Ecology-Driven Real Options: An Investment Framework for Incorporating Uncertainties in the Context of the Natural Environment

The role of uncertainty within an organization’s environment features prominently in the business ethics and management literature, but how corporate investment decisions should proceed in the face of uncertainties relating to the natural environment is less discussed. From the perspective of ecological economics, the salience of ecology-induced issues challenges management to address new types of uncertainties. These pertain to constraints within the natural environment as well as to institutional action aimed at conserving the natural environment. We derive six areas of ecology-induced uncertainties and propose ecology-driven real options as a conceptual approach for systematically incorporating these uncertainties into strategic management. We combine our results in an integrative investment framework and illustrate its application with the case of carbon constraints.     

CUSTOMER SERVICE IN THE INTERNET‐ENABLED LOGISTICS SUPPLY CHAIN: WEBSITE DESIGN ANTECEDENTS AND LOYALTY EFFECTS

This article extends the existing research on logistics customer service‐loyalty relationships to the online logistics supply chain environment by examining potential website determinants of logistics customer service quality. A structural equation analysis of 373 online shopping transactions suggests that perceived quality of all logistics customer service activities (perceived cycle time, in‐stock availability, and customer responsiveness) varies inversely with: (1) perceived ease of use, and (2) content vividness of the website; and positively with product information content. However, only retailer customer responsiveness assessment was found to have any significant influence on consumer intended loyalty behavior in Internet‐enabled supplies chains.     

Voluntary Disclosure of Nonproprietary Information: A Complete Equilibrium Characterization

The so-called disclosure principle is a 'puzzle' in the accounting literature: Game theoretic models of financial markets show that in equilibrium firms should disclose all their private information. Yet, the result is not convincing. Researchers have therefore built sophisticated models in order to demonstrate for which reasons the disclosure principle might fail. This note shows that even in the original model there are multiple equilibria. In those equilibria good types disclose and bad types do not. The commonly known full disclosure equilibrium is a limit point of the equilibrium set.     

Gains from configuration: The transboundary protected area as a conservation tool

Nearly two hundred transboundary protected areas comprise a portion of the global conservation landscape the size of India, with further expansion anticipated. Proponents claim that transboundary protected areas outperform isolated protected areas in achieving conservation objectives, while regional case studies have led critics to challenge this claim. Empirical investigation into the relative performance of transboundary protected areas is fundamentally limited since these areas cannot be directly compared to the isolated protected areas that might otherwise have emerged in the same location. This paper develops a game theory model of park formation to compare counterfactual transboundary and isolated protected areas. The model suggests that under certain conditions, transboundary protected areas can achieve greater conservation and production objectives, even in the absence of international cooperative park management. The paper establishes five sufficient conditions for transboundary protected areas to provide greater national welfare, domestic conservation value, or global conservation value than counterfactual isolated protected areas. These conditions are tested for three common conservation objectives. The results suggest that when the objective of conservation is species persistence or interior habitat, conservation groups should encourage transboundary protected areas. However, when the objective of conservation is to extend reserve coverage to the maximum number of species, conservation groups should encourage protected areas where species richness is greatest, whether or not these areas span international borders.     

On Compliance with Ethical Standards in Tax Return Preparation

The Statements on Responsibilities in Tax Practice (SRTPs) provide guidance to the CPA when making decisions in tax practice. Many of these decisions are ethical in nature and have implications for tax compliance. In this study, a survey methodology is used to test whether the SRTPs affect decisions that CPAs make. The findings suggest that a clear majority of CPAs follow the SRTPs when making ethical decisions relating to tax return preparation and that CPAs follow the SRTPs more often than unlicensed preparers on half the issues tested. However, a statistically significant number of CPAs do not follow the SRTPs and, CPAs do not follow the SRTPs any more often than unlicensed tax preparers on three issues.     

