Victoria de Grazia. Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. 586 pp. ISBN 0-674-01672-6, $29.95 (cloth).

There is no doubt that the twentieth century is America’scentury, but the terms of that conquest and dominance are lesscertain and apparent. Of course, military force has much todo with the creation of this hegemony, despite periodic boutsof isolationism. But even in these moments of vaunted withdrawalfrom the political and military systems of the world, thereis nothing to suggest a withdrawal in an economic sense. Indeed,during the isolationist 1920s, as de Grazia describes it, theUnited States was having     

The status quo bias and reform of the Common Agricultural Policy: impact of voting rules, the European Commission and external changes

We develop a formal model of EU decision-making on the CommonAgricultural Policy (CAP). The model is used to evaluate underwhat conditions CAP reform occurs and what the influence ofthe European Commission (Commission) is on CAP reform. We findthat the voting and amendment rules in the Council of the EuropeanUnion, the number of policy instruments and external changeshave important impacts on the occurrence and extent of CAP reformand on the influence of the Commission. Stricter voting rulesincrease the status quo bias and reduce Commission influence,whereas stricter amendment rules increase both the status quobias and Commission influence. More significant external changeresults in more reform and more Commission influence.     

Challenges and policy options in the global bio‐economy: introduction and overview

Agricultural economics is at the nexus of the major policy options surrounding the global bio‐economy. The outputs from agriculture have expanded beyond the traditional food, feed, and fiber to include fuel and other nonfood applications as well as environmental goods due to recent technological developments and changing consumer demands. Numerous policy questions have arisen within the bio‐economy. This article introduces and summarizes several invited panel sessions on issues of special importance in the global bio‐economy: new institutions of dealing with uncertainty and increased volatility related to climate change; structural transformations in agricultural production and food consumption and their effect on development; biofuel policies and development; and determinants of changes in consumer attitudes to new products and technologies.     

Promises and practices: job evaluation and equal pay forty years on!

This article examines the claim made by Barbara Castle when introducing the Equal Pay Act (EPA) in 1970 that there is nothing preventing unions pressing for job evaluation schemes to achieve equal pay. It does this by examining the research on potential hurdles to job evaluation and those that can be found in the UK law since the introduction of the EPA. The article concludes that the standards for selecting job evaluation and the obstacles of introducing job evaluation have significantly changed over the period, leaving little promise of an extension of its use to achieve equal pay.     

Food Standards and Welfare: General Equilibrium Effects

We analyse the general equilibrium effects of the growth of high standard food chains on household welfare. To measure structural production changes and welfare effects on rural and urban households, our model has two types of agents, five kinds of products and four types of factors. We calibrate the model using a Chinese dataset. The simulation results show that the effects on poor rural households depend on a variety of factors, including the nature of the shocks leading to the expansion of high standard sector, production technologies, trade effects, spillover effects on low standard markets, factor market constraints and labour market effects.     

毕马威全球调查显示:CSR报告呈现新趋势

最近毕马威发布的2011年全球企业社会责任调查报告显示,可持续发展报告已经变成全球潮流,且速度正不断增加。如此一来,是否需要发布报告已经不需要考虑,反而必须考虑什么时候发布。毕马威每三年会进行一次全球性调研,分析可持续发展报告的现况及最新趋势。该调研首先会研究全球500强企业中的前250家(简称"G250");另一方面会针对不同地区34个国家的100强企业(简称"N100")进行调研——这应该是目前市场里企业范围最广的调研。     

Cross-sectional and time-series momentum returns: are Islamic stocks different?

We search for differences in both unconditional and conditional momentum returns of Islamic and Non-Islamic stocks and test implications of competing behavioural theories that aim to explain momentum returns. Our results show that there is no significant difference in momentum returns between Islamic versus Non-Islamic stocks with respect to both cross-sectional (CS) and time-series (TS) momentum strategies even when we condition momentum returns on market dynamics, information uncertainty and idiosyncratic volatility. We also find that the TS strategy outperforms (underperforms) the CS strategy in market continuations (transitions) consistent with the recent evidence in the U.S. market.

Furthermore, we find that CS and TS strategies of both Islamic and Non-Islamic stocks are profitable only when the market continues in the same state consistent with overconfidence driving momentum returns of both Islamic and Non-Islamic stocks.