Union Mergers: The New Interest and Some Old Questions

When the merged union UNITE HERE was recently torn apart by internal dissent, the labor movement’s attention turned to some longstanding questions about how union mergers are negotiated, why some fail and others succeed, how members are affected by merger, and how the big, diverse unions created by mergers—the super-unions—manage to stay intact. This article addresses these questions, arguing throughout that little is actually known about the union merger process and outcomes. In doing so, it also suggests that some union mergers, such as the one forming UNITE HERE, may not always make sense and that bigger unions created by mergers are not necessarily better unions.     

Producing solidarity in social media activism: The case of My Stealthy Freedom

Solidarity, i.e., an individual's feelings of devotion and commitment to others in a collective, is one of the defining features of social movements. It is regarded as a key motivator of collective action in that it collectivizes what would otherwise remain individual experiences and emotions. However, as social movements are increasingly relying on Internet technology, particularly social media, for instrumental and expressive communication, some question whether solidarity plays any role in e-movements at all. Others propose that new forms of solidarity are developing in these mediated environments. Since most prior research fails to account for the role of physical bodies in online social movements, the objective of this paper is to explore the roles and forms of solidarity in contemporary social movements that hybridize online and physically-embodied action. To this end, we develop a multi-faceted and practice-based definition of solidarity through which we read two configurations of a social movement called My Stealthy Freedom (MySF), which opposes the compulsory veiling laws (i.e., hijab) in Iran. In both enactments of MySF, the activists' physical bodies played a significant role in the social movement's online presence but the forms of solidarity they produced differed. We therefore theorize the role of materiality – particularly social media and activists' physical bodies –in social media activism.     

Common shocks,common transmission mechanisms and time-varying connectedness among Dow Jones Islamic stock market indices and global risk factors

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we examine the importance of permanent versus transitory shocks as well as their domestic and foreign components in explaining the business cycle fluctuations of seven Dow Jones Islamic stock markets (DJIM), namely U.S., U.K., Canada, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan and GCC, over the period from April 2003 to November 2018, using the permanent-transitory (P-T) decompositions approach of Centoni et al. (2007). Second, we investigate the spillover mechanisms of these shocks across Islamic stock markets and a set of global risk factors, using the Diebold and Yilmaz (DY) (2012) approach. The P-T decomposition results show that the DJIM U.S., U.K., Europe and GCC indices are sensitive to both domestic and foreign shocks, while the DJIM Canada, Japan and Asia-Pacific are most sensitive to domestic shocks. The empirical results of the DY approach indicate that: (i) the return and volatility spillover intensity increase during financial turmoil, supporting evidence of the contagion phenomenon, (ii) the DJIM U.S. is the main transmitter of return and volatility spillovers, while the DJIM GCC is identified as the main receiver of both return and volatility spillovers, (iii) the seven Dow Jones Islamic stock indices are weakly linked to movements of global risk factors, and (iv) there is evidence of possible portfolio diversification between the selected Islamic stock markets and the oil commodity market.     

Kings and Vikings: on the dynamics of competitive agglomeration

This paper proposes a theory of competitive agglomeration—a new enquiry into the origins of hierarchical structures and governments. As a motivating example we analyze the Viking age—the roughly 300 year period beginning in 800 AD—from the perspective of the economics of conflict. The Viking age is interesting because throughout the time period, the scale of conflict increased—small scale raiding behaviour eventually evolved into large scale clashes between armies. With this observation in mind, we present a theoretical model describing the incentives both the defending population and the invading population had to agglomerate into larger groups to better defend against attacks, and engage in attacks, respectively. We tentatively postulate that competitive agglomeration during the Viking era was a key impetus to state formation in Europe.     

Face to face and telephone surveys in terms of sampling representativeness: a multidimensional analysis

This paper analyzes sample structure in a survey-based research project using both face-to-face and telephone survey techniques, at a time when the telephone survey has completely ousted the face-to-face survey; particularly in electoral studies. Multiple Correspondence Analysis is applied to the data from a political poll conducted prior to regional elections held in Spain’s Autonomous Community of Galicia in which half of the questionnaires were administered by telephone and the other half via face-to-face interview. Unlike other studies—that use a partial approach based on bivariate analysis—this one examines all the sociodemographic variables simultaneously.     

