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This paper aims to investigate the linkages among foreign direct investment (FDI – greenfield and mergers and acquisitions [M&A]) decisions and equity market returns and volatilities. The main premise is that FDI decisions by multinational enterprises (MNE) are influenced by risk and uncertainty indicated by equity market returns and volatilities in the destination (host) countries. This is so because the events on the stock markets in general and their volatilities in particular signal the vitality of the investment climate of the target market. Understanding volatility in capital markets is important for determining the cost of capital and for evaluating direct investment and asset allocation decisions.

Surveys and structured interviews were conducted with senior managers of 11 MNEs based in the USA to collect the data used in this study from November 2017 to October 2018. The paper investigates if FDI decisions of the MNE managers are influenced by risk and uncertainty indicated by equity market returns and volatilities. The paper endeavors to make a contribution to the IB literature in highlighting the role played by equity returns and volatilities in FDI decisions and therewith attempts to integrate finance (capital markets) with international business/strategic decision-making.

Capital market performances (returns and volatilities) were found to influence the country choice for location of production facilities (FDI – both greenfield and M&A decisions) as well as timing of the FDI by a MNE. In other words, the share of production capacity optimally located abroad and M&A activities are affected by capital market returns and volatilities.

This paper aims to examine the forms and experiences of victimization of foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) in Hong Kong, the effects of victimization on FDHs and FDHs’ coping strategies.

The main findings are based on semi-structured interviews with a sample of 12 FDHs in Hong Kong.

The findings uncovered a continuum of violence ranging from relatively mundane abuses on an everyday basis to acute events at the time of termination. Some respondents also experienced secondary victimization from police and/or pending criminal justice proceedings after contract termination.

Victimization exerted significant adverse physical and psychological effects on FDHs in our study. Nevertheless, contrary to common assumptions about FDHs as passive victims, our findings suggest that some FDHs experienced a degree of empowerment, as they found ways to cope with their difficulties by individualized and social strategies depending on the degree of victimization and the resources available.

The findings suggest there is an urgent need to review the existing laws and policies that, at best, are ineffective and, at worst, create far more problems than they solve.

We issue a double Souvenir number of The Library World in connection with the Library Association Conference at Birmingham, in which we have pleasure in including a special article, “Libraries in Birmingham,” by Mr. Walter Powell, Chief Librarian of Birmingham Public Libraries. He has endeavoured to combine in it the subject of Special Library collections, and libraries other than the Municipal Libraries in the City. Another article entitled “Some Memories of Birmingham” is by Mr. Richard W. Mould, Chief Librarian and Curator of Southwark Public Libraries and Cuming Museum. We understand that a very full programme has been arranged for the Conference, and we have already published such details as are now available in our July number.

Fraudulent financial reporting is a matter of grave social and economic concern. The Treadway Commission recommended that the Auditing Standards Board require the use of analytical procedures to improve the detection of fraudulent financial reporting. This is an exploratory study to determine if financial ratios of fraudulent companies differ from those of nonfraudulent companies. Fraudulent firms were identified by examining the SEC's Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases issued between 1982 and 1999. The fraudulent firms (n=79) were then matched with nonfraudulent firms on the basis of firm size, time period, and industry. Using this matched‐pairs design, ratio analysis for a seven‐year period (i.e. the fraud year −/+ 3 years) was conducted on 21 ratios. Overall, 16 ratios were found to be significant. Of these, only three ratios were significant for three time periods. Of the 16 statistically significant ratios, only five were significant during the period prior to the fraud year. Using discriminant analysis, misclassifications for fraud firms ranged from 58 percent to 98 percent. These results provide empirical evidence of the limited ability of financial ratios to detect and/or predict fraudulent financial reporting.

As numerous scholars have noted, the law takes a strikingly incoherent approach to adolescent reproduction. States overwhelmingly allow a teenage girl to independently consent to pregnancy care and medical treatment for her child, and even to give up her child for adoption, all without notice to her parents, but require parental notice or consent for abortion. This chapter argues that this oft-noted contradiction in the law on teenage reproductive decision-making is in fact not as contradictory as it first appears. A closer look at the law’s apparently conflicting approaches to teenage abortion and teenage childbirth exposes common ground that scholars have overlooked. The chapter compares the full spectrum of minors’ reproductive rights and unmasks deep similarities in the law on adolescent reproduction – in particular an undercurrent of desire to punish (female) teenage sexuality, whether pregnant girls choose abortion or childbirth. It demonstrates that in practice, the law undermines adolescents’ reproductive rights, whichever path of pregnancy resolution they choose. At the same time that the law thwarts adolescents’ access to abortion care, it also fails to protect adolescents’ rights as parents. The analysis shows that these two superficially conflicting sets of rules in fact work in tandem to enforce a traditional gender script – that self-sacrificing mothers should give birth and give up their infants to better circumstances, no matter the emotional costs to themselves. This chapter also suggests novel policy solutions to the difficulties posed by adolescent reproduction by urging reforms that look to third parties other than parents or the State to better support adolescent decision-making relating to pregnancy and parenting.

With this issue, Collection Building reinstitutes the popular column on free and inexpensive materials developed by Kathleen Weibel in the three issues of our first volume. Most of the material included will be items suitable for the vertical files, although occasionally items will be mentioned that may be substantial enough to warrant standard cataloging and shelving as books or periodicals. Format will be unrestricted and efforts will be made to find and include nonprint materials even where some of these, such as slide sets or films, may be available for loan only. As costs of library materials continue to rise, the struggle to provide up‐to‐date information on the great variety of subjects of importance to our patrons becomes ever more difficult. Following the column's earlier pattern, we will attempt to identify and describe in each issue material on a broad topic that is free, or available for postage and handling costs, or is inexpensive. Our definition of inexpensive, alas, has risen from Weibel's $1.60 to $2.50.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate political activity (CPA) are two important components of firms’ nonmarket strategies, oriented toward shaping the firm’s political and social conditions. Although this is acknowledged in the literature, there are contradictory arguments and evidence, concerning, first, whether and under which conditions firms align their CPA and CSR activities, and second, what the impacts might be if they do align these activities. In light of this, this chapter draws from earlier reviews of nonmarket strategies, to explore the factors at multiple levels, macro and micro, that may drive a firm’s alignment of CPA and CSR. In doing so, we draw from management research to identify the macro- and micro-level factors that shape CPA and CSR alignment as CSR and CPA alignment research mostly focuses on outcomes rather than identifying the drivers of alignment. We develop a general model that integrates the macro- and micro-level discussions to make suggestions about where future research needs to go to increase understanding of when corporations will combine their CPA and CSR efforts and the merits of these efforts.

THESE are grave days, and perhaps especially grave for those who are workers in books, in art and in the things of the mind and spirit. They are days which may make, or may mar, much that such people as the readers of THE LIBRARY WORLD have striven for through a century or more. In war the material things, money, food, clothes, cease to be ordinary problems; they become urgent; and all the graces of life, even education itself, are endangered. We have yet to experience the full impact, let alone the reactions, of the drastic war taxation recently imposed. Necessary it is, no doubt, but that will not lessen its effects.