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I am concerned with insights heterodox economics, and particularly the new institution economics, can offer regarding interactions between health emergencies and the airline industry. Air services not only facilitates the transmissions of diseases among humans, and between animals, but on the positive side, can expedite the movement of medicines and the transfer of those afflicted during pandemics and epidemics. They can serve to limit the outbreak of disease by providing “mercy flights” to regions poorly served by other modes. Significant challenge confronting carriers during a major event, however, often included immediate financial shocks as well as ensuring their operations do not contribute to the spread of disease. These economic challenges for both commercial carriers and public policymakers involve sources of finance for what is, in this context, a semi-public service as well as the extent to which airlines should retain standby capacity extending resilience to the air-service supply chain. Conventional neoclassical economics, while still at the center of analyzing many of these sorts of issues, has increasingly, because of its rigid assumption and poor forecasting record, been supplemented by heterodox economic thinking. This trend has been reinforced by progress in fields such as psychology. What I demonstrate is that heterodox economics, and especially the role of institutions, offers a more complete picture of the interactions between air transportation and the spread of disease.

This paper aims to examine the relationships between how family owners perceive different aspects of proximity to their territory of origin and the location-related decisions of family business portfolios.

By using the data collected from 112 family business portfolios (FBP), the authors carry out an empirical analysis to test the proposed hypotheses. The results are robust across a battery of robustness analyses performed by the authors.

The analysis reveals a heterogeneous relationship between the different dimensions of proximity and the maintenance and location of portfolio business units. Specifically, we reveal that entrepreneurial families’ social and institutional proximities to their founding territory have a positive influence on their decisions related to investing and maintaining their business portfolio.

These findings open the black box of how business decisions are affected by how business owners perceive their contexts, providing new insights into how corporate decisions in understudied business organisations, business groups, are shaped by the ownership’s proximity to territories.