Forestry,Forest Fires,and Climate Change in Indonesia

In recent months, strong global growth, rebounding commodity prices, and relatively accommodative financial conditions have benefited the Indonesian economy. The first quarter of 2017 in Indonesia saw resilient GDP growth, moderate inflation, stable exchange rates, an increase in the growth of non-oil exports, and an investment upgrade from ratings agency Standard & Poor's. Investment growth, however, did not pick up enough to drive overall growth to a higher rate. The poor quality of banking-sector assets and the gaps in tax revenue—despite the fulfilment of the government's tax-amnesty program—are two of the most immediate economic concerns. President Joko Widodo (Jokowi), who is well into the second half of his term, is under pressure to deliver on his development platform, which includes making progress in sustainable development and climate change mitigation. The effective management of forests is key to this platform. There has been longstanding tension over Indonesia's forests between the protection of environmental values, including carbon storage, and the production of valuable commodities, including timber, palm oil, and pulpwood, which generate revenue and employment. We survey recent developments in four storylines related to forestry and climate change: first, Indonesia's commitment to reducing emissions to 29%–41% below projected business-as-usual levels by 2030, as well as the international climate agreements and finance that can help achieve this commitment; second, land-use rights and regulations, including a moratorium on clearing, draining, or setting fires on peatland; third, measures to prevent catastrophic forest fires like those during the 2015 El Niño, including the establishment of the Peatland Restoration Agency; and, fourth, the actions of non-state actors, especially large agribusinesses, in managing forests and peatland. We conclude by discussing differences in the approaches of Jokowi's administration and those of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration and by questioning whether Indonesia's budgeted resources, actions, and results to date are commensurate with its climate commitments.     

An Experimental Examination of US Individual Donors’ Information Needs and Use

This paper adopts an internet‐based experiment to investigate whether and how individual donors use nonprofit organizations’ financial and nonfinancial information when making their donation decisions. Using undergraduate students in the United States (US) to proxy for individual donors, our results indicate that individual donors are more likely to acquire nonfinancial information, such as nonprofit organizations’ goals, outcomes, programs and missions, than financial information. Donors integrate nonfinancial information into their decisions as their actual donations are significantly correlated with such information. Our results also indicate that while individual donors acquire financial efficiency measures, including the program expense ratio and fundraising expense ratio, they do not seem to integrate such information into their decisions as their actual donations are not significantly correlated with the efficiency information. This study contributes to the nonprofit literature and research domain focusing on charitable giving and donor preferences.     

Problems of large‐scale fashion designers in Accra,Ghana

A survey was conducted to investigate the problems faced by large‐scale fashion designers in Ghana. Data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The problems the respondents encountered were manpower, economic, logistic and social. Additional training in fashion design outside Ghana and a high level of education were identified as assets in the export trade. Suggestions to the Ghanaian Government and other stake holders, to improve the fashion industry and thus enable the industry to contribute effectively to the realization of the economic goals outlined in ‘Ghana’s Vision 2020’ (development plan), are discussed.     

Negotiation games with unobservable mixed disagreement actions

A negotiation model combines an alternating offers bargaining game with a normal form stage game that determines players’ (interim) disagreement payoffs. Busch and Wen [Econometrica 63 (1995) 545] investigated this negotiation model under the assumption that players’ past mixed disagreement actions are observable. The question arises if this assumption is a substantial restriction. In this paper, we adopt the more plausible assumption that only the realizations of past mixed actions are observable, and find that the set of equilibrium payoffs shrinks, compared to that when mixed disagreement actions are observable. We precisely identify the effects of the unobservability and characterize the limiting set of equilibrium payoffs as the two players become sufficiently patient.     

Estimating emissions based on the integration of microscopic traffic simulation and vehicle dynamics model

This study proposes an integrated simulation approach, which consists of a microscopic traffic simulation model, a vehicle dynamics model, and an emission estimation model, in order to estimate emissions based on more reliable vehicle performance measures. The vehicle performance measures such as engine power and engine speed significantly relate to the amount of emissions, and road curvatures and inclinations are the core inputs affecting these vehicle performance measures. Therefore, providing reliable vehicle performance measures reflecting the road geometric attributes is critical for a reliable emission estimation. This study proposes to use the microscopic traffic simulation model for generating vehicle trajectories, which is advantageous in modeling various traffic situations, and the vehicle dynamics model for producing the vehicle performance measures based on the vehicle trajectories. Finally, the outputs from the vehicle dynamics model are fed into the emission estimation model to compute emission measures. This study conducted a case-study using two road sections, one is a hypothesized road section, including various curvatures and inclinations with regular variations, and the other is a Kesselberg road section, which is an actual geometry in Bayern, Germany. The emission measures are estimated in these case-study road sections using both an existing simulation approach and the proposed integrated simulation approach. The difference between these two emission estimation approaches is discussed in terms of the emission measures, including fuel consumption, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matters.