Transnational Agrarian Movements: Origins and Politics, Campaigns and Impact

This essay introduces a special issue of the Journal of Agrarian Change on transnational agrarian movements (TAMs). The contributors' methods and subjects vary widely in geographical, temporal and political scope. The contributors to this collection share an understanding of TAMs' complexity that grows out of an appreciation of the complicated historical origins and the delicate political balancing acts that necessarily characterize any effort to construct cross-border alliances linking highly heterogeneous organizations, social classes, ethnicities, political viewpoints and regions. This introductory essay outlines the TAMs' deep historical roots and also explains why and how the authors in this collection see this complexity as an essential element in understanding TAMs. This complexity can be understood by looking at seven common themes: (i) representation and agendas, (ii) political strategies and forms of actions, (iii) impact, (iv) TAMs as arenas of action between different (sub)national movements, (v) class origins, (vi) ideological and political differences and (vii) the dynamics of alliance-building. By acknowledging TAMs' contradictions, ambiguities and internal tensions, the authors also seek, from the standpoint of engaged intellectuals, to advance a transformative political project by better comprehending its origins, past successes and failures, and current and future challenges.     

Consumer Perceptions of Credibility and Selling Intent Among Advertisements,Advertorials, and Editorials: A Persuasion Knowledge Model Approach

This article presents the results of a study of consumer reaction to three different types of information delivery in magazines: editorials, advertorials, and advertisements. The study draws on the Persuasion Knowledge Model to examine the effect of each form of information delivery on source influence, source credibility, perceived selling intent and purchase intention. The analysis indicates that the form of information delivery in print media affects the perceived credibility of the source of the information, the perceived selling intention and the purchase intention. Implications for marketers and policy-makers are also discussed.     

The Private Provision of Public Goods under Uncertainty: A Symmetric-Equilibrium Approach

Various studies have examined whether increased uncertainty about the non‐Nash response of others to an individual's voluntary contribution to a public good affects that individual's contribution so as to mitigate the free‐rider problem. We extend this single‐agent approach to the analysis of a symmetric equilibrium. We provide conditions on group size and endogenous relative risk aversion that imply increased equilibrium contributions in response to greater uncertainty about the productivity of each individual's contribution to the actual level of the public good. These results enable us to broaden the circumstances in which the theory predicts that increased uncertainty reduces free riding.     

Budget Balancedness and Optimal Income Taxation

We make two contributions to the theory of optimal income taxation. First, assuming conditions sufficient for existence of a Pareto optimal income tax and public goods mechanism, we show that if agents' preferences satisfy an extended notion of single crossing called capacity constrained single crossing, then there exists a Pareto optimal income tax and public goods mechanism that is budget balancing. Second, we show that, even without capacity constrained single crossing, existence of a budget balancing Pareto optimal income tax and public goods mechanism is guaranteed if the set of agent types contains no atoms.     

Lawyers and medical torts: medical malpractice litigation as a residual option

The relationship between the supply of lawyers and the frequency of medical malpractice claims for one state is examined. A model of the location decisions of lawyers within a state developed. These decisions depend on their forecasts of the amounts of various types of legal business which will be available. Because such forecasts are inperfect, however, at a given time an excess of lawyers in any given hypothesized, there will then be an incentive to dip deeper into the available pool of malpractice cases. This hypothesis is tested and it is found that the estimated excess of lawyers over those required to perform other tasks is a significant factor in explaining the filing of malpractice claims.     

PRODUCT VARIETY AND DEMAND UNCERTAINTY: WHY MARKUPS VARY WITH QUALITY*

We demonstrate that demand uncertainty can explain equilibrium product variety in the presence of sunk costs. Product variety is an efficient response to uncertainty because it reduces the expected costs associated with excess capacity. We find that within the firm's product line, the highest quality product has the highest profit margin but the lowest percentage margin, while the lowest quality product has the highest percentage margin but the lowest absolute margin. Both of these relationships are consistent with evidence available from marketing studies.     

Disentangling the paradoxical alliances between art market and art world

The relationship between art and market can be rendered visible only by closely examining the actions of contemporary artists, art critics, and writers, and the efforts of gallery and auction house merchandisers. A market orientation is just one way of evaluating the activities of the art world. Art and market are not reducible to each other, no matter the prevailing ideology. While the market operates on a narrative that valorizes the latest trend in imagemaking, aided by the creation of new technologies, it is neither the only nor the most important arbitrator of value for the viewer. Disentangling the art‐market complex is a necessary first step in reclaiming a holistic view of the consumption of art. We take that step in this paper.     

The effect of CEO pay deviations on CEO withdrawal,firm size,and firm profits

We build upon previous work on the effects of deviations in CEO pay from labor markets to assess how overcompensation or undercompensation affects subsequent voluntary CEO withdrawal, firm size, and firm profitability, taking into account the moderating effect of firm ownership structure. We find that CEO underpayment is related to changes in firm size and CEO withdrawal, and that the relationship between CEO underpayment and CEO withdrawal is stronger in owner‐controlled firms. We also show that when CEOs are overpaid, there is higher firm profitability; a relationship that is weaker among manager‐controlled firms. We then discuss the implications that these findings have for future research. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Application of the Capital Asset Pricing Model to Multi-period Investments

This paper presents a method for evaluating a multi-period asset that is consistent with the valuations implied by the capital asset pricing model, and shows how the results of the valuation processes can be expressed in terms of a number of commonly used valuation formulas.
Ce papier expose tout d'abord une méthode permettant d'estimer une valeur immobilisée à multiples périodes qui soit compatible avec les évaluations fournies par le modéle d'bvaluation de l'actif immobilisé. II montre ensuite comment les résultats des opérations d'haluation peuvent être exprimés au moyen d'un nombre de formules d'estimation couramment utilisées.
Dieser Beitrag stellt eine Methode für die Bewertung einer mehrperiodischen Investition dar, die mit den Bewertungen, die das 'Capital Asset Pricing' Modell impliziert, übereinstimmt. Er zeigt, wie die Ergebnisse des Bewertungsprozesses mittels einer Anzahl gebrluchlicher Formeln ausgedruckt werden konnen.