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Professor of Economics Aston Business School Reference Number: R110134

Contents: The Economics and Strategy Group 1 Staff within the Group 3

Professor of Economics 1

THE ECONOMICS AND STRATEGY GROUP The Economics and Strategy Group carries out a wide range of research and teaching activities in the general fields of economics, strategic management, innovation and international business. Research within the Group is generally of an applied nature, and is designed to be directly relevant to business. Staff from the Group contribute specialist teaching to most of the School’s Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes, and in particular to the BSc in International Business and Economics, the BSc in Economics and Management, BSc Math’s and Economics the MSc in International Business, and the MBA programme. The Group's website can be accessed at: http://www.abs.aston.ac.uk/newweb/AcademicGroups/esg/ Major Research Themes Economics (Rakesh Bissoondeeal, Jun Du, Chris Jones, Michail Karoglou, Matthew Olczak, David Saal, Yama Temouri). Economics research within the Economics and Strategy Group lies principally within the broad area of applied microeconomics. The majority of our research therefore adopts a micro-economic perspective using individual company or sectoral data. The broad areas of research interest are as follows: The economics of innovation, concentrating on the processes which determine effective innovation and its links to firm performance and higher productivity growth. Current research topics include the organisation of innovation at the firm level, regional innovation systems, financial innovation, innovation and export performance, the role of intellectual property and foreign ownership and product innovation. Productivity analysis. There are a number of strands within this area, including the econometric determinants of productivity growth (both micro and macro); measurement of the sources of productivity growth in regulated industries; the analysis of innovation and productivity spillovers from multinational enterprises to host economy firms; and the effects of trade and FDI on economic growth. Regulation and competition. This area has obvious links with productivity analysis, especially as regards productivity measurement within regulated industries. Other areas of interest include collusion and merger control, retail competition, and privatization in China. The impact of economic reforms and ownership structures on the behaviour and performance of financial and non-financial sector firms in emerging markets

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The application of the application of advanced multivariate techniques to a range of data types, particularly the econometric and time series analysis of financial and monetary economics data.

Entrepreneurship / Innovation (Yundan Gong, Mark Hart, Hiro Izushi, Mark Rogers, Vania Sena, Pawan Tamvada). IB Research at Aston. (Sumon Bhaumik, Stephanie Decker, Nigel Driffield, Natasha Smith, Yama Temouri, Kirit Vaidya). Much of the international business research at Aston is concerned to link the theory of international business to empirical studies of FDI. In this context, the group has also carried out policy based work for UKTI, the World Bank, UNIDO and OECD. In addition, we have in the last five years secured three ESRC awards. The first of these concerned the impact of Inward FDI on the UK economy, generated some thirteen papers in international journals, including one in the Journal of International Business Studies. The second (details of Jims knowledge sourcing project ?). The third concerns the links between institutions and FDI decisions, and the links between FDI and transition economies. This has also generated a paper in Journal of International Business Studies. Other work in the group includes FDI and corruption in the context of Russia, studies concerning the relationship between exporting and productivity and development of industrial capabilities and competitiveness in emerging economies. This also links to work for UKTI on the exporting decisions of small firms. There is also a strong link between this work, and that done in terms of the economics group on productivity. Members of the IB group are well known for work on productivity and FDI. This includes analysis at a regional level of the impact of FDI on productivity, and analysis of international technology transfer and the importance of FDI

Strategy (Stephanie Decker, Paula Jarzabkowski, Michael Kennard, Graham Leask, Michael Smets, Efstathios Tapinos). The strategic management team in the ESG group is doing at the nexus of strategy and organizations. In particular, the group has a strong emphasis on longitudinal, qualitative strategy-as-practice and strategy process research, led by Professor Paula Jarzabkowski. In addition to social practice theory, the group also has strong research interests and methodological competence in institutional theory, strategic group theory and psychological approaches to strategizing. Research projects in the group and papers published or in progress deal with strategy formation practices and processes in the context of

The implications of regulatory, technological and analytic change on risk-trading practices in the global reinsurance industry

Strategic paradoxes arising from major regulatory shifts in infrastructure firms; Globalisation of professional service firms Public and third sector organizations Global pharmaceuticals and FMCG multinationals Corporate social responsibility and sustainability in transitional economies

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Strategizing tools, techniques, and frameworks and their uses in a knowledge economy

