China, after its implementation of foreign direct investment policy in December 1978, has continued to receive investments from international companies, and this has been one of the primary driving engines behind the Asian business development. Electronics products originating either from U.S.A....

The U.S. financial crisis that began in the autumn of 2008 has continued to impact the world economy. China, who has also been in an economic recession, has counteracted the situation and comparative market stability appears to be generated there. This essay addresses the essential questions on...

1. Information systems have recently undergone substantial changes. The computing power has experiencing a move from “Asset” to “Expense”. Under the emerging model of cloud computing, user organizations do not need to have an ownership of the information systems. They can now just use...

Electronics industry has seen a tremendous industry shift from the developed countries to the emerging regions such as East and South Asia, particularly during the past four decades. And we can now see a huge industrial capability accumulation in Asia. This research note aims at, firstly,...

In explaining economic phenomena, economic analysis concentrates on selected influences and fixes the host of other factors under a ceteris paribus clause. This view, which goes back to Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), is developed in the first part of the book. Aggregation is viewed as a particular...

Life annuities provide a guaranteed income for the remainder of the recipient’s lifetime, and therefore, annuitization presents an important option when choosing an adequate investment strategy for the retirement ages. While there are numerous research articles studying annuities from a...

Even 50 years after Modigliani/Miller’s irrelevance theorem, the basic question of how firms choose their capital structure remains unclear. This survey paper aims at summarizing and discussing corresponding recent developments in empirical capital structure research, which, in our view, are...

In 2003, Swiss Re introduced a mortality-based security designed to hedge excessive mortality changes for its life book of business. The concern was apparently brevity risk, i.e., the risk of premature death. The brevity risk due to a pandemic is similar to the property risk associated with...

New approaches in health care, such as e.g. Integrated Delivery Systems, affect the role and tasks of medical suppliers. More and more, medical suppliers are incorporated into the process of guiding patients to medical specialists and hospitals and thus managing the course of disease. In this...

The aim of this paper is to explain consulting failure from a systems-theoretical perspective and to provide a new framework for analysing consultant–client relationships. By drawing on Luhmann’s systems theory, clients and consultants are conceptualised as two autopoietic communication...