LACK OF RIGOUR IN DEFENDING FAIRTRADE: A REJOINDER TO ALISTAIR SMITH

Smith (2010 ) does not deny that he made errors in economic theory, logic and fact, and that he had misused evidence. He says that I misrepresented a large body of theory, that I distorted what he said in four places and that I was wrong in one sentence. These statements are false.     

Strategic militancy and the probability of strikes in union-firm bargaining

The paper provides a model that explains the probability of strikes by the union's use of militancy as a strategic tool in bargaining. Militants are useful because they provide a credible threat, hence enhancing the union's bargaining position. Using a multi-stage bargaining game, we show that, in general, militants will be used by the union as a strategic tool. The strategic benefit of militancy is reflected by the fact that the wage and employment level will be higher in a union that uses militants, compared to a union that does not. We use the model to show that the level of militancy and the probability of a strike decrease with the union's power. This suggests that policies that increase the strength of the union will have, at least, a partial positive effect on social welfare. We also show that the model can be viewed as providing an equilibrium of a repeated game, an interpretation that can explain the probability of strikes even in the absence of militants.     

Autocorrelation in daily short-sale volume

While Diether, Lee, and Werner (2009) find that daily shorting activity is serially correlated, this study uses more formal tests and finds significant first-order autocorrelation in daily short volume. Contrary to prior research that suggests that autocorrelation in total trade volume is explained by the flow of information into prices, our tests indicate that the information contained in short sales is decreasing in the level of autocorrelation. In additional tests, we do not find that short-sale constraints explain the presence of autocorrelation. However, our tests do provide evidence that the level of autocorrelation in daily short volume is highest in stocks that are least liquid suggesting that illiquidity might explain the presence of autocorrelation.     

Press freedom and corruption in business-state interactions

We show that press freedom has a role in constraining business corruption. Using firm-level data, we find that countries with greater press freedom have significantly fewer incidences of bribery involving public officials. In particular, we find that a free press is associated with a substantial reduction in the percentage of firms that report corruption during interactions with tax officials and when obtaining construction permits. Furthermore, we find that fewer businesses in these countries report that corruption is the biggest problem that they face. These findings highlight the role of an independent media in combating corruption.     

The Value of CEO Mobility: Contextual Factors That Shape the Impact of Prior CEO Experience on Market Performance and CEO Compensation

This study examines the value that prior CEO experience has for the companies that hire such CEOs—as reflected in the firms’ subsequent market‐based performance—as well as its value for the CEO that possesses this experience—as reflected in his or her initial compensation. While we suggest that shareholders tend not to benefit from firms hiring experienced CEOs, we also argue that particular firm and industry contextual factors that shaped the prior CEO experience help ameliorate this detrimental effect. Regardless, we also suggest that prior CEO experience generally stands to benefit the CEOs, in that it brings them a compensation premium over those CEOs without such prior experience. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 654 US CEO succession events that occurred between 2001 and 2004 and found broad support for our hypotheses. We close with a discussion of the implications of our findings for future research as well as what they mean for firms hiring experienced CEOs and for CEO careers more generally. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Political Leadership,Conflict and the Prospects for Constitutional Peace

The emphasis in constitutional political economy has been that new rules and institutions can be devised that improve the welfare of a society. Given the number of societies that are infected with political conflict and as a result lower levels of welfare, this paper attempts to analyse why we do not see more constitutional conventions aimed at eliminating conflict. The key idea is that expressively motivated group members may create incentives for instrumentally motivated group leaders such that it leads them to choose conflict rather than compromise. Nonetheless, it is not argued that such a peace is impossible to obtain. This leads to a further question, that if such a constitutional agreement could be found, would the expressive perspective alter the conventional instrumental perspective on the sort of constitutional reform that should be undertaken?     

Sustainability reporting quality and post‐audit financial reporting quality: Empirical evidence from the UK

This study examines whether firms that appear to exhibit high sustainability reporting quality are less likely to engage in earnings management activities, thereby delivering financial information that is more transparent and reliable than that delivered by firms that do not produce high‐quality sustainability reports. I also investigate whether the association between sustainability reporting quality and post‐audit financial reporting quality is conditional on audit effort. Analysis of data drawn from FTSE 350 companies covering 2007 to 2018 indicates that firms that produce high‐quality sustainability reports are significantly and negatively associated with earnings management metrics. More importantly, this association is moderated by audit effort, measured by audit fees, suggesting that sustainability reporting quality reflects factors considered by auditors in their audit risk assessment practices. These results remain robust after several sensitivity analyses. I conclude that firms that devote more resources to producing high‐quality sustainability reports are likely to demonstrate an overall commitment to quality that alleviates auditors' concerns about the opportunistic use of sustainability reporting and reduces business risk, thereby reducing the effort auditors expend to verify financial reports.     

