Virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life), where users interact and form relationships with other users’ virtual identities represented by avatars (i.e., human-avatar relationships), are increasingly influential in today’s businesses and society. Nevertheless, the sustainability and impact of virtual worlds depend largely on the closeness of human-avatar relationships. This study investigates the ante...

We extend Real Option Theory to evaluate natural resource development projects that may bring negative net bene ts and require costly restoration. Based on a new concept, irreversibility cost, we show that the degree of irreversibility becomes an endogenous choice, rather than an exogenously given economic constraint. The xed cost of restoration has continuous impacts, over and above the widely...

One of the principal elements of the economic reforms program initiated in 1991 was to reduce the fiscal deficit of the central government which, at that time, faced a solvency crisis. This reduction was at least partially achieved by reducing transfers to state governments. As a result, state government budgets faced crises and agriculture, being largely a state subject, was denied adequate in...

This paper analyses entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in multinational corporations (MNCs) and develops a new typology of MNC EO based on combining R&D and asset growth investment intensities as orthogonal resource allocations. A cluster analysis of US MNCs on these two dimensions reveals three types of entrepreneurial stance: conservative, aggressive-asset growth and balanced. Internal knowledg...

Life-history theory posits a fundamental trade-off between number and size of offspring that structures the variability in parental investment across and within species. We investigate this 'quantity-quality' trade-off across primates and present evidence that a similar trade-off is also found across natural-fertility human societies. Restating the classic Smith-Fretwell model in terms of allom...

Empirical evidence confirms that trade exposure can shift resources towards the most efficient firms in an industry and induce substantial increases in aggregate productivity. Although recent studies document that much of world trade is controlled by multinational firms, few examine the effect of foreign direct investment decisions on resource allocation and aggregate productivity. This paper p...

Optimizing international oil exploration projects is one of the main challenges for oil companies in obtaining investment benefits. This paper establishes an integrated evaluation model to maximize investment benefits within the constraints of technical and economic factors, including geological factors, resource quality, geographic conditions, the investment environment, and oil contracts. The...

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: R&D R&D investment Resource-based view Decision factors This study investigates the decision factors regarding R&D investment activities. The subjects in this empirical study are from the countries of Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, which are all similar in the level of regional economic development and technology manufacturing. The research samples consist of the fina...

The distinctive features of reproduction in squirrels are the lack of allometric influences on the duration of reproductive investment; the strong allometric influences on offspring mass; and a trade-off between number and size of young, suggesting an important developmental component to reproduction. Lengths of gestation and lactation do not vary with body size but neonatal and weaning mass do...

Empirical evidence confirms that trade exposure can shift resources towards the most efficient firms in an industry and induce substantial increases in aggregate productivity. Although recent studies document that much of world trade is controlled by multinational firms, few examine the effect of foreign direct investment decisions on resource allocation and aggregate productivity. This paper p...