1,721,455 research outputs found
The FDI and Trade relationship revisited under structural change: evidence from a sector-based analysis in Central and Eastern European countries
No full textThis study revisits the long standing argument on the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Trade relationship in an effort to shed some new light on the issue as well as investors’ behavior. This is achieved within the context of structural changes as proposed by the Investment Development Path (IDP) paradigm. In addition, it does so in a sector-based framework where more accurate results may be obtained and safer implications may be outlaid. We use an expanded dataset of Central and Eastern European countries, from the early stages of transition in 1992 to 2006 covering a variety of location factors. Results pinpoint to a differential relationship between FDI and imports among the sectors, indicating a complementary one for manufacturing (secondary) and services (tertiary) and a substitution one for agriculture (primary). In the case of FDI we find strong locational characteristics such as the large market size, the gradual improvement of the macro-environment and finally the quality of labour force as centripetal forces, well documented along the structural changes framework of the IPD we employ here
Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies
No full textCross region comparative study on the Internationalisation of Small and Medium Enterprises
No full textThe main aim of the present study is to provide a comparison of the six regional reports on the internationalisation of SMEs from the first stage of the SME Internationalisation Exchange (SIE) Interreg project. This study builds on the findings produced by regional studies from Kent County in the UK, Cantabria in Spain, Aquitaine in France, Kujawsko-Pomorskie (Torun) in Poland, Usti in Czech Republic and Molise in Italy. It focuses on identifying the levels of internationalisation across regions, facilitating factors and barriers to internationalisation of SMEs, measurement of the effectiveness of support mechanisms and providing useful recommendations to further support the internationalisation of SMEs within and across the partner regions. Despite the differences in the methodological approaches from the different partners a number of findings have been put forward.
Levels of Internationalisation (page 15) – Most regions have gone through a period of large trade deficits in the last 20 years. Deepening of EU integration and the availability of funding to support internationalisation initiatives has enabled regions to turn around and demonstrate trade surpluses in the last decade. Despite the spread of internationalisation activities in the different regions it is common that a substantial proportion of them can be attributed to a rather small number of companies and an even smaller number of sectors. For all regions, other EU markets represent the key customers of their international activities.
Facilitators to Internationalisation (page 19) – Ability to innovate has been identified as a key facilitator. Both process as well as product innovation have been brought forward by SMEs as factors that enhance their internationalisation efforts. Access to specialised information through the local support mechanisms and access to financial subsidies have also been identified as important facilitators.
Barriers to Internationalisation (page 21) – Both external and internal barriers exist. External barriers are usually associated with the volatility and the uncertainty of the institutional environment that creates additional risks for SMEs. Internal barriers are either informational ones or functional ones. The former correspond to lack of access to specialised information about foreign markets whilst the latter correspond to lack of specialised, primarily marketing, resources to effectively enter foreign markets.
Support Mechanisms (page 25) – All studies identified a complex and bureaucratic environment of support mechanisms. Significant overlaps exist between national and local/regional support mechanisms and this leads to lack of awareness and therefore lack of engagement from SMEs. A number of best practices have been identified throughout the regions that facilitate better engagement, better information dissemination and a more focused or tailored approach to the needs of individual SMEs.
Recommendations (page 28) – Two major recommendations have been put forward. First, the establishment of a cross-regional business network that will enable SMEs to take advantage of opportunities in other regions and share risks across borders. Trust in this network will be infused by the existing collaboration of partners across regions. Second, the establishment of a policy laboratory that will foster sharing of best practice across regions but will also monitor and evaluate the implementation of policies across regions through engagement with a small number of SMEs
Impact of Brexit on the Internationalisation of SMEs in Kent
No full textKent County Council commissioned some research in 2016 as part of an EU-funded project to better understand the current situation with the internationalisation (export activities) of local companies including barriers to exporting and the challenges faced by businesses. This follow-up report was commissioned to better understand the evolving outlook of Kent businesses relating to international trade as the UK prepares to leave the European Union. It builds on quantitative and qualitative findings from a survey on SMEs’ internationalisation in October-November 2016, a roundtable of local businesses organised by Kent Business School in February 2017 and the Kent Business Summit that took place in January 2018.
