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This article focuses on one key aspect of industrial buying behaviour, namely the buying process itself. Using a common questionnaire, a large sample of respondents in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US were interviewed by mail from two sectors, the paper and pulp and chemical and allied products industries. The similarity of results between the different industries and the countries — as well as similarities between this and previous surveys in the UK and US — allows generalisations to be made about the respective involvement of corporate departments in the purchase process for equipment, materials and components.

Describes how pollution control spending around the world is set to increase from $70 billion (1979) to $115 billion in 1990 in real terms. Expands on the theory that cleaning up ‐ or preventing mistakes ‐ in the environment makes for financial and healthwise good sense. Posits that cleaner air leads to fewer respiratory problems and cleaner water in most areas of manufacturing results in lower fuel use. Focuses on trade, end use competitive modes and marketing patterns regarding water pollution control equipment (WPCE). States that WPCE shipments world wide are projected to rise from $3.3 billion in 1979 to $5.4 billion in 1990, and that this is a dynamic market worthy of investigation. Reports on the methodology, international trade, types of equipment structure and competition and expresses these with the aid of explicit tables. Finishes by estimating size of national, regional and global markets but acknowledges that there are gaps. Concludes that competition is keen but strong market opportunities remain for procedures around the globe in upcoming years.

Offshore outsourcing offers competitive advantages when goods and services are produced economically and with acceptable or superior quality by suppliers located outside a firm's home country. The purpose of this paper is to focus on India as a destination for offshore outsourcing of services and the challenges it faces in maintaining its leadership in this area. The paper discusses the growth of services outsourcing and the economic and environmental forces that have contributed to the outsourcing of high‐end services, also known as knowledge process outsourcing (KPO).

This article surveys the literature of offshore outsourcing and identifies strategic drivers and options that can help India to grow and consolidate its position as an exporter of services and build long‐term competitive advantages in its relationships with global partners. To understand why nations gain competitive advantage in certain industries, Porter's “diamond” model is utilized as a broad framework for examining policies and national strategies that can sustain India's competitive advantage in outsourcing of knowledge‐based services. The paper discusses India's current and prospective assets and liabilities that correspond to the model's four components.

The article discusses India's competitive edge as a leading supplier of knowledge‐based services and proposes a model for sustaining this edge. The model proposes key policy steps to move from the current position (e.g. supplier of business process outsourcing services) to a role of knowledge leader by providing advanced value added services to global clients. This model suggests ways in which a supplier nation can gain leverage in the value chain.

The article is conceptual, not empirical. Public and corporate policy implications are presented to strengthen India's competitive advantages in outsourced services.

The article presents a strategic roadmap with policy implications that can help move India up the value chain from being primarily a destination for low‐end business process outsourcing (BPO) to that of a co‐equal, high value‐adding partner or principal who offers knowledge leadership in the design and delivery of services for global markets.

The article discusses a nation's technical strengths, as well as cultural and infrastructure weaknesses, that can contribute to volatility as a global outsourcing leader. The article also presents strategies that can reduce a nation's vulnerabilities to competitive actions.

The dramatic growth and international scope of knowledge‐intensive business services (KIBS) are evident in emerging markets such as China and India. Nations, like firms, seek to capitalize on their available resources and capabilities (e.g. people, technology, skills) in order to build and maintain core competencies in certain industry sectors. This paper has the following objectives: to discuss the classification of KIBS, to marshal conceptual and statistical evidence on KIBS in major emerging markets, to compare and contrast selected major emerging markets in regard to their KIBS activities, and to discuss policy implications.

In this conceptual paper, extant literature is reviewed and discussed pertaining to the KIBS sectors. Several existing data sources are used to assess the comparative performance of major emerging markets in the KIBS sectors.

The emphasis is on finding comparative longitudinal statistics that are useful for comparison and contrast among major emerging markets. The analysis indicates that while the major emerging markets are building competitive advantage by focusing on knowledge‐intensive business services, their progress differs sharply. For example, China shows the lead, followed by India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Turkey, and Indonesia. Smaller nations lag behind these in most indicators. It is evident that leading major emerging nations have not reached parity with highly industrialized countries.

The results show ranking and contribution of various major nations in the global knowledge economy, but additional time series and analysis are needed to assess comparative rankings. However, the classification and the indicators illustrated here offer a panoramic, comparative picture over the past decade. Using international business theories, research can develop statistical models to explain foreign market entry strategies of knowledge‐intensive service firms.

The paper is of value to managers considering entry and/or expansion into major emerging markets in various sub‐sectors of knowledge‐intensive sectors. The specific industry and function pursued by a firm need to be identified and matched up with host nation characteristics (e.g. more software design and pharmaceutical research in India v. more manufacturing design and R&D facility in China). The paper also provides guidelines to policy makers to sustain their country's competitive advantage in the KIBS sectors.

