Business Ethics and the Well-Being of Nations – Is There a Connection?

The aim of this paper is to examine whether and how business ethics is connected with the well-being of a nation. There has been active research in the well-being of nations across the globe in the last two decades, resulting in substantial theoretical progress and a wealth of empirical data on the well-beings of different nations across the globe. Dissatisfied with the conventional measures such as the GDP, well-being researchers have been developing alternative measures that can better capture the true nature of the well-being of a country. The paper begins by examining why the GDP is inadequate as a good measure of the well-being of a country. Major alternative proposals on well-being or similar measures are summarized. Objective well-being of a nation refers to the conditions of well-being of a country. Subjective well-being of a nation is the perceptions of its citizens with regard to their satisfaction with the major conditions of living in that nation. The paper presents two central arguments leading to the conclusion that business ethics is an integral part of the well-being of a country. The first argument utilizes the concept of workplace well-being to establish the linkage. The second argument uses evidence from a recent survey of the perceptions of Taiwanese people on business ethics in relation to the well-being of a nation. The paper also reveals that common values tie the two together at a deeper level.     

Eliciting Willingness‐to‐Pay through Multiple Experimental Procedures: Evidence from Lab‐in‐the‐Field in Rural Ghana

This paper has the objectives of (a) comparing estimated willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) across three elicitation mechanisms (a Becker‐DeGroot‐Marschak [BDM] auction, a kth price auction, and a choice experiment [CE]) and (b) examining how these vary by participation fee. The product under consideration is kenkey made with nutritious maize, biofortified with vitamin A, which gives it a distinct orange color, in contrast to the white and yellow varieties that are traditionally consumed. We use an experiment consisting of 14 treatment arms, conducted in rural Ghana. Our estimation strategy explicitly accounts for the censored (typically at the market price) nature of the bids in the auctions, and the apparently lexicographic choices of several individuals in the CE. We find no evidence of economically meaningful (defined by the minimum currency unit of five pesewas) differences in WTP (although they may be statistically significant) across elicitation mechanisms, or by participation fee, a result that is in contrast to that found in much of the literature. A secondary finding is that the provision of nutrition information positively and significantly affects the marginal WTP for the new maize.     

Integrated Management of Land Use Systems under Systemic Risks and Security Targets: A Stochastic Global Biosphere Management Model

Interdependencies among land use systems resemble a complex network connected through demand–supply relationships. Disruption of this network may catalyse systemic risks affecting food, energy, water and environmental security (FEWES) worldwide. We describe the conceptual development, expansion and practical application of a stochastic version of the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM), used to assess competition for land use between agriculture, bioenergy and forestry at regional and global scales. In the stochastic version of the model, systemic risks of various kinds are explicitly covered and can be analysed and mitigated in all their interactions. While traditional deterministic scenario analysis produces sets of scenario‐dependent outcomes, stochastic GLOBIOM explicitly derives robust outcomes that leave the systems better‐off, independently of which scenario applies. Stochastic GLOBIOM is formulated as a stochastic optimisation model that is critical for evaluating portfolios of robust interdependent decisions: ex‐ante strategic decisions (production allocation, storage capacities) and ex‐post adaptive (demand, trading, storage control) decisions. As an example, the model is applied to the question of optimal storage facilities, as buffers for production shortfalls, to meet regional and global FEWES requirements when extreme events occur. Expected shortfalls and storage capacities have a close relationship with Value‐at‐Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value‐at‐Risk (CVaR) risk measures. A Value of Stochastic Solutions is calculated to illustrate the benefits of the stochastic over the deterministic model approach.     

Dinámica de la inversión extranjera directa en los estados de México: un análisis de cadenas de Markov espaciales

The aim of this investigation is to analyze the evolution of the spatio-temporal distribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) across Mexican states. The literature that analizes foreign direct invesment in Mexico is numerous and diverse; however, it is argued that the analysis of the spatio-temporal distribution of FDI conditioned to spatial interaction effects in Mexico, is still absence. In this sense, by applying the spatial Markov chain approach as proposed by Rey (2001), we found a divergence process in the FDI inflows among mexican states that seems to get stronger over time. In particular, during the period from 2006 to 2013, the process of divergence towards higher-FDI-inflows quantiles occurs among states spatially associated with neighbors in lower-FDI-quantiles.     

The Effects of the Fourth Amendment: An Economic Analysis

We develop an economic model of crime and search that allowsus to analyze the effects of the Fourth Amendment's exclusionaryrule on crime and privacy. We find that the rule always increasescrime but has two opposing effects on searches. It directlyreduces searches by reducing the chances that they lead to successfulconviction, but it also indirectly increases them by increasingcrime. If its indirect effect dominates, the rule actually increasessearches and has an ambiguous effect on wrongful searches. Ifits direct effect dominates, it reduces wrongful searches, therebyprotecting privacy. Its direct effect is more likely to dominatethe greater is the number of police officers per capita, thelower is the police's incentive to simply close cases and themore accountable the police are for their mistakes. Police accountabilityalso increases crime but unambiguously reduces wrongful searches.We also explore the effects of long-term progress in searchtechnology on crime and privacy.     

Decision Trees Versus Decision Tables for Audit Test Data Design: An Experimental Study*

Use of test data is an important evidence collection method that auditors can employ to evaluate the authenticity, accuracy, and completeness of program processing. Nevertheless, test data design is a time-consuming and error-prone process. To facilitate design, two approaches advocated are the decision-tree approach and the decision-table approach. An experiment conducted to examine the quality of test data designs produced using both approaches showed some support for the superiority of the decision-table approach over the decision-tree approach. Insofar as the results obtained are problematical, however, the research needs to be replicated and extended.     

Enhancing online-to-offline specific customer loyalty in beauty industry

Customer loyalty is one of the core values for business success in beauty industry; however, there is insufficient research on weighing the importance of critical factors contributing to customer loyalty for the industry. This study, for the first time, investigates and ranks empirically the critical factors contributing to O2O specific customer loyalty in beauty industry by using Analytical Hierarchical Process. Results show that customer satisfaction, customer’s perceived switching costs, customer trust, corporate image and customer value positively influence O2O specific customer loyalty (in decreasing order of importance). Attributes contributing to the five critical factors have also been studied and ranked.