A very British state capitalism: Variegation, political connections and bailouts during the COVID-19 crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in governments playing increasingly prominent roles as active economic agents. However, state capitalism does not necessarily serve broad developmental purposes, and rather can be directed to supporting sectional and private interests. As the literature on variegated capitalism alerts us, governments and other actors regularly devise fixes in response to a systemic crisis, but the focus, scale, and scope of the interventions vary considerably, according to the constellation of interests. Rapid progress with vaccines notwithstanding, the UK government's response to COVID-19 has been associated with much controversy, not only because of an extraordinarily high death rate, but also because of allegations of cronyism around the granting of government contracts and bailouts. We focus on the latter, investigating more closely who got bailed out. We find that badly affected sectors (e.g. hospitality, transportation) and larger employers were more likely to get bailouts. However, the latter also favored the politically influential and those who had run up debt profligately. Although, as with state capitalism, crony capitalism is most often associated with emerging markets, we conclude that the two have coalesced into a peculiarly British variety, but one that has some common features with other major liberal markets. This might suggest that the eco-systemic dominance of the latter is coming to an end, or, at the least, that this model is drifting towards one that assumes many of the features commonly associated with developing nations.

A review of the internationalization of state-owned firms and sovereign wealth funds: Governments' nonbusiness objectives and discreet power

We review and bridge the literature on the internationalization of state-owned firms and sovereign wealth funds to provide a novel understanding of how government ownership affects foreign investments in three ways. First, we explain how state-owned firms and funds behave differently from private ones because they need to balance governments' nonbusiness objectives and firms' business goals. This results in competing predictions on whether government ownership helps or hinders internationalization due to particular nonbusiness objectives. Second, building on the review, we provide suggestions on how to extend research topics and theories of the firm by incorporating these nonbusiness objectives in the internationalization decisions in four areas: home government's endowments, characteristics, and attitudes; host-country expansion's support, influence, and impact; home- and host-country relationship conflicts, mediation, and disguising; and management's orientation, opacity, and arbitrage. Third, we capture how governments may use state-owned multinationals and sovereign wealth funds to nudge host-country governments by introducing the concept of discreet power and the use of four strategies (recognition, values, development, and supremacy) to achieve it. This helps to outline the beginning of a unified approach to how governments use their foreign investments to achieve nonbusiness goals.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41267-022-00522-w.

Mitigating Financing Constraints on Investment: Ownership and Transparency in Russia

This study examines the impact of transparency and disclosure scores on fixed investment within the unique context of the Russian capital market. I find that transparency has a positive and significant impact on fixed investment. However, state-owned enterprises are more sensitive than oligarch-owned enterprises to improved transparency. I find robust evidence that greater transparency of financially constrained firms positively affects investment. Transparency, therefore, is a valid mechanism for reducing financing constraints on investment.

Direct Observation of Homogeneous Cavitation in Nanopores

We report on the evaporation of hexane from porous alumina and silicon membranes. These membranes contain billions of independent nanopores tailored to an ink-bottle shape, where a cavity several tens of nanometers in diameter is separated from the bulk vapor by a constriction. For alumina membranes with narrow enough constrictions, we demonstrate that cavity evaporation proceeds by cavitation. Measurements of the pressure dependence of the cavitation rate follow the predictions of the bulk, homogeneous, classical nucleation theory, definitively establishing the relevance of homogeneous cavitation as an evaporation mechanism in mesoporous materials. Our results imply that porous alumina membranes are a promising new system to study liquids in a deeply metastable state.

Stress or Strain Does Not Impact Sorption in Stiff Mesoporous Materials

The present paper investigates strain-induced sorption in mesoporous silicon. Contrarily to a previous report based on indirect evidence, we find that external mechanical strain or stress has no measurable impact on sorption isotherms, down to a relative accuracy of 10^-3. This conclusion is in agreement with the analysis of the sorption-induced strain of porous silicon and holds for other stiff mesoporous materials such as porous silicas.

National asthma observational survey of severe asthmatics in Israel: the no-air study

Background

Asthma is considered a global public health issue requiring a significant medical expenditure as a result of its high prevalence and the low rate of disease control.

Objective

This is the first nationwide survey of severe asthma patients carried out in Israel. In this study we aimed to assess health resources utilization, compliance with treatment and disease-control in a subgroup of patients with severe asthma in Israel.

Material and method

One hundred and twenty-three patients with a diagnosis of asthma for more then one year, as well as a hospitalization during the last 12 months due to asthma exacerbation or maintenance systemic steroids therapy, were included in this non-interventional observational study.

Results

Asthma was uncontrolled in 43.9%, partly controlled in 50.4% and well controlled in only 5.7%. The majority of the patients (83%) were compliant with drug treatment.

Conclusion

The fact that 83% of the asthma patients included in this study were compliant with their asthma therapy was not manifested in asthma control. Therefore concrete tools are required for achieving and maintaining asthma control, especially in the treatment of the most severe asthmatic patients.

Adsorption in noninterconnected pores open at one or at both ends: a reconsideration of the origin of the hysteresis phenomenon

We report on an experimental study of adsorption isotherm of nitrogen onto porous silicon with noninterconnected pores open at one or at both ends in order to check for the first time the old (1938) but always current idea based on Cohan's description which suggests that the adsorption of gas should occur reversibly in the first case and irreversibly in the second one. Hysteresis loops, the shape of which is usually associated with interconnections in porous media, are observed whether the pores are open at one or at both ends, in contradiction with Cohan's model.