Crisis costs and debtor discipline: the efficacy of public policy in sovereign debt crises

Recent debate on the reform of the international financial architecture has highlighted the potentially important role of the official sector in crisis management. We examine how such public intervention in sovereign debt crises affects efficiency, ex ante and ex post. Our results shed light on the scale of capital inflows and the implications for debtor country output of such a regime. The efficacy of measures such as officially sanctioned stays on creditor litigation depend critically on the quality of public sector surveillance and the size of the costs of sovereign debt crises.     

Risk,balanced skills and entrepreneurship

This paper proposes that risk aversion encourages individuals to invest in balanced skill profiles, making them more likely to become entrepreneurs. By not taking this possible linkage into account, previous research has underestimated the impacts of both risk aversion and balanced skills on the likelihood individuals choose entrepreneurship. Data on Dutch university graduates provide an illustration supporting our contention. We raise the possibility that even risk-averse people might be suited to entrepreneurship; and it may also help explain why prior research has generated somewhat mixed evidence about the effects of risk aversion on selection into entrepreneurship.     

Unfinished business: The new approach to assessing vertical restraints

Conclusions  The new approach to assessing the competitive effects of vertical agreements is to be welcomed. For too long, European competition law on vertical restraints has been dominated by the “block-exemption dependency culture” that has stifled discussion about economic effects and cut down the number of reasoned decisions the Commission has been forced to issue. There is however a long way to go before a fully coherent policy on vertical agreements is developed, and this paper has highlighted some areas where the current views on the application of the new approach are either misconceived or incomplete. In particular, there remains a danger that the number of decisions will be stifled by excessive reliance on market share tests. Under the new regime, there should be a strong onus on the Commission and national competition authorities both to develop and extend the economic thinking contained in its Guidelines and to produce reasoned decisions that set out what agreements will be viewed as acceptable and those which will not.     

EU Commercial Policy in a Multipolar Trading System

In recent years the bipolar multilateral trading system of the post-war years has given way to a multipolar alternative. Although many specifics have yet to be determined, some contours of this new trade policy landscape are coming into focus. This article examines their implications for the EU's external commercial policy. Particular attention is given to both the state of business-government relations and the propensity to liberalise under the auspices of reciprocal trade agreements by Brazil, India, and China, the potential new poles of the world trading system. I thank John Curtis and Bob Wolfe for stimulating my thinking on this subject in a recent conversation on the multipolar trading system. I also thank Roderick Abbott, Richard Baldwin, Krishna Gupta, Bernard Hoekman, Patrick Low, and John Whalley for helpful comments on the first draft of this paper. I alone am responsible for the errors contained herein.     

Self-referencing and consumer evaluations of larger-sized female models: A weight locus of control perspective

In two experiments, we show that the beliefs women have about the controllability of their weight (i.e., weight locus of control) influences their responses to advertisements featuring a larger-sized female model or a slim female model. Further, we examine self-referencing as a mechanism for these effects. Specifically, people who believe they can control their weight (“internals”), respond most favorably to slim models in advertising, and this favorable response is mediated by self-referencing. In contrast, people who feel powerless about their weight (“externals”), self-reference larger-sized models, but only prefer larger-sized models when the advertisement is for a non-fattening product. For fattening products, they exhibit a similar preference for larger-sized models and slim models. Together, these experiments shed light on the effect of model body size and the role of weight locus of control in influencing consumer attitudes.

Executive Compensation and Earnings Persistence

Governing boards utilize executive compensation contracts in an attempt to align executive actions with corporate goals. The objective is to ensure that executive performance provides value to the organization in terms of successful outcomes. A key performance criteria typically specified in CEO compensation contracts is earnings targets. However, using earnings as a performance evaluation may be problematic because some firms exhibit robust and sustained earnings over time (high earnings persistence), and other firms, such as high growth oriented firms, exhibit weak or sometimes negative earnings over time (low earnings persistence). Our study reveals that the effect of high earnings persistence results in firms that focus more heavily on cash compensation (salary and bonus) rather than on equity compensation (stock options, etc.) to compensate executive performance. Additionally, for firms characterized by low earnings persistence, our study indicates that cash flows from operations act as a supplementary performance measure to accounting earnings, and become increasingly important as a means to justify executive cash compensation.     

Gender effects on consumers’ attitudes toward comedic violence in advertisements

Abstract

This study examined gender’s effects on attitudes and tendencies to share online ads containing comedic violence. The results show that males enjoyed comedic violence more than females, when the perpetrator of the comedic violence was male, regardless of the victim’s sex; and, when the perpetrator and victim were both female. When the perpetrator and victim were of different sexes, the impact of attitudes toward comedic violence on sharing the ad varied by gender. However, when the victim and perpetrator were of the same sex, there was no significant gender difference in the effects of attitudes toward sharing the ad.     

To Go Or Not To Go? Ethical Perspectives on Tourism in an ‘Outpost of Tyranny’

For many years, the actions of Myanmar’s military government have provoked domestic discontent and strong condemnation overseas. The government is encouraging tourism in an attempt to legitimize its actions whilst generating valuable foreign currency. However, a number of organizations are urging people to avoid travel to Myanmar and thus prevent the military junta from obtaining the hard currency and global legitimacy it needs to survive. In this article, the ethical arguments for and against tourism in Myanmar are discussed, and for the first time the ethical perceptions of tourists themselves are explored. The study applied the Multidimensional Ethics Scale to a group of 376 Myanmar visitors, finding that respondents were generally in favor of tourism in Myanmar, but were uncomfortable with the ethical implications of their visit. Simon Hudson is an Associate Professor in the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary. He has a marketing degree from Brighton, England, an MBA from California, and a PhD from Surrey, England. Prior to working in academia, he spent several years working in the tourism industry in Europe, and six years running his own business. Dr Hudson has published numerous journal articles and book chapters from his work, and has three books to his name; Snow Business, Sport & Adventure Tourism and Tourism & Hospitality Marketing.     

Decision Support Systems in Marketing

The practical application of decision support systems in marketing is still in its infancy, even though academic research has been recommending the use of such systems for years. This is largely due to the lack of a single, generally applicable decision support system. The specific requirements and problems of management are too dissimilar to make the development of one universal decision support system feasible. However, improved PC performance, enhanced market survey methods such as conjoint measurement, and further developed programming tools permit the varying requirements to be fairly flexibly met. The following article describes state-of-the-art know-how regarding the practical utilization of such systems, and addresses the preconditions for employing them. We have included many examples gathered from our own experience with numerous applications.     

Consumption,Resistance and Everyday Life: Ruptures and Continuities

This paper makes the case for regarding political consumption and more generally individual collective action as an instance of “everyday resistance.” In doing so it seeks to make connection with the political case against representative politics, one that stretches back to the origins of “official” politics at the start of the 19th century. Three moments in the history of the idea of everyday resistance are presented: Max Stirner’s egoistic individualism, Leo Tolstoy’s critique of violence, and Agnes Heller’s evocation of the everyday as a site of civic courage. The examples show the longevity and persistence in political thought of the idea of the individual as the locus of social power, one that puts it at odds with the normative assumptions of theories of representation. They also show the dangers of assuming that individual collective action can unproblematically be considered a form of participation in democratic processes as opposed to a resistance against incorporation into mainstream or “official” politics. Rights which are often at the core of efforts of activists become remodelled as a weapon of contingent “everyday” struggles as opposed to a universal or transcendentally posited phenomenon.