The politics of special purpose trust funds

Over the last decades, bilateral donors of foreign aid have increased their use of special purpose trust funds to provide earmarked aid to multilateral organizations. This paper investigates the incentives and consequences underlying this recent shift toward country‐ or theme‐specific funding and away from bilateral and multilateral aid. We propose a game‐theoretic model with multiple principals and a multilateral agent to study how the interaction between donor preferences, voter concerns in the donor country, the voting rules at the multilateral organization, and the presence of special purpose trust funds influences aid allocation. We show that multilateral organizations with majority rules are more likely to receive discretion and thus voluntary core contributions than those with unanimity requirements and that the possibility of earmarking multilateral aid decreases donors’ contributions to the multilateral's discretionary core budget and the amount of bilateral aid. In contrast to much of the literature dealing with issues of delegation and bi‐ and multilateral aid, our model suggests non‐monotonic effects of preference heterogeneity on the choice of aid channel for some parameter combinations when contributions to special purpose trust funds are an option.     

Ethnic Networks and Price Dispersion

We offer and test a model linking ethnic networks to global price dispersion which predicts lower price dispersion as shared ethnic populations between countries rise, effects that may reverse at higher levels as network discipline breaks down. Using Chinese, Indian and Japanese data, we find that country pairs linked by the Chinese network have significantly lower mean price dispersion. A one standard deviation increase in the size of the Chinese coethnic network lowers price dispersion by 6–33%, an effect that reverses as the network gets large. No such evidence exists for the Indian or Japanese networks.     

The contours of employee voice in SMEs: the importance of context

This article develops a context‐sensitive approach to analyse how and why voice operates in small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), an area that remains under‐theorised and under‐researched. By building on a priori frameworks with proven ability to unpack complexity and take account of the wider context of SMEs, this article explores how resources (human and social capital) and constraints (product market, labour market and strategic orientation) interact to shape voice practices. The article finds significant differences between ‘reported’ compared with ‘actual’ practices in situ, and identifies different types of firms (‘strategic market regulation’, ‘strategic market‐led’ and ‘non‐strategic market‐led’) along with the factors that influence the form and practice of voice. Overall, the article argues that researchers should further pursue research that appreciates the layered nature of ontology and the role played by firm context to explain complex organisational phenomena, if we are to advance our understanding of voice practices in SMEs and beyond.     

Reconciling the electricity industry with sustainable development: backcasting — a strategic alternative

The concept of Sustainability has emerged from a recognition that all terrestrial systems, be they natural or human, are interconnected, and cannot, therefore, be adequately understood through reductionist analysis. Such an understanding has fundamental implications for the policy making process. While specialist knowledge remains an essential prerequisite in the development of effective ‘sustainability’ policies, it is not in itself sufficient. An equally important, and all too often neglected, component, is the understanding and insight gained from synthesising detailed and disparate information from across a range of disciplines. With this in mind, this paper builds on Lovin's and Robinson's earlier ‘backcasting’ work to suggest an alternative strategic structure for reconciling a reliable and affordable electricity industry with the broad tenets of sustainable development. Within this alternative model, electricity demand, as well as supply, becomes an endogenous factor in the policy making process. Moreover, the model essentially rejects the mechanistic optimisation underpinning both the contemporary market model and the earlier planned structure of the electricity industry. By contrast, the backcast proposed here embraces wider environmental and social responsibilities through a more circumspect appreciation of current knowledge and hence a more flexible and responsive policy agenda.     

Green marketing as an environmental practice: The impact on green satisfaction and green loyalty in a business-to-business context

Many companies have developed a green marketing strategy, aimed at promoting and selling green environmental products. While the majority of articles on this topic report on studies in a business-to-consumer setting, this research focusses on the impact of green marketing strategies on the satisfaction and loyalty of professional buyers in a business-to-business setting. Hypotheses were tested with survey data from 148 Dutch professional purchasers in the cleaning industry. The results emphasize the impact and importance of product quality, product price and corporate image. The most notable and strong impact on satisfaction and loyalty was found for the salesperson expertise.     

