Reframing the Past: Thoughts about Business Leadership and Decision Making under Uncertainty

How do business leaders make decisions in the face of uncertainty?More important, how do business and economic historians writea narrative that links a business problem, its proposed solution,and the outcome of this action without allowing the successor failure of the decision to determine the trajectory of thestory? Counterfactual hypotheses and contextual analysis providetwo tools that can help historians minimize the distortionsof hindsight and recover a sense of the contingency that surroundsall decisions.     

Deregulating Overtime Hours Restrictions on Women and its Effects on Female Employment: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Japan

This paper provides novel evidence on the effect of deregulating overtime hours restrictions on women by using the 1985 Amendments to the Labour Standards Act (LSA) in Japan as a natural experiment. The original LSA of 1947 prohibited women from working overtime exceeding two hours a day; six hours a week; and 150 hours a year. The 1985 Amendments exempted a variety of occupations and industries from such an overtime restriction on women. Applying a difference‐in‐difference model to census data, we find causal evidence pointing to the positive effect of this particular piece of labour market deregulation on the proportion of female employment. We then carry out a series of sensitivity analyses to ensure the robustness of our finding. Especially, we conduct a falsification test and an event study to show that our causal inference is not threatened by the differential pretreatment trends. Finally, we use quantile regressions and find that for jobs with more rapidly growing proportion of female employment, the effect of the exemption from the overtime work restriction on women is larger.     

The optimal size of Japan's public pensions: An analysis considering the risks of longevity and volatility of return on assets

There are two main pension systems: the Defined Benefit (DB) pension system and the Defined Contribution (DC) pension system. Each system has advantages and disadvantages. This paper investigates to what degree Japan should maintain a DB public pension system which offers the benefit of sharing risk and to what degree Japan must adopt a DC pension system to eliminate intergenerational imbalance. The risks of longevity and volatility of return on assets are incorporated into the simulation model. As a result of the simulation analysis, a replacement rate of 20–30% would be adequate for future generations if the expected return on assets and the wage growth rate are at the same level. Meanwhile, if the former is 2% points larger than the latter, a replacement rate of 0% or full-scale privatization would be desirable.     

Reallocation and productivity growth in Japan: revisiting the lost decade of the 1990s

Hayashi and Prescott (Rev Econ Dyn 5(1):206–235, 2002) argue that the ‘lost decade’ of the 1990s in Japan is explained by the slowdown in exogenous TFP growth rates. At the same time, other research suggests that Japanese banks’ support for inefficient firms prolonged recessions by reducing productivity through misallocation of resources. Using the data on large manufacturing firms between 1969 and 1996, the paper attempts to disentangle the factors behind the slowdown in productivity growth during the 1990s. The main results show that there was a significant drop in within-firm productivity, the component that is not affected by reallocation of input and output shares across firms over time, during the 1990s. Although we find that misallocation among large continuing firms represents a substantial drag to overall TFP growth for these firms throughout the sample period, the negative impact of misallocation was least visible during the 1990s. The significant reduction in within-firm productivity growth suggests that, as the Japanese economy has matured, a policy which fosters technological innovations via greater competition, R&D, and fast technological adoption may have become increasingly important in promoting economic growth.

Mitigating Negative Water Quality and Quality Externalities by Joint Management of Adjacent Aquifiers

Groundwater basins are usually separated into aquifers that are hydrologically interrelated. This interrelation may take the form of water movement from one aquifer to another. When differentials in water quality exist, pumping from one of the aquifers can cause water movement that may be associated with degradation of its quality. A management policy that considers this interrelation may be preferable to an independent management of each aquifer. This paper develops a dynamic optimal control model to evaluate joint versus independent management. The optimal joint pumping management, in which two adjacent aquifers of different water qualities are interrelated, is analyzed and compared to independent aquifer pumping, and the situations where joint management is not required are identified. Policy implications are then derived and discussed. Finally, the theoretical model is applied to a case of interrelated aquifers in southern Israel. The empirical model identifies conditions (interest rate, agricultural fresh water supply rainfall recharge, price of surface water, drinking water quality standards) under which a joint policy is preferable. The empirical results confirm the theoretical ones.     

企业成功的十条戒律

投资商为开办和拓展公司确实都作出了巨大的努力。他们迫使经营者把精力集中在赚钱上,然而,资金并不能保证成功。成功的公司要为日常问题提供创新的解决方案。那么,怎样使你的企业繁荣昌盛?下面是成功企业的十条戒律。     

The marketing challenge: Towards being profitable and socially responsible

This article reviews the history of marketing thought in relation to social responsibility and business ethics. The main objective of the article is to show that business can be profitable and socially responsible at the same time by practising the societal marketing concept. More specifically, it presents the development of a marketing philosophy, discusses the influence of consumerism on the marketing concept and deals with ethics and social responsibility in marketing. It is argued that organisations who adopt the societal marketing concept will be the ones most likely to make long-run profits as well as be beneficial to society as a whole. Russell Abratt is Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has published in the Journal of Business Ethics, European Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Advertising, Industrial Marketing Management and the Quarterly Review of Marketing amongst others. His current research interests are in Social Marketing, Industrial Marketing and Retailing. He has also taught at the Unversity of Melbourne in Australia and the Ohio State University in the U.S.A. Diane Sacks is an LLM student at Harvard University. She holds the BA, LLB, and MBA degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.     

Consumer vulnerability and complaint handling: Challenges,opportunities and dispute system design

Effectively designed complaint handling systems play a key role in enabling vulnerable consumers to complain and obtain redress. This article examines current research into consumer vulnerability, highlighting its multidimensional and expansive nature. Contemporary understandings of consumer vulnerability recognize that the interaction between a wide range of market and consumer characteristics can combine to place any individual at risk of vulnerability. While this broad definition of consumer vulnerability reflects the complex reality of consumers’ experiences, it poses a key challenge for designers of complaint handling systems: how can they identify and respond to an issue which can potentially affect everyone? Drawing on current research and practice in the United Kingdom and Australia, the article analyses the impact of consumer vulnerability on third party dispute resolution schemes and considers the role these complaint handling organizations can play in supporting their complainants. Third party complaint handling organizations, including a range of Alternative Dispute Resolution services such as ombudsman organizations, can play a key role in increasing access to justice for vulnerable consumer groups and provide specific assistance for individual complainants during the process. It is an opportune time to review whether the needs of consumers at risk of vulnerability are being met within complaint processes and the extent to which third party complaint handlers support those who are most vulnerable to seek redress. Empowering vulnerable consumers to complain presents specific challenges. The article discusses the application of a new model of consumer dispute system design to show how complaint handling organizations can meet the needs of the most vulnerable consumers throughout the process.