Modes,weighted modes,and calibrated modes: evidence of clustering using modality tests

We apply recent results from the statistics literature to test for multimodality of worldwide distributions of several (unweighted and population‐weighted) measures of labor productivity. Specifically, we employ Silverman (Bump) and Dip modality tests, calibrated to correct for their incorrect asymptotic levels. We show that test results are sensitive to the test statistic employed and to population weighting. But regardless of the statistical criterion used, multimodality is present throughout, or emerges during, our sample period (1960–2000). We also examine (a) movements of economies between modal clusters and (b) relationships between certain key development factors and multimodality of the productivity distribution. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Playing by the rules: ethical criteria at an ethical investment fund

Although ethical investment is a growing phenonenon which attracts a signficant amount of media interest, relatively little has been written about the internal operations of ethical investment funds. Using a variety of sources, including interviews with a fund manager and participant observation at meetings of the fund's ethical advisory committee, this paper examines the decision making of one ethical unit trust operating in the United Kingdom. In particular, it describes the development of the ethical criteria and the ways in which their implementation was monitored. Several significant parallels between publicly stated ethical investment criteria and corporate codes of ethics are then discusssed.     

A situated metacognitive model of the entrepreneurial mindset

We develop a framework to investigate the foundations of an ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ — described by scholars as the ability to sense, act, and mobilize under uncertain conditions. We focus on metacognitive processes that enable the entrepreneur to think beyond or re-organize existing knowledge structures and heuristics, promoting adaptable cognitions in the face of novel and uncertain decision contexts. We integrate disparate streams of literature from social and cognitive psychology toward a model that specifies entrepreneurial metacognition as situated in the entrepreneurial environment. We posit that foundations of an entrepreneurial mindset are metacognitive in nature, and subsequently detail how, and with what consequence, entrepreneurs formulate and inform “higher-order” cognitive strategies in the pursuit of entrepreneurial ends.     

Multinationals and the investment provisions of the nafta

The foreign direct investment (FDI) provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are examined in light of a worldwide trend toward liberalization of the policy environment for multinational firms. We first examine the rationale for entering into international investment negotiations from the perspective of the three signatories—Canada, Mexico, and the United States—and then analyze the accomplishments embodied in the resulting investment provisions. We also briefly address areas where these provisions could be strengthened and that may be on the agenda of future international trade and investment negotiations, whether in other fora or during negotiations involving accession of new member states to the NAFTA.     

The Panoptic Role of Advertising Agencies in the Production of Consumer Culture

Advertising's role in promoting an ideology of marketed consumption has been widely commented upon by critical theorists yet the mechanisms through which this influence becomes manifest remain relatively under-examined. In particular there has been no explicit examination of the mediating role of cultural knowledge in the production of ideologically