Members of the strategic management research team are actively engaged in supporting the development of their field, through convening sub-themes and interest groups at international conferences, including a Standing Working Group at the European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS) and a Special Interest Group of the Academy of Management (AoM). They also serve as members on various editorial boards, including Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Science, Organization Studies and Strategic Management Journal. In addition to their own projects, the team supervises a number of doctoral students in the field of strategic management. STAFF WITHIN THE GROUP The Economics and Strategy Group within the Aston Business School comprises a Professor of International Business (Nigel Driffield, Head of Group), Professor of Strategy (Paula Jarzabkowski), a Professor of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (Mark Hart), 2 Readers, 4 Senior Lecturers, 15 Lecturers, (encompassing Economics, International Business, Innovation, and Strategic Management). Staff research interests include the following: Professor Nigel Driffield (Head of Group) Professor of International Business. Nigel’s interests are in the determinants and effects of foreign direct investment (FDI). Specific interests include the labour market effects of FDI, and the productivity spillovers effects of FDI both to and from the domestic sector. Professor Driffield is also a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of international Business Studies. Professor Paula Jarzabkowski (Director, Aston Centre for Critical Infrastructure and Services). Professor of Strategic Management. Paula uses qualitative, largely ethnographic research methods to analyze how people (rather than firms or markets) do strategy and competition. She specializes in a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ approach, audio and video recording the naturally occurring practices and activities of strategists. Using these methods she has conducted research into major technological, regulatory and analytic shifts in global reinsurance markets, strategic integration in multinational FMCG firms and vertical separation in regulated infrastructure firms. Professor Jarzabkowski is also on the Editorial Board of a number of leading journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Organization Studies and Strategic Management Journal. Professor Mark Hart Professor of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. His research interests are on the dynamics of business demography, entrepreneurship and the evaluation of business support and regional development policies.

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Dr Sumon Bhaumik Reader in International Business and Economics. Sumon Bhaumik has a PhD in Economics from the University of Southern California. Aside from academia, he has worked in the corporate sector and the policy world. His research interests are diverse and include the impact of institutions on MNE strategies and decisions, and the impact of ownership structures on decisions and performance of financial and non-financial companies. He is a Research Fellow at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and at IZA - Institute for the Study of Labour in Bonn. Dr Rakesh Bissoondeeal Lecturer in economics. Rakesh is a specialist in time series econometrics research and publications are mostly on the modeling and forecasting of financial and macroeconomic time series. He has a PhD from Nottingham Trent University. Dr Stephanie Decker Lecturer in International Business. Dr Jun Du Senior Lecturer of Industrial Economics at Aston Business School. Her PhD degree in Economics was awarded by University of Leicester in 2006. She has been working in the field of economics of industrial organization, in particular, finance, FDI and firm growth in the context of China. Dr Yundan Gong Lecturer in Economics and Innovation. Before joining Aston, Yundan worked as a Research Fellow in the Leverhulme Centre for Research on Globalisation and Economic Policy (GEP) and completed a Ph.D in Industrial Economics at Nottingham University Business School. Her main research interests are in international trade, firm performance analysis, innovation and R&D, privatizations and acquisition, economic growth and the Chinese economy. Dr Hiro Izushi Senior Lecturer in Innovation. Hiro’s interests are in innovation and economic development. Specific interests include knowledge sourcing behaviours of firms, business networks, knowledge-based economic growth, and video game industry. Dr Chris Jones Lecturer. Chris’s interests are primarily concerned with FDI and Trade in developing countries. Specific interests include FDI in conflict zones, and the political economy of trade policy in Africa. Dr Michail Karoglou Lecturer of Economics Dr Josie Kelly Lecturer Public Services

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Dr Michael Kennard MBA Course Director / Teaching Fellow Dr Graham Leask Lecturer in Strategic Management. Competitive strategy within the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and healthcare industries. The effects of healthcare reform on the competitive position of pharmaceutical companies. Mr Matt Olczak Lecturer in Economics. Current research interests focus on collusion, merger policy and retail competition. Dr David Saal Senior Lecturer in Economics. Current research interests include restructuring of defense sectors and the performance of privatised enterprises. Dr Vania Sena Reader in Economics. Her interests lie in the use of econometric (and non-econometric) techniques for the measurement of productivity and its main determinants both in the public and private sector. Dr Michael Smets Lecturer in Strategy, Michael joined Aston in Summer 2009 after earning his PhD at Said Business School, Oxford. His main research interest is in institutional strategy, i.e. the interplay between organizational practices with the institutional environments in which they are embedded. Specifically, he looks into questions of internationalisation, decision-making and technology usage, innovation and cross-border work in highly institutionalized sectors such as law, consulting, and reinsurance. Dr Natasha Smith. Lecturer in Economics. Current interests are the links between foreign investment and corruption in Russia. Dr Paul Spee Lecturer. The realm of Paul’s research is in the doing of strategy work, taking a sociological approach. In particular, Paul is intrigued by the role of strategy tools as well as strategic plans and their impact upon strategizing activities. Currently, Paul is part of a research team investigating the difference of face-to-face and electronic methods in trading reinsurance comparing the London and Bermudan marketplace. Dr Efstathios Tapinos Lecturer in Strategic Management. Stat his is interested in the strategy process. His research is engaged with the interrelationships and interdependencies between the elements of the strategy development process. In the past, he has focused on organisational direction and performance measurement/management. Currently, he is working on the influence of strategy tools and on perceived environmental uncertainty on the strategy process.

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Dr J Pawan Tamvada Lecturer in Small Business Economics / Entrepreneurship. Current research interests include economics of entrepreneurship and strategy, and entrepreneurship and innovation in developing countries. Dr Yama Temouri Research Fellow. Yama's research interests are mainly in empirical industrial organization, international trade and the impact of globalization on both host and source countries. He is particularly interested in the activities and performance of multinational corporations and their labour market effects in developed and developing countries. Mr Kirit Vaidya Senior Lecturer in Business Economics. His research and publications are in the areas of international business and technology transfer, employment and development strategies and economic and industrial development in China and Asia.