Buy or wait,that is the option: the buyer's option in sequential laboratory auctions

We report results from an experiment on two‐unit sequential auctions with and without a buyer's option (which allows the winner of the first auction to buy the second unit). The four main auction institutions are studied. Observed bidding behavior is close to Nash equilibrium bidding in the auctions for the second unit, but not in the auctions for the first unit. Despite these deviations, the buyer's option is correctly used in most cases. The revenue ranking of the four auctions is the same as in single‐unit experiments. Successive prices are declining when the buyer's option is available.     

Heterogeneous preferences for altruism: gender and personality,social status,giving and taking

Some of the earliest work on heterogeneity in social preferences focuses on gender differences in behavior. The source of these gender differences is the main interest of this paper. We report on dictator game experiments designed to identify heterogeneity of other-regarding preferences according to personality, gender, status, and whether the choice is framed as giving or taking. We find that the effect of gender on giving is more subtle than previously understood, and is explained collectively by various personality factors. We also find that women, high status treatment individuals, and individuals in the giving language treatment give less, and are also less sensitive to the price of giving.     

The Emergence of Industrial Relations in Regional Trade Blocks — A Comparative Analysis

This article analyses the emergence and institutionalization of regional industrial relations arrangements in six regional integration agreements (European Union, North American Free Trade Association, Mercado Común del Sur, Economic Community of West African States, Southern African Development Community, Association of Southeast Asian Nations). In each, the article investigates human and social rights, labour standards, residence and social security rights of migrants, regional union and employer organization, and provisions for social dialogue. The article tries to explain the comparative differences in emergent regional industrial relations by testing four competing hypotheses based on integration and institutional theories specified at the regional and national level.     

A short review of the historical critique of usury

Usury - lending at interest or excessive interest - has, according to known records, been practised in various parts of the world for at least four thousand years. During this time, there is substantial evidence of intense criticism by various traditions, institutions and social reformers on moral, ethical, religious and legal grounds. The rationale employed by these wide-ranging critics have included arguments about work ethic, social justice, economic instability, ecological destruction and inter-generational equity. While the contemporary relevance of these largely historical debates is not analysed in detail, the authors contend that their significance is greater than ever before in the context of the modern interest-based global economy.     

Common Shocks and Relative Compensation

This paper studies qualitative properties of an optimal contract in a multi-agent setting in which agents are subject to a common shock. We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the optimal reward of an agent producing an output level y to be a decreasing (increasing) function of the outputs of the other agents, under the assumption that the agents’ outputs are informative signals of the value of the common shock. The condition is that the likelihood ratio p(y, e, η)/p(y, e′, η), where e is a higher effort level than e′ and η is the value of the common shock, be a decreasing (increasing) function of η. We give examples of applications of the result and examine its consequences for CEO compensation.     

‘We're still the same people’: developing a mass media campaign to raise awareness and challenge the stigma of dementia

• A popular awareness‐ and fund‐raising vehicle for charities and non‐profit organisations is the annual ‘Day’ or ‘Week’ campaign. Such campaigns can be challenging because they often involve multiple, potentially competing objectives, not least the requirement to balance the needs of the general public with the those who already have, or are caring for someone with, a particular condition. This paper reports on formative research conducted in Scotland to inform the development of an awareness‐raising campaign on the issue of dementia, which had two key aims: to raise awareness of the condition among the general public, and to reduce the stigma associated with it. Social marketing consumer research was conducted with three key groups—the general public, carers and people with dementia‐to explore their beliefs and perceptions about dementia and their information needs. The research highlights the importance of providing realistic and credible images of people with dementia to the general public and the importance of avoiding instilling fear of the condition. Guidance for future awareness‐raising activity in this area is provided.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Financing new venture exporters

This paper investigates the demand for, and access to, financing for young small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The work compares, theoretically and empirically, two sets of new firms—those that export and those that do not export—as to the frequency with which they seek and obtain external financing. The work hypothesizes that new growth firms and new exporter firms are especially likely to seek external financing yet less likely to obtain financing. Empirical findings confirm these expectations, demonstrating that young growth firms were more likely than non-growth firms to seek all forms of capital and exporters were particularly likely to apply for equity and trade credit. Commercial lenders were less likely to approve loan applications from early stage growth firms, and especially so for applications from young, growth-oriented SME exporters. The implications of these results for research and public policy are discussed.     

A COMOMENT CRITERION FOR THE CHOICE OF RISKY INVESTMENT BY FIRMS*

This article uses Taylor series expansions and the assumption of small risks to derive a comoment criterion that firms should maximize so that the resulting equilibrium is Pareto optimal. This is done in two models of production under uncertainty: the state‐of‐nature model in which the firms’ outputs depend on states of nature and financial markets are complete with respect to these states of nature and the probability model in which the firms’ risky outputs are modeled by their joint probabilities and financial markets span the outcome space of the firms. The comoment criterion provides a unifying framework for the two equilibrium models of production under uncertainty, has the merit of being based on information which is readily available to firms, and provides greater insight than the theoretical criterion into the risk characteristics of its profit stream that a firm should focus on when choosing its investment plan.     

Free movement,equal treatment and workers' rights: can the European Union solve its trilemma of fundamental principles?

This article analyses the trilemma the EU is facing concerning three fundamental principles on which the Community rests: free movement of services and labour; non‐discrimination and equal treatment, and the rights of association and industrial action. With rising cross‐border flows of services and (posted) labour after the Eastward enlargement, the conflict between these rights has triggered industrial disputes and judicial strife. In the view of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), highlighted in the Laval Quartet, some principles are more fundamental than others. Tracing the ‘dual track’ along which European integration has evolved, whereby supranational market integration has been combined with national semi‐sovereignty in industrial relations and social policies, our claim is that the supremacy of free movement over basic social rights implied by the ECJ judgments is leading Europe in a politically and socially unsustainable direction. To prevent erosion of the European Social Models and of popular support for European integration, the politicians have to reinsert themselves into the governance of the European project. A pertinent start would be to ensure that the rising mass of cross‐border service workers in Europe become subject to the same rights and standards as their fellow workers in the emerging pan‐European labour market.