Antecedents, consequences, and mediating effects of perceived moral intensity and personal moral philosophies

This study uses responses from a survey of marketing professionals in a structural equation model linking antecedents and consequences of two dimensions of personal moral philosophies (idealism and relativism) and perceived moral intensity (PMI). Mixed support is found for hypothesized effects of gender, religiosity, education, experience, salary, and corporate ethical values on idealism and relativism. Idealism increases and relativism decreases PMI in four ethical scenarios. PMI increases perceptions of ethical problems, which reduce intentions to act unethically. The study tests whether relationships between variables, revealing that PMI has direct as well as indirect effects on intentions. Intentions are also influenced by gender: women have more ethical intentions than men, on average, and this effect is not mediated by other variables in the model. Anusorn Singhapakdi is an associate professor of marketing at Old Dominion University. He has also served on the marketing faculty at Lamar University, Texas, and at Thammasat University, Thailand. His papers on topics in marketing ethics and social responsibility have been published in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, and various other journals and proceedings. Scott J. Vitell is the Phil B. Hardin Professor of Marketing at the University of Mississippi. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from Texas Tech University. His work has previously appeared in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Business Ethics, Research in Marketing, International Marketing Review, and in other journals and proceedings. George R. Franke is an associate professor and Reese Phifer Fellow of Marketing at the University of Alabama. His research interests include ethics, public policy, advertising, and research methodology. His publications have received best-paper awards from theJournal of Advertising, Journal of Marketing Research, American Marketing Association, and Southern Marketing Association.     

Brexit: How Will UK Agriculture Fare?

There is little doubt that Brexit would have significant implications for UK agriculture, a sector with strong trade links to the EU and strong reliance on CAP income support. This article reports preliminary results from employing a Computable General Equilibrium Model, a Partial Equilibrium Model and Farm Level Models to explore selected trade and domestic policy scenarios post‐Brexit. These allow for the estimation of changes in producer prices, production and farm incomes against a baseline scenario of continued EU membership. Under a Free Trade Agreement with the EU, agricultural impacts are relatively modest. By contrast, unilateral removal of import tariffs has significant negative impacts on prices, production and incomes. Adoption of the EU's WTO tariff schedule for all imports favours net importers (e.g. dairy) and harms net exporters (e.g. sheep). Given the strong dependence of most UK farms on direct payments, their removal worsens negative impacts of new trade arrangements and offsets positive impacts. Impacts vary across different types and sizes of farm, but also regionally. However, the period of adjustment to new trade and domestic policy conditions may prove very challenging for a large number of farm businesses.     

Technical Progress and Product Reliability under Competition and Monopoly

Technical progress lowers costs and prices but appears to have an ambiguous effect on product reliability. This paper presents a simple model which explains this observation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regulatory arbitrage and the FERC rate settlement process

We demonstrate that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) regulatory procedures for natural gas pipelines, specifically its rate-refund policy, induces regulatory arbitrage that leads to economic distortions. Specifically, we demonstrate that the rate refund policy causes pipelines effectively to “extort” ratepayers through the addition of economically inefficient capital investment, akin to “gold-plating” investments. We estimate the potential magnitude of this arbitrage impact on ratepayers to be between $400 and $700 million annually. Counterintuitively, however, we demonstrate that the presence of this arbitrage opportunity leads to underinvestment in pipeline capacity, thus negating one of the principal purposes of rate regulation. We further demonstrate that FERC could easily eliminate this regulatory arbitrage by setting the refund interest rate to the pipeline’s as-filed weighted average cost of capital.