Horizontal mergers, entry, and efficiency defences

In standard models of Cournot competition, it is well-known that if large-scale entry is impossible, then any merger failing to create technological synergies must harm consumers through a higher price level. This paper shows that this is true irrespective of entry conditions: any profitable Cournot merger failing to generate synergies must raise price, even if large-scale entry is possible or if the merger allows the avoidance of fixed cost duplication.     

Preference adjustment and opportunities for agreement: Decision modeling to assess negotiating flexibility at UNCED

This paper develops a conceptual framework and applies it to analyze the dynamics of national interests in prenegotiation. The study's goals are to develop a systematic approach for analyzing prenegotiation processes and provide results that will have practical utility for negotiators. Specifically, the approach is applied to the prenegotiation process of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), examining the financial resources issue, in particular. Decision analytic models were built to account for three key negotiation actors, and sensitivity analyses were performed to evaluate the incremental modifications to issue preferences required to achieve mutually acceptable compromises. Conclusions are drawn that indicate the extent of flexibility required of key negotiation actors to take advantage of the opportunities for agreement in the financial resources issue area. The conceptual framework and methodological approach explored in this paper can provide practical assistance as a planning tool for negotiators, helping them to diagnose the situation and plan strategies for future environmental and other multilateral negotiations. The approach can suggest specific opportunities for compromise and the degree and type of flexibility needed to achieve a convergence of interests on the issue.     

Protecting the privacy of personal information in employee benefit plans

The United States is not the only country dealing with privacy of health information. In the absence of clear legislative direction, this paper focuses on the common privacy principles that underlie Canadian privacy legislation and recommends a plan of action. The objective is to give plan administrators and trustees sufficient transition time to develop and implement the appropriate privacy strategies, thereby minimizing both the potential burden of compliance and the potential risks of noncompliance.     

Dynamic employment adjustments over business cycles

This paper uses U.S. monthly industrial production employment data between 1964 and 2000 to examine the dynamic labor adjustments of production workers and nonproduction workers in both the short and long-run. The results from the short-run analysis show that the dynamic adjustment of production workers is consistent with business cycles. However, the adjustment of nonproduction workers is relatively fixed, lags behind the shocks over business cycle changes, and exhibits the quasi-fixed factor property. In the long-run, we found that nonproduction workers and production workers are cointegrated indicating that the two series are in long-run equilibrium.First version received: March 2002/Final version received: November 2003We would like to thank James McClure, participants in the Economics Department seminar series at Ball State University, and an anonymous referee for their comments and suggestions.     

Joint product signals of quality

Summary The relationship between product quality, signals, and the firm's optimal pricing policy has been given much attention in economics. The literature is extended in this paper by considering the signaling problem of a firm that jointly produces two commodities—one of known quality to consumers (a search good) and one of unknown quality (an experience good). The model presented employs a stylized reputation function, a linear cost structure, and linear demand schedules to produce two interesting insights. First, the search good's price can potentially be used as a signal of the quality of the experience good. Second, the price of a search good will depend upon whether it is jointly produced with another search good or an experience good or whether it is produced in isolation by a single product firm. Furthermore, evidence from a paper on gasoline pricing seems to support this contention.     

Cross‐cultural differences on work‐to‐family conflict and role satisfaction: A Taiwanese‐British comparison

The aim of this research was to explore relations between work and family demands and resources, work‐to‐family conflict (WFC), and work and family outcomes in a cross‐cultural comparative context involving Taiwanese and British employees. Two‐hundred and sixty‐four Taiwanese employees and 137 British employees were surveyed using structured questionnaires. For both Taiwanese and British employees, work and family demands were positively related to WFC, whereas work resources were negatively related to WFC. Furthermore, WFC was negatively related to family satisfaction. More importantly, we found that nation moderated relationships between work resources and WFC, WFC and work, and family satisfaction. Specifically, work resources had a stronger protective effect for Taiwanese than British in reducing WFC, whereas WFC had a stronger detrimental effect on role satisfaction for British than Taiwanese. It is recommended that both culture‐general and culture‐specific effects should be taken into consideration in designing future WFC research and familyfriendly managerial practices. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Tournament performance and “Agency” problems: An empirical investigation of “March madness”

Tournaments have long been used as a resource allocation device. Regardless of the margin of victory, a tournament’s champion is typically rewarded far more handsomely than are its losers. For this reason, a tournament can generally be expected to elicit spectacular levels of performance from a group of competitors; performances in professional golf tournaments are an example. Surprisingly, the analysis in this paper indicates the existence of no significant relationship between the rewards and performances of participants in the NCAA basketball tournament. To explain this finding we allude to the classic principal-agent problem.     

Competition and the capital-labor conflict

This paper analyzes the distributional effects of changes in the intensity of product market competition. The focus is on the interaction between imperfect competition in product markets and bargaining in the labor market. The main result is that, while a uniform intensification of product market competition increases employment, it may cause real wages to fall, in the short run as well as in the long run. This is especially likely if labor market regulations are favorable to workers. Therefore, product market and labor market regulations tend to reinforce each other politically, and compensatory fiscal transfers may be needed in order to enact employment-enhancing deregulation policies.     

The business of blacklisting

The omission of ideology from managerial discourse leaves unacknowledged the dominant influences that shape patterns of thinking and acting. The Cold War offers one such framework for analyzing the intersection of management and ideology. Specifically, the anti‐Communist blacklist in the United States offers a rich opportunity to explore the actions of business leaders and to test the assumptions on which those actions were based. Businessmen played a key role in creating and supporting the blacklist. This study suggests that enforcers of the blacklist distorted the nature of public response. The evidence suggests that businessmen were responding from an ideological rather than a pragmatic position and that, from a pragmatic perspective, they might have been well advised to ignore the blacklisters. Copyright © 2008 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.