Managerial Economics the Three Articles

Managerial Economics

The three articles analyzed in this paper include the Confucian Consumer: Seven reasons why the Chinese save, when they really should be spending by Nouriel Roubini, Explaining Growth by Douglas Clement, and FDI, Trade, and Product Innovation: Theory and Evidence by Hui-lin Lin and Eric S. Lin. Each of these three article provides a different perspective on the lessons learned in Managerial Economics this semester, and are analyzed below.

Analyzing the Lessons Learned in the article, Explaining Growth

The article provides insights into how economic growth occurs across varying sizes of businesses and during periods of economic uncertainty. The author point out that productivity growth has traditionally been the catalyst of sustainable, long-term differentiation of business models and value chains. The premise of the article however is that organizational capital, when combined with productivity growth, delivers economic growth regardless of the firm size, only constrained by market conditions.

This assumption of combining productivity growth and organizational capital is one that is incomplete in assessing the strength and direction of growing businesses. The economic conditions of the last three years have made businesses focus more on value creation, less on the use of transactions to bolster and increase their firm's value. The valuation of organizational capital is only partially correct. It is the ability to continually invest in employees and have them gain autonomy, mastery and purpose in their roles within the business that is the most effective catalyst of growth. The author fails to bring in the behavioral economics factors of why employees choose to concentrate autonomy, mastery and purpose, three essential elements to enriching personal productivity and making any business more competitive. The blueprint the author mentions also does not adequately mention how effective knowledge transfer and information sharing can be in augmenting and strengthening overall firm performance. The impact of pricing elasticity as they relate to profitability is not assessed as well.

Alluding to organization structure and the inherently greater agility of a smaller business to be more capable at integrating productivity and organizational capital, the author stops short of explaining knowledge transfer, trust and continual value of worker productivity specifically (Clement, 63). Instead, the focus is only an aggregated view of an organization, not the inherent value of a third component of productivity, which is that of workers and the investment in their long-term learning and productivity. In addition, the finding that larger firms can become more productive over time relative to smaller firms is inconsistent with the concepts of agility and market responsiveness that is so critical in emerging markets. The author has taken a purely theoretical stance on this issue of agility and market responsiveness, again taking out of the analysis the influence of personal productivity. The reality is that organizational structure and architecture has a direct and significant effect on the extent to which a firm can growth, stay profitable and attain a measure of agility in the market conditions they operate in. The article could have gone another step and analyzed how worker productivity across the business sizes contributed or detracted from the overall level of firm productivity, and that would have been a more accurate measure of firm competitiveness. Lastly, the issue of value creation and indexing from a managerial economic standpoint is discussed yet only from a productivity growth and organizational capital standpoint. Value creation is the path to profitability many firms have relied on throughout the recession. The analysis presented in Explaining Growth could have been far more effective is value creation indexes had also been included to evaluate the effects of personal productivity on firm resiliency and market responsiveness.

Analyzing the Lessons Learned in FDI, Trade, and Product Innovation: Theory and Evidence

In the peer-reviewed article FDI, Trade, and Product Innovation: Theory and Evidence (Lin, Lin, et.al.) provide analysis of how Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is influenced by organizational and industry structure within the Taiwanese and Chinese high technology industries. Their conclusions illustrate how intensive R&D spending can lead to greater levels of FDI, yet are no assurance of a higher level of patent ownership on a national level. The authors also show that FDI as a catalyst of economic growth within a given nation is not as predictable of organizational productivity or competitiveness as it is a factor in globalization globally where countries unify to pursue rapidly growing technology markets (Lin, Lin, 454). R&D investments in the form of FDI then are catalyst of rapid globalization that can quickly force cultures together, many of which have diametrically opposed cultural values, mindsets and orientations to power distance and long-term orientation as well. The Cultural Dimensions Model as defined by Dr. Geert Hofstede graphically portrays these variations in cultures, which are accessible from his website at http://www.geert-hofstede.com / (Hofstede, McCrae, 52). The analysis of FDI investment effectiveness and its implications on economic growth of nations has however not taken into account the architectural and structural differences of organizations for significantly different cultural backgrounds as well (Lin, Lin, 454). This lack of focus on FDI as either a catalyst or constraint of long-term economic growth in nations with cultures that are vastly different that Taiwan and China are not addressed, therefore the issue of personal and organizational productivity is also not addressed. This is a major shortfall of this analysis on FDI, as it fails to take into account the catalysts of long-term economic growth based on cultural variations inherent in organizational architectures and cultures.

The article FDI, Trade, and Product Innovation: Theory and Evidence however does take into account the validation of four key variables that have the greatest impact on FDI influence on economic growth of foreign nations. These included inward-bound FDI, outward FDI, import aggregation measures of supply chain efficiency and exports and their implied velocity (Lin, Lin, 464). The authors contend that these factors are most critical for a given nations' growth from a productivity growth and organizational capital standpoint. The missing factors of personal productivity as a determinant of national competitiveness, a key point made in our textbook and by Dr. Michael Porter in much of his research, are not evident in the analysis. This is one aspect of the national competitiveness and if it is strengthened by R&D-based FDI needs further research on a global scale.

The Confucian Consumer; Seven reasons why the Chinese save, when they really should be spending.

Dr. Nouriel Roubini is co-founder and CEO of Roubini Global Economics and serves as a professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business. He has also taught at Harvard and Yale universities. In his article