Corporate Social Responsibility, Public Policy, and NGO Activism in Europe and the United States: An Institutional-Stakeholder Perspective

abstract    Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an increasingly pervasive phenomenon on the European and North American economic and political landscape. In this paper, we extend neo-institutional and stakeholder theory to show how differences in the institutional environments of Europe and the United States affect expectations about corporate responsibilities to society. We focus on how these differences are manifested in government policy, corporate strategy, and non-governmental organization (NGO) activism towards specific issues involving the social responsibilities of corporations. Drawing from recent theoretical and empirical research, and analysis of three case studies (global warming, trade in genetically modified organisms, and pricing of anti-viral pharmaceuticals in developing countries), we find that different institutional structures and political legacies in the US and EU are important factors in explaining how governments, NGOs, and the broader polity determine and implement preferences regarding CSR in these two important world regions.     

Differing Visions of Agriculture: Industrial-Chemical vs. Small Farm and Urban Organic Production

Seed diversity and soil preservation are the foundations of healthy agriculture. Over many generations, farmers have developed varieties of wheat, rice, corn, and other crops that are adapted to local growing conditions. Industrial-chemical agriculture has abandoned that local knowledge, replacing seed diversity with genetically uniform crops that require large doses of fertilizers and chemical poisons to survive. One way the United States exerted control over Iraq, starting in 2003, was to enable agribusiness to disrupt thousands of years of tradition by imposing industrial methods on the country where evidence of the earliest mass production of food was discovered. Thus, it seems that conquest of people goes hand in hand with conquest of soil. There is resistance to agribusiness around the world. In the United States, small farms and urban agriculture are not only providing healthy food but also reconnecting people who grow up in cities with the life of the soil.     

Consumer attitudes toward genetically modified food in the United States: Are Millennials different?

ABSTRACT

Our study adds to the extant literature by focusing on Millennials, exploring possible generational shift that may have taken place in attitudes related to and consumption of such products. Results suggest that Millennials respond similarly as non-Millennials across several factors that shape consumers’ views and behaviors toward genetically modified technology and products. Millennials who are more educated and knowledgeable about biotechnology, though, are more willing to purchase GM foods. They perceive less risk and have fewer safety concerns compared to non-Millennials. Furthermore, male Millennials are more willing to purchase GM products and are more supportive of encouraging GM technology compared to female Millennials.     

Modeling the International-Trade Network: a gravity approach

We investigate whether the gravity model (GM) can explain the statistical properties of the International Trade Network (ITN). We fit data on trade flows with a GM using alternative estimation techniques and we build GM-based predictions for the weighted topological properties of the ITN, which are then compared to the observed ones. Our exercises show that the GM: (i) may replicate part of the weighted-network structure only if the observed binary architecture is kept fixed; (ii) is not able to explain higher-order statistics that, like clustering, require the knowledge of triadic link-weight topological patterns, even if the binary structure perfectly replicates the observed one; (iii) performs very badly when asked to predict the presence of a link, or the level of the trade flow it carries, whenever the binary structure must be simultaneously estimated.     

Corruption, institutions and trade

The economics literature describes various factors that affect trade between countries, which, in addition to the standard economic and geographic factors, also include cultural, ethnic and historical factors. The present study is apparently one of only a few attempts in the literature to examine directly the effects of corruption on trade and the first attempt to examine trade over time in a specific country whose level of corruption changed significantly. Israel was chosen as the subject of the study mainly because of the fact that, according to international indexes, the country’s status as a civil society has declined significantly over the past decade. According to the corruption index of Transparency International, Israel was ranked 33rd in the world, at the end of the sample period in 2008, having fallen from 14th in 1995. The results of the research can serve as the basis for comparison to similar studies of other Western countries. The study’s conclusions support the hypothesis that the effect of corruption on trade of any given country is significant, stable and negative.     

Estimating models of complex FDI: Are there third-country effects?

The recent general equilibrium theory of trade and multinationals emphasizes the importance of third countries and the complex integration strategies of multinationals. Little has been done to test this theory empirically. This paper attempts to rectify this situation by considering not only bilateral determinants, but also spatially weighted third-country determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI). Since the dependency among host markets is particularly related to multinationals’ trade between them, we use trade costs (distances) as spatial weights. Using panel data on U.S. industries and host countries observed over the 1989–1999 period, we estimate a “complex FDI” version of the knowledge-capital model of U.S. outward FDI by various recently developed spatial panel data generalized moments (GM) estimators. We find that third-country effects are significant, lending support to the existence of various modes of complex FDI.     

The Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement: An economic evaluation

A bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Australia and the United States came into effect on 1st January 2005. Since the U.S. is one of the main trading partners for Australia, it was anticipated that the FTA would bring a substantial increase in Australia's bilateral trade with the United States. It would also have important implications for Australia's other main trading partners such as Japan, and China. This paper seeks to provide a quantitative assessment of the impact of the FTA by undertaking simulations using the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model. By simulating the GTAP multi-country CGE model, the paper evaluates various economy-wide effects, sectoral level effects, and trade diversion and trade creation effects in the two countries in response to bilateral free trade. It will also identify the effects on trading partners outside the FTA. The results will provide a preliminary indication of the magnitude of welfare gains involved.     

The Euro Effect on Trade is not as Large as Commonly Thought*

Existing studies on the impact of the euro on goods trade report increments between 5% and 40%. These estimates are based on standard panel gravity models for the level of trade. We show that the residuals from these models exhibit upward trends over time for the euro countries, and that this leads to an upward bias in the estimated euro effect. To correct for that, we extend the standard model by including a time trend that may have different effects across country‐pairs. This results in an estimated euro impact of only 3%.     

Leadership competencies: An exploratory study of what is important now and what has changed since the terrorist attacks of 9/11

This exploratory study attempts to identify the leadership competencies that managers believe are needed to be successful across different managerial levels and organization types (manufacturing, finance, insurance, and banking, health, transportation, communications, and utilities, wholesale and retail trade, private nonprofit, and public) and presents an analysis of whether changes in the importance of certain leadership competencies over time coincided with the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Our findings suggest that the leadership competencies leading employees and resourcefulness were the most important across all managerial levels and organization types studied. Moreover, leadership competencies important (or not important) for one managerial level or organization type seem to be important (or not important) for others. Furthermore, leadership competencies important before 9/11 remained important immediately after 9/11, 2 years after 9/11, and are still important today. These findings may have implications for leadership training and development, selection, and succession planning.     

金融危机下美国对华轮胎“特保”的启示及对策

特别保障措施即"特保",是世界贸易组织(WTO)成员在特定的过渡期内采取的具有特定性和歧视性的限制保障措施。文章在介绍"特保"的基础上,通过分析金融危机背景下美国对我国商用轮胎所提出的"特保"案例,得出经济危机过程中贸易保护会进一步加剧,在此背景下要有效防范和应对贸易保护,就必须统筹兼顾、标本兼治。既抓眼前,也抓长远。宏观方面要考虑国家对外贸易政策的调整,微观上要发挥企业的作用,从根本上解决可能出现的愈来愈多的贸易纠纷与争端。     

Trade openness,financial openness,and macroeconomic volatility

This paper develops a new model of an open economy for a study of macroeconomic dynamics under different degrees of trade and financial openness. The model is estimated using quarterly data on the Chinese economy over the period 2005Q3-2020Q4 and then applied to analyze how macroeconomic volatility varies with trade and financial openness in several representative settings. We find that the impacts on macroeconomic volatility of trade openness and financial openness depend on the nature of the underlying shocks and a moderate degree of trade openness, together with a high degree of financial openness, yield the optimal welfare results in most cases. These results highlight that the effects of trade and financial openness on macroeconomic volatility differ in various situations and that their interactions can lead to different welfare results.     

Estimation of commodity-by-commodity input–output matrices

In this paper we derive a method for the estimation of symmetric input–output tables (SIOTs), which makes it possible to use the commodity technology assumption even when use- and make tables are rectangular. The method also solves the problem of negative coefficients. In the empirical part we derive annual SIOTs in order to evaluate the differences between SIOTs calculated with different methods and the change in technical coefficients over time. Our results, based on data for Sweden, show that the impact of using different technology assumptions is rather large. However, in a factor content of trade application the impact of different technology assumptions does not seem to be very important. Also the size of the changes in the technical coefficients over time is found to be quite large, indicating the importance of calculating SIOTs annually.     