Trade and Growth: Reconciling the Macroeconomic and Microeconomic Evidence

Abstract.  Many empirical studies based on plant-level data have found that firms that enter the export markets are more productive than non-exporters and that this difference in productivity is achieved before firms become involved in exporting. These findings have challenged the traditional view that openness to trade increases productivity and economic growth. This article reconsiders the literature on trade, growth, and trade policies and argues that a careful examination of these new findings is consistent with the idea that exporting increases productivity and economic growth.     

Reducing perceptions of overqualification and its impact on job satisfaction: the dual roles of interpersonal relationships at work

A sizeable portion of the working population perceives that they are overqualified for their jobs. This is problematic, given that research consistently shows that such beliefs translate into lower levels of job satisfaction. Hence, it behoves human resource management (HRM) scholars to identify factors that influence perceptions of overqualification and also moderators that may reduce the negative effect of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction. In this study, we present a moderated path model that posits that the quality of the relationships that employees hold with their leader and with their team is not only antecedents of perceived overqualification but it is also hypothesised to weaken the negative relationship between perceived overqualification and job satisfaction. Survey data that were gathered from two organisations in the Netherlands (n = 183) supported the model. Implications for theory and practice in HRM are discussed. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

Strategic participation and the median voter result

In a seminal paper on electoral equilibrium under majority rule, Ledyard (1984) demonstrates that strategic participation by voters results in an electoral equilibrium at the proposal that maximizes the utility of a randomly selected voter. Palfrey and Rosenthal (1985) limit the usefulness of this result by showing that strategic participation rates are miniscule in large electorates, and that the incentive to participate vanishes completely as the electorate grows without bound. The most reasonable modification of Ledyard’s approach that circumvents these criticisms is to allow for a negative cost of voting. We show that when voters can have even an arbitrarily small negative cost of voting, there is an electorate sufficiently large so that any proposal is defeated or tied by the median proposal. This observation raises questions about the existence of electoral equilibrium under strategic participation, and is relevant to the efficiency of elections.     

Environmental responsibility and policy in a two-country dynamic input–output model

Increased spatial dependency of economic activities, as well as spatial differentiation of production and consumption, has implications for environmental policy. One of the issues that has gained importance is the responsibility for the emissions from products that cross national boundaries during the environmental policy's lifetime. This paper discusses the different ethical views of environmental responsibility. Furthermore, the policy measures that are associated with the different viewpoints are analyzed in a novel dynamic two-country two-sector dynamic input–output model. A numerical example is modeled to assess taxing schemes that are based on these ethical viewpoints. The results show that a tax on the ‘embodied’ environmental pressure, which is generally viewed as ethically preferable, is less effective that the current policy of taxing consumers of products. Our discussion however shows that these results are very dependent on the model structure and initial parameters that are used. Nevertheless, the model illustrates that policies that are based on ethically superior standpoints may have detrimental distortionary effects in the dynamic setting.     

The Impact of Organizational and National Cultural Differences on Social Conflict and Knowledge Transfer in International Acquisitions

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the effects of organizational and national cultural differences on international acquisitions. We argue that cultural differences prompt social identity building that leads to ‘us versus them’ thinking and thereby creates the potential for social conflict. We also maintain that the same cultural differences can contribute to learning in terms of knowledge transfer. We develop a structural equation model to test these hypothesized effects on a sample of related international acquisitions. Our analysis shows that cultural differences at the organizational level are positively associated with social conflict, but that national cultural differences can decrease social conflict. Furthermore, both organizational and national cultural differences are positively associated with knowledge transfer. This analysis shows the importance of disentangling the various effects that cultural differences have on international acquisitions. It also suggests that national cultural differences are less of a problem in international acquisitions than is usually assumed.     

Bootstrapping realized multivariate volatility measures

We propose a bootstrap method for statistics that are a function of multivariate high frequency returns such as realized regression, covariance and correlation coefficients. We show that the finite sample performance of the bootstrap is superior to the existing first-order asymptotic theory. Nevertheless, and contrary to the existing results in the bootstrap literature for regression models subject to error heteroskedasticity, the Edgeworth expansion for the pairs bootstrap that we develop here shows that this method is not second-order accurate. We argue that this is due to the fact that the conditional mean parameters of realized regression models are heterogeneous under stochastic volatility.     