The paper looks at knowledge‐intensive business services in major emerging markets. It offers both conceptual contributions and statistical evidence that key nations differ in their activities in regard to such high‐level and complex service offerings.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the linkage between agricultural sector and macroeconomic factors with farm financial health. It considers whether agricultural lenders can more accurately anticipate changes in the credit quality of their portfolios by considering broad economic indicators outside the agriculture sector.

This paper examines firm, sector, and macroeconomic drivers of probability of default (PD) migrations from a sample of 153 grain farms of actual lender data from Farm Credit Mid-America’s portfolio. A series of ordered logit models are developed.

Farm-level and sector-level variables have the most significant impact on PD migrations. Equity to asset ratios, working capital to gross farm income ratios, and gross corn income per acre are found to be the most significant drivers of PD migrations. Macroeconomic variables are shown to unreliably forecast PD migrations, suggesting that agricultural lenders should emphasize firm and sector variables over macroeconomic factors in credit risk models.

This paper builds the literature on agricultural credit risk by testing a broader set of sector and macroeconomic variables than previous articles. Also, prior articles measured the direction but not magnitude of PD migrations; the ordered model in the analysis measures both.

Chen and Ritter (2000) documented that underwriter spreads for recent US initial public offerings (IPOs) in $20 million range as well as much larger IPOs in the $80 million range are clustered at 7%. This observation has led to a Department of Justice (DOJ) enquiry into potential price fixing by underwriters. We demonstrate through a times series analysis that IPOs have tripled in size and become much riskier over time. A pooled data analysis can therefore mask evidence of competition in the market. We find that spread clustering is not a recent phenomenon. Over time, clustering at 7% has increased as clustering above 7% has declined. IPO spreads have declined significantly over time as the firms going public more recently are riskier, underwriting efforts have increased and recent IPOs are much larger than IPOs in the past. Controlling for time trends, larger IPOs have lower average spreads. The market for underwriting IPOs seems to be competitive with entry of new firms during the hot markets.

Hospitals catering to the unique needs of international patients often make substantial investments in their international program. Research has yet to evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of establishing these programs. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the economic benefits and costs of international patient programs and evaluate the ROI of international patients for US hospitals by program maturity and size.

Operational information about 29 health systems with international patient programs in the USA was obtained from the US Cooperative for International Patient Programs (USCIPP) Annual Benchmarking Survey. A Spearman correlation coefficient was used to test the association between international program investments and revenue. Mann–Whitney U tests were used to test whether ROI differs significantly by program maturity and size.

It was found that 14 (48.3 per cent) international programs were established and 10 (34.5 per cent) programs were large in size. The median estimated organizational total gross revenue less operating expense for all programs was positive ($15.6m). Total gross revenue less operating expense was higher for large programs ($105.6m) than for small programs ($9.2m) (p < 0.001) and higher for established programs ($40.2m) than for new programs ($8.5m) (p < 0.001).

The results suggest that hospital investment in international programs yields substantial returns for the health systems studied. New programs rely on staff from other areas of the organization while developing operational processes and relationships with providers and payers abroad. Examining the ROI can help hospitals develop a business case for an international program and understand any economies of scale from increased investment.

This study aims to assess the performance of domestic and foreign Islamic banks as well as the influence of foreign banks’ home country development influence on the performance of foreign banks.

This study uses data of 17 domestic Islamic banks and 11 foreign Islamic banks from Bahrain, Malaysia and Pakistan from 2010 to 2018. Pooled ordinary least square is used to investigate the relationship between home country development and performance of foreign Islamic banks.

Results from this paper suggest domestic Islamic banks in Malaysia have higher performance than their foreign counterparts while foreign Islamic banks from Pakistan have higher performance than their domestic counterparts. However, as a whole, the performance of domestic and foreign Islamic banks is not significantly different from one another. Development of foreign banks’ home country measured by gross national income per capita and gross domestic product per capita show significant positive influence on the performance of foreign Islamic banks.

Higher level of development of the home country of foreign banks appears to influence the performance of foreign banks in the host country.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether energy-efficient green buildings tend to provide net lease structures over gross lease ones. It then considers whether owners benefit by trading away operational savings in a net lease structure.

Empirical models of office leasing transactions in Sydney, Australia, with wider transferability supported by analysis of office rent data in the USA.

Labeled green buildings are approximately four to five times more likely than non-labeled buildings to use a net lease structure. However, despite receiving operational savings, tenants in net leases pay higher total occupancy costs (TOC), benefiting owners. On average, the increase in TOC paid by tenants in a net lease is equal to or greater than savings attributed to an eco-labeled building.

A full accounting of TOC in eco-labeled buildings suggests that net lease structures provide numerous benefits to owners that offset the loss of trading away operational savings.

The principal-agent market inefficiency, or “split incentive,” is a widely cited barrier to private investment in energy-efficient building technology. Here, a uniquely broad look at rental cash flows suggests its role as a barrier is exaggerated.