Industrial Relations in Western Europe: An Era of Ambiguity?

In western Europe, as in the United States, the 1980s saw major challenges to established institutions of industrial relations. Managements, faced with intensified competitive pressure, have taken the initiative; union have been on the defensive. Deregulation and decentralization have been the recurrent themes of both practitioners and academic analysts. For some commentators, national distinctiveness is giving way to convergence, encouraged in part by moves toward the Single European Market. This article develops a more skeptical perspective on recent trends.     

Textile marketing: a status report

This exploratory study investigated the status of textile marketing in the United States by (a) examining the textile industry's use of effective marketing techniques, and (b) identifying common problems and needed improvements in textile marketing. The procedure followed these steps: (a) effective marketing techniques were identified, (b) interviews were conducted with nine textile executives and four individuals representing the United States textile industry at large, and (c) the respondents' statements about textile marketing practices were analysed for evidence of effective marketing techniques, common textile marketing problems and needed inprovements in textile marketing. The results indicated that only five of the thirteen respondents described textile firms that were using effective marketing techniques, but some textile firms were using effective marketing techniques and this should be an incentive for other textile firms. Several common problems and needed improvements in textile marketing were also identified. Because of the small sample size, the open-ended questions, and the subjective analysis of the respondents' statements, this study must be regarded as exploratory. However, representative statements from the respondents are presented and these statements are informative about textile marketing practices.     

PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT AND TECHNOLOGICAL TYING IN A WINNER‐TAKE‐ALL MARKET*

In a winner‐take‐all duopoly for systems in which firms invest to improve their products, a vertically integrated monopoly supplier of an essential system component may have an incentive to advantage itself by technological tying. If the vertically integrated firm is prevented from technologically tying, there is an equilibrium in which the more efficient firm invests and serves the entire market. However, another equilibrium may exist in which the less efficient firm wins the market. Technological tying enables a vertically integrated firm to foreclose its rival. The welfare implications of technological tying are ambiguous and depend on equilibrium selection.     

Another Look at the Cross-section of Expected Stock Returns

Our examination of the cross-section of expected returns reveals economically and statistically significant compensation (about 6 to 9 percent per annum) for beta risk when betas are estimated from time-series regressions of annual portfolio returns on the annual return on the equally weighted market index. The relation between book-to-market equity and returns is weaker and less consistent than that in Fama and French (1992). We conjecture that past book-to-market results using COMPUS-TAT data are affected by a selection bias and provide indirect evidence.     

Accounting for the Business of Suffering: A Study of the Antebellum Richmond, Virginia, Slave Trade

When the Congress barred the importation of slaves into the United States in 1808, it left the internal slave trade intact. The trade took on a new importance as the slave states of the Old South saw their agricultural economies shift to a point that holding large numbers of slaves became too expensive. During this time, the large agricultural concerns shifted to the New South, where cotton and sugar plantations needed the cheap labour provided by the institution of slavery. As this transition intensified, Richmond, Virginia, became a central slave market that facilitated the interstate slave trade as Old South planters chose the course of selling slaves as a valuable commodity rather than the course of manumission. The records of two businesses—Dickinson & Hill and Hector Davis & Company—which plied the slave trade in the Richmond market, have survived into the twenty-first century. These records revealed a primitive, yet sophisticated, process to account for the consignment, purchase, and sales of human merchandise in this haunting story of the 'business of suffering'.     

Market Reactions to Corporate Governance Ranking Announcements: Evidence from Taiwan

This study examines whether market participants react to the announcements of corporate governance ranking exercises. As a regulatory innovation, the Financial Supervisory Commission in Taiwan initiated and administered two ranking exercises, one in 2015 and the other in 2016, on all publicly listed companies. Adopting anchoring-and-adjustment theory, the study predicts that market participants will react strongly to the second announcement if the ranking obtained in the second exercise turns out to be better than the ranking in the first round. Employing an event study methodology, the study shows that market participants react positively and significantly to firms ranked in the top 50% in the second corporate governance exercise. Their reactions to the announcement are even stronger among those that did not list in the top 20% in the first exercise, but made it into the top 50% in the second one. Overall, our analyses support that anchoring-and-adjustment theory effectively explains market participants’ behaviour. Since the monitoring of the board of directors and investors may not effectively mitigate the potential moral hazard committed by family owners/executives, our empirical evidence demonstrates that a ranking exercise probably can be employed to supplement routine corporate governance disclosures made in annual reports, in order to strengthen the check-and-balance mechanism and reduce the risk of principal–principal conflicts. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of the research findings and propose directions for future studies.     

Devaluation,Capital Mobility,and Long-Run Equilibrium*

The paper considers a small, fully employed economy with non-tradeables, securities, and money. The paper first analyzes the effects of devaluation and financial controls in the short-run equilibrium on the trade balance, the capital account, and the overall balance of payments. Disequilibria in the capital account and the overall balance of payments cause changes in the stock of securities and money, shifting the short-run equilibrium. The paper investigates the condition for the- uniqueness and stability of the long-run equilibrium under this adjustment process (‘specie flow mechanism’). Finally, the long-run equilibrium effects of devaluation and monetary policies are examined.