is the quantification of spatial logistics employment clusters using spatial autocorrelation measures to empirically identify and spatially contextualize logistics hubs.

Many economists and politicians have declared the price mechanism to be the most effective coordination mechanism. On the contrary, the economic perspectives at the beginning of the twenty‐first century reveal that an increase in the supply of products does not necessarily engender an increasing demand. That is why more and more economists agree that every society not only can, but also must, choose the combination of coordination mechanisms that are most appropriate under its specific conditions.

Economic development and growth are approached as being dependent on the development of society and vice versa. The empirical relation between economic openness of a country and the structure of its industrial relations is analysed in relation to different economic outcomes. Special attention is paid to the question whether a policy to engender smaller income differentials does or does not provide a positive drive for the structural change towards a modern information technology‐based economy.

Although some authors argue that smaller income differentials coincide with lower productivity rates, this study reveals that there is no such trade‐off. Different sets of coordinating mechanisms determine economic performance. The market mechanism is therefore not the overriding force determining economic development. On the contrary, income and education seem to be two drivers of the sectoral shift to an ICT‐based service economy.

Different sets of coordination mechanisms seem to support the same economic performance. This implies that governments should once again take responsibility for structuring the economy and society – that is to enforce a system of reliable justice for the vast majority of citizens.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a Biblical basis for localization as against globalization. This paper argues that the normative direction of Biblical thought is toward the localization of socio‐economic activity. A case study is made for the developing world today relevant to localization.

An evaluation is made of normative Biblical teaching that might have bearing on the localization of socio‐economic activity. How this teaching could apply to the contemporary developing world is assessed.

Normative Biblical teaching is oriented toward localization. This emphasis is capable of being applied in the developing world.

The case that normative Biblical teaching is in favour of localization rather then dispersal (and thereby globalization) has not been made previously. For those who believe that normative Biblical teaching has relevance today, the localization bias challenges the widespread acceptance of globalization.

This paper aims to understand how support organizations promote the structuring of the agricultural value chain through partnerships and capacity building of the various links in the chain.

The study is exploratory and qualitative, based on ten semi-structured interviews with the main public support organizations related to the date sector in Tunisia.

The results showed that the support organizations of the Tunisian date sector do not share the same vision of the priorities to be strengthened to promote the export of dates in Tunisia.

Reviewing the coordination mechanisms between the support organizations is important in order to improve the governance of the value chain and to reinforce the capacity of the operators in the date value chain.

Public support organizations are important actors in agricultural value chains as these organizations implement agricultural policies. Assessing these organizations' contribution to capacity building of chain links is an innovative approach to detecting organizational dysfunction in agricultural value chains in developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of the evolution of Singapore as a destination for international tourists, comparing contemporary circumstances with those existing 50 years ago when full independence was attained.

A case study methodology is adopted and findings are derived from the analysis of materials in the public domain.

Function as a tourist destination cannot be understood without an appreciation of a place’s history and evolving general economic, political and socio-cultural conditions. These determine opportunities and constraints and thus the character and image of the destination from a tourism industry perspective. Singapore is shown to have undergone transformation as a country and consequently as a tourist centre under the leadership of a strong government which has brought prosperity to the now highly urbanised and industrialised city state. Achievements are considerable, although the future is one of some uncertainty as the wider context continues to change in ways which pose new challenges.

The paper’s core argument is that performance as a destination cannot be separated from broader circumstances demonstrated by comparisons of Singapore’s tourism in 1965 and 2015 and the political, economic, socio-cultural and environmental contexts of the two periods.

While possessing many unique attributes related to its defining characteristics, the republic’s experiences afford valuable insights into the dynamics of destination development and especially in nations which are young, small and rapidly modernising.