Quantity and quality effects of advertising: a demand system approach

Quantity and quality effects of advertising are investigated in this article. A censored demand system is estimated for fish, beef, pork, and other meats using Norwegian household data. In the demand model, generic fish advertising and meat advertising is introduced as demand shifters, and at the same time unit values are treated as endogenous. The unit values capture the quality of the commodities. Empirical findings show that advertising can have both quantity and quality effects on household demand.     

Foreign ownership and corporate income taxation: An empirical evaluation

Foreign ownership allows countries to effectively export part of their corporate tax burden. Hence, countries with high foreign ownership are expected to impose relatively high corporate taxes. The findings of this paper suggest that there indeed is an economically significant positive relationship between foreign ownership and tax burdens in Europe. Already significant foreign ownership levels in Europe offer an explanation for the absence of a ‘race to the bottom’ in corporate tax levels.     

Consumer Resistance Against Regulation: The Case of Health Care

Regulation fostering Managed Care alternatives in health insurance is spreading. This work reports on an experiment designed to measure the amounts of compensation asked by the Swiss population (in terms of reduced premiums) for Managed-Care type restrictions in the provision of health care. It finds that restrictions on the freedom of physician choice would require an average compensation of more than one-third of the premium, while generic substitution even meets with a small willingness to pay. Marked preference heterogeneity is an argument against regulation imposing uniformity of contract in Swiss social health insurance.     

Do women react differently to incentives? Evidence from experimental data and payroll records

We consider the response to incentives as an explanation for observed productivity differences within a firm that paid its workers piece rates. We provide a framework within which the observed productivity differences can be decomposed into two parts: One due to differences in ability and the other due to differences in the response to incentives. We apply this decomposition to male and female workers from a tree-planting firm in British Columbia, Canada. Our evidence (both experimental and nonexperimental) suggests that there was no difference in the reaction to incentives between male and female planters. The productivity differential male planters enjoyed arose because of differences in ability, interpreted as strength in our application.     

THE 1993 REVISED SYSTEM OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTS: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

The 1993 System of National Accounts is a remarkable document, but the System also has some major imbalances and omissions. The present paper spells out four aspects of the SNA that require further development: (1) accounting for the costs of economic change; (2) delineation of information as an economic commodity; (3) overhaul of the methodology underlying input-output accounts; and, (4) consequences of the System's implicit use of compacted accounting. These developments can be incorporated in a Supplementary Document in the near future. We need not wait 25 years.     

The stochastic implications of rent maximization: an application to stumpage rates for timber in British Columbia

We construct a model of rent‐maximizing behaviour by a single seller of timber in the absence of a formal market, deriving the stochastic implications of rent maximization for timber prices (stumpage rates) when other input and output (lumber) prices are random. Subsequently, we examine the model's ability to describe monthly, time‐series, stumpage‐rate data from British Columbia, Canada between January 1979 and October 1999. Deviations of stumpage rates from their long‐run trend are also structured by an error‐correction model which suggests that between 13 and 20% of period‐to‐period changes in stumpage rates can be explained by an equilibrium adjustment term. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perceived fairness,decision control,and commitment in international joint venture management teams

Previous research examining the effectiveness of international joint ventures (IJVs) has focused on differences in the backgrounds and bargaining power of IJV parent firms, while little attention has been given to the IJV itself. This study takes a different perspective by examining the relationship between IJV parent firms and the IJV. Specifically, we examine how IJV and parent involvement in strategic decision‐making influences the IJV management team's commitment to the IJV and to the parent firms. We hypothesize that the IJV management team tends to be more committed to the IJV than to the parent firms, and that there is a strong positive relationship between procedural justice, strategic decision control, and organizational commitment. A field study involving 51 IJVs supported our hypotheses. We discuss the implications of organizational commitment and procedural justice for managing IJVs. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do stakeholder groups influence environmental management system development in the Dutch agri‐food sector?

This paper presents the results of a survey that included 492 companies in the Dutch agri‐food sector with respect to the influence of stakeholder groups on the companies' level of environmental management system (EMS) implementation. It is concluded that primary stakeholders (government, clients) are more relevant for EMS development than secondary stakeholders (such as environmental organizations). The results suggest that small and medium‐sized companies are able to accommodate to demands with respect to the implementation of internally oriented care systems (I‐EMSs). I‐EMSs focus at the single firm or location. In general, they are predominantly influenced by governmental and other ‘non‐commercial’ stakeholder groups. For the implementation of externally oriented EMSs (E‐EMSs), which focus on the supply chain and network, qualitative rather than quantitative relationship characteristics between companies and the government are important. Moreover, commercial stakeholder groups (such as suppliers, clients and competitors) influence E‐EMS levels significantly. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The Impact of Ownership Structure on the Structure of Compensation Committees

The practice of appointing insiders to the compensation committee has drawn considerable criticism since compensation committees play an important role in executive compensation decisions. This paper examines the association between the firm's ownership structure and the decision to use insiders on the compensation committee. The paper finds that CEO stock ownership is positively related to the presence of insiders on the compensation committee whereas the stockholdings of non-executive employees, as a group, is negatively related to the presence of insiders.