The report starts with a discussion of the impact on inward and outward Foreign Direct Investments and continues with a discussion of the impact on both facets of SMEs internationalisation, i.e. exporting and importing activity. It then provides evidence on the impact of Brexit on the overall economic activity and concludes by summarising the key findings and recommendations.
A summary of the findings reveals the following important issues:
Firms and especially SMES should be aware of their position in global value chains.
Foreign exchange fluctuations are a major factor especially for SMEs that do not have the resources to hedge in the medium and long term.
Access to talent and skills could have an important effect.
Brexit could be an opportunity but this requires the development of an entrepreneurial approach that enables firms to become resilient.
Kent’s economy has the necessary characteristics to develop innovation and entrepreneurship.
These findings suggest that Brexit has a negative impact but this could be mitigated with appropriate support in the following areas:
Supporting businesses to having better planning and scenario analysis.
Enabling access to talent through the retention and attraction of highly skilled labour force.
Supporting an entrepreneurial approach to business through access to funding and additional specialised support in the development of ideas
Kent SME Internationalisation Study
No full textThe Kent SME Internationalisation Study 2016/2017 investigates the internationalisation status of SMEs located Kent, UK. The core aims of the study are the understanding of the existing levels of SME international activities; the identification of drivers for and barriers to SME cross-border activities; the assessment of the existing support mechanisms; the initiation of the Brexit impact discussion; and ultimately the provision of recommendations on the increase of internationalisation capacity and activity among Kent businesses. The rationale for the SME focus is due to the significant population of SMEs in the region and their contribution to economic growth, as SMEs create employment opportunities, contribute to achieving higher production volumes, boost exports and drive innovation
Toward explainable biomedical deep learning
No full textDeep learning has been extensively utilized in the domains of bioinformatics and chemoinformatics, yielding compelling results. However, neural networks have predominantly been regarded as black boxes, characterized by internal mechanisms that hinder interpretability due to the highly nonlinear functions they learn. In the biomedical field, this lack of interpretability is undesirable, as it is imperative for scientists to comprehend the reasons behind the occurrence of specific diseases or the molecular properties that make a compound effective against a particular target protein. Consequently, the inherent closure of those models keeps their results far from being trusted. To address this issue and make deep learning suitable for bioinformatics and chemoinformatics tasks, there is the urge to develop techniques for explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). These techniques should be capable of measuring the significance of input features for predictions or determining the strength of their interactions. The ability to provide explanations must be integrated into the biomedical deep learning pipeline, which utilizes available data sources to uncover new insights regarding potentially disease-associated genes, thereby facilitating the repurposing and development of new drugs. In line with this objective, this thesis focuses on the development of innovative explainability techniques for neural networks and demonstrates their effective applications in bioinformatics and medicinal chemistry. The devised models find their place in the pipeline, wherein each component of the protocol generates effective and explainable results. These results span from the discovery of disease genes to the repurposing and development of drugs. However, deep learning lives in synergy with classical machine learning models and network-based algorithms, which remain relevant in this field and, therefore, hold a place within this thesis. Moreover, they offer the basis for proper training of deep learning models and pave the way for the development of XAI techniques for neural networks. The proposed work demonstrates how XAI can benefit biomedicine, proving deep learning to be a powerful tool to solve biomedical problems and that the obtained results can be explained. This contributes to the delivery of not only accurate but also trustworthy results, fulfilling the need for explainability of medical doctors, geneticists, and scientists in the life sciences and leading toward a fully explainable biomedical deep learning pipeline
Curves of maximal moduli on K3 surfaces
No full textWe prove that if is a complex projective K3 surface and , then there
exist infinitely many families of curves of geometric genus on with
maximal, i.e., -dimensional, variation in moduli. In particular every K3
surface contains a curve of geometric genus 1 which moves in a non-isotrivial
family. This implies a conjecture of Huybrechts on constant cycle curves and
gives an algebro-geometric proof of a theorem of Kobayashi that a K3 surface
has no global symmetric differential forms.Comment: Minor changes, final versio
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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