Falling through the cracks: International accounting rate reform at the ITU and WTO

Heightened attention to international accounting rates at the ITU and the WTO has led some observers to conclude that carriers soon will impose cost-based termination charges. This article concludes that while accounting rates have declined on some routes, many incumbent carriers can and will delay or thwart progress. The article examines the FCC's unilateral regulatory initiative as evidence of a growing schism between governments keen on immediate progress and those that fear a ‘free fall’ in accounting rates and a quick end to settlement surpluses. The article also considers technological innovations like call-back and Internet telephony with an eye toward assesssing whether and how widespread accounting rate reductions will occur.     

Using R to teach econometrics

R, an open‐source programming environment for data analysis and graphics, has in only a decade grown to become a de‐facto standard for statistical analysis against which many popular commercial programs may be measured. The use of R for the teaching of econometric methods is appealing. It provides cutting‐edge statistical methods which are, by R's open‐source nature, available immediately. The software is stable, available at no cost, and exists for a number of platforms, including various flavours of Unix and Linux, Windows (9x/NT/2000), and the MacOS. Manuals are also available for download at no cost, and there is extensive on‐line information for the novice user. This review focuses on using R for teaching econometrics. Since R is an extremely powerful environment, this review should also be of interest to researchers. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Ethical Mutual Fund Performance Debate: New Evidence from Canada

Although the academic interest in ethical mutual fund performance has developed steadily, the evidence to date is mainly sample-specific. To tackle this critique, new research should extend to unexplored countries. Using this as a motivation, we examine the performance and risk sensitivities of Canadian ethical mutual funds vis-à-vis their conventional peers. In order to overcome the methodological deficiencies most prior papers suffered from, we use performance measurement approaches in the spirit of Carhart (1997, Journal of Finance 52(1): 57–82) and Ferson and Schadt (1996, Journal of Finance 51(2): 425–461). In doing so, we investigate the aggregated performance and investment style of ethical and conventional mutual funds and allow for time variation in the funds’ systematic risk. Our␣Canadian evidence supports the conjecture that any␣performance differential between ethical mutual funds and their conventional peers is statistically insignificant.      

Ratio Analysis Using Rank Transformation

This paper presents an alternate method for transforming financial ratios. Ratios are ranked and scaled into a uniform distribution with boundaries between 0 and 1. Conceptually, we suggest that this method solves a number of methodological problems associated with ratios, including constrained choice of regression models, ratio outliers, negative ratios, and non-normal distributions. Scaled ranks of financial ratios are also conceptually appealing because they appear to capture comparative ordinal data about cross-sectional relationships between firms.The study empirically tests scaled rank transformations by examining the association of the transformations with stock returns. Results show that models using relative ranked accounting ratios have more explanatory and predictive power than untransformed, log-transformed and square-root transformed ratios.     

An Integrative Model of the Influence of Parental and Peer Support on Consumer Ethical Beliefs: The Mediating Role of Self-Esteem,Power, and Materialism

What causes adolescents to develop consumer’ ethical beliefs? Prior research has largely focused on the negative influence of peers and negative patterns of parent–child interactions to explain risky and unethical consumer behaviors. We take a different perspective by focusing on the positive support of parents and peers in adolescent social development. An integrative model is developed that links parental and peer support with adolescents’ self-worth motives, their materialistic tendencies, and their consumer ethical beliefs. In a study of 984 adolescents, we demonstrate support for a sequential mediation model in which peer and parental support is positively related to adolescents’ self-esteem and feelings of power, which are each associated with decreased materialism as a means of compensating for low self-worth. This reduced materialism is, in turn, associated with more ethical consumer beliefs.     

Embedding Ethics: Dialogic Partnerships and Communitarian Business Ethics

Although emotion has become one of the most popular research areas within organizational scholarship, few studies have considered its connection with unethical behavior. Using dual-process theory, we expand on the rationalist perspective within the field of behavioral ethics by considering the process through which two discrete emotions, anger and guilt, influence unethical behavior. Across two studies using different methodologies, we found that anger increases unethical behavior whereas guilt reduces unethical behavior. These effects were mediated by impulsive and deliberative processing. Overall, our results shed light on distinct mechanisms through which emotions can influence unethical behavior. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Successful Psychopaths: Are They Unethical Decision-Makers and Why?

Successful psychopaths, defined as individuals in the general population who nevertheless possess some degree of psychopathic traits, are receiving increasing amounts of empirical attention. To date, little is known about such individuals, specifically with regard to how they respond to ethical dilemmas in business contexts. This study investigated this relationship, proposing a mediated model in which the positive relationship between psychopathy and unethical decision-making is explained through the process of moral disengagement, defined as a cognitive orientation that facilitates unethical choice. The results of the study supported this model, and implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Climate reversals and the transition to agriculture

The transition to agriculture is generally acknowledged to be the economic foundation for population growth over the last 10,000 years and for modern civilization itself. Dates for pristine transitions to agriculture have become a key input into empirical work on economic growth over the very long run. We propose a model of the transition in which population and technology respond endogenously to climate. The available data on the southwest Asian case, other cases of pristine transition, and cases of non-transition are consistent with our model, but often inconsistent with rival explanations. In addition, our theory of the origins of agriculture has implications for instrumental variable strategies that can be used in empirical research on long run economic growth and development.      

Greening the Street-Level Procurer: Challenges in the Strongly Decentralized Swedish System

This article investigates the every-day street-level practice of green public procurement (GPP) in Sweden, a country with one of the most decentralized systems of public administration within the European Union (EU). The street-level procurement officers in Swedish local and regional government are in charge of purchases estimated to represent between 10% and 15% of Sweden’s GDP. This article examines the constraining and enabling factors behind the individual procurement officer’s choice of green procurement in textiles and clothing through a combination of qualitative interviews and a review of documentary sources. The analysis shows that while indirect support through European and national soft regulation and policy advice is imperative for “greening” procurement, the direct factors which influence the local outcome of GPP comprises factors on the local level: political commitment and environmental knowledge, the organizational structure of local government and the local interpretation of the regulatory framework. This study shows that a decentralized structure has possibilities of furthering ambitions of buying green if there are committed politicians and public officials, an optimal level of internal centralisation and an external support structure of knowledge and enabling rules.