Corporate philanthropy in the United Kingdom

The increasing demands placed on private welfare services and calls for business to fulfil its social responsibilities have heightened interest in corporate charitable donations in the United Kingdom. Adjustments to the corporation tax system have been made to encourage companies to give more. The article outlines the legal and fiscal background to company giving, examines its magnitude and reports on a survey of company practice.Christopher J. Cowton is a Research Fellow of Templeton College, The Oxford Centre for Management Studies. His main research interests are in accounting, which he teaches on the College's executive programs and to Oxford University undergraduates and postgraduates. He is the author of a recent research monograph on the disclosure of corporate charitable donations.     

Atypical Work and Pay

Atypical work has long been criticized in popular debate as providing poorly compensated, precarious employment. Yet the empirical evidence is both incomplete and mixed. The main contribution of the present paper is to estimate wage differences for the full set of these alternative work arrangements while simultaneously controlling for observed demographic characteristics and unobserved person-specific fixed effects. The paper also allows for the skewness in atypical worker earnings while retaining the Mincerian human capital earnings function. Our improved estimates are consistent with some of the more optimistic findings reported in the literature, the caveat being that we are examining here only the wage component of the total compensation package.     

Factors affecting consumer acceptance of chilled ready meals on the island of Ireland

The chilled ready meal market on the island of Ireland is relatively young but is growing rapidly. This paper focused on a consumer questionnaire (n = 702), designed to examine consumer attitudes to and consumption of chilled ready meals, in both the north and south of Ireland. This formed part of a larger study, with the questionnaire findings contributing to an in‐depth sensory study on a selected range of chilled ready meals. For a significant number of Irish consumers, consumption of these products is higher than on the UK mainland. For others, the products are purchased as a convenient alternative or a weekly treat. Respondents in urban locations were significantly more likely to consume chilled ready meals, as were men and younger, single respondents. Irish consumers are becoming more accustomed to ethnic cuisine although traditional meals remain popular. There is a clear need for developers to continue to enhance the sensory quality of these products, particularly as the primary barrier to consumption was a preference for home cooked food. However, they must also strive to maintain consumer interest in the sector, fulfil the desire for convenience and satisfy a more discerning palate.     

The relationship between ethics and firm practices in Russia and the United States

One of the fundamental objectives of corporate governance is to promote a climate that fosters ethical decision-making. As transitioning economies move toward more transparent and democratic systems the existence of policies, such as codes of ethics, that attempt to monitor and control moral behavior will become increasingly important. The establishment of ethical standards not only encourages trust with potential trade partners but also is likely to cultivate foreign direct investment. In this study, data collected from 112 U.S. and 74 Russian respondents reveal some intriguing patterns across these two diverse economies. Managerial implications and future research directions are also discussed.     

Imposing regularity conditions on a system of cost and factor share equations

Systems of equations comprising cost functions and first-order derivative equations are often used to estimate characteristics of production technologies. Unfortunately, many estimated systems violate the regularity conditions implied by economic theory. Sampling theory methods can be used to impose these conditions globally, but these methods destroy the flexibility properties of most functional forms. We demonstrate how Bayesian methods can be used to maintain flexibility by imposing regularity conditions locally. The Bayesian approach is used to estimate a system of cost and share equations for the merino wool-growing sector. The effect of local imposition of monotonicity and concavity on the signs and magnitudes of elasticities is examined.     

Pandemic (COVID‐19) Policy,Regional Cooperation and the Emerging Global Production Network†

In this paper, we explore the possible policy responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic shock as well as the related economic (financial crisis) shocks on trade and global value chains (GVC) in East Asia. We find that regional policy coordination is critical to mitigate and isolate the pandemic shock. It is important to identify the pandemic events early to flatten the pandemic curve at the national and regional level. This supports a recent study by the World Bank (2020), which highlights the importance of early mitigation policies during the pandemic shock. The cost of the pandemic and economic shocks will increase significantly when several countries in the region experience the pandemic shock concurrently. In this case, flattening the regional pandemic curve becomes important. The results also indicate the need for greater coordination in East Asia to mitigate the pending economic shock in terms of unemployment, corporate bankruptcy and financial market fragility. The paper also highlights that the stability of the GVC network is critical during the pandemic in terms of hedging the risk of disruptions to the procurement of critical medical and health products as well as maintaining service linkages to manufacturing, such as the logistics sector. Regional policy coordination and the stability of GVC will be valuable in the post‐pandemic recovery of the region.     

Economic relations between the EU and East Asia: Past, present and future

Present economic linkages between the European Union and East Asia are relatively underdeveloped despite the fact that a number of EU member states have deep historical associations within the region. It is imperative that EU business engages itself more intensively in East Asia if Europe is not to become marginalised in an emergent “Pacific century”. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A02GP109 00002     

Post-Communist Consumer Ethics: The Case of Romania

In this paper we theorize that cognitive ethical orientations play an influential role in the beliefs of consumers when faced with different ranges of moral dilemmas. We examine this proposition in transitional Eastern Europe and results from a sample of 210 Romanian consumers suggest that Romanians are faced with a moral situation where low levels of Machiavellianism and high levels of idealism appear to relate to a higher ethical concern about passively benefiting at the expense of others.     

Voting rules and the success of connected lending in 19th century New England banks

How well do decision-making processes within firms serve as control mechanisms? The voting rules governing loan approval in early 19th century New England banks are analyzed to find out. These banks exhibited high levels of lending to directors and their associates. Some theories of corporate governance argue that this could lead to increased managerial opportunism. However, a model shows that banks that require more votes to be won in the loan approval process prevent projects with private gains and social costs. The historical data are consistent with the idea that higher levels of consensus raised the profitability of banks.