Tariff rate quotas and the economic impact of agricultural trade liberalization in the world trade organization

Since their implementation at the Uruguay Round, tariff rate quotas (TRQs) have become a widely used instrument of trade policy in agricultural trade. With almost 1,300 TRQs scheduled at the World Trade Organization, this paper will examine their economic effects more closely. First, the theoretical background of TRQs is examined. Then, a short overview of the Uruguay Round and their institutional background is given. We demonstrate that official statistics, which do not count TRQs as nontariff barriers, are at least highly misleading. Very often, their effects are the same as those of regular quotas, including redistributive effects. The prominent example of the European banana regime is used to illustrate all of these points.A first draft of this paper was presented at the International Atlantic Economic Conference, March 14–21, 2000, Munich, Germany. The results are part of the research project "The Influence of the Institutional Design on the Actual Impacts of Agricultural Trade Liberalization after GATT." Financial support by Volkswagen Stiftung is gratefully acknowledged.     

The Eyes Have It: How a Car's Face Influences Consumer Categorization and Evaluation of Product Line Extensions

This research focuses on a previously unexamined risk associated with the widely used new product development strategy of line extensions. Specifically, it explores consumer reactions when line extensions become too visually similar and examines both short‐term and longer term strategies for solving the problem. Examined in the context of consumer durables, specifically, automobiles, the results show that consumers who make categorization mistakes when trying to distinguish between two visually similar product lines have more negative attitudes not only toward the product but also toward the parent brand. The results of Study 1 confirm that providing a design vocabulary that articulates the car's design features is effective in reducing consumer's categorization mistakes. In addition, results of Study 2 indicate that changes to the car's “eyes” (headlights) are more effective than changes to the car's “mouth” (grille) in helping consumers to differentiate among cars in the line.     

Incorporating sustainability criteria into credit risk management

Does a commercial debtor's economic, environmental and social performance in terms of sustainability affect its credit risk rating? Does adding criteria aimed at assessing a lender's environmental, social or sustainability practices provide added value to traditional financial rating criteria? Many analyses have reported that a correlation exists between companies' environmental and their financial performance. We checked out the assertion that it ‘pays to be sustainable’ by analyzing the role that criteria pertaining to sustainability and environmental orientation play in the commercial credit risk management process. Our results show that sustainability criteria can be used to predict the financial performance of a debtor and improve the predictive validity of the credit rating process. We conclude that the sustainability a firm demonstrates influences its creditworthiness as part of its financial performance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

A Regime‐Switching Approach to Modeling Rental Prices of U.K. Real Estate Sectors

This article uses regime‐switching models of the threshold type to analyze the adjustment process of rental prices for three U.K. commercial real estate sectors over the period 1974–2008. The nonlinear models outperform their linear counterparts in in‐sample fit. Their out‐of‐sample forecasting ability is better whenever the corresponding linear models contain a significant amount of neglected nonlinearity. Regime switches are triggered when the growth rates of rental price exceed certain threshold levels. For the industrial and retail sectors such regime switches occur in situations of strong excess demand, for the office sector they occur when there is strong excess supply.     

COMMENT ON THE 2010 WINCOTT LECTURE, ‘EUROPE: HOW CAN THINGS GET BETTER?’

The increasing centralisation of government at European Union level is eroding individual freedom. Greater EU regulation of financial markets, as advocated by Charlie McCreevy, represents a further threat to liberty, while the measures advocated would have been ineffective at preventing the current financial crisis.     

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.     

Getting a feel for price affect: A conceptual framework and empirical investigation of consumers' emotional responses to price information

Behavioral pricing research is cognitively biased. Therefore, the research agenda for this paper is to examine consumers' emotional responses to price information, or price affect. A conceptual framework of price affect based on appraisal theory is proposed. Moreover, a psychometric measure of price affect capturing positive and negative emotions is derived. A field experiment involving N = 1533 consumers reveals that a price increase leads to changes in price affect. Also, negative price affect is related to passive consumer behavior, whereas positive price affect is associated with proactive consumer behavior. Yet, a price increase reduces the importance of price affect in predicting consumer behavior. In addition, both price cognitions and price affect mediate the effect of a price increase on consumer behavior. Consistent with appraisal theory, a price increase exerts its causal influence on price affect through changes in price cognitions. Similarly, price affect mediates the effect of price cognitions on consumer behavior. Finally, price affect improves the prediction of consumer behavior beyond price cognitions. Results suggest that price affect is a stand alone, previously overlooked predictor of consumer behavior. Implications are discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.