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Economists have believed for a long time that financial systems are fragile in the sense that small shocks can cause serious disruption. Research has focused on phenomena, such as bank runs, which affect the stability of individual institutions. Only recently has there been interest in the phenomenon of contagion, in which financial distress in one institution or one sector of the financial system spreads to other institutions or sectors. The crises in South‐East Asia in 1997 and Russia in 1998 have provoked speculation that financial crises have spread from one country to another. This paper reviews a number of possible hypotheses about the process of financial contagion and relates them to recent events in emerging markets.

Networks are natural tools for understanding social and economic phenomena. For example, all markets are characterized by agents connected by complex, multilateral information networks, and the network structure influences economic outcomes. In an earlier study, we undertook an experimental investigation of learning in various three-person networks, each of which gives rise to its own learning patterns. In the laboratory, learning in networks is challenging and the difficulty of solving the decision problem is sometimes massive even in the case of three persons. We found that the theory can account surprisingly well for the behavior observed in the laboratory. The aim of the present paper is to investigate important and interesting questions about individual and group behavior, including comparisons across networks and information treatments. We find that in order to explain subjects’ behavior, it is necessary to take into account the details of the network architecture as well as the information structure. We also identify some “black spots” where the theory does least well in interpreting the data.

The global banking environment is experiencing significant change as regulatory and geographical barriers to competition are reduced. As these barriers are removed, greater integration of banking services is developing throughout the world affecting the performance and structure of banking institutions. This research examines the stock returns and volatility of stock returns for a sample of banks in the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan. The general focus is to identify factors influencing the return and risk and to examine cross‐country differences in these factors. The results suggest that while size does not affect return volatility for any of the categories of banks, it does affect returns for banks in Japan, the U.S. and other non‐universal banking systems. Likewise, the investment in fixed assets appears consistently to adversely affect returns. A number of differences are found across country borders and across type of institutions (i.e. universal versus non‐universal banks).

The market orientation concept has received increasing research attention, although the vast majority of published work has focused on organizations based in western countries, especially in the USA. Given the importance of globalization, this western focus limits our understanding of the concept in global markets. The purpose of this study is to examine how the context of country/economy affects: levels of market orientation; and the strength of linkages between a company's market orientation and its business performance. Data were collected through a survey of firms in both mainland China and Hong Kong. These two economies were selected because they have similarities in cultural dimensions on the one hand, and differences in economic dimensions on the other. While the results suggest that the proposed conceptual model does generalize to a Chinese context, they also show that the country/economic context influences the impact of market orientation on business performance. However, contrary to our prediction, the country/economic context does not appear to affect the levels of market orientation. The implications of our findings are discussed and the limitations of the study as well as future research directions are also addressed.

This chapter celebrates just some of Norman Denzin's many research contributions, outlets and gatherings, and encouragement and support of individuals over the course of his career. I suggest that these contributions can be described as a sustained effort to make and foster a capacious – expansive – inquiry.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Estimation of (in)efficiency became a popular practice that witnessed applications in virtually any sector of the economy over the last few decades. Many different models were deployed for such endeavors, with Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) models dominating the econometric literature. Among the most popular variants of SFA are Aigner, Lovell, and Schmidt (1977), which launched the literature, and Kumbhakar, Ghosh, and McGuckin (1991), which pioneered the branch taking account of the (in)efficiency term via the so-called environmental variables or determinants of inefficiency. Focusing on these two prominent approaches in SFA, the goal of this chapter is to try to understand the production inefficiency of public hospitals in Queensland. While doing so, a recognized yet often overlooked phenomenon emerges where possible dramatic differences (and consequently very different policy implications) can be derived from different models, even within one paradigm of SFA models. This emphasizes the importance of exploring many alternative models, and scrutinizing their assumptions, before drawing policy implications, especially when such implications may substantially affect people’s lives, as is the case in the hospital sector.