The Role of Ideas in Understanding Industrial Relations Policy Change in Liberal Market Economies

This paper analyzes the uneven processes underpinning industrial relations policy liberalization in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and Ireland. Drawing upon 140 elite interviews and building upon ideational comparative political theories, the paper highlights the role of ideas in the policy change process. It identifies how particular ideas can be used to construct policy problems, how these ideas can gain legitimacy through battles with competing ideas, and how policy legacies can influence whether ideas take root. The findings from the comparative case analysis expose a critical difference between “positive legacies” and “negative legacies” to account for different liberalization trajectories.     

Operating cash flow asymmetric timeliness in Australia

Operating cash flow (CFO) asymmetric timeliness occurs when CFO reflects bad news more quickly than good news. We examine the presence and determinants of CFO asymmetric timeliness in Australia, where substantial differences in reporting requirements of cash flow components, in characteristics of listed companies and in the degree of conservative financial reporting produce contrasting findings to those in the United States. We find supportive evidence for the novel ‘sticky cost behaviour’ explanation and also the product-pricing strategy, but not the life cycle hypothesis. These findings are useful for investors and analysts concerned with forecasting the future values of companies.     

Communication networks,externalities, and the price of information

Information goods (or information for short) play an essential role in modern economies. We consider a setup where information has some idiosyncratic value for each consumer, exerts externalities, and can be freely replicated and transmitted in a communication network. Prices paid for information are determined via the (asymmetric) Nash Bargaining Solution with endogenous disagreement points. This decentralized approach leads to unique prices and payoffs in any exogenous network. We use these payoffs to find connection structures that emerge under different externality regimes in pre‐trade network formation stage. An application to citation graphs results in eigenvector‐like measures of intellectual influence.     

THE EFFECTS OF NEWS WHEN LIQUIDITY MATTERS

We analyze the impact of news (information shocks) in economies where liquidity matters, including those with endogenous credit limits, and those with assets serving as collateral or media of exchange. Although we also consider news about productivity and credit conditions, a leading case concerns monetary policy announcements. Real or monetary news has big effects on markets, potentially causing cyclic or boom–bust responses, even though we focus on the unique transition consistent with stationarity after shocks. In particular, policy announcements may induce instead of reduce volatility. We also discuss the implications for the inflation puzzle, forward-guidance puzzle, and other apparent anomalies.     

Social assistance and dignity: South African women's experiences of the child support grant

Many women interact with the South African social security system in relation to the Child Support Grant (CSG), which is social assistance payable for children living with low-income caregivers. This paper explores women's accounts of how the CSG serves to protect and respect dignity, a foundational value in the South African Constitution. Drawing from focus groups and in-depth interviews with female CSG recipients of working age, it is argued that whilst the experience of using the CSG does protect dignity in certain important respects, other aspects including the application process, the small amount of the grant and negative discourses associated with the status of being a CSG recipient were experienced by many as erosive of dignity.     

Entry limiting agreements: First‐mover advantage,authorized generics,and pay‐for‐delay deals

During patent litigation, pay‐for‐delay (P4D) deals involve a payment from a patent holder of a branded drug to a generic drug manufacturer to delay entry and withdraw the patent challenge. In return for staying out of the market, the generic firm receives a payment, and/or an authorized licensed entry at a later date, but before the patent expiration. We examine why such deals are stable when there are multiple potential entrants. We combine the first‐mover advantage for the first generic with the ability of the branded manufacturer to launch an authorized generic (AG) to show when P4D deals are an equilibrium outcome. We further show that limiting a branded firm's ability to launch an AG before entry by a successful challenger will deter such deals. However, removing exclusivity period for the first generic challenger will not.     

Loss-leader pricing and upgrades

A new theory of loss-leader pricing is provided in which firms advertise low (below cost) prices for certain goods to signal that their other unadvertised (substitute) goods are not priced too high. The theory is applied to the pricing of upgrades. The results contrast with most existing loss-leader theories in that firms make a loss on some consumers (who buy the basic version of the good) and a profit on others (who buy the upgrade).     

Has Adoption of IFRS Increased Non–North American Institutional Investment in the Canadian Stock Markets?

We investigate whether non–North American (non‐NA) institutional investment in firms listed on the Canadian stock markets increased between the pre‐ and post‐IFRS adoption periods relative to such investment in firms listed on the U.S. stock markets. Prior to IFRS adoption, Canada had high‐quality financial reporting standards that were similar to the U.S. standards. As consequences of IFRS adoption, Canadian financial statements became more comparable with European and other IFRS country financial statements and less comparable with neighboring U.S. financial statements. Thus, a question of interest is whether the enhanced comparability with non‐NA companies was beneficial in terms of attracting non‐NA investment to Canadian companies versus U.S. companies. We find that there was no significant change in non‐NA institutional investment in Canadian firms relative to U.S. firms for the very largest (fifth quintile) and for smaller (first, second, and third quintiles) Canadian companies. However, intermediate‐sized Canadian companies in the fourth size quintile lost non‐NA institutional investment relative to their U.S. peer companies, suggesting that non‐NA investors cared more about comparability with U.S. peer companies than non‐NA peer companies for companies in this size quintile.     

Health Care Matters: Supply Chains In and Of the Health Sector

Providing health care involves a complex enterprise, and the trade‐off between quality and cost has been particularly stark compared to other industries. However, a recent focus on health sector supply networks is now producing significant innovations and improvements. This Special Topic Forum illustrates for the academic and practitioner community how health care supply chain research can benefit from our evolving understanding of supply chains and help push that understanding even further. We classify health care supply chain research into two broad categories—supply chain in health care and supply chain of health care—to set an agenda for future research.     

Real-Time Pricing and Imperfect Competition in Electricity Markets*

We analyze the effects of the adoption of real-time pricing (RTP) of electricity when generating firms have market power. We find that an increase in consumers on RTP contracts decreases peak prices and increases off-peak prices, increases consumer surplus (both for switching and non-switching consumers) and welfare, while decreasing industry profits, with these effects being magnified by the extent of market power. We illustrate these results by calibrating our model to the New Zealand electricity market, and find that taking into account the market power of generating firms increases the efficiency gains from RTP adoption by 41%.