Information technology and the social construction of information privacy

This paper examines how the conflict between information technology and information privacy is socially constructed and enacted through judicial decisions, legislative mandates, and private sector initiatives such as WebTrust^SM/TM and other privacy seal programs. We first identify some reasons individuals may have for wanting to control their personal information, how such privacy is eroded by advances in information technology, and the currently limited role of informed consent in managing the conflict between privacy and technology. We then argue that the existing judicial, legislative, and private sector initiatives in North America and Europe do not adequately achieve the goals of informed consent and other fair information practices. We further argue that privacy attestation will likely play a limited privacy protection role because it is only one of several social practices that manage the tensions between information technology and information privacy. Finally, we discuss some policy implications of information technology and the erosion of society's expectations about privacy, some difficult tradeoffs between private and public interests, and whether interested parties (including accountants in public practice) can become effective agents of social change in the information privacy arena.     

Can Corporate Social Responsibility Lead to Social License? A Sentiment and Emotion Analysis

The term social license (SL) refers to the acceptance or approval by a community of a company's presence. It is generally assumed in the literature that effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions will lead to an SL. In this study we examine the CSR-SL relationship at the local community level and establish boundary conditions on the effectiveness of local CSR in creating an SL. Using consent-based micro-social contract theory, we theorize that commitment to local CSR improves the level to which a local community grants an SL to a multinational corporation (MNC), but the impact is moderated by the global legitimacy of the parent company, the nature of institutions in the host country, and the degree of polarization within the focal community. Based on 3696 articles regarding 43 global mining MNCs operating in 523 local communities between 2008 and 2020, we use natural language processing and sentiment analysis to evaluate the degree to which a local community grants an SL. Our empirical evidence indicates that local CSR does positively influence the granting of an SL, but the effect is reduced when there is strong rule of law or high community polarization and increased when the focal firm has strong global legitimacy.     

Program trading and intraday volatility

Program trading and intraday changes in the S&P 500 Indexare correlated. Futures prices and, to a lesser extent, cashprices lead program trades. Index arbitrage trades are followedby an immediate change in the cash index, which ultimately reversesslightly. No reversal follows nonarbitrage trades. The cumulativeindex changes associated with buy-and-sell trades and with arbitrageand nonarbitrage trades all are similar. Price decompositionssuggest that the results are not due to microstructure effects.Program trades in this 1989-1990 sample do not seem to havecreated major short-term liquidity problems. The results arestable within the sample.     

Management and ownership effects: evidence from five countries

Despite the growing recognition in the corporate governance literature that the relationship between ownership concentration and profitability is context dependent, this issue has not yet been subjected to direct empirical investigation using a single cross-national sample. This study empirically examines the ownership concentration–performance relationship across the nations of Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Essentially, we argue that the correlation (if any) between ownership concentration and firm profitability differs across countries in a systematic way determined by the national system of corporate governance. Results indicate that important and statistically significant differences do in fact exist across the countries studied. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Year in Review: Economics at the Antitrust Division, 2009–2010

This paper covers the activities of the Economic Analysis Group of the Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, during 2009–2010. It describes the economic analysis undertaken by EAG in several important investigations and other activities as an advocate for competition.     

HBO’s Two Frontiers: Deadwood and The Wire

The Wire (five seasons, 2002–2008) takes place in Baltimore, an urban venue that is distinguished by diverse modes of violence and alienation – the colour line, tensions between governmental bureaucracy and citizen, between policing executives and investigators, between corporate-oriented drug dealers and individual (take-no-prisoners) dealers, and in general between aspiring change-agents and entrenched power holders. And most significantly for this analysis, The Wire explores what Robert Crooks identifies as the new “urban frontier.” The older frontier (in “the West”) is depicted in Deadwood (three seasons, 2004–2006). That frontier, as Cronon, Miles, and Gitlin point out, was, at the outset of the Euro American–Native American encounter, a space of negotiation, a space in which institutionalised regionalisation had not yet been installed.