Revisiting the Effect of Family Involvement on Corporate Social Responsibility: A Behavioral Agency Perspective

This paper sheds light on the incongruent findings concerning the relationship between family involvement and firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR). While prior studies have mainly taken the perspective of families’ socioemotional wealth preservation, we approach this relationship from the perspective of behavioral agency theory, highlighting the important role played by CEOs’ family memberships. Specifically, we posit that family firms are more likely to invest in CSR when their CEOs are members of the controlling families. Furthermore, we examine how family firms can employ long-term incentives to encourage non-family CEOs to act in the interests of the controlling families to preserve SEW and thus enhancing family firms’ CSR performance. We tested our hypotheses using hand-collected data of family firms included in the S&P 500 index, in the period of 2003–2010. The empirical findings support our hypotheses that (a) family firms with family members as the CEOs have better CSR performance and (b) family firms tend to provide a high level of long-term incentives to non-family than family CEOs. In addition, long-term incentives strongly motivate CEOs to improve firms’ CSR performance, regardless of their family memberships.     

An Integrated Model of Quality for Mass Services in the Context of the Ghanaian Retail Banking Sector

This study draws upon the service literature and operationalizes the investment model in the services domain to examine factors that contribute to customers’ desire to maintain service relationships with firms (i.e., retail banks) in an emerging economy in sub‐Saharan Africa: Ghana. We empirically test the explanatory power and robustness of the investment model using 218 customers of various banking institutions in Ghana. Results from partial least squares—structural equation modeling (PLS‐SEM)—reveal that (1) service quality is positively associated with customer satisfaction, investment size, and customer commitment; and (2) while customer satisfaction is positively associated with customer commitment, both investment size and quality of attractive alternatives are not associated with customer commitment. Interestingly, we found investment size to have a positive association with customer commitment only when fully mediated by customer satisfaction. Our model reveals that service quality and customer satisfaction predict 79.3% of the variation in customer commitment toward maintaining a service relationship with their retail banks. Discussion and managerial implications conclude the article. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Labour market adjustment to third-party competition: Evidence from Mexico

China's exports reduce wages in importing countries, but few studies have looked at competition in third-party markets. We examine labour market outcomes in Mexico's apparel and textile sectors associated with US apparel and textile imports from China. Using data on US imports in conjunction with quarterly Mexican labour force surveys, we show that US imports from China are associated with a reduction of employment in Mexico's apparel and textile sectors. These effects are the most pronounced for the least educated. Wages were not impacted on net except for possibly the poorest which would indicate stronger local labour market ties in the left tail of the wage distribution. Finally, the effects of trade-induced demand shocks dissipate after about two quarters indicating low firm-level adjustment costs.     

Berger, Dina. The Development of Mexico's Tourism Industry: Pyramids by Day, Martinis by Night

Dina Berger's The Development of Mexico's Tourism Industry:Pyramids by Day, Martinis by Night traces the historical foundationsof the tourism industry in México from 1928 to the earlypost–WW II period. The author argues that during thisperiod tourism became a medium for the modernization and economicdevelopment of México. According to Berger, the "creationof a tourist industry emerged as the cornerstone to state-ledmodernization programs in the late 1920s at the height of revolutionary     

PERIODIC SEQUENCES OF ARBITRAGE: A TALE OF FOUR CURRENCIES

This paper investigates arbitrage chains involving four currencies and four foreign exchange trader‐arbitrageurs. In contrast with the three‐currency case, we find that arbitrage operations when four currencies are present may appear periodic in nature, and not involve smooth convergence to a ‘balanced’ ensemble of exchange rates in which the law of one price holds. The goal of this article is to understand some interesting features of sequences of arbitrage operations, features which might well be relevant in other contexts in finance and economics.     

The service sector of Cuba: An analysis and critique

The Cuban economy has experienced a significant increase in foreign direct investment over the past decade due to the end of the Soviet Union and the establishment of more liberal trade policies. Although the U.S. embargo of trade with Cuba still exists, there has been movement lately that suggests the end of the four‐decades‐old policy. The purpose of this article is to analyze the current Cuban business environment and to identify potential entrepreneurial opportunities in the service sector. Major trade partners are also reviewed and managerial implications discussed. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Direct and Multiplicative Effects of Ethical Dispositions and Ethical Climates on Personal Justice Norms: A Virtue Ethics Perspective

From virtue ethics and interactionist perspectives, we hypothesized that personal justice norms (distributive and procedural justice norms) were shaped directly and multiplicatively by ethical dispositions (equity sensitivity and need for structure) and ethical climates (egoistic, benevolent, and principle climates). We collected multisource data from 123 companies in Hong Kong, with personal factors assessed by participants’ self-reports and contextual factors by aggregations of their peers. In general, LISREL analyses with latent product variables supported the direct and multiplicative relationships. Our findings could lay the groundwork for justice research from a morality perspective in future.     

Michael Redclift. Chewing Gum: The Fortunes of Taste

Chewing gum was foremost an American invention, Michael Redclifttells us in Chewing Gum: The Fortunes of Taste, a brief yetserious and engaging book that details how chewing gum cameto occupy a distinct place in the rise of American consumerism.Perhaps nothing signified the triviality of consumerism as chewinggum. It possessed what Redclift calls an "ephemeral quality,"it was an easily replicable mass product, and provided instantgratification. This ephemerality was complicated by     

PRICING FOR LARGE POSITIONS IN CONTINGENT CLAIMS

Approximations to utility indifference prices are provided for a contingent claim in the large position size limit. Results are valid for general utility functions on the real line and semi‐martingale models. It is shown that as the position size approaches infinity, the utility function's decay rate for large negative wealths is the primary driver of prices. For utilities with exponential decay, one may price like an exponential investor. For utilities with a power decay, one may price like a power investor after a suitable adjustment to the rate at which the position size becomes large. In a sizable class of diffusion models, limiting indifference prices are explicitly computed for an exponential investor. Furthermore, the large claim limit arises endogenously as the hedging error for the claim vanishes.