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Extant work in international business (IB) involves a partial contingency-theoretic perspective: a holistic view of the impact of bundles of contingencies on an outcome variable is missing. The purpose of this paper is to adopt a contingency approach to study multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiary performance in the appropriate context of European transition economies at the beginning of the current millennium.

Methodologically, the authors introduce abduction as a line of inquiry into IB and management to develop new theoretical insights, and apply the novel empirical general interaction method to estimate bundle effects. In so doing, the authors contribute to the further development of a theoretical and empirical toolkit to revitalize holistic, or configurational, quantitative research in IB and management.

The authors find that capability fit is a necessary condition for high MNE subsidiary marketing performance, whilst environment fit is particularly critical for high MNE subsidiary financial performance.

A key limitation is that this is a cross-section study.

This study offers insights as to subsidiary fit into Eastern Europe, indicating fitting entry and establishment modes.

This paper offers a novel holistic approach to IB, both in terms of theoretical and empirical methodology.

A dynamic econometric model of wine auctions is estimated to measure the informational signalling impact of a wine critic on the return to the investment in fine wines. United States data suggests that critic Robert Parker is an influencer on the auction price of Bordeaux wines. Furthermore it appears that American buyers look toward the much larger European market in order to establish values. In doing so they may be able to mitigate the effects of asymmetric information.