Temporal Orientation and Corporate Social Responsibility: Global Evidence

There has been a growing emphasis on the importance of a long-term perspective in academia and practice. Yet understanding of the interdependency of those factors – the temporal preferences embedded in organizations and in societal values as well as the influence of temporal orientation of investors – remains limited. We theorize whether and how a firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) is affected by the societal temporal orientation, its time horizon, and its investors' time horizon. Using a global sample, we confirm that CSR activity is higher when a country has a long-term orientation culture, when the firm has a long-time horizon, and when the controlling institutional investor has a long-term investment horizon. We also find that the national culture's long-term orientation heightens the effect of a firm's long-time horizon on its CSR. Further, our results show that the effects of temporal orientation are more pronounced in environmental than in social CSR.     

Soviet Household Saving Function

In this paper, the Soviet household saving function is estimated using reconstructed data from the unpublished archival material: the Soviet family budget survey data. In addition, a shortage indicator is developed to capture both household purchasing power in comparison with the availability of consumer goods in the official market and the spillover of the household demand for consumer goods from the official retail market to the secondary one. A long-run solution of the Soviet household saving function, which includes a shortage indicator as one of the independent variables, is estimated using these data. The reliability of the long-run solution is confirmed by the short-run dynamics of the Soviet household saving function, which satisfy super-exogeneity, parameter constancy, and several diagnostic tests. The highly significant coefficient of the shortage indicator suggests that Soviet household saving behaviour was affected by shortages of consumer goods during 1965–1989. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Trade-offs in the allocation of prosecution resources: an opportunity cost of overcriminalization

One in every five citizens has a criminal record in Korea. Scarce prosecution resources have been severely skewed toward prosecuting more ‘legislated crime’ than ‘conventional crime’. We estimate the opportunity cost of this prosecutory pattern in terms of spillovers to conventional crimes. The cost was found to be substantial. For example, in 2003, the total spillovers accounted for approximately 25% of the increase in conventional crimes for 3 years from 2000 because of the disproportionate prosecutory focus on legislated crimes compared with that of the 1990s. This article has relevance to those countries with an overcriminalizing trend for legislated crimes.     

Standardization in electronic money

Abstract

Electronic money services are provided by the combination of Integrated Circuit (IC) cards and terminals. The compatibility of different brands of electronic money can be enabled by firms' joint adoption of standard terminals. In this paper, we analyse the effect of achieving compatibility among different brands of electronic money. We show that, if the unit production cost of a standard terminal is not so much different from that of a non-standard one, firms' joint adoption of standard terminals will increase the total sales of IC cards and the network size of terminals, thus raising consumers' surplus and firms' profits. On the other hand, if the unit cost of a standard terminal is so high that firms are discouraged from voluntarily adopting standard ones, the government may employ subsides to enhance efficiency. However, if the duty of implementing standardization is placed solely on the firms without subsidies, all the agents, including consumers and retailers, will be left worse off.     

A Pre-purchase Product Trial of a Monopolist with Multiple Products

For the heterogeneous consumers who do not know their individual utilities from a new product, a pre-purchase product trial would be helpful. We found out that a monopoly firm with two similar products would have a strong incentive not to allow a pre-purchase product trial, even though it is socially optimal to allow it. Furthermore, it is more likely for a monopoly firm with a pre-purchase product trial policy to introduce a new product to the market when introducing a new product is socially optimal.     

The Effects of Tariffs and Export Subsidies on Entry Barriers and Investment

This paper explains the effects of unilateral tariffs and export subsidies on entry decisions in an imperfectly competitive industry, and suggests that carefully targeted trade policies play a strategic role in shifting the industry structure and the terms of subsequent competition. The model provides a new justification for tariffs which is different from the traditional infant industry argument; the tariff affects foreign firms' reactions as well as those of the domestic firms. [410]     

The Permanent Export Hypothesis and Foreign Trade of a Centrally Planned Economy: A Case Study of North Korea

Huge outstanding debts of Third World Centrally Planned Economies(CPEs) notwithstanding, their trades with industrialized countries have been continuing briskly. In order to safeguard against an aggravation of current debts of the CPE, however, an industrialized country determines annually the maximum amount of imports permitted for a CPE on the basis of the CPE's permanent exports. This paper attempts to develop a permanent export model and apply it to the foreign trade of North Korea. [F 14]     

Is property crime caused by drug use or by drug enforcement policy?

The relationships among drug offenses, prorperty crime, and the allocation of police resources are investigated in a structural model using data from Florida countries. Law enforcement resources are scarce, and as efforts to combat drug crime increase the amount of these resources allocated to property crime is reduced. This reallocation of police resources results in reduced deterrence for property crime and, as a result, an increase in these crimes. The evidence presented suggests that rising property crimes in Florida are at least partially the result of drug enforcement policy.     

An alternative semiparametric estimate of the base-independence equivalence scale: an application to US consumer expenditure survey data

The deficit debate is a recurring theme in academic and political circles. The controversy is over the effect of deficits on inflation and interest rates. The existing body of empirical evidence does not resolve the controversy. This paper focuses on the inflationary impact of deficits. The model used is derived from a comprehensive IS-LM analysis which incorporates a foreign trade sector and a general price (adoptive expectation) adjustment mechanism. We test the model using time series data for the United states. From our results we conclude that NIA deficits have no significant bearing on the rate of inflation.     

Estimating the effects of monetary policy shocks: does lag structure matter?

This paper examines the implications of lag structure for estimating the effects of monetary policy shocks in a VAR. A symmetric lag structure in which all variables have the same lag length and an asymmetric lag structure in which the lag length differs across variables but is the same for a particular variable in each equation of the model are examined. This is important in light of the fact that the true lag structure is generally not known. Four commonly used identification schemes are employed to identify monetary policy shocks. Monte Carlo simulations strongly indicate that the lag structure of a VAR model does matter when assessing the quantitative effects of monetary policy shocks. Given the inherent uncertainty about the true lag structure in practice, it is thus important that one compare the impulse response functions from both symmetric lag and asymmetric lag VARs in assessing the effects of monetary policy shocks.