Juan Manuel de la Fuente Sabaté

The role of psychic distance stimuli on the East-West FDI location structure in the EU: Evidence from Spanish MNEs

Eastern Europe nowadays represents an important and attractive economic area for foreign direct investment. Determinants of investments have converged with those of other European countries. However, it has been argued that a differentiated East-West structure still exists in Europe. This study examines the existence of such a structure from the novel perspective of psychic distance stimuli, showing no evidence of its persistence. Moreover, the results provide evidence on the fundamental role played by different dimensions of psychic distance, especially in levels of industrial development and language, as obstacles to foreign direct investments. On the contrary, distance in education is positively associated with investments, reflecting an efficiency-seeking MNE approach.

Financial Impacts of Corporate Reputation

Apart from stakeholder research, examinations on the financial impact of corporate reputation are a major field of interest within the communication community. De Quevedo Puente, Delgado Garcia, and de la Fuente Sabate close this chapter with a meta-analysis of studies on this issue. They systematically describe previous findings concerning the impact on corporate profitability, risk, and market value. Additional explanations for inconsistent measurement results are provided, too.

Steps towards medication harmonization: A look at Europe and the United States

Abstract Countries with distinct institutional endowments are trying to reach drug harmonization. The explanation given for the beginning of this process is that the rising health concerns governments have about patients transcend their different visions of social welfare and increasing bureaucratic costs, for both pharmaceutical companies and governments. The underlying reasons are, on the one hand, the high transaction costs between the pharmaceutical companies and the patients of medication and, on the other hand, the differing pharmaceutical regulations increase bureaucratic costs. This situation pushed Europe, Japan and the US into initiating a process of harmonization of regulation for new drugs. Even though harmonization is an on-going process, global and simultaneous medication product approval is not easy (the final objective of harmonization). In this paper we present, from a transaction cost approach, the economic reasons why pharmaceutical transactions need to be under public control. At the same time, we evaluate the public policies related to pharmaceutical exchange – technical guidelines, funding and price policies – as elements of the institutional endowment of countries that could facilitate or slow down the harmonization process. We use two protagonists of the harmonization process: Europe and the United States.