Trade Liberalisation,Market Structure and the Incentive to Merge

In this article, we consider whether a movement towards freer international trade generates incentives for firms to merge and if so what forms of merger are most profitable. In a linear Cournot framework, we show that a reduction in trade costs may, but will not necessarily, encourage mergers. Both market structure and the level to which trade costs fall are shown to play a decisive role. Domestic mergers will be encouraged only if the product market is not highly concentrated and trade costs fall below a threshold level. International mergers can be encouraged in any market structure, and are generally more profitable than domestic mergers.     

Corporate Ethical Values and Altruism: The Mediating Role of Career Satisfaction

This study explores the ability of career satisfaction to mediate the relationship between corporate ethical values and altruism. Using a sample of individuals employed in a four-campus, regional health science center, it was determined that individual career satisfaction fully mediated the positive relationship between perceptions of corporate ethical values and self-reported altruism. The findings imply that companies dedicating attention to positive corporate ethical values can enhance employee attitudes and altruistic behaviors, especially when individuals experience a high degree of career satisfaction.     

MCMC ESTIMATION OF LÉVY JUMP MODELS USING STOCK AND OPTION PRICES

We examine the performances of several popular Lévy jump models and some of the most sophisticated affine jump‐diffusion models in capturing the joint dynamics of stock and option prices. We develop efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for estimating parameters and latent volatility/jump variables of the Lévy jump models using stock and option prices. We show that models with infinite‐activity Lévy jumps in returns significantly outperform affine jump‐diffusion models with compound Poisson jumps in returns and volatility in capturing both the physical and risk‐neutral dynamics of the S&P 500 index. We also find that the variance gamma model of Madan, Carr, and Chang with stochastic volatility has the best performance among all the models we consider.     

Astroturfing Global Warming: It Isn’t Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence

Astroturf organizations are fake grassroots organizations usually sponsored by large corporations to support any arguments or claims in their favor, or to challenge and deny those against them. They constitute the corporate version of grassroots social movements. Serious ethical and societal concerns underline this astroturfing practice, especially if corporations are successful in influencing public opinion by undertaking a social movement approach. This study is motivated by this particular issue and examines the effectiveness of astroturf organizations in the global warming context, wherein large corporate polluters have an incentive to set up astroturf organizations to undermine the importance of human activities in climate change. We conduct an experiment to determine whether astroturf organizations have an impact on the level of user certainty about the causes of global warming. Results show that people who used astroturf websites became more uncertain about the causes of global warming and humans’ role in the phenomenon than people who used grassroots websites. Astroturf organizations are hence successful in promoting business interests over environmental protection. In addition to the multiple business ethics issues it raises, astroturfing poses a significant threat to the legitimacy of the grassroots movement.     

Would Freeing Up World Trade Reduce Poverty and Inequality? The Vexed Role of Agricultural Distortions

Trade policy reforms in recent decades have sharply reduced the distortions that were harming agriculture in developing countries, yet global trade in farm products continues to be far more distorted than trade in non‐farm goods. Those distortions reduce some forms of poverty and inequality but worsen others, so the net effects are unclear without empirical modelling. This article summarises a series of new economy‐wide global and national empirical studies that focus on the net effects of the remaining distortions to world merchandise trade on poverty and inequality globally and in various developing countries. The global Linkage model results suggest that removing those remaining distortions would reduce international inequality, largely by boosting net farm incomes and raising real wages for unskilled workers in developing countries, and would reduce the number of poor people worldwide by 3 per cent. The analysis based on the Global Trade Analysis Project model for a sample of 15 countries, and nine stand‐alone national case studies, all point to larger reductions in poverty, especially if only the non‐poor are subjected to increased income taxation to compensate for the loss of trade tax revenue.     

Debt to Society: Asset Poverty and Prisoner Reentry

Every year, millions of people exit American jails and prisons and attempt to reintegrate into society. Ex-offenders face many obstacles during the transition. Scholars contend that securing employment is central to a successful transition. A job that allows an ex-offender to earn an income above the poverty line is especially significant, recent studies have shown. Consequently, many prisoner reentry initiatives are focused on expanding employment opportunities for ex-offenders. However, the almost exclusive emphasis on employment as the measurement of economic well-being is short-sighted because it ignores the importance of financial education and asset ownership. Prisoner reentry programs should include an emphasis on financial education in addition to an emphasis on employment as a means of reducing recidivism rates and improving the economic well-being of the ex-offenders and receiving communities. The paper concludes with a discussion of policy implications.     

Dominant Articulations in Academic Business and Society Discourse on NGO–Business Relations: A Critical Assessment

Relations between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and companies have been the subject of a sharply increasing amount of publications in recent years within academic business journals. In this article, we critically assess this fast-developing body of literature, which we treat as forming a ‘business and society discourse’ on NGO–business relations. Drawing on discourse theory, we examine 199 academic articles in 11 business and society, international business, and management journals. Focusing on the dominant articulations on the NGO–business relationship and key signifiers they rely on, we analyze the problem-settings of articles in order to reveal the statements that are acceptable and appropriate within this field. Our threefold aim is to (1) identify dominant articulations of NGO–business relations in business and society discourse, (2) expose those articulations that are silenced or suppressed by these dominant articulations, and (3) critically assess possible power effects of these discursive dynamics in the field of discursivity. While business and society discourse on NGO–business relations overall remains open to many different articulations, we also find that those articulations that focus on NGO–business partnerships and governance initiatives tend to privilege collaborative and deliberative ways of engaging and marginalize more adversarial subject positions. We call for more recognition of the potentially constructive role that can be played by conflict.     

Improving Distribution Service Performance Through Effective Production and Logistics Integration

Current empirical research on logistics' relationships with other departments has mostly neglected the interface with production. On the basis of data from 387 manufacturing companies, we answer a recent call for research and extend the literature by examining effective working relationships and achieved integration between the production and logistics functions regarding their performance impacts and their antecedents. With respect to the former, we take a resource‐based perspective, showing that integration achieved between the production and logistics functions drives distribution service performance by serving as a pivotal capability element in the resource–capability–value chain. Within this chain, effective working relationships constitute the underlying resources and prove to be a strong driver of achieved integration. With respect to antecedents, we employ the theory of cooperation and competition and identify positive goal interdependence to substantially improve working relationships between production and logistics. Furthermore, we find this effect to be amplified via formalized performance measurement systems.