The construction of the risky individual and vigilant organization: A genealogy of the fraud triangle

This article examines how a vision of organizational fraud has been constructed around a particular technology, the fraud triangle, which was initially developed in the aftermath of the creation of the fraud examination discipline. We examine the genealogy of the fraud triangle and follow various chains of translations underlying its construction. One of the main translation trajectories we uncover presents individuals as vectors of moral riskiness needing to be vigilantly monitored and controlled by the organization. The organization is conceived of as a prime site in which fraud is to be addressed – not annihilated but significantly reduced as long as sufficient care is devoted to establishing layers of vigilance. As such, the fraud triangle redefines social, political and economic relations through a web of translations that both celebrate and normalize the use of organizational surveillance systems to control risk ensuing from the individual’s (alleged) frail morality. In the process, other visions of fraud, focused on the broader role of society, political agendas and powerful economic institutions in engendering and preventing fraud, escape from view.     

Optimal exploration investments under price and geological‐technical uncertainty: a real options model

This article develops a real options model for valuing natural resource exploration investments (e.g. oil or copper) when there is joint price and geological‐technical uncertainty. After a successful several‐stage exploration phase, there is a development investment and an extraction phase. All phases are optimized contingent on price and geological‐technical uncertainty.
Several real options are considered. There are flexible investment schedules for all exploration stages and a timing option for the development investment. Once the mine is developed, there are closure, opening and abandonment options for the extraction phase. Our model maintains a relatively simple valuation structure by collapsing price and geological‐technical uncertainty into a one‐factor model.
We apply the model to a copper exploration prospect and find that a significant fraction of total project value is due to the operational, development and exploration options available to project managers.     

Modeling Distribution Channel Dynamics of North American Cars in the Spanish Automobile Industry

Relations between manufacturers and distributors have been the center point of the distribution channel’s management. This study covers the effects of coercive, as well as non-coercive power on intermediary variables such as cooperation and conflict. It will also analyze the effects of cooperation and conflict on American car dealers’ satisfaction and performance in Spain. Due to the small sample size (46 dealers), the model based on causal modeling compelled us to use the optimization method based on the partial least squares (PLS) regression techniques coupled with a bootstrapping to enable some generalization of the results.

Diseconomies of Size with Fixed Managerial Ability

Managerial ability has important implications for farm growth. In this article we first show in a production model that increasing output with a fixed level of managerial ability can lead to a decrease in profits. Next, we discuss the effect that managerial ability has on economies of size. In the empirical part, economies of size are estimated for a sample of dairy farms using a proxy for managerial ability, which is calculated as a technical efficiency index. The results show that increasing farm size while holding managerial ability constant can be an important source of diseconomies of size.     

Estimation of a US dairy sector model by maximum simulated likelihood

This paper estimates a multivariate Tobit system of monthly wholesale dairy prices where four prices are lower censored by the dairy price support programme. Using Maximum Simulated Likelihood (MSL) the effects of simulation noise are tested/corrected for and the relevance of estimating multivariate versus the single Tobit equations discussed.     

Macroeconomic stability,structural reforms,and sluggish growth: The Mexican economy since 2008–2009 and the lessons of 2015

This paper examines the evolution of the Mexican economy since the crisis of 2008–2009. It focuses on the main economic indicators of the period and then turns to the changes in economic policy adopted by Peña Nieto’s government since late 2012 and the scope and shortcomings so far of these reforms. It then looks in detail at what happened in 2015, a year characterized by a deterioration of the external environment and by a number of puzzles. Finally, it addresses the short and medium term prospects of the economy under the present set of economic policies and the changes required to put the economy on a higher growth path.     

¿Más trabajo pero no mejor en Chile? La importancia capital del contrato indefinido

Los gobiernos chilenos desde 1990 han confado en el crecimiento económico para generar empleo, salarios más altos y mejores condiciones de trabajo, obteniendo resultados cuantitativos, pero no de la calidad del empleo. Revelando el contraste entre una legislación aparentemente rígida y la flexibilidad real del mercado laboral, los autores resaltan la importancia de las condiciones de trabajo para evaluar el comportamiento del mercado. Exploran empíricamente los efectos de las características individuales y laborales en la capacidad para encontrar empleo y generar ingresos, cuyo determinante más importante, según sus resultados, es el contrato indefinido. Concluyen con sugerencias para la elaboración de políticas.     

The empirical relationship between commitment enhancement devices and terrorism

An extant theoretical literature attributes the high lethality of violent extremist religious sects (VERSs) to their comparative advantage in assembling coalitions of highly committed operatives and identifies sacrifice and stigma (S&S) and social service provision (SSP) as the primary commitment enhancement devices VERSs employ. However, lack of direct measures of the VERSs’ deployment of these devices has impeded efforts to test the hypothesized effects of S&S and SSP on terrorism. This article exploits the relationship between exogenous variation in the marginal productivities of S&S and SSP as inputs in the production of commitment and variation in VERSs’ employment of these inputs to identify proxies for S&S and SSP. Using data from 158 countries, our cross-sectional estimates of the effects of S&S and SSP on the impact of terrorism are significant and larger than the effects of geographic and political variables that are consistently reported to be both significant and substantial.