Digging in the dirt? Extractive industry FDI and corruption

Does corruption attract or deter foreign investment in the extractive sectors? This article presents an econometric analysis of extractive industry foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to 81 countries in the period 1996–2009. The results suggest that increased corruption within a country is associated with increased extractive industry FDI, but at a diminishing rate as corruption increases grow larger. For realistic changes in corruption, however, more corruption is associated with more extractive industry investment.     

The housing problem and revealed preference theory: duality and an application

This paper exhibits a duality between the theory of revealed preference of Afriat and the housing allocation problem of Shapley and Scarf. In particular, it is shown that Afriat’s theorem can be interpreted as a second welfare theorem in the housing problem. Using this duality, the revealed preference problem is connected to an optimal assignment problem, and a geometrical characterization of the rationalizability of experiment data is given. This allows in turn to give new indices of rationalizability of the data and to define weaker notions of rationalizability, in the spirit of Afriat’s efficiency index.     

Three questions about engagement and exclusion in responsible investment

There is a move towards more use of engagement strategies in responsible investment. This change in strategies is motivated by a number of claims about the effectiveness of engagement versus exclusion of companies from the investment universe (the set of investment objects available to an investor). This paper examines the basis for three central claims: (1) That engagement, in contrast to exclusion, does not reduce the investment universe; (2) That exclusion reduces an investor's influence on a company; and (3) That engagement with exclusion is necessarily a more effective means of influencing companies than pure exclusion. All three claims are argued to be open to challenge. It is possible that the move towards more engagement reflects bureaucratic incentives and political considerations among institutional investors, rather than arguments about the effectiveness and efficiency of engagement.     

Human rights and positive corporate duties: the importance of corporate–state interaction

While it is commonly accepted that corporations have negative duties to respect human rights, the question of whether rights also imply positive duties for corporations is contentious. The recent reports of the United Nations special representative on business and human rights contend that corporations do not have positive duties, but the arguments this is based on are flawed from an ethical point of view. In particular, the reports fail to consider the implications of interactions between corporations and states. For rights to be secured, corporations may face duties to use their power to pressure governments into performing their assigned duties, and duties not to undermine the role of the government. The interaction of corporations and governments also has implications for choosing effective instruments to advance human rights. International initiatives that do not take this interaction into account will be ineffective or, at worst, counterproductive.     

On the distribution of profits and covering of war-risk

Abstract

Extract

Owing to the low premium rates used by Norwegian Life Insurance Companies, the solution of the question relating to the covering of the war-risk offers, in their case, peculiar difficulties. In their proposal for a new basis of calculations the Norwegian actuaries pointed to the desirability of the Companies trying, to a greater extent than heretofore, to arrive at the full payment, in case of a war, of claims arising from deaths among insured persons participating in the war. Most of the Norwegian Companies introduced the new calculations from Jan. 1st 1925, the proposal of the minority as to loading having been adopted. Only one of the companies, the Idun, granted to its policyholders the right to full indemnity in case of death in war, and this right was given on the basis of a special regulation for the allotment of profits.     

COMONOTONIC MEASURES OF MULTIVARIATE RISKS

We propose a multivariate extension of a well‐known characterization by S. Kusuoka of regular and coherent risk measures as maximal correlation functionals. This involves an extension of the notion of comonotonicity to random vectors through generalized quantile functions. Moreover, we propose to replace the current law invariance, subadditivity, and comonotonicity axioms by an equivalent property we call strong coherence and that we argue has more natural economic interpretation. Finally, we reformulate the computation of regular and coherent risk measures as an optimal transportation problem, for which we provide an algorithm and implementation.     

Aura: Aesthetic Business Creativity

As markets all over the world are becoming more and more surplus-markets, competition is gradually taking new forms. At the same time as markets are overloaded with products and alienation is growing, companies that produce feelings that tries to give meaning not only on the level as a marketing concept, is growing. Introducing the concept aura in marketing, this article explores the process how values becomes tangible in the mind of the customer. Aura is defined as a cover that is related to the feeling-experiences of beauty, exclusiveness, unique and authenticity that a product, service or a brand creates. Aura-production describes the building-process how aura is produced and factors that influence the outcome of the aura.     

The geometry of global production and factor price equalisation

We consider a production economy where commodities are partitioned into K irreproducible factors and L   reproducible goods, and the production technologies have constant returns to scale. We examine the geometry of the global production set in the space of commodities, and we derive theorems of non-substitution type. We define the “factors values” of the different goods, we use them to characterize the efficient production plans, and we investigate in detail the relations between the prices of goods and the prices of factors. We show that the prices of factors uniquely determine the prices of goods, and that, generically, equalising the prices of 2K$2K$ goods equalises the prices of factors.