The New Economy is dead,long live the information economy

The arrival of the 2001–2003 recession caused many to suppose that the so-called “New Economy” was now defunct. This article addresses a number of related issues, including the question of the durability and viability of business cycles in the face of the technological developments of the information age. It asks what went wrong with the New Economy and examines its characteristics as well as its remaining possibilities and prospects for the future. Finally, it considers the spread of the Information Economy to Europe, especially to Germany, the country that one might expect to be the leading European player, but which is not at present actually a strong competitor for that role.     

Corporate moral agency: A case from literature

I analyze a well-known and moving passage from John Steinbeck's novelThe Grapes of Wrath. This passage provides an excellent illustration of one of the central questions about corporate moral agency: Is corporate moral agency anything over and above the agency of individual human beings? The passage in question is a debate about whether or not the actions of a particular company are anything over and above the actions of individual human beings.     

Nea presidential address, 1991: Sixteenth-century European expansion and the economic decline of Africa (in honor of Walter Rodney)

Prior to the sixteenth century, the Indian Ocean trading network was one of the wealthiest commercial regions in the world. It included states of East Africa, the Arabian peninsula, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, China and Japan. By circumnavigating Africa, Portugal was the first European nation to gain access to the region. Through the exercise of naval superiority, blockading of strategic shipping lanes, imposition of duties and expulsion of Swahili and Muslim merchants, Portugal exercised a mercantile monopoly which ultimately led to the region’s rapid economic decline. Using rare historical documents from Po rtugal and Africa, this study traces the effects of Portuguese expansion on the economies of East Africa and trade in the Indian Ocean.     

Advertising with Subjective Horizontal and Vertical Product Differentiation

In this paper, we analyze the impact of advertising on markets wheresubjective horizontal and vertical product differentiation are important. A simple model showshow advertising can be used to create subjective horizontal and vertical differentiation.The model predicts that firms are likely to be symmetric when advertising creates subjective horizontaldifferentiation and that name and generic brands are most likely to coexist in markets whereadvertising creates subjective vertical differentiation. In all cases, the ability toadvertise creates distance between products which increases the market power of firms. Finally, severalreal world examples are used to illustrate the conditions under which the model is most relevant.     

Schools of thought in organizational learning

This article attempts to bring coherence to the diversity that characterizes organizational learning research. It argues that organizational learning is embedded in four schools of thought: an economic school, a managerial school, a developmental school, and a process school. The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the schools, describes how they differ from each other, and outlines how each of them can be employed effectively. To demonstrate the benefits of theoretical plurality, the four schools are applied to the key marketing topics of market orientation and new product development. Implications for future research in marketing are provided. Simon J. Bell is a lecturer in marketing in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the University of Melbourne. Gregory J. Whitwell is an associate professor of marketing in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the University of Melbourne. Bryan A. Lukas is an associate professor of marketing and director of the Master of Applied Commerce Program in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the University of Melbourne.     

External Monitoring of Property Appraisal Estimates and Information Asymmetry

Finance theory proposes that firms' cost of capital increases when market makers set wider spreads due to perceived higher information asymmetry across traders. Using a sample of UK investment property firms and controlling for firms' non-random selection of external monitors, we find evidence that market makers perceive information asymmetry across traders to be lower for firms employing external appraisers versus those employing internal appraisers. This evidence is consistent with liquidity-motivated traders being unable to overcome such reliability differences using asset value information from sources other than accounting. We fail to find a similar difference for firms employing Big 6 versus non-Big 6 auditors. Our findings contribute to the debate over the recognition of fair value estimates for long-lived tangible assets by documenting that reliability differences attributable to differential monitoring by appraisers can affect information asymmetry, and therefore firms' cost of capital.