Optimal regulation of network expansion

We model the regulation of irreversible capacity expansion by a firm with private information about capacity costs, where investments are financed from the firm's cash flows and demand is stochastic. The optimal mechanism is implemented by a revenue tax that increases with the price cap. If the asymmetric information has large support, then the optimal mechanism consists of a laissez‐faire regime for low‐cost firms. That is, the firm's price cap corresponds to that of an unregulated monopolist, and it is not taxed. This “maximal distortion at the top” is necessary to provide information rents, as direct subsidies are not feasible.     

Channel management and sales management: Some key interfaces

Channel management and sales management have traditionally been treated as different “animals” in the literature on these two areas of the marketing discipline. But there are several important interfaces between these two fields which have been ignored in the literature. This article identifies and discusses the significance of five of the most basic and important of these previously ignored interfaces: 1) channel design, 2) motivation of channel members, 3) education and training of channel members, 4) selling through channel members, and 5) evaluation of the performance of channel members. By recognizing these interfaces, the relationships between channel management and sales management become clearer from both the academic and practitioner points of view.     

Explaining the Relation Between Job Insecurity and Employee Outcomes During Organizational Change: A Multiple Group Comparison

We develop and test a mediation model linking job insecurity to affective commitment and psychosomatic complaints via two distinct theoretical mechanisms: fairness and energy depletion. Analyses were based on 6,268 Belgian bank employees facing organizational change. Results from structural equation modeling showed that fairness and exhaustion partially mediated the association of job insecurity with affective commitment and psychosomatic complaints, respectively. Multiple group analysis showed that the relation between job insecurity and fairness gradually decreased across the three change stages, and that the exhaustion process was most prominent amid the change. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The stocks at stake: Return and risk in socially responsible investment

We relate US portfolio returns, book-to-market values and excess stock returns to different dimensions of socially responsible performance. We find that socially responsible investing (SRI) impacts on stock returns by lowering the book-to-market ratio and not by generating positive alphas. Our result is consistent with the theoretical work suggesting that SRI is reflected in demand differences between SRI and non-SRI stock. It also explains why so few studies are able to establish a link between alpha’s and SRI.     

The business of blacklisting

The omission of ideology from managerial discourse leaves unacknowledged the dominant influences that shape patterns of thinking and acting. The Cold War offers one such framework for analyzing the intersection of management and ideology. Specifically, the anti‐Communist blacklist in the United States offers a rich opportunity to explore the actions of business leaders and to test the assumptions on which those actions were based. Businessmen played a key role in creating and supporting the blacklist. This study suggests that enforcers of the blacklist distorted the nature of public response. The evidence suggests that businessmen were responding from an ideological rather than a pragmatic position and that, from a pragmatic perspective, they might have been well advised to ignore the blacklisters. Copyright © 2008 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modeling Energy and Development: An Evaluation of Models and Concepts

Most global energy models are developed by institutes from developed countries, focusing primarily on issues that are important in industrialized countries. Evaluation of the results for Asia of the IPCC/SRES models shows that broad concepts of energy and development, the energy ladder and the environmental Kuznets curve, can be observed in the results of the models. However, improvements can be made in modeling the issues that underlie these concepts, like traditional fuels, electrification, economic structural change, income distribution, and informal economies. Given the rapidly growing importance of energy trajectories of developing countries for global sustainability, the challenge for the future is to develop energy models that include all these aspects of energy and development.     

Global consumer study to identify water wastage in the usage of automatic dishwashers

In dishcleaning automatic dishwashers do clearly win over manual cleaning when it comes to efficiency: Resources can be saved without compromising on hygiene. But mistakes in the usage behaviour can equalize saving advantages. Consumers in nine countries, covering different regions of the world, were asked about their dishcleaning behaviour to identify if this household work is done in a resource saving way. By analysing mistakes in the current behaviour, the potential of water savings shall be estimated.     

How suitable is CBA for the ex-ante evaluation of transport projects and policies? A discussion from the perspective of ethics

Nowadays in most western countries CBA is the standard method to ex-ante evaluate transport policy options. Despite its popularity CBA has often been criticized for several reasons, most of them related to the utilitarian perspective and related ethical considerations. This paper gives an overview of ethically relevant critics on CBA. Rather than rejecting CBA as the method to be preferred the paper concludes that researchers should be aware of its limitations and gives guidance on how to deal with the weaknesses of CBA from an ethical point of view.