Changing marketing opportunities in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

The changes in the business environment of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union indicate that U.S. firms must adjust their perceptions of socialist markets if they are to compete successfully with Western European and Japanese firms. Consensus among the managers of socialist enterprises agree that U.S. firms fail in these markets because they have made little effort to understand the general business environment and the market dynamics that are characteristic of countries in Eastern Europe and the Soviet union. The purpose of this article is to identify and discuss the key elements of the techniques needed to penetrate socialist markets. Sufficient understanding of these factors should produce a strong competitive position for the U.S. firms that are actively pursuing these marketing opportunities.     

Maturity cycles in implied volatility

The skew effect in market implied volatility can be reproduced by option pricing theory based on stochastic volatility models for the price of the underlying asset. Here we study the performance of the calibration of the S&P 500 implied volatility surface using the asymptotic pricing theory under fast mean-reverting stochastic volatility described in [8]. The time-variation of the fitted skew-slope parameter shows a periodic behaviour that depends on the option maturity dates in the future, which are known in advance. By extending the mathematical analysis to incorporate model parameters which are time-varying, we show this behaviour can be explained in a manner consistent with a large model class for the underlying price dynamics with time-periodic volatility coefficients.Received: December 2003, Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 91B70, 60F05, 60H30JEL Classification: C13, G13Jean-Pierre Fouque: Work partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0071744.Ronnie Sircar: Work supported by NSF grant DMS-0090067. We are grateful to Peter Thurston for research assistance.We thank a referee for his/her comments which improved the paper.     

A balancing act: managing your personal and professional life--Part II

Managing your personal and professional life is a lifelong balancing act due to situations that arise in the course of expected and unexpected normal life events. Identifying and dealing with these issues in your own life will likely make you a stronger leader in the eyes of your employees who often struggle with similar issues. Acknowledging these struggles among your employees can help create community in work teams, which ultimately translates into retention. Advocating for work life policies in your organization will transform personal compassion into organizational culture and, ultimately, into corporate policy.     

Repeated Games with Almost-Public Monitoring

In repeated games with imperfect public monitoring, players can use public signals to coordinate their behavior, and thus support cooperative outcomes, but with private monitoring, such coordination may no longer be possible. Even though grim trigger is a perfect public equilibrium (PPE) in games with public monitoring, it often fails to be an equilibrium in arbitrarily close games with private monitoring. If a PPE has players' behavior conditioned only on finite histories, then it induces an equilibrium in all close-by games with private monitoring. This implies a folk theorem for repeated games with almost-public almost-perfect monitoring. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C73.     

An Analysis of Product Deletion Scenarios

Despite a flurry of attention during the early 1980s and the occasional article thereafter, product deletion continues to suffer from neglect, which is surprising given its role in aiding processes of innovation and change that are central to competitive survival. The aim of this article is to rejuvenate research interest in this field. In doing so, we review and organize the relevant literature in three key sets of factors and postulate that their interplay delineates the product deletion scenarios followed by a company. On the basis of this argument, we develop a typology of product deletions and outline how it increases our knowledge of this critical issue and leads to useful research directions.     

Ethics and Equity: Enforcing Ethical Standards in Commercial Relationships

Lawyers and the legal system have been much criticized in recent years. Despite popular perceptions, the legal system contains numerous mechanisms and rules designed to ensure fair results. This paper shows how the legal system tries to implement, in commercial transactions, the ethical principles of truthfulness and fairness. The Anglo-American development of Equity Courts is reviewed briefly. Several examples of the Law's enforcement of ethical principles are presented, in four different legal areas: Contracts, Securities, Goods, and Real Estate. The intent here is to present an overview of the problem, with area-specific illustrations, rather than a comprehenisve examination of the cases in just one area.     

Are Local TV Markets Separate Markets?

In sweeping revisions the US Telecommunications Act of 1996 relaxed rules respecting broadcast TV ownership regulations. In particular Congress directed the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to conduct a rulemaking on whether the 'duopoly rules' preventing businesses from owning multiple broadcast stations in the same market should be relaxed, modified or eliminated. Naturally, this directive raises questions concerning competition. Specifically, would concentration and consolidation of local media firms have deleterious effects on advertising rates, output and consumer choice? In the present paper we examine, using own-price and cross-price elasticity demand estimates, the question of whether local TV markets constitute a separate market for advertising. Our structural tests, with appropriate caveats, reveal that local TV advertising is not, by itself, a distinct market - one relevant for antitrust action.     

Foreign acquisitions by Chinese firms: A strategic intent perspective

This article presents a strategic intent perspective (SIP) to analyze the foreign acquisitions made by Chinese firms. It suggests that Chinese firms strategically use cross-border acquisitions to achieve goals, such as acquiring strategic capabilities to offset their competitive disadvantages and leveraging their unique ownership advantages, while making use of institutional incentives and minimizing institutional constraints. The SIP is supported by the evidence from three firms that we studied, where dozens of interviews were conducted, including the one with the founder of Lenovo. This study contributes to extant international business theories by incorporating the SIP to examine internationalization strategies of firms from developing countries.