西北民族地区农产品第三方物流发展分析

以乌鲁木齐市为例,通过实地调查、发放问卷了解和掌握农产品第三方物流企业的发展情况,研究发现,全市农产品第三方物流存在诸多亟待解决的问题,而解决存在的诸多物流问题是本市经济持续快速发展的关键,需要政府及相关物流主体的共同努力,并提出了有效的对策措施。     

Bargaining through Approval

The paper considers two-person bargaining under Approval Voting. It first proves the existence of pure strategy equilibria. Then it shows that this bargaining method ensures that both players obtain at least their mean utility level in equilibrium. Finally it proves that, provided that the players are partially honest, the mechanism triggers sincerity and ensures that no alternative Pareto dominates the outcome of the game.     

On the limited usability of the inoperability IO model*

This note shows that the inoperability input–output model (IIM) estimates only a part of mainly the negative indirect economic impacts of disasters, whereas it neglects most of the positive indirect impacts. This means that the IIM is not suited to prioritize industries for policy interventions that aim at reducing the negative impacts of such disasters. Besides, this note shows that the application of the IIM is problematic and tends to overestimate the subset of impacts that the model is able to quantify. Finally, we identify two approaches that much better capture the variety of different disaster impacts.     

The search for success: do the unemployed find stable employment?

We use discrete time proportional hazards regressions to model the impact of previous unemployment incidence and duration on job tenure. We find that jobs that follow an unemployment spell have shorter mean duration than other jobs. Only one half of jobs that follow unemployment last for 12 months. Multivariate results suggest that an unemployment spell has a severe penalty on subsequent job tenure, and that it is unemployment incidence rather than duration which has the major impact.     

Interregnum and Critical Management Studies: The possible end of meaningful work

We are now witnessing the first generation born into liquid modernity – the millennials – for whom being primarily called on by society as consumers and experiencing the deepened significance and logic of life as a lottery (Bauman and Mauro, 2016) is natural (yet uncomfortable). The main point made is that the first ‘solid’ (sic!) generation of liquid consumers that Bauman wrote so vividly about is set to embark on adult life and enter organizations en masse as managers and workers. It is argued that the entry of the millennials further intensifies the ongoing subsidiarization process that is already taking place in organizations and means that the individualization of collective organizational problems will be even more concealed and difficult to detect. In relation to the millennials entering organizations, it is further argued that it is essential that Critical Management Studies (CMS) takes heed of the challenges that the entry of the millennials carry with them. A Baumanian framework informs us that this can only be done by avoiding nostalgia – going back-to-the-future.     

Employee involvement and participation: developing the concept of institutional embeddedness using WERS2004

It is widely accepted that employee involvement and participation (EIP) is a key component of the high commitment bundle of HRM, but that it can take a range of forms in practice. Much of the analysis to date has either treated different forms of EIP as a single construct or has measured EIP by virtue of its presence or absence alone. Drawing on earlier work based on the data from WERS1998 examining the link between various forms of EIP and employee outcomes such as job satisfaction and organisational commitment, the authors re-apply and extend these ideas to data from WERS2004. In particular they develop the concept of institutional embeddedness, in order argue that both the depth and breadth of EIP have important associations with commitment though not with satisfaction.

This association held for workplaces employing 25 or more workers, and here it was apparent that the more that employees are involved at workplace level – through a wider number of EIP practices that are held more frequently and include opportunities for workers to have their say – the more likely it is that investments in EIP will reap the reward of organisational commitment. For smaller establishments, given that they tend to operate with relatively few formal schemes, it is likely that managers in these workplaces find alternative ways in which to engage the workforce, and that informal EIP offer similar levels of embeddedness in these situations. A clear implication to be drawn from the findings is that, in a context of lower levels of formality within organisations (large and small), line managers are more than ever the key link between HR policy and the embodiment of actual practice at the workplace.     

Airlines’ strategic interactions and airport pricing in a dynamic bottleneck model of congestion

This paper analyzes efficient pricing at a congested airport dominated by a single firm. Unlike much of the previous literature, we combine a dynamic bottleneck model of congestion and a vertical structure model that explicitly considers the role of airlines and passengers. We show that a Stackelberg leader interacting with a competitive fringe partially internalizes congestion, and that there are various toll regimes that induce the welfare maximizing outcome, widening the set of choices for regulators. In particular, charging the congestion toll that would apply for fully competitive carriers and that ignores any internalization, to both the leader and the fringe, yields the first-best outcome.