Fostering entrepreneurship in distressed urban neighbourhoods

During the last decade entrepreneurship research has focused increasingly on spatial aspects of entrepreneurship. Many systematic studies have been conducted on the national or regional scale, although other geographical scales—cities and their single districts and neighbourhoods—have drawn less attention. In this context, the paper aims, firstly, at identifying spatial success factors of entrepreneurial activities and their promotion at the local scale. Secondly, the paper aims at contributing to the development of a conceptual frame at the interface of entrepreneurship research, urban and economic geography, and regional economics. Empirically, the paper draws on results from explorative case studies in two distressed urban areas.     

Economic designs of two-sided single and double screening procedures

Economic designs of single and double screening procedures for improving outgoing product quality based on two screening variables are presented for the case of two-sided specification limits. Two screening variables are observed simultaneously in the single screening procedure. In the double screening procedure, one variable is used first to make one of three decisions — accept, reject, or undecided — and after the first screening, the second variable is employed to screen the undecided items. It is assumed that the performance and the two screening variables are jointly normally distributed, and the deviation of the performance variable from the ‘ideal’ value causes dissatisfication to the consumers. Two quality cost functions — constant and quadratic — are considered. Cost models are constructed which involve screening inspection cost, and costs of accepted and rejected item. Methods of finding the optimal cutoff values are presented and a numerical example is given.     

On the performance of voting systems in spatial voting simulations

We study the performance of voting systems in terms of minimizing the overall social disutility of making a collective choice in an univariate voting space with ideological voting and perfect information. In order to obtain a distribution of the performance indicator for each of the 12 systems chosen for this study—Baldwin’s Method, Black’s Method, The Borda Count, Bucklin’s Grand Junction System, Coombs’ Method, Dodgson’s System, Instant Run-Off Voting, Plurality, Simpson’s MinMax, Tideman’s Ranked Pairs, Schulze’s Beatpath Method, and Two-Round Majority—we simulate elections using an Agent-Based Computational approach under several different distributions for voters and candidates positioning, with up to 15 available candidates. At each iteration, voters generate complete and strict ordinal utility functions over the set of available candidates, based on which each voting system computes a winner. We define the performance of a system in terms of its capability of choosing among the available candidates the one that minimizes aggregate voter disutility. As expected, the results show an overall dominance of Condorcet completion methods over the traditional and more widely used voting systems, regardless of the distributions of voter and candidate positions.     

Measurement of power,probabilities, and alternative models of man

Starting from Max Weber’s definitions of power we discuss the meaning of his concept Chance and its relationships to the probabilistic notions that play a central role in definitions of indices of measuring voting power. Using Martin Hollis’s distinction between two models of man—plastic and autonomous—we argue that the common measures of voting power when interpreted in terms of probabilities seem to be in better conformity with the model of plastic man than with the model of autonomous man. The paper elaborates on the probability interpretation with applications to the modelling of power measures with a priori unions and to the concept of “real voting power” based on relative frequencies of historical events. Power as potential—which in our view is what Weber very likely meant—remains an elusive concept, but one that should be amenable to game-theoretic analysis.     

Do Islamic Banks Employ Less Earnings Management?

In this article, we examine whether Islamic banks are less likely to manage their earnings than non‐Islamic banks and how Islamic banks’ unique corporate governance system, especially Shari'ah Supervisory Boards, impacts earnings management behaviors within Islamic banks. Using a sample of Islamic banks and their matched non‐Islamic banks in 15 countries, we find that, first, Islamic banks are less likely to conduct earnings management as measured by both earnings loss avoidance and abnormal loan loss provisions. Second, there are no significantly different earnings management behaviors between Islamic banks with and without Shari'ah Supervisory Boards. Third, several Shari'ah Supervisory Board characteristics, such as size and the presence of members from Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions, are important determinants of the earnings management of Islamic banks who have Shari'ah Supervisory Boards.     

Returns to acquiring firms: The role of managerial ownership, managerial wealth, and outside owners

Since merger and acquisition activity does not unambiguously benefit the shareholders of acquiring firms, the motivation of managers who undertake such actions is unclear. The present study investigates the extent to which the wealth effects of acquisition activity undertaken by firms in one industry—communications and publishing—are related to (1) the ownership and wealth characteristics of both the executives and the board of directors of these firms and (2) the ownership concentration of large outside shareholders. The motivating hypothesis, supported by empirical results, is that these factors contribute to the alignment of executive and shareholder interests.     

