Additive and Multiplicative Uncertainty Revisited: What Explains the Contrasting Biases?

above the certainty level while for additive uncertainty the price should be lower than the certainty level. This note gives an intuitive explanation for the result after first presenting a parsimonious review of the two models. We also discuss which, if either, of the two models is more realistic. Received December 14, 2001; revised version received July 16, 2002 Published online: April 30, 2003 We thank referees for helpful comments. Ciaran Driver would like to acknowledge the research facilities from ANU, Canberra for their help in writing this paper.     

Alternative Forms of Mixing Banking with Commerce: Evidence from American History

Much of the discussion about banking and commerce in America has failed to make several crucial distinctions and has not accounted for many arrangements that have promoted the mixing of these activities. We investigate the history of banking and commerce in the United States, looking both at bank control of commercial firms and commercial firms' control of banks. We trace how these controls have changed with shifting definitions of "bank" and changing methods of "control." Despite the regulations prohibiting some arrangements that promote financial control, we find evidence of extensive linkages between banking and commerce in the United States. These linkages usually build on devices that are very close substitutes to the arrangements prohibited by law. Altogether, our findings question the often made claim that traditionally banking in the United States has been separated from commerce. Furthermore, given that research on Japan and Germany has shown that the mixing of banking and commerce matters for a variety of issues, our evidence also raises some questions on similar research in the United States which makes the simplifying assumption that these industries are separated.     

浅议“人才退出”机制

在经济全球化的今天,市场经济理念深入人心,人们逐渐接受了竞争意识、企业裁员已成为常有的事,但裁员的负面效应往往为人们所忽略,建立完善的人才退出机制任重而道远。     

Corporate Board Composition, Protocols, and Voting Behavior: Experimental Evidence

We examine voting by a board designed to mitigate conflicts of interest between privately informed insiders and owners. Our model demonstrates that, as argued by researchers and the business press, boards with a majority of trustworthy but uninformed “watchdogs” can implement institutionally preferred policies. Our laboratory experiments strongly support this conclusion. Our model also highlights the necessity of penalties on insiders when there is dissension among board members. However, penalties for dissent appeared to have little impact on the experimental outcomes.     

Expenditure on different categories of meat in Greece: the influence of changing tastes

This paper employs a latent variable approach to isolate the effects of changing tastes on the share of total meat expenditure on different categories of meat products in Greece during the period 1965–1995. We find that changes in the relative expenditure on different categories of meat cannot be explained by changes in the relative prices of the different meat products and increased expenditure alone. For pork products in particular, the increase in the share of expenditure has been greater than would be expected as a result of the relative fall in their price. The increase can therefore be associated with changes in taste. This finding is of general interest to those conducting empirical research into consumer behaviour both in economies where there have been significant changes in patterns of food consumption, and where, as in the case of many less industrialised economies, rapid structural changes in food consumption patterns are still to come. It is also of importance to policy makers in assessing die effectiveness of advertising or promotional campaigns in influencing longer term changes in consumer preferences for different products.     

Current and future changes in corporate attitudes to national identity

This commentary is a revised version of a speech that was delivered by the Honorable Thomas Harris to the Thunderbird community at the Glendale campus on February 6, 2001. Although the speech was delivered in 2001, its attendant concerns and arguments endure and are germane in today's global business considerations. Ambassador Harris is presently Her Majesty's Consul General and Director General of British Trade and Investment in the United States. Following his graduation from Cambridge University, Ambassador Harris joined the Board of Trade in 1966, and subsequently the British Diplomatic Service. His diplomatic career included stints in Tokyo, Washington, and Lagos. He has also held various appointments in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. His most recent overseas posting was as British Ambassador to Korea between 1993 and 1997. He was later appointed Director General for Export Promotion in the Department of Trade and Investments (now known as British Trade International), before taking on his present assignments in New York. As Director General of British Trade and Investment, he has overall responsibility for the promotion of British trade throughout the U.S. and for securing investment by U.S. firms in the United Kingdom. In 1995, Ambassador Harris was appointed by Her Majesty, the Queen of England, to be a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG). © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.