Founders,heirs, and corporate opacity in the United States

We argue that information about firm activities can vary substantially in the presence of founder or heir ownership, thereby influencing the risks borne by minority investors. We explore two hypotheses with regard to these controlling shareholders and corporate transparency, focusing on their role as monitor in-place and their potential to exploit firm opacity to accrue private benefits of control. To test these notions, we create an opacity index that ranks the relative transparency of the two thousand largest industrial US firms and find founder and heir ownership in 22% and 25% of these firms, respectively. Our analysis indicates that, in large, publicly traded companies, both founder and heir firms are significantly more opaque than diffuse shareholder firms. We also find that founder and heir-controlled firms exhibit a negative relation to performance in all but the most transparent firms. Surprisingly, additional tests reveal that concerns about divergences in ownership versus control (management type, dual class shares, and board influence) appear to be substantially less important than corporate opacity in explaining the performance impacts of founder and heir control. Finally, we decompose corporate opacity into disclosure and market scrutiny components, finding that the disclosure quality component appears to be of greater importance to investors. However, irrespective of whether these controlling shareholders create or stay in the firm because of corporate opacity, our analysis suggests that founders and heirs in large, publicly traded firms exploit opacity to extract private benefits at the expense of minority investors.     

Mögliche Entwicklung der Umlage zur Förderung der Stromerzeugung aus erneuerbaren Energien durch das Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz bis 2018

As a result of the strong growth of renewable energies in the German electricity sector within the last few years, the allocation of renewable costs to the consumer (RES-E apportionment) has been set to 5.277 ct/kWh for 2013 (ÜNB, Pressemitteilung der Übertragungsnetzbetreiber zur veröffentlichten EEG-Umlage 2013, 2012a). This article presents potential developments in the costs of promoting renewable energy and the RES-E apportionment in Germany using three different scenarios. Each of the scenarios considers different trends with respect to further deployment of renewable energies, wholesale prices and electricity demand. Due to the underlying uncertainties surrounding these major parameters, the scenarios show a wide range for the RES-E apportionment. A reduction of the RES-E apportionment can be reached if we consider an increase in wholesale prices. However, the scenarios indicate a further increase in the RES-E apportionment, where the amount heavily depends on the further deployment of renewable energies and the development of wholesale prices. Despite the reduction of feed-in tariffs, a main contributor to an increase in the RES-E apportionment is still the ongoing deployment of photovoltaics (PV). In order to prevent a further cost increase without inhibiting renewable targets, it may be worth focusing on comparably cheaper technologies in the further deployment of renewable energies.     

Markets,Morality and Climate Change: What,if Anything,is Wrong with Emissions Trading?

This article explores whether emissions trading is morally defensible To do so it examines three different kinds of moral consideration Which might be used to judge emissions trading. The first kind makes what I term an ‘ethical’ objection, and holds that utilising market instruments to combat climate change is inherently objectionable. I examine three versions if this ‘ethical’ argument but find none persuasive. The remainder of the article considers two additional moral considerations, both of which appeal to principles of justice. Drawing on these it argues that emissions trading can be morally defensible but only it it meets these two demanding moral criteria. First, the costs of emissions trading should be shared equitably. The paper examines what this might mean and criticises the leading account of what constitutes a just distribution of emissions Second, emissions trading must make an appropriate contribution to climate mitigation. A number of ways in which current emissions trading schemes signally fail to meet this second criterion are then noted. The article concludes that emissions trading schemes could in principle be morally defensible but only if new schemes are introduced or existing schemes are radically redesigned in line with the principles outlined in the article.     

Omitted variables in equations relating prices to money

This paper considers some of the conditions under which an estimated ‘reduced form’ equation relating retail prices solely to past values of sterling M3 would provide a reliable guide to the past relationship between these two variables. The equation does not appear to be biased by innovations in real output. However, when overseas variables are included in the reduced form the estimated relationship between money an prices chages significantly. This suggests that the estimated parameters in a price equation based on money alone suffer form omitted variable bias.     

Personality,self-efficacy and job resources and their associations with employee engagement,affective commitment and turnover intentions

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the extent to which personality characteristics influence employees’ psychological connection to their work beyond that predicted by job context factors. More specifically, using Job Demands-Resources theory, we examined the influence of HEXACO personality facets, self-efficacy, and job resources on engagement, affective commitment and turnover intention. We used structural equation modelling on data collected from 623 participants working in a variety of organizational settings to test a proposed and a re-specified model. The results showed that both job resources and individual differences factors had direct and indirect effects on engagement, affective commitment and turnover intention. The personality facet liveliness was positively associated with engagement; sentimentality was positively associated with affective commitment; and social boldness, diligence and sentimentality were positively associated with self-efficacy. The model explained 69% of the variance in engagement, 60% of the variance in affective commitment and 33% of the variance in turnover intention. Despite the stronger influence of job resources, the results suggest that both individual factors and job context factors influence employees’ psychological attachment to their work. Practical implications in terms of selection, engagement and organizational development interventions, and further research opportunities are identified.