Financial Safety Nets: Lessons from Chile

Should governments ever override bank regulators who are attemptingto close down insolvent financial institutions? An analysisof Chile's history shows that time after time from the 1850sto the 1980s, prudential banking regulations were abandonedduring economic crises when attempts to impose tight solvencystandards proved impossible to enforce. Chile's current stringentbanking regulations may prove more durable, but mounting financialdistress is equally likely to lead the government to adopt policiesthat prevent bank failure but undermine the authority of regulators. Bank regulators, including the central bank, are responsiblefor creating a financial safety net to protect depositors againstloss and for enforcing the rules of prudent behavior that arerequired for a stable financial system. Because safety netsoften additionally cover losses to bank owners and borrowers,the support they offer encourages risk-taking by the privatesector an action that may promote financial deepening, but ata high budgetary cost to the government. Poorly designed safetynets may have to be suspended during crises to prevent lossesfrom mounting and to limit the government's liability.      

Queer eye for a gay guy: Using market‐specific symbols in advertising to attract gay consumers without alienating the mainstream

Although advertisers have flooded gay and lesbian print media in recent years, it is estimated that more than half of the gay and lesbian population does not read gay media. Hence, this study addresses the question: How may marketers target gays and lesbians in mainstream media without alienating heterosexual consumers? As such, this study assesses responses of both heterosexual and homosexual consumers to advertising content that includes mainstream imagery, implicit gay and lesbian imagery, and explicit gay or lesbian imagery to provide advertisers with a better understanding of how to effectively crossover into mainstream media with gay‐targeted advertisements. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Methodological and Ethical Issues of Conducting Management Research in the Voluntary Sector

This article discusses the methodological and ethical issues involved in conducting research in the voluntary sector. By outlining a proposed research strategy the authors highlight the challenges and issues that voluntary sector researchers face. The article concludes that the nature of the voluntary sector and the unique characteristics of voluntary organizations not only impact on the development of voluntary sector management theory but also on the research design, ethics and practices adopted for empirical studies into voluntary organizations.     

The origins of power in buyer–seller relationships

Who, or what, holds power in business-to-business buyer–seller relationships is a debate at the heart of power theory. Power in buyer–seller relationships is variously seen as the property of organizations, individuals or relationships yet to be theoretically valid and useful to management, integration of these schools of thought needs to be operationalized. This paper opens up future research avenues through identifying how buyers and sellers understand the origins of power and the nature of self perceived and countervailing power. The paper presents results from 10 focus groups of both buyers and sellers revealing the underlying origins of experienced power. The results support the proposition that power in buyer–seller relationships is a pluralistic concept and that extant theories focused on organizational, individual or relational elements of power are independently too narrow in their reflections of the power construct; rather, they are all part of the same broad construct.     

Migration transition or migration transformation in the Asian dragon economies?

There has been a marked tendency to interpret the recent transformation of international migration systems in Eastern Asia in terms of a ‘migration transition’ model. The transition in these countries from net emigration to net immigration, with major inflows from poorer adjacent countries, is seen as being driven by an intricate regional pattern of uneven development but growing economic integration. This paper challenges this view through an examination of the trade, investment and migration linkages of the region’s four dragon economies (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan). It argues that the key influences on their international migration streams reflect, above all, the functions of these states as second-order, global city regions. Their place in the global capitalist system creates a shared demand for very particular types of both highly skilled and unskilled labour, but the migration policies of the four states are independently, and therefore distinctively, socially constructed. — Il y a une tendance à utiliser un modèle de ‘transition de migration’ pour interpréter les transformations récentes des systèmes de migration internationaux en Asie de l’est. La transition de l’émigration nette à l’immigration nette dans ces pays, avec des arrivées massives des pays adjacents plus pauvres, est supposée être due à un modèle régional complexe de développement inégal mais d’intégration économique croissante. Cet article questionne ce modèle et examine les liens entre le commerce, l’investissement, et la migration dans les quatre économies dragons de la région (Hong Kong, Singapour, la Corée du sud et Taï?wan). Il soutient que les influences majeures sur leur flux de migration internationale reflète avant tout les fonctions de ces états en tant que régions urbaines globales de deuxième ordre. Leur place dans le système capitaliste global crée une demande pour un type très particulier de travailleurs qualifiés et non qualifiés, mais les politiques de migration des quatre états sont indépendemment, et donc distinctement, socialement construites.     

The effect of mass shootings on the demand for guns

Unfortunately, mass shootings are common occurrences in the United States. When one occurs, it makes national news, becomes fodder for the ongoing national gun debate among politicians and activists, and may impact the demand for guns through fears of violence and future gun regulation. We attempt to estimate the overall effect of mass shootings on gun demand in the United States and how this effect varies across the nation, time, and other factors. Mass shootings are found to increase the national demand for firearms, with the effect lasting up to 2 months. Stronger effects are found in gun-heavy and/or Republican states but not necessarily near where the shooting occurred. Demand spikes are also larger if the shooter was White, female, or if the event took place in a rural setting, but seemingly less related to the specific venue, the shooter's age or known mental health, the number of fatalities, or weapon characteristics.     

Chasing noise

We present a simple model in which rational but uninformed traders occasionally chase noise as if it were information, thereby amplifying sentiment shocks and moving prices away from fundamental values. In the model, noise traders can have an impact on market equilibrium disproportionate to their size in the market. The model offers a partial explanation for the surprisingly low market price of financial risk in the spring of 2007.     

A formal model of theory choice in science

Summary. Since the work of Thomas Kuhn, the role of social factors in the scientific enterprise has been a major concern in the philosophy and history of science. In particular, conformity effects among scientists have been used to question whether science naturally progresses over time. Using neoclassical economic reasoning, this paper develops a formal model of scientific theory choice which incorporates social factors. Our results demonstrate that the influence of social factors on scientific progress is more complex than previously thought. The patterns of theory choice predicted by the model seem consistent with historical episodes of theory change. Received: April 8, 1997; revised version: April 30, 1998     

Terrorism and the Invisible Hook

This article investigates and compares the root causes of transnational terrorism and piracy. In order to accomplish this, we construct a novel data set that catalogues terrorist activity and piracy over the years 1992–2008, paying particular attention to the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean since 1991. These data are then merged with other information detailing the economic, political, and security posture of each organization during the same period so that we can examine the relationship between economic prosperity, security, terrorism, and piracy. The main conclusion is that terrorism is mostly unrelated to economic conditions, while piracy responds to both economic payoffs and military deterrents.