Contributions Feminist Economics Can Make to the Quality of Life Movement

This article articulates how and why feminist economists can move the quality of life literature forward and help it become a solid part of the social sciences rather than a subject whose perceived value fluctuates with political winds. Readers are challenged to consider and critique a proposed set of expectations to clearly define the field and set standards of excellence. Examples of this approach are provided from the experiences of an economic research firm striving to build on these guidelines in its work with nonprofit and for-profit organizations that design, fund, evaluate, and/or deliver programs that impact quality of life.     

Piercing the Corporate Veil: Cape Industries and Multinational Corporate Liability for a Toxic Hazard, 1950-2004

The ‘corporate veil’ refers to the separation oflegal identity between parent firms and their subsidiaries,which gives the parent protection against the liabilities ofits subsidiaries. Fearing that such liability protection wouldfacilitate illicit activity, early twentieth century courts,especially in America, would sometimes ‘pierce’the corporate veil. This article explores Adams v. Cape (1990),in which American plaintiffs attempted to persuade the Englishcourts to lift the corporate veil and impose liability for industrialdisease on Cape Industries, a leading U.K. asbestos manufacturer.This landmark case shows how corporate strategy can be closelyintertwined with international corporate law and occupationalhealth and safety issues. It also highlights how limited liabilitylaw and separate legal personality can result in significantinjustice to claimants against multinational enterprises.     

A cross‐cultural examination of the relationships among human resource management practices and organisational commitment: an institutional collectivism perspective

Previous research has shown that human resource management (HRM) practices vary across cultures. However, little research has empirically compared the effects of various HRM practices on firm‐level or individual‐level outcome variables across cultures. Drawing upon psychological contract theory and the literature on cultural values, the present study examined the effects of three organisational‐level HRM practices on individual organisational commitment in a survey of 2424 individuals in 120 organisations located in four countries and three industries. Based upon the GLOBE study, we classified the four countries into two groups – high versus low institutional collectivism. The results of our hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) analyses found significant differences in the effects of organisational‐level HRM on individual organisational commitment across cultures for two of the three HRM practices included in our model: training and teamwork. We also found partial support for differences across cultures for the effects of the third HRM practice: employee involvement in decision making. Overall, our results support the utility of theoretical and empirical models that address multiple levels of analyses to better understand the mechanisms through which the HRM‐performance link takes place across national cultures.     

The antecedents of employee commitment to customer service: evidence from a UK

This paper provides a first attempt at conceptualizing and operationalizing the notion of commitment to customer service (CCS) as part of a broader concern to explore the determinants of key aspects of service quality and of individual-level performance in service organizations. Based on an explicitly behavioral definition of commitment to customer service, we first set out a model of the antecedents of CCS. We then test it using data from a representative sample of 717 employees of a major food-retailing organization in the UK. The results suggest that commitment to customer service is primarily a non-calculative phenomenon driven above all by affective. normative altruistic concerns, rather than by overtly instrumental considerations. Additional significant determinants of CCS were job pressure, job routinization. job competence and employees' understanding of customer service requirements. Research and policy implications of the study are discussed.     

Does size asymmetry exacerbate the inefficiency of tax competition?

Many authors demonstrate that the tax gap resulting from tax competition increases with the size asymmetry of the competing countries. Consequently, increasing country-size disparities exacerbates the inefficiency of tax competition. The aim of this note is to show that this classical view has no general validity, if we consider that countries compete not only in taxes, but also in the provision of infrastructure. The simple model we develop for this purpose demonstrates that the effect of size disparity on efficiency depends crucially on the degree of international capital mobility.     

An extension of the home-attachment criteria under dynamic tax competition

In this short note we extend the home attachment setting of Mansoorian and Myers (1993) and Ogura (2006) to allow the study of tax competition in a dynamic framework when international business relocation occurs over successive periods. The dynamic framework we propose also helps to understand why tax rates may change over time. Our modified home-attachment rule is illustrated by a simple model of dynamic tax competition in discrete time.     

A critical exploration of sponsorship,infrastructure, and new organizations

This research focuses on the effects of public sponsorship, and regional infrastructure on the emergence and survival of new organizations. Propositions are tested regarding the joint effects of sponsorship and infrastructure on industrial development in a randomly selected sample of fourteen regions. The data include six measures of infrastructure, sponsorship as measured by the total dollars spent for economic development and their individual and joint effects on the number of firms and employees in high technology industries for the years 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980 and 1984. This preliminary analysis suggests that variation in the infrastructure and level of sponsorship within a region is related to the birth and survival of new organizations.     

Why economic dynamics matter in assessing climate change damages: Illustration on extreme events

Extreme events are one of the main channels through which climate and socioeconomic systems interact, and it is likely that climate change will modify the probability distribution of the losses they generate. The long-term growth models used in climate change assessments, however, cannot capture the effects of such short-term shocks. To investigate this issue, a non-equilibrium dynamic model (NEDyM) is used to assess the macroeconomic consequences of extreme events. This exercise allowed us to define the economic amplification ratio, as the ratio of the overall production loss due to an event to its direct costs. This ratio could be used to improve the cost-benefit analysis of prevention measures. We found also that, unlike a Solow-like model, NEDyM exhibits a bifurcation in GDP losses: for each value of the capacity to fund reconstruction, GDP losses remain moderate if the intensity and frequency of extremes remain under a threshold value, beyond which GDP losses increase sharply. This bifurcation may partly explain why some poor countries that experience repeated natural disasters cannot develop. Applied to the specific issue of climate change, this model highlights the importance of short-term constraints in the assessment of long-term damages, and shows that changes in the distribution of extremes may entail significant GDP losses in absence of specific adaptation. It suggests, therefore, that to avoid inaccurately low assessments of damages, researchers must take into account the distribution of extremes instead of their average cost and make explicit assumptions on the organization of future economies.     

What Do Unions Do to Productivity? A Meta‐Analysis

The impact of unions on productivity is explored using meta-analysis and meta-regression analysis. It is shown that most of the variation in published results is due to specification differences between studies. After controlling for differences between studies, a negative association between unions and productivity is established for the United Kingdom, whereas a positive association is established for the United States in general and for U.S. manufacturing.     

Mean‐variance efficiency of the market portfolio and futures trading

We derived an intertemporal capital asset pricing model in which the mean‐variance efficiency of the market portfolio is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition. We obtained this result by modeling a frictionless, continuously open financial market in which nonredundant futures contracts are available for trade, in addition to cash assets. Introducing such contracts modifies the way investors optimally allocate their wealth. Their portfolios then comprise the riskless asset, a perturbed mean‐variance‐efficient portfolio of cash assets, and a perturbed mean‐variance‐efficient portfolio of futures contracts. Furthermore, a (3 + K) mutual fund separation is obtained, with K being the number of economic state variables, in lieu of the usual (2 + K) fund separation. Mean‐variance efficiency of the market portfolio is a necessary condition only when cash assets are the sole traded assets. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21:329–346, 2001