Consumer preferences and the international harmonization of organic standards

Harmonization of technical standards is often advocated as a means to remove technical barriers that reduce the welfare gains available from international trade. Organic standards are not currently harmonized internationally. If domestic organic standards reflect consumer tastes, and consumers have strong preferences for those standards, then harmonization to a common standard may reduce the benefits consumers receive from organic products. Through a consumer survey, conjoint analysis was used to explore the preferences of consumers in the US, the UK and Canada for organic food. The results suggest that consumers in the three countries do not have a strong attachment to the current national organic standards and that international harmonization may be a legitimate food policy goal.     

Book review

Bayard, Thomas O., and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Reciprocity and Retaliation in U.S. Trade Policy, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1994, 503 pages.

Rugman, Alan M. (Ed.), Foreign Investment and NAFTA, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1994, xii + 340 pages.

Zahra, Shaker A., and Abbas J. Ali (Eds.), The Impact of Innovation and Technology in the Global Marketplace, Binghamton Haworth Press, 1994, 222 pages.

Connolly, Michael, and Jaime de Melo (Eds.), The Effects of Protectionism on a Small Country: The Case of Uruguay, Washington, DC, The World Bank, 1994, 172 pages.

Andersson, Thomas, Managing Trade Relations in the New World Economy, New York: Routledge, 1993, 183 pages.

Rondinelli, Dennis A. (Ed.), Expanding Sino-American Business and Trade: China's Economic Transition, Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1994, ix + 270 pages.

Chukwumeiue, Okezie, Choice of Law and International Commercial Arbitration, Westport, CT: Quorum, 1994, xii + 218 pages.

Welford, Richard, and Kate Prescott (Eds.), European Business: An Issue Based Approach, 2nd Edition, Philadelphia, PA: Trans Atlantic Publishers, Inc., 1994, 384 pages.

Copeland, Laurence, Exchange Rates and International Finance, Second Edition, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994, xiv + 455 pages.

Surajaras, Patchara, and Richard Sweeney, Profit-Making Speculation in Foreign Exchange Markets, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992, 280 pages.

Esty, Daniel C., Greening the GATT: Trade, Environment, and the Future, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1994, 319 pages.

Scherer, F. M., Competition Policies for an Integrated World Economy, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1994, xxii + 133 pages.

Safarian, A. E., Multinational Enterprise and Public Policy: A Study of the Industrial Countries, Hants, England: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 1993, 581 pages.     

Social Technologies,Informal Knowledge Practices,and the Enterprise

This article focuses on the ways in which social technologies facilitate informal knowledge sharing in the workplace. Social technologies include both common technologies such as email, phone, and instant messenger and emerging social networking technologies, often known as social media or Web 2.0, such as blogs, wikis, public social networking sites (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn), enterprise social networking technologies, etc. We know social technologies support informal interactions over digital systems and influence informal social connections among people within and across organizational boundaries. To understand the role of social technologies in informal knowledge practices, we pursue a field study of knowledge workers in consulting firms to investigate the role of social technologies in their informal knowledge sharing practices. Our theorizing from the data is guided by the conceptual premises of sociomateriality to better understand the ways social technologies are integrated with common knowledge practices. Findings highlight five knowledge practices supported by the use of social technologies. Building from these findings we offer conceptual insights regarding the material performance of different social technologies as an assemblage.     

On the Effectiveness of Monetary Policy and of Fiscal Policy

There has been a major shift within macroeconomic policy over the past two decades or so in terms of the relative importance given to monetary policy and to fiscal policy in both policy and theoretical terms. The former has gained considerably in importance, with the latter being rarely mentioned. Furthermore, the nature of monetary policy has shifted away from any attempt to control some monetary aggregate (prevalent in the first half of the 1980s), and instead monetary policy has focused on the setting of interest rates as the key policy instrument. There has also been a general shift towards the adoption of inflation targets and the use of monetary policy to target inflation. This paper considers the significance of this shift in the nature of monetary policy. This enables us to question the effectiveness of monetary policy, and to explore the role of fiscal policy. We examine these questions from the point of view of the "new consensus" in monetary economics and suggest that it is rather limited in its analysis. When the analysis is broadened out to embrace empirical issues and evidence the clear conclusion emerges that monetary policy is relatively impotent. The role of fiscal policy is also considered, and we argue that fiscal policy (under specified conditions) remains a powerful tool for macroeconomic policy. This is particularly an apt conclusion under current economic conditions.     

Latin American trade elasticities

An important issue in applied international economics is the extent to which trade flows adjust to changes in income, relative prices, and exchange rates. While there have been numerous surveys regarding merchandise trade elasticities in industrial economies such as Japan and the United States, relatively little work has been completed with respect to developing regions of the world. Material in this article examines the literature on empirical estimates of import and export elasticities published for Latin America. (JEL F140) Partial funding for this research was provided by the Center for the Study of Western Hemispheric Trade at the University of Texas at El Paso, the Public Policy Center at the University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso Electric Company, and the Fulbright Council for International Exchange of Scholars. Helpful comments were provided by an anonymous reference. Econometric research assistance was provided by Roberto Coronado.     

Bad Apples,Bad Barrels,and Broken Followers? An Empirical Examination of Contextual Influences on Follower Perceptions and Reactions to Aversive Leadership

Research on destructive leadership has largely focused on leader characteristics thought to be responsible for harmful organizational outcomes. Recent findings, however, demonstrate the need to examine important contextual factors underlying such processes. Thus, the present study sought to determine the effects of an organization’s climate and financial performance, as well as the leader’s gender, on subordinate perceptions of and reactions (i.e., whistle-blowing intentions) to aversive leadership, a form of destructive leadership based on coercive power. 302 undergraduate participants read through a series of vignettes describing a fictional organization, its employees, and an aversive leader in charge of the company’s sales department. They were then asked to envision themselves as subordinates of the leader and respond to several quantitative measures and open-ended questions. Consistent with Padilla and colleagues' (2007) toxic triangle theory, results suggest that both perceptions and reactions to aversive leadership depend on the three aforementioned factors. Specifically, aversive leaders were perceived more aversively and elicited greater whistle-blowing intentions in financially unstable organizations possessing climates intolerant of negative leader behavior. Moreover, female aversive leaders were perceived more aversively than their male counterparts under such conditions. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions are also discussed.     

The Psychology of Intertemporal Discounting: Why are Distant Events Valued Differently from Proximal Ones?

Research in intertemporal choice has been done in a variety of contexts, yet there is a remarkable consensus that future outcomes are discounted (or undervalued) relative to immediate outcomes. In this paper, we (a) review some of the key findings in the literature, (b) critically examine and articulate implicit assumptions, (c) distinguish between intertemporal effects arising due to time preference versus those due to changes in utility as a function of time, and (d) identify issues and questions that we believe serve as avenues for future research.     

Digital assemblages: evidence and theorising from the computerisation of the US residential real estate industry

We develop the concept of digital assemblages in order to advance current theorising on the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are helping to reshape work. The empirical setting is the US residential real estate industry—a ‘living laboratory’ for studying information‐intensive work and the adoption and uses of ICT. We find that real estate agents' uses of ICT are pervasive and suggest that agents now embed themselves more deeply into the transacting of real estate by actively supporting buyers and sellers, rather than acting primarily as information intermediaries. Building from this, we theorise that this ICT use can more coherently be understood as a ‘digital assemblage’ rather than a formal information system. Digital assemblages are characterised as distinct patterns of ICT collections that, in use, are functionally equivalent and structurally similar, relying on standardised and commodified ICT and are neither formally designed nor collectively governed.