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This chapter addresses a first essential strategic choice that internationalizing financial services firms face: should cross-border markets be served or not? It offers a detailed description of the major benefits and costs of international growth initiatives. Several major benefits are distinguished: economies of scale, economies of scope, X-efficiencies, access to key factors and location-related advantages, firm-specific assets, satisfying growth expectations of shareholders, accumulation of market power, and agency motives. On the other hand, the three main costs categories are liabilities of foreignness, liabilities of newness, and coordination costs.

This chapter starts with a discussion on how financial services firms predict market development. The role of uncertainty and ambiguity, and tools that attempt to reduce them, are presented. It then considers early and late mover advantages, showing how firms that enter markets early try to protect their advantages through isolation mechanisms such as the creation of technological standards, the pre-emption of assets, and buyer switching costs. Late movers can take advantage of free riding, the early resolution of technological or market uncertainty, shifts in technology or customer needs, and incumbent inertia. The chapter concludes with a discussion of factors that typically lead to accelerated international expansion.

The chapters in this book demonstrate that ‘beeronomics’ covers a vast set of economic issues: economic history, development, demand and supply, geography, trade, investment, technology, health and nutrition, quantity and quality, industrial organization, competition, science and innovation, taxation, regulation, political economy, etc. This concluding chapter summarizes some of the key insights of this book, organized in five sections: a historical perspective on the product ‘beer’, consumption, industrial organization, trade and international expansion, and government regulation. The final section discusses a set of unresolved issues and a future research agenda in the field of beeronomics.

This chapter explains how civilized standards were globalized as a result of the mimetic behaviour of non-European regimes. Top- down civilizing offensives in China, Japan, Siam, Russia and the Ottoman empire/Turkish Republic are examined to explore dominant patterns of change in the global order. Modernizing regimes set out to reform state structures in the light of European conceptions of civilization. They altered traditional diplomatic mores in order to comply with European conventions. Some engaged in mimetic colonialism to demonstrate their civilized credentials and to press claims to be admitted into international society as equal sovereign powers. The overall pattern of change illustrates Elias’s thesis about how established groups seek to persuade outsiders to internalise feelings of inferiority and to modify behaviour accordingly. As Elias recognised, European notions of civilization spread outward to non-European elites but new social arrangements appeared in the process. The chapter discusses the development of novel combinations of nation and civilization that laid the foundation for challenges to the European global order which accelerated from the middle of the twentieth century.

This chapter develops the thesis that Elias devoted too little attention to colonialism and to civilizing offensives to transform non-European peoples. To extend Elias’s explanation of the civilizing process, it considers discourses of conquest and discovery that shaped civilized self-images. Elias’s focus on the role that manners books played in influencing the dominant standards of propriety can be augmented by investigating the impact of narratives that were centred on colonial encounters. Specific attention is paid to the nineteenth century standard of civilization which was an important bridge between state formation and colonial international society. That legal doctrine embodied distinctions between civilized, semi-civilized and savage peoples that were central to the world-views of the imperial establishment. They were not fixed positions in an unchangeable hierarchy of peoples. They were linked with conceptions of human progress which assumed that societies of lesser worth could be elevated through benign imperial governance. The standard of civilization was fundamental to European attempts to create a global order in their image.

This chapter follows Medardo Rosso's peregrinations in his last decade of international expansion. At that time, it became clear to Rosso that being in Paris would not suffice to create a truly international reputation and fully disseminate his revolutionary ideas. He began to travel around Europe to promote his art, relying on international networks and new opportunities that characterized the first decade of the twentieth century. At the same time, Rosso's attempt to create a meaningful identity for himself without recourse to fixed symbolic structures of nationalism further intensified his uneasy position as a perennial outsider. He poignantly captured this sense of alienation in his final masterpiece, Ecce puer (Behold the Child, 1906), a haunting, larger-than-life head of the son of a wealthy London collector.

This chapter sketches the role of foreign banks opening branches, joint ventures, and representative offices in China over the past decade. Although their market share is only 2%, they have played an important role in technology transfer and in introducing more sophisticated products to the market. The largest and most successful of the foreign banks has been HSBC, due to its well-conceived China strategy and excellent relations with the financial authorities. Chinese banks are now expanding overseas in support of the government’s policy of “going out.” Chinese banks are expected to support Chinese investment overseas. They are limited in experience and capabilities for international expansion at this time, and so are cautious.