Corporate social responsibility reporting: A comprehensive picture?

This study develops a content analysis framework that provides information on the comprehensiveness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, an important aspect of social and environmental accountability. Comprehensive reporting, as defined here, requires three types of information for each disclosed CSR item: (i) vision and goals, (ii) management approach, and (iii) performance indicators. The feasibility of the framework to assess the comprehensiveness of CSR reporting is demonstrated using the 2005 annual reports of a sample of publicly traded Belgian companies. The content analysis reveals a low level of comprehensive reporting. This finding complements those of prior studies on the completeness of CSR reporting and, therefore, feeds the debate regarding the extent to which CSR reporting can be considered a mechanism for discharging social and environmental accountability.     

Exchange risk and universal returns: A test of international arbitrage pricing theory

According to the international arbitrage pricing theory (IAPT) posited by Solnik (1983), currency movements affect assets' factor loadings and associated risk premiums. Based on a novel universal return decomposition, we propose an empirical model to test this proposition and perform tests using U.S. stock returns in the period 1975–2008. Our results confirm that currency movements significantly affect the market betas of a large proportion of stocks. Further cross-sectional tests indicate that currency movements affecting the market factor are significantly priced in stock returns. Based on these and other findings, we conclude that Solnik's IAPT is supported. An important implication of our findings is that exchange rate risk can broadly affect stock returns through both factor loading and residual factor channels.     

The Size of Terroir: A Theoretical Note on Economics and Politics of Geographical Indications

Geographical indications (GI) certify the geographical origins of a product and delineate the specific area in which the certified product must be produced. Despite a large literature on the economics of GIs, few papers have explored the question of the optimal size of GI regions. This note presents a flexible conceptual framework to explore the economics and politics of the delimitation of a GI. The general framework describes the efficiency and distributional effects of the size of a GI and shows how this affects interest groups’ incentives to influence government decision‐making.     

The power of quality models: The example of the SIQ model for performance excellence

Most contemporary total quality management (TQM) practice is influenced, directly or indirectly, by structured, acontextual and standardized quality models. The present paper focuses on the strategic introduction of one such model, namely the Swedish Institute for Quality (SIQ) model for performance excellence, in a Swedish public-sector organization, which we refer to as ‘the Authority.’ We take our theoretical stance from Foucault's concept of ‘power/knowledge.’ In describing the case, we focus on the management team of one of the Authority's ten regions. Our analysis shows the members of the management team using the SIQ model to objectify both the organization and themselves as managers. However, contrary to many critical or managerial accounts, the SIQ model was not totalizing: management subjectivities changed but were not entirely reconstituted, and some resistance to them was generated by the members of the management team, in their role as professionals.     

A multivariate Poisson mixture model for marketing applications

This paper describes a multivariate Poisson mixture model for clustering supermarket shoppers based on their purchase frequency in a set of product categories. The multivariate nature of the model accounts for cross-selling effects between the purchases made in different product categories. However, for computational reasons, most multivariate approaches limit the covariance structure by including just one common interaction term, or by not including any covariance at all. Although this reduces the number of parameters significantly, it is often too simplistic as typically multiple interactions exist on different levels. This paper proposes a theoretically more complete variance/covariance structure of the multivariate Poisson model, based on domain knowledge or preliminary statistical analysis of significant purchase interaction effects in the data. Consequently, the model does not contain more parameters than necessary, whilst still accounting for the existing covariance in the data. Practically, retail category managers can use the model to devise customized merchandising strategies.     

Reason rules...: the utility of rationality and the rationality of utility

Almost every theory of human behavior is based upon some assumption of rationalty. Such an assumption is commonly believed to be necessary in order to distinguish rational behavior, which is, from non-rational behavior, which is not amenable to scientific investigation. This article presents a thorough re-examination of this assumption, an inquiry which turns out to raise all the central issues of both the methodology and the theory of behavioral inquiry generally. It leads to the somewhat surprising conclusion that the notion of rationality does not have any meaningful role to play in behavioral inquiry, and that there is no sense in distinguishing rational from non-rational or irrational behavior. It also shows that the generalization of the utility notion in terms of information makes it into a much more powerful and subtle tool of analysis than it commonly appears to be taken for.     

Total factor productivity in South African agriculture, 1947‐91

Indices of total factor productivity (TFP) measure aggregate output per unit of aggregate input, providing a guide to the efficiency of agricultural production. This article outlines the relationship between production functions and TFP indices. Then, an index is constructed for South African agriculture for the period 1947‐91. The index shows that TFP grew at an average rate of 1,3 per cent per annum. However, TFP growth has increased since the reforms of the early 1980s. Since capital has been more realistically priced relative to labour, greater productivity growth has gone together with increasing employment, which must have improved social welfare.     

Estimating Systematic Risk Using Time Varying Distributions

This article proposes a dynamic vector GARCH model for the estimation of time-varying betas. The model allows the conditional variances and the conditional covariance between individual portfolio returns and market portfolio returns to respond asymmetrically to past innovations depending on their sign. Covariances tend to be higher during market declines. There is substantial time variation in betas but the evidence on beta asymmetry is mixed. Specifically, in 50% of the cases betas are higher during market declines and for the remaining 50% the opposite is true. A time series analysis of estimated time varying betas reveals that they follow stationary mean-reverting processes. The average degree of persistence is approximately four days. It is also found that the static market model overstates non-market or, unsystematic risk by more than 10%. On the basis of an array of diagnostics it is confirmed that the vector GARCH model provides a richer framework for the analysis of the dynamics of systematic risk.