Do Firms Use Derivatives to Reduce their Dependence on External Capital Markets?

This study investigates if the use of derivatives by corporations is likelyto affect their financing strategies. I find a strong positive relationbetween the minimum revenue guaranteed by hedging and investmentexpenditures. This result implies that hedging increases the likelihood thatinvestments can be financed internally. I also find that firms tend tofinance their investment expenditures externally rather than internally. Ifexternal capital is more costly than internal capital it would clearly be ina firm's interest to reduce its dependence on external capital. Consistentwith this result, I find that the median firm that does not hedge finances100% of its investment expenditures externally, while the median firm thathedges finances only 86% of investments externally.     

Market allocation of indivisible goods

The existence of equitable allocations of divisible goods is established. The methods used give divisions of a good into geometrically simple sets, such as simplexes or polyhedral convex cones. This economic problem is solved by applying David Gale's covering lemma. An extension of Gale's lemma and its dual versions are established; the proofs are based on Ky Fan's fundamental theorem on coincidence of two set-valued functions.     

Market and regulatory forces in the pricing of legal services

New data on individual law firms and attorneys is used to examine the effects of professional licensing restrictions and market forces on prices of legal services. The data allow detailed testing of the hypothesis that licensing restrictions serve to increase the price of professional services as well as the incomes of those providing these services. In general, little support is found for this hypothesis. Instead, the estimates show that market forces are most important in explaining variations in prices and attorney incomes.Dean Lueck is on leave from Louisiana State University. We thank William Boiger, Executive Director of the National Resource Center for Consumers of Legal Services, for providing data on law firms. Andrew Dick, Philip Hersch, Andy Kleit, Bill Kovacic, Fred McChesney, Jeff Moore, and two anonymous referees provided helpful comments on earlier versions. Chris Diener, Jim Larkins, Robert Pace, and Darrin Timothy provided research assistance.     

Sustainability, Epistemology, Ecocentric Business, and Marketing Strategy: Ideology, Reality, and Vision

This conceptual article examines the relationship between marketing and sustainability through the dual lenses of anthropocentric and ecocentric epistemology. Using the current anthropocentric epistemology and its associated dominant social paradigm, corporate ecological sustainability in commercial practice and business school research and teaching is difficult to achieve. However, adopting an ecocentric epistemology enables the development of an alternative business and marketing approach that places equal importance on nature, the planet, and ecological sustainability as the source of human and other species’ well-being, as well as the source of all products and services. This article examines ecocentric, transformational business, and marketing strategies epistemologically, conceptually and practically and thereby proposes six ecocentric, transformational, strategic marketing universal premises as part of a vision of and solution to current global un-sustainability. Finally, this article outlines several opportunities for management practice and further research.