Cost and profit efficiency of conventional and Islamic banks in GCC countries

Using stochastic frontier approach, this paper investigates the cost and profit efficiency levels of 71 commercial banks in Gulf cooperation council countries over the period 1999–2007. This study also conducts a comparative analysis of the efficiency across countries and between conventional and Islamic banks. Moreover, we examine the bank-specific variables that may explain the sources of inefficiency. The empirical results indicate that banks in the Gulf region are relatively more efficient at generating profits than at controlling costs. We also find that in terms of both cost and profit efficiency levels, the conventional banks on average are more efficient than Islamic banks. Furthermore, we observe a positive correlation of cost and profit efficiency with bank capitalization and profitability, and a negative one with operation cost. Higher loan activity increases the profit efficiency of banks, but it has a negative impact on cost efficiency.     

Regulatory Effects and Strategic Global Staffing Profiles: Beyond Cost Concerns in Evaluating Offshore Location Attractiveness

The practice of offshoring—staffing all or part of a business outside the home country—has proliferated to such an extent that the question for most multinational corporations (MNCs) is where, not if, some or all of its labor forces should be located beyond geopolitical borders. It remains an open question, however, where and under what conditions the hoped-for advantages of offshore staffing are best realized. While cost savings continue to play the major role for most companies, both quality and availability of worker skills and administrative and regulatory contexts of labor markets have increasingly influenced global staffing decision processes. This paper has two purposes: to examine the extent to which employment laws and other regulatory factors can impact—beyond cost concerns alone—the decision where to offshore, and to offer a methodology for developing attractiveness profiles that can help governments, service providers, and MNCs evaluate and improve the match between staffing needs and labor market characteristics. By examining financial considerations in conjunction with administrative and regulatory effects, the parties can better manage ongoing expansion of offshore staffing arrangements beyond more established locations such as India, China, and Malaysia. Strategic implications of a trend toward nearshoring—relocating offshore operations closer to or within the home country—are also discussed.     

Researching my people,researching the “other”: field experiences of two researchers along shifting positionalities

Two researchers—one an Arab-Bedouin studying her own people from the Bedouin community, and the other belonging to Israel’s hegemonic Jewish society, studying women from the Druze minority—examine their positionalities as manifested in the field, analyzing their experiences and interaction with participants. Considerable importance and significant implications are customarily ascribed to the issue of whether a researcher is part of the culture studied or external to it. By contrast, this study challenges prevailing notions in professional literature, exploring fluctuations in the positioning of both researchers that occurred as they conducted their study, despite their ostensibly clear and obvious position, analyzing these effects on the sense of affinity to or remoteness from the participants, their culture and inner worlds.     

Productivity,efficiency and technical change: measuring the performance of China’s transforming agriculture

As China enters the twenty-first century the health of the agricultural economy will increasingly rely, not on the growth of inputs, but on the growth of total factor productivity (TFP). However, the tremendous changes in the sector—sometimes back and sometimes forwards—as well as evolving institutions make it difficult to gauge from casual observation if the sector is healthy or not. Research spending has waxed and waned. Policies to encourage the import of foreign technologies have been applied unevenly. Structural adjustment policies also triggered wrenching changes in the sector. Horticulture and livestock production has boomed; while the output of other crops, such as rice, wheat and soybeans, has stagnated or fallen. At a time when China’s millions of producers are faced with complex decisions, the extension system is crumbling and farmer professional associations remain in their infancy. In short, there are just as many reasons to be optimistic about the productivity trends in agriculture as to be pessimistic. In this paper, we pursue one overall goal: to better understand the productivity trends in China’s agricultural sector during the reform era—with an emphasis on the 1990–2004 period. To do so, we pursue three specific objectives. First, relying on the National Cost of Production Data Set—China’s most complete set of farm input and output data—we chart the input and output trends for 23 of China’s main farm commodities. Second, using a stochastic production frontier function approach we estimate the rate of change in TFP for each commodity. Finally, we decompose the changes in TFP into two components: changes in efficiency and changes in technical change. Our findings—especially after the early 1990s are remarkably consistent. China’s agricultural TFP has grown at a healthy rate for all 23 commodities. TFP growth for the staple commodities generally rose around 2% annually; TFP growth for most horticulture and livestock commodities was even higher (between 3 and 5%). Equally consistent, we find that most of the change is accounted for by technical change. The analysis is consistent with the conclusion that new technologies have pushed out the production functions, since technical change accounts for most of the rise in TFP. In the case of many of the commodities, however, the efficiency of producers—that is, the average distance of producers from the production frontier—has fallen. In other words, China’s TFP growth would have been even higher had the efficiency of production not eroded the gains of technical change. Although we do not pinpoint the source of rising inefficiency, the results are consistent with a story that there is considerable disequilibrium in the farm economy during this period of rapid structural change and farmers are getting little help in making these adjustments from the extension system.     

