Multilateral stability and efficiency of trade agreements: A network formation approach

We study the endogenous network formation of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements by means of hypergraphs and introduce the equilibrium concept of multilateral stability. We consider multicountry settings with a firm in each country that produces a homogeneous good and competes as a Cournot oligopolist in each market. Under endogenous tariffs, we find that a multilateral trade agreement governing the rules and norms of tariff setting, that is the WTO/GATT regime itself, together with a bilateral preferential trade agreement (PTA) is multilaterally stable. We also find that the existence of the WTO is necessary for the stability of the trading system. We further analyse the impact of PTAs on multilateral tariffs within the WTO. We find that the formation of PTAs increases countries' incentives for multilateral tariff reduction.     

Reflexive Evaluation of an Academic–Industry Research Collaboration: Can Mode 2 Management Research be Achieved?

We present a reflexive retrospective account of a UK government research council funded project deploying knowledge management software to support environmental sustainability in the construction industry. This project was set up in a form typical of a Mode 2 research programme involving several academic institutions and industrial partners, and aspiring to fulfil the Mode 2 criteria seen as transdisciplinarity and business relevance. The multidisciplinary nature is analysed through retrospectively reflecting upon the research process and activities we carried out, and is found to be problematic. No real consensus was reached between the partners on the ‘context of application’. Difficulties between industry and academia, within industry and within academia led to diverging agendas and different alignments for participants. The context of application does not (pre‐)exist independently of institutional influences, and in itself cannot drive transdisciplinarity since it is subject to competing claims and negotiations. There were unresolved tensions in terms of private vs. public construction companies and their expectations of ICT‐based knowledge management, and in terms of the sustainable construction agenda. This post hoc reflexive account, enables us to critique our own roles in having developed a managerial technology for technically sophisticated and powerful private industrial actors to the detriment of public sector construction partners, having bypassed sustainability issues, and not reached transdisciplinarity. We argue that this is due to institutional pressures and instrumentalization from academia, industry and government and a restricted notion of business relevance. There exists a politically motivated tendency to oppose Mode 1 academic research to practitioner‐oriented Mode 2 approaches to management research. We argue that valuing the links between co‐existing Mode 1 and 2 research activities would support a more genuine and fuller exploration of the context of application.     

When do acquirers earn abnormal returns?

In this study, we explore the conditions under which acquirers earn abnormal returns. We provide an empirical test of Barney and Chatterjee's arguments by examining the role of the respective resource contribution of the target and the acquirer. Combining an event study with a survey of postacquisition resource transfer on a sample of 101 horizontal acquisitions, we find that acquirers do not earn abnormal returns when they only receive resources from the target. In this case, it is likely that multiple bidders, which could have equally captured these resources, competed away all the abnormal returns from the successful bidder. In contrast, we find that acquirers can expect to earn abnormal returns when they transfer their own resources to the target. Overall, we find that value creation does not ensure value capture for the acquirer. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intergenerational correlation in self employment: some further evidence from French ECHP data

Previous empirical work has shown that self-employment is correlated across generations, so that the children of the self-employed are themselves more likely to be self-employed. However, the reason for this intergenerational correlation remains unclear. This paper contributes to the existing literature in two ways. First, using French data from the European Community Household Panel Survey, we provide a further examination of this intergenerational correlation among the self-employed. In particular we investigate to what extent the intergenerational correlation in self-employment reflects occupational following. The second contribution of our paper is to investigate the differences between first- and second-generation self-employed workers and their possible explanations. Even though our results indicate that having self-employed parents increases the probability of being self-employed, irrespective of occupation, we do observe that a large majority of individuals enter the same (or very similar) occupation as their parents, which is consistent with occupational following. Our results also reveal some differences between the first- and second-generation self-employed. Formal education is more important for the first-generation self-employed (those whose parents are not self-employed) than for the second-generation self-employed. Further, the first-generation self-employed, who received less informal human capital than the second-generation self-employed, compensate for this shortcoming by acquiring more formal education.

The Effects of Person–Organization Ethical Fit on Employee Attraction and Retention: Towards a Testable Explanatory Model

An exploratory model is presented as a heuristic to indicate how individual perceptions of corporate reputation (before joining) and corporate ethical values (after joining) generate specific individual organizational senses of fit. The paper suggests that an ethical dimension of person-organization fit may go some way in explaining superior acquisition and retention of staff by those who are attracted to specific organizations by levels of corporate social performance consonant with their ethical expectations, or who remain with them by virtue of better personal ethical fits with extant organizational ethical values. Specifically, the model suggests that individual misfits that arise from ethical expectations that either exceed or fall short of perceived organizational ethical performances lead to problematic acquisition and retention behavioural outcomes.     

Price Discrimination in the Context of Vertical Differentiation: An Application to Canadian Wheat Exports

The ability of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) to price discriminate in wheat exports is examined. The conceptual model shows that the CWB's ability to exploit cost differences in pricing depends on the extent of differentiation between Canadian and U.S. wheat. This model is implemented using monthly confidential price data for exports to four markets from 1982 to 1994. The empirical results support the conclusions that (1) the CWB has market power emerging from product differentiation, (2) the CWB price discriminates across export markets, and (3) Alchian–Allen effects are important in pricing in markets valuing quality such as Japan and the United Kingdom.     

Intermarket network externalities and competition: An application to the media industry

Intermarket network externalities occur when the utility of a good produced in a given industry varies with the size of the demand for a good produced in another. A particularly significant example of this phenomenon is provided by the interaction between the media and advertising industries. Media consumers vary according to their willingness to pay for a media good, which depends on the advertising volume. In the advertising market, advertisers vary according to their willingness to pay for an advertisement, which also depends positively on the audience reached. We model a situation of competition between two content providers who are rivals in both the media and advertising industries, choosing simultaneously the newspaper prices and the advertising rates. We characterize the equilibria of the game and explore how they depend on audience attitudes towards advertising. Our main finding is that two-sided interactions may induce exit by one of the media companies from either only the advertising market or both markets.     

The Effect of Wal-Mart Supercenters on Grocery Prices in New England

The competitive price effect of Wal-Mart Supercenters on national brand and private label grocery prices in New England is examined. We use primary price data collected on several identical products from six Supercenters in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island and from conventional supermarkets. Taking into account demographics, store characteristics, and market conditions, we show that Wal-Mart decreases prices by 6 to 7% for national brand goods and by 3 to 8% for private label goods. Price decreases are most significant in the dry grocery and dairy departments. Moreover, Wal-Mart sets grocery prices significantly lower than its competitors.     

Group and individual risk preferences: A lottery-choice experiment with self-employed and salaried workers

This paper focuses on decision making under risk, comparing group and individual risk preferences in a lottery-choice experiment. In the individual treatment, subjects make choices individually; in the group treatment, each subject placed in a group made lottery choice via voting. In the choice treatment, subjects choose whether to be on their own or in a group. The originality of this research lies in the fact that we introduced variability in socio-demographic characteristics by recruiting salaried and self-employed workers. Our main findings indicate that groups are more likely than individuals to choose safe lotteries. Our results also show that individuals risk attitude is correlated with both the type and the sector of employment.