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AbstractThe European Union's Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with countries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group are touted as a new form of equitable engagement. However, many argue that the EPAs simply substitute a different form of political and economic domination. In this paper, we consider if the siting of meetings has a substantive impact on EPA outcomes or media reporting thereof. Using a difference‐in‐difference like approach we evaluate if the tone and polarity of media reports about the EPAs during periods of 'home' meetings in the ACP countries differs from media reports during 'away' meetings in the EU. Using two different datasets we arrive at differing results, leading to inconclusive overall findings. While we suspect that the alternating meeting site norm has implications for EPA process and outcomes, further research will be needed to uncover the precise nature of these effects.

This paper uses longitudinal factor analysis of location‐specific advantages that are relevant to the foreign direct investment decisions of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) to signal changes in location competitiveness. A total of 1,216 responses by MNEs to a survey in 15 SSA countries are analyzed. We find that, first, over a three‐year period (2002–5), MNEs perceive a positive change in the market‐servicing environment in SSA. Second, MNEs find negative changes in SSA regarding the availability of input factors and characteristics of market demand.

AbstractExploiting existing assets and exploring new assets are two major and often concurrent forces driving firms to invest abroad. Moving beyond prior attention to their separate effects on foreign ownership decisions, this study examines their integrative impact. I develop hypotheses aligning a set of firm‐specific advantages with asset‐seeking motives, and test these relationships on a sample of Taiwanese overseas investments. I find that wholly‐owned subsidiaries are preferred to joint ventures when multinationals are able to tap into host innovatory dynamism by employing extant technological capabilities and to access local natural resources by leveraging corporate scales. Nonetheless, multinationals face difficulties in deploying marketing knowledge in different contexts and thus are more likely to choose joint ventures for an aggressive foreign market entry. Copyright © 2007 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

ABSTRACTInternet technologies and e‐commerce have significantly reduced communication and search costs and facilitated trade between distant parties. It has been advocated that the world becomes flat and geographic divisions are gradually irrelevant. However, recent studies have identified a type of location advantage in online platforms, that is, home bias. To further explore the role of geography in online markets, this study investigates another type of location advantage, the country of origin (COO) effect for online sellers. Using a large listing and transaction data set collected from both an e‐commerce retail platform in China and the official Web sites of two foreign brands, we examine the impact of geographic location on online sellers' pricing strategies and transaction quantities. Our research provides empirical evidence supporting the existence of the COO effect for online sellers in the context of foreign branded product exchanges. Furthermore, the results suggest that sellers' location information can be a substitute to their reputation and observable effort in facilitating online transactions.

There is an interdependent relationship between enterprises and the region in which they are located: On the one hand the conditions of this location influence turnover, costs, profits and thus the economic situation of the individual firm. On the other hand the economic situation of the regional firms is an important determinant of regional economic success and the wel-fare of the people living in that region. This happens directly because the firms stabilize regional income and employment; but there are also indirect effects running via income and input-output-linkages. Regional economic success and welfare in turn determine the regional tax receipts and the regions? possibilities for positively influencing the location conditions. These interdependencies give an explanation for the high interest firms, politicians and researchers normally have in regional location conditions and their quality. The better a region?s information about these issues, the better its possibilities to promote its location advantages and the more efficiently it can use its scarce financial means to reduce the locational disadvantages. Regional marketing and improvements of the region?s location conditions aim at the acquisition of new firms, at additional private investment in the region, at the creation and stabilization of employment and the population?s welfare. In recent years the Niederrhein Institute for Regional- and Structural Research (NIERS) has surveyed firms to thoroughly analyze the location conditions of Middle Lower Rhine Area ? a German region located in the western part of Northrhine-Westphalia. This research especially aimed at judging the location conditions? quality in Middle Lower Rhine Area. But as the firms had to evaluate not only the local quality but also the general importance of the location factors and as firms? participation in these surveys has been sufficiently high the results also give the opportunity to rank the location factors by its relevance and to differentiate this kind of analysis by industry. So, the aim of the proposed paper is twofold: It firstly describes which locational factors are ? on the basis of the above mentioned surveys ? most important from the firms? point of view. To find out whether energy-intensive industries have special location requirements it secondly compares these general results with those from energy-intensive industries.

This research has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the Grant MTM2013-44212-P, the Principality of Asturias/FEDER Grant GRUPIN14-101, Grant C16/15/068 of International Funds KU Leuven and IAP research network grant No. P7/06 of the Belgian government. Their support is gratefully acknowledged

Abstract. Earthquakes in mountainous areas can trigger thousands of
co-seismic landslides, causing significant damage, hampering relief efforts,
and rapidly redistributing sediment across the landscape. Efforts to
understand the controls on these landslides rely heavily on manually mapped
landslide inventories, but these are costly and time-consuming to collect,
and their reproducibility is not typically well constrained. Here we develop
a new automated landslide detection index (ALDI) algorithm based on pixel-wise
normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) differencing of Landsat time series within Google Earth Engine
accounting for seasonality. We compare classified inventories to manually
mapped inventories from five recent earthquakes: Kashmir in 2005, Aysén in 2007,
Wenchuan in 2008, Haiti in 2010, and Gorkha in 2015. We test the ability of ALDI to
recover landslide locations (using receiver operating characteristic – ROC – curves) and landslide sizes (in terms
of landslide area–frequency statistics). We find that ALDI more skilfully
identifies landslide locations than published inventories in 10 of 14 cases
when ALDI is locally optimised and in 8 of 14 cases both when ALDI is
globally optimised and in holdback testing. These results reflect not only good
performance of the automated approach but also surprisingly poor performance
of manual mapping, which has implications both for how future
classifiers are tested and for the interpretations that are based on
these inventories. We find that manual mapping, which typically uses finer-resolution imagery, more skilfully captures the landslide area–frequency
statistics, likely due to reductions in both the censoring of individual small
landslides and amalgamation of landslide clusters relative to ALDI. We
conclude that ALDI is a viable alternative to manual mapping in terms of its
ability to identify landslide-affected locations but is less suitable for
detecting small isolated landslides or precise landslide geometry. Its fast
run time, cost-free image requirements, and near-global coverage suggest the
potential to significantly improve the coverage and quantity of landslide
inventories. Furthermore, its simplicity (pixel-wise analysis only) and
parsimony of inputs (optical imagery only) mean that considerable further
improvement should be possible.

Branchless banking is a banking service based on ICT, one of which is an agent.
This service can be found in both urban and rural areas. This research aims at identifying
the existence and advantages of agents-based branchless banking. The locations of
branchless banking agents was also analyzed to explore the spatial pattern. This research
applies a quantitative method. Agents and customers are selected by undergoing a survey.
The data are obtained by structurally interviewing agents on the kinds of services they
provide and the benefits of services for customers. Meanwhile, an accidental sampling
technique is used to select customers. Besides, spatial analysis is applied using kernel
density analysis and accessibility analysis. The result of the research shows that the
advantages of branchless banking through agent alter the perception of spatial benefits to
access banking services. The space for banking services is in the same place for other
purposes such as business units and home. In urban areas, the making use of agents is
mainly based on the factors of being closely located and easy to access. Meanwhile, in
suburban and rural areas, conveniences are of primary consideration to make use of
agents. Concerning the geographical field, location plays an essential role in the
substantial changes related to the spatial functions of economic services, mainly banking
services, which are not always located in downtown areas. On the contrary, it is possible to
locate economic services in rural areas, with the help of ICT-based services. The result of
the analysis shows that banks do not optimally consider location, range and service area
for branchless banking represented by agents.