Economics and urban transportation policy in the United States

This article examines the role that economics can play in analysing problems with urban transportation in the United States. The specific problems addressed are failing infrastructure, financially weak public transit, environmental impacts of motor vehicles, motorvehicle accidents, and traffic congestion. Simple quantitative analyses, even though approximate, can help to focus attention on the most promising classes of policies. Those classes involve some technological measures and some narrowly targeted behavioral changes, but not the widespread curtailment of motor vehicle use.     

ENDOGENOUS SCHEDULING PREFERENCES AND CONGESTION

We consider the timing of activities through a dynamic model of commuting with congestion, in which workers care solely about leisure and consumption. Implicit preferences for the timing of the commute form endogenously due to temporal agglomeration economies. Equilibrium exists uniquely and is indistinguishable from that of a generalized version of the classical Vickrey bottleneck model, based on exogenous trip‐timing preferences, but optimal policies differ: the Vickrey model will misstate the benefits of a capacity increase, it will underpredict the benefits of congestion pricing, and pricing may make people better off even without considering the use of revenues.     

Values,trust, and management in New Zealand agriculture

This study provides empirical evidence of the link between outlook and practice among farmers, foresters, and growers in New Zealand. Specifically, we use a large, nationally representative survey to assess how foci on production and environmental outcomes influence the adoption of six good management practices aimed at increasing agricultural sustainability. We then show that while environmentally oriented and production-oriented decision-makers are statistically more prepared to take risks, all rural decision-makers are more likely to adopt new technologies and good practices after seeing their relative advantages successfully demonstrated. Next, we show that social and professional networks are small, often limited to five or fewer operators, which begs the question about how the risk-averse operators become informed about good practice. Hence, we ultimately analyse trust in order to identify other credible demonstrators or informants. We find that veterinarians are the most trusted source of information and that government (at all levels) is the least.     

Reduction of Value-at-Risk bounds via independence and variance information

We derive lower and upper bounds for the Value-at-Risk of a portfolio of losses when the marginal distributions are known and independence among (some) subgroups of the marginal components is assumed. We provide several actuarial examples showing that the newly proposed bounds strongly improve those available in the literature that are based on the sole knowledge of the marginal distributions. When the variance of the joint portfolio loss is small enough, further improvements can be obtained.     

Common risk factors in the cross-section of corporate bond returns

We investigate the cross-sectional determinants of corporate bond returns and find that downside risk is the strongest predictor of future bond returns. We also introduce common risk factors based on the prevalent risk characteristics of corporate bonds—downside risk, credit risk, and liquidity risk—and find that these novel bond factors have economically and statistically significant risk premiums that cannot be explained by long-established stock and bond market factors. We show that the newly proposed risk factors outperform all other models considered in the literature in explaining the returns of the industry- and size/maturity-sorted portfolios of corporate bonds.     

Representing pace in tourism mobilities: staycations,Slow Travel and The Amazing Race

This article examines the way popular representations of tourism make sense of pace within the context of Western modernity and asks how certain ethical and ideological values come to be associated with speed, slowness or stillness. In the typical story of modernity, speed is commonly associated with positive values such as ‘freedom’ and ‘progress’, while slowness and stillness are often seen as marginal or undesirable modes of mobility. The analysis presented suggests that paying attention to pace and the way pace is socially encoded in media contexts reveals a more complicated narrative of mobility and modernity. The article draws on an analysis of media representations of three popular modes of tourism – the ‘staycation’, a neologism invented to describe vacationing at home; Slow Travel; an emerging social movement that advocates travelling slowly and locally; and the television programme The Amazing Race – to argue that the way pace is socially encoded in these representations is central not only to a more nuanced story of modernity, but also to a ‘politics of mobility’.     

‘A Case for Including Business Ethics and the Humanities in Management Programs’

The idea underlying this article was that the humanities in general and business ethics in particular should be more firmly embedded in business management programs. A number of areas have been identified for students to use as topics for research projects in management ethics. These ranged from Biblical and classical times to the present day. Some were drawn from sources that were less well known e.g. the De consolatione philosphiae ‘The Consolation of Philosophy’ by Boethius 524 AD. This was chosen partly for its ethical content, but also because Boethius was magister officiorum i.e. head of the civil service. Aelfred the Great (849–899) King of Wessex (he who burnt those cakes) was chosen because he promoted the intellectual, moral and spiritual qualities that were to serve as guidelines for his executives. Nineteenth century literature (Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope and Galsworthy) was also chosen as a source of topics for research projects in business ethics. The writer acknowledges the work of earlier writers in the fields of management, organisation theory, and business ethics.     

Business Practice, Ethics and the Philosophy of Morals in the Rome of Marcus Tullius Cicero

Moral behaviour, and more recently wisdom and prudence, are emerging as areas of interest in the study of business ethics and management. The purpose of this article is to illustrate that Cicero—lawyer, politician, orator and prolific writer, and one of the earliest experts in the field recognised the significance of moral behaviour in his society. Cicero wrote ‘Moral Duties’ (De Officiis) about 44 BC. He addressed the four cardinal virtues wisdom, justice, courage and temperance, illustrating how practical wisdom, theoretical/conceptual wisdom and justice were viewed in Rome of the first century BC. ‘Moral Duties’ is a letter admonishing his son, Marcus. It refers to personal behaviour, business practice and analyses terms such as good faith and criminal fraud. In addition, it contains material which would be suitable for tutorials/seminars and discussions, particularly in the areas of critical thinking in business ethics and general management. A study of De Officiis in respect to present day management and business practice could give a wider perspective to business ethics and management students. If concepts such as moral virtue, moral propriety and moral goodness, many of which seem to be ignored in business situations today, are to be embedded in business leaders of the future, it is reasonable to expect that these qualities will be analysed and discussed by business students today. Further, a study of Cicero’s six-step approach, when preparing an address/speech, could be useful and productive for practitioners and students in this area.     

Examining the differential use of global integration mechanisms across HRM practices: Evidence from China

This paper examines how multinational corporations use different mechanisms to integrate four HRM practices in their foreign subsidiaries: financial compensation, performance appraisal, training and development, and recruitment and selection. Our analysis of 76 European-owned subsidiaries located in China reveal systematic differences in the use of integration mechanisms across the four HRM practices. The findings suggest that the usage of global integration mechanisms is contingent on the purposes of integration – headquarters control, and inter-unit coordination – as well as on the degree to which the mechanism is capable of responding to needs for local adaptation of the individual HRM practice in question.