Credit market failure intervention: Do government sponsored small business credit programs enrich poorer areas?

Using local market employment rates as our measure of economic performance, we find a positive and significant correlation between the average annual level of employment in a local market and the level of SBA guaranteed lending in that local market. Furthermore, the intensity of this correlation is much larger in low-income markets. Indeed, our results suggest that this correlation is positive and significant only in low-income markets. This result has important implications for public policy in general and SBA guaranteed lending in particular.

New-firm startups,technology, and macroeconomic fluctuations

New-firm startup activity is examined within a framework pooling a cross-section of 117 industries over six time periods between 1976 and 1986. A model is introduced relating startup activity both to elements of the business cycle, in particular the macroeconomic growth rate, the cost of capital, and the unemployment rate, and to industry-specific characteristics, especially the technological conditions underlying the industry. The pooled cross-section regression results suggest that macroeconomic fluctuations as well as industry-specific elements contribute to startup activity. While new-firm startups respond positively to macroeconomic growth, they are promoted by a low cost of capital and high unemployment rate. A somewhat surprising result is that new-firm startups are not apparently deterred in capital intensive industries and where R&D expenditures play an important role. The empirical results suggest that new firms may be able to overcome their inherent size and experience disadvantages in such markets through exploiting university research and pursuing innovative activity.     

Technology spillover through trade and TFP convergence: 135 years of evidence for the OECD countries

Using a new dataset on imports of technology and total factor productivity (TFP) over 135 years for the OECD countries, this paper tests whether knowledge has been transmitted internationally through the channel of trade. The empirical estimates show that there is a robust relationship between TFP and imports of knowledge and that 93% of the increase in TFP over the past century has been solely due to imports of knowledge. Furthermore, it is shown that knowledge spillovers have been an important contributing factor behind the TFP convergence among the OECD countries over the period 1870 to 2004.     

‘A Comparison of the Contents of the Codes of Ethics of Canada’s Largest Corporations in 1992 and 2003’

This paper compares the findings of content analyses of the corporate codes of ethics of Canada’s largest corporations in 1992 and 2003. For both years, a modified version of a technique used in several other studies was used to determine and categorize the contents of the codes. It was found, inter alia, that, in 2003, as in 1992, more of the codes were concerned with conduct against the firm than with conduct on behalf of the firm. Among the changes from 1992 to 2003 were a significant increase in the frequency of mention of environmental affairs, legal responsibility as the basis of codes and enforcement/compliance procedures.     

The key to marketing to older consumers

Marketers must put aside stereotypes and unexamined assumptions to reach older consumers. In this article, the author details their values and describes a technique that can be used to effectively position a product or service in older consumers' minds.     

Expropriation and direct investment

The paper considers a model in which private foreign investors make direct long-lived capital investments in a small developing country that is subject to stochastic shocks to production. Depending upon the preferences of the host country, we find that expropriation can occur because of either 'desperation or ‘opportunism’. We show that under reasonable assumptions increased investment makes expropriation less likely to occur, and that the level of investment chosen by atomistic foreign investors may be non-optimal.     

The Face of Fairness: Self-Awareness as a Means to Promote Fairness among Managers with Low Empathy

Although managing fairness is a critical concern for organizations, not all managers are predisposed to enact high levels of fairness. Emerging empirical evidence suggests that personality characteristics can be an important antecedent of managers’ fair behavior. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to understand how to promote fairness among managers who are naturally predisposed to engage in lower levels of fairness. Building upon self-awareness theory, we argue that increasing managers’ self-awareness can motivate managers with low trait empathy to engage in greater levels of justice. We test the interactive effects of trait empathy and state self-awareness using an experimental study (N = 76) in which individuals were asked to communicate negative news. In support of our hypothesis, our results indicate that increasing self-awareness through self-focusing situations can help promote interactional justice when communicating negative news for individuals with low trait empathy. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Shaping Ethical Perceptions: An Empirical Assessment of the Influence of Business Education,Culture, and Demographic Factors

Recent events at Enron, K-Mart, Adelphia, and Tyson would seem to suggest that managers are still experiencing ethical lapses. These lapses are somewhat surprising and disappointing given the heightened focus on ethical considerations within business contexts during the past decade. This study is designed, therefore, to increase our understanding of the forces that shape ethical perceptions by considering the effects of business school education as well as a number of other individual-level factors (such as intra-national culture, area of specialization within business, and gender) that may exert an influence on ethical perceptions. We found significant effects for business education, self-reported intra-national culture, area of specialization within business, and gender for some and/or all areas of ethics examined (i.e., deceit, fraud, self-interest, influence dealing, and coercion). One of our most encouraging findings is that tolerance for unethical behavior appears to decrease with formal business education. Despite the prevalent stereotype that business students are only interested in the bottom line or that business schools transform idealistic freshman into self-serving business graduates, our results suggest otherwise. Given the heightened criticism of the ethicality of contemporary managerial behavior, it is heartening to note that, even as adults, individuals can be positively affected by integration of ethics training.     

Shaping of Moral Intensity Regarding Software Piracy: A Comparison Between Thailand and U.S. Students

Software piracy is a major global concern forbusinesses that generate their revenues throughsoftware products. Moral intensity regardingsoftware piracy has been argued to be relatedto the extent of software piracy. Anunderstanding of the development of moralintensity regarding software piracy inindividuals would aid businesses in developingand implementing policies that may help themreduce software piracy. In this research westudied the similarities and differences indevelopment of moral intensity regardingsoftware piracy among university students intwo different cultures, the U.S. and Thailand. In particular, we studied the influence of theimmediate community of individuals, such asother students, faculty, and other universityemployees, on the development of moralintensity regarding software piracy of the twogroups of students. Results indicate that, ingeneral, there are significant differences inmoral intensity regarding software piracybetween students from the US and Thailand, andthat gender differences also exist. Though theeffect of the immediate community on theself-perception of moral intensity regardingsoftware piracy of students was significant,there appears to be very little significantdifferences in this effect between the studentsin the two different countries studied. Thefindings have implications for teachingbusiness ethics, and for developing andimplementing policies to curb global softwarepiracy.     

Transforming Personal Experience into a Pedagogical Tool: Ethical Complaints

One of the crucial intellectual and social challenges facing corporation leaders is to foster a new way of thinking about business and society which recognizes the multinational corporation as a key player in society's responsibility to support and maintain fairness in the global reorganization of markets. In order to establish a sound global social economy, we are in need of the organizing and directing principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. Both of these principles speak to the need of transforming our public and private institutions in such a way that all persons are placed in positions whereby they can share in the benefits of the newly-formed global economy.