The Dirty Dozen: Common Problem Areas in Principal–Agent Relationships

The main purpose of the article is to educate managers about potential difficulties caused by breach of fiduciary duties on the part of agents/employees within their organization. Managers will learn how to recognize common problem situations so they can take steps to avoid, or at least mitigate, any resulting damage. This article highlights 12 frequent situations—the “dirty dozen”—that pose dangers for business organizations.     

A Study on the Productivities of IT Capital and Computer Labor: Firm-level Evidence from Taiwan’s Banking Industry

The current paper extends the non-neutral stochastic frontier production function—which belongs to the class of a one-step procedure as defined by Wang and Schmidt (2002) and developed by Huang and Liu (1994)—from a cross-sectional setting to a panel data modeling. Using a newly-surveyed dataset from Taiwan’s commercial banks on their investments in information and communication technologies (IT), I find that IT capital and computer labor tend to exhibit higher productivities than their non-IT and non-computer counterparts, that IT capital has positive impacts on the marginal productivities of computer labor and borrowed funds, and that the mean technical efficiency is around 87.7%. Evidence is found that the total factor productivity of the banking sector grew at an average rate of 0.28% per annum, albeit fluctuating, for the past 8 years.     

“Rulers ruled by women”: an economic analysis of the rise and fall of women’s rights in ancient Sparta

Until modern times, most women possessed relatively few formal rights. The women of ancient Sparta were a striking exception. Although they could not vote, Spartan women reportedly owned 40 percent of Sparta’s agricultural land, and enjoyed other rights that were equally extraordinary. We offer a simple economic explanation for the Spartan anomaly. The defining moment for Sparta was its conquest of a neighboring land and people, which fundamentally changed the marginal products of Spartan men’s and Spartan women’s labor. To exploit the potential gains from a reallocation of labor—specifically, to provide the appropriate incentives and the proper human capital formation—men granted women property (and other) rights. Consistent with our explanation for the rise of women’s rights, when Sparta lost the conquered land several centuries later, the rights for women disappeared. Two conclusions emerge that may help explain why women’s rights have been so rare for most of history. First, in contrast to the historical norm, the optimal (from the men’s perspective) division of labor among Spartans involved women in work that was not easily monitored by men. Second, the rights held by Spartan women may have been part of an unstable equilibrium, which contained the seeds of its own destruction. For helpful comments, we thank Yoram Barzel, Paul Cartledge, Beth Davenport, Dino Falaschetti, Nancy Folbre, Barbara Hanssen, Ron Johnson, Lea Kosnik, Francine Lafontaine, Dean Lueck, Sarah Pomeroy, Mark Ramseyer, Randy Rucker, Wendy Stock, Chris Stoddard, Werner Troesken, Doug Young, and seminar participants at Colby College, George Mason University, Montana State University, the Property and Environment Research Center, the University of Virginia, Wabash College, the 2006 meetings of the Economic History Association, and the 2007 meetings of the American Economic Association.     

Speculating on presidential success: exploring the link between the price–earnings ratio and approval ratings

Stock markets and politics are enduring staples of dinner party conversations but surprisingly little is known about the interaction between the two. Here we present evidence for a robust relationship between a key financial measure—the aggregate Price–Earnings ratio—and surveyed approval of the incumbent president. We argue, following the finance literature, that the price–earnings ratio is a composite measure of investors’ hopes and fears. The partially prospective nature of this ratio enables us to shed new light upon the controversy surrounding how the electorate attends to economic circumstances in judging its presidents.     

National self-insurance and self-protection against adversity: bureaucratic management of security and moral hazard

This paper extends existing analyses of self-insurance and self-protection—distinctions first made by Ehrlich and Becker (J Polit Econ 80:623–648, 1972)—that countries may implement at a national level in pursuit of their security. We show that, when no market insurance is available, self-insurance alone raises important new issues as to the definition of “fair pricing” and as to the relations between pricing, optimization, risk aversion, and inferiority that are significantly different from standard, conventional market analysis. We also discover a hitherto unrecognized tendency for misallocation between self-protection and self-insurance when both are available and considered together. Because of external effects running from self-protection to self-insurance, governments ruled by myopic bureaucracies and trying to find the right balance face incentives that encourage extreme, self-inflicted moral hazard, to the detriment of self-protection.