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To provide a framework for corporate and divisional planning and operation decisions, SPX Corporation, a Fortune 500 manufacturing company, has developed an elegantly simple paradigm: Correct strategy, linked to and implemented through dedication to total quality, will create value for all stakeholders.

Strategic outsourcing has swept virtually every industry—especially those rightsized down to their core, value‐creating processes. Here's a report from the field.

What would have been the hypothetical effect of monetary policy shocks had a country never joined the euro area, in cases where we know that the country in question actually did join the euro area? It is one thing to investigate the impact of joining a monetary union, but quite another to examine two things at once: joining the union and experiencing actual monetary policy shocks. The authors propose a methodology that combines synthetic control ideas with the impulse response functions to uncover dynamic response paths for treated and untreated units, controlling for common unobserved factors. Focusing on the largest euro area countries, Germany, France, and Italy, the authors find that an unexpected rise in interest rates depresses inflation and significantly appreciates exchange rate, whereas gross domestic product (GDP) fluctuations are less successfully controlled when a country belongs to the monetary union than would have been the case under the independent monetary policy. Importantly, Italy turns out to be the overall beneficiary, since all three channels – price, GDP, and exchange rate – deliver the desired results. The authors also find that stabilizing an economy within a union requires somewhat smaller policy changes than attempting to stabilize it individually, and therefore provides more policy space.

Perhaps the best place to start is to tell you something about our business. Smith & Nephew is a British firm, founded in 1856 by a pharmacist named T.J. Smith. Mr. Smith was an entrepreneur with one significant product—cod liver oil, which he imported from Norway.

Considers some of the major spheres of influence which can affect the design of the passive fire protection of a building and outlines passive fire protection materials and applications, fire tests, Building Regulations and the possible influence of European legislation. Discusses the five major requirements relating to fire which must be met when designing a building. Details the use of sprays, boards, intumescents, performed sections, fire barrier ′quilts′ or ′blankets′ and penetration seals and firestops. Explains the British Standard fire tests and provides reactions to them. Summarizes building control regulations, with reference to The Building Regulations 1991, recent developments and European aspects.

This chapter examines the effect of changes in the public debt–gross domestic product (GDP) ratio on long, 10 year, interest rates in a panel of 17 countries over the period 1870–2016 controlling for other variables, in particular the world interest rate. Over this long period, one can argue that most of the big changes in public debt were the product of factors largely exogenous to national interest rate determination, such as war, depression or financial crisis. The issue is of current relevance since the Covid-19 pandemic has caused large increases in the ratio of public debt to GDP in many countries. The estimates suggest that it is the change in debt, rather than the level of debt or the deficit that matters for long interest rates. World interest rates have long- and short-run effects on interest rates which are very well determined and close to one. Current inflation has a small but significant effect.