中美要素禀赋与贸易不平衡实证分析

本文采用巴拉萨的显示性比较优势指数计算,测定中关两国贸易竞争力的相关情况;通过建立模型研究中国劳动力优势与中美制造业贸易差额的相关性。通过上述量化分析,本文认为,中国相对美国的单位劳动成本的优势与中关制造业贸易差额有一定的关联性,中国相对美国的劳动成本优势每增加1个百分点,中关制造业贸易差额就会随着增加0．89个百分点。     

美国量化宽松货币政策下的中国货币政策思考

本轮全球性大危机的一个重要特征是美国量化宽松货币政策的长期持续。美国持续的量化宽松政策对作为生产型经济体的中国将产生长期不利影响。本文分析了美国持续量化宽松货币政策对中国的对外贸易和资本流动两个层面的不利冲击,得出了人民币对外升值与对内贬值的压力将长期伴随中国经济的观点,在此基础上指出中国中央银行应谨慎论证和抉择货币政策"币值稳定"目标值:在生产要素价格低估下人民币不宜过快升值,传统的通胀预警指标需要修正和提高;提出了未来货币政策总趋势应该是中性的、应注重总量调控与结构调整并重等政策建议。     

Regional trade agreement and foreign direct investment

This paper investigates the relationship between regional trade agreements, such as the NAFTA, and FDI. Using a fixed-effects gravity model to estimate OECD panel data spanning 1982–1997, we learn that trade integration encourages FDI. We find specific evidence for each of the NAFTA member countries—Mexico, Canada and the United States. In addition, we find evidence that FDI will rise with host and parent country GDP and fall with distance.     

Employer responses to union organising: patterns and effects

This article presents original research on employer responses to trade union organising campaigns in the United Kingdom. The evidence indicates that there is no single response, with employers in some cases seeking to block and in others support union activity. These different patterns are strongly path dependent and reflect the prior degree of exposure to trade unionism of workplaces targeted for organising. Another finding is that employer responses co-vary with union approaches to organising, such that when the employer adopts adversarial tactics so does the union. The militancy of both parties, it seems, is mutually reinforcing. Finally, the evidence points to substantial influence of employer responses over the outcomes of organising. When employers are supportive then campaigns tend to be more successful, measured on a range of criteria. When the employer is hostile unions find it difficult to make progress and encounter particular difficulties in securing recognition.     

Regional integration and dynamic adjustments: Evidence from gross national product functions for Canada and the United States

We estimate a translog Gross National Product function and test for endogenously determined structural change allowing for anticipated and lagged responses to regional trade agreements. We found that Canada embarked on a long transition path prior to the implementation of the Canada-U.S. Trade Agreement, a result reminiscent of Magee's (2008) results concerning RTAs’ trade creation effects. In contrast, the United States experienced an abrupt structural change a year after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect. This reflects that smaller economies benefitting from larger changes in terms of trade are confronted to more complex adjustment processes than larger economies.     

The J-curve dynamics of U.S. bilateral trade

Three earlier studies examined the impact of dollar depreciation on bilateral trade between the United States and her six largest trading partners. They used different methodologies that resulted in different outcomes. In this paper we consider 18 major trading partners of the United States and employ a relatively new method to investigate the short-run as well as the long-run response of the bilateral trade balance to currency depreciation. While as with previous research we are unable to discover any J-curve pattern in the short run, in the long run real depreciation of the dollar has favorable effects on the U.S. trade balance in most cases. Valuable comments of an anonymous referee are greatly appreciated. Any remaining errors, however, are the authors'.     

The Role of Interregional Trade in Generating Change in the Regional Economies of Japan, 1980-1990

An earlier analysis (Hewings et al., 1998) revealed the 'hollowing-out' process, a decrease in the level of intraregional intermediation, in the Chicago economy during the period 1975-2011. The main force underlying this structural change has been the change in regional trade patterns in a way that interregional trades across economies has replaced the local purchases of intermediate inputs. The issue addressed in this paper focuses on the decomposition of structural change into changes in interregional trade and in technology, in order to investigate the nature of structural change over time and across sectors. The empirical realization is provided by reference to a series of regional input-output tables for a nine-region division of the Japanese economy (1980-1985-1990). The results revealed that interregional trade has played a key role in determining regional output level while technology itself had a tendency to decrease further.