All's Fair

A bstract The authors examine divorce rates in the United States in the 20th century, looking especially at the effects that wars have had on those rates. Gary Becker's theories on the family arc the basis for analysis. Of particular interest to the authors is whether or not the scope of the war has an effect upon the rate of divorce. The authors also examine other social changes and events to see how they have affected those rates. Empirical tests show that World War II significantly increased divorce rates, but the rates did not significantly climb because of the Korean War and Vietnam War. World War I is also not significant, although had the United States been involved longer, the results may have been different.     

How did investor‐state dispute settlement get a bad rap? Blame it on NAFTA,of course

In the short history of the US bilateral investment treaty (BIT) programme, there have been no instances of dispute settlement cases initiated against the United States by firms from BIT countries. The NAFTA experience changed that. Where other studies have only hinted at the reasons for NAFTA controversies, this paper makes clear three causal factors: (i) changing patterns and intensity of FDI, (ii) the application of those rules to developed countries amid those changing FDI patterns and (iii) ambiguities in ISDS rules themselves. The paper explores these and traces the ways in which lessons of the NAFTA have been instrumental in changing the pursuit of investment protection agreements. BITs used to be uncontroversial, but the NAFTA focused attention on reforms to ISDS that maintain the utility of BITs in the governance of FDI, without creating a legal structure for simply challenging the state.     

The Climate Policy of the European Union

There is now almost universal agreement that climate change, with potentially disastrous consequences, is happening and that it is contributed to by human activities. This Forum is dedicated to the discussion of various aspects of the European Union's climate policy, e.g. the EU's future role in the global effort to combat global warming, the efficiency of its climate strategy, the design of a new rule for sharing the corresponding burdens fairly among member states, and the interrelationships between the Union's climate policies, on the one hand, and its energy and transport policies, on the other. * and member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). The author wishes to thank Helen Bicknell (Mainz University of Applied Sciences), Oliver Deke (WBGU) and Jürgen Schmid (ISET, Department of Efficient Energy Conversion at the University of Kassel) for their helpful comments. ** This contribution is based on a Jean Monnet Lecture held at Aarhus University on 19 March 2007. The author would like to thank Harri Kalimo for valuable comments.     

Building loyalty in e-commerce: Impact of business and customer characteristics

Abstract

Understanding, building, and predicting customer loyalty in e-commerce are critical activities for long-run profitability. Successfully carrying out these activities is challenging due to the complex mix of both business organization and customer factors that may influence and drive e-loyalty. We demonstrate that business factors, such as credibility, e-satisfaction and site knowledge, and customer factors, such as inertia, innovativeness, and aggressiveness, influence e-loyalty. Our analyses show that business credibility is affected by the reputation of the e-business and its congruence with the customers’ self-image; e-satisfaction by the customers’ value perception, care, and choice; and site knowledge by customer experience, involvement, and expertise. Business factors account for about 75% of the explained variation in e-loyalty and customer factors for the rest. Understanding the controllable business and uncontrollable customer factors that drive customer loyalty should enable e-commerce retailers to continually assess these factors and make appropriate changes in marketing strategy.     

If Time Is Money Is It a Common Currency? Time in Anglo,Asian, and Latin Cultures

ABSTRACT

Social time affects the timing and frequency of purchases, the hours consumers patronize businesses, and how long consumers expect products to last. Understanding how culturally based social time attitudes differ will help marketers tailor their offerings and messages to consumers whose concepts of time differ. This exploratory study combined related streams of time literature to examine constructs of social time differences across cultures. Drawing upon a sample of 1377 respondents from six countries representing three cultural groups (Anglo, Latin, and Asian), the study explores the similarity and differences of cultural social time differences among these three groups.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Purpose: Companies engage in business relationships for a variety of reasons, including specialization, product development, and building competitive networks. Research has demonstrated that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) may challenge ongoing business relationships. The purpose of this article is to investigate whether and how competition authorities consider business relationships when evaluating M&As.

Methodology: The article uses the documentation from 450 M&As reported to the Swedish competition authority to capture the way in which an authority evaluates M&As. The Swedish competition authority evaluation corresponds to other national and international evaluation procedures.

Findings: The findings indicate that the competition authorities neglect an important aspect of business life, namely companies forming business relationships. The competition authorities evaluate M&As on the basis of risk for price increases, and consequently disregard such issues as heterogeneity in demand and offerings, and values built into existing business relationships.

Originality/Value/Contribution: The article contributes to research on business relationships through exploring how a public authority deals with such relationships. It also contributes to research on mergers and acquisitions through examining how these activities are evaluated by competition authorities. Furthermore, the article contributes to competition research by reflecting on competition law concerning M&A regulations in relation to business relationships.     

Hedging performance of shrimp futures contracts with multiple deliverable grades

The performance of the black tiger and white shrimp futures contracts traded in the Minneapolis Grain Exchange (MGE) is considered. These two futures contracts have suffered low trader participation[fn100] since their inception despite the underlying multibillion-dollar cash shrimp market. The article tries to find answers for such lack of interest in the context of the multiple deliverable category character of both contracts. In particular, the hedging effectiveness and the adequacy of the premiums/discounts are measured for the various shrimp size categories traded in each contract. The analyses indicate that the hedging effectiveness of both contracts is relatively modest. Part of the explanation for the performance of the contracts resides in high deliverable category exchange option values, which stem from volatility in the price differentials between size categories. The fixed premiums/discounts are not able to provide a remedy to the alternation in the cheapest to deliver category. There is also a liquidity problem that could result from the peculiarities of seafood trade. It is concluded that the lack of trader interest may be influenced by initial high deliverable category exchange option values. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 19: 957–990, 1999     

Do Japanese consumers care about sustainable fisheries? Evidence from an auction of ecolabelled seafood

This paper investigates Japanese consumers' willingness to pay for Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) ecolabelled seafood using a sealed bid, second price auction. Participants in an experiment in Tokyo were provided varying degrees of information about the status of world and Japanese fisheries and the MSC program in sequential rounds of bidding on ecolabelled and nonlabelled salmon products. A random‐effects tobit regression shows that there is a statistically significant premium of about 20 per cent for MSC‐ecolabelled salmon over nonlabelled salmon when consumers are provided information on both the status of global fish stocks and the purpose of the MSC program. This premium arises from a combination of an increased willingness to pay for labelled products and a decreased willingness to pay for unlabelled products. However, in the absence of experimenter‐provided information, or when provided information about the purpose of the MSC program alone without concurrent information about the need for the MSC program, there is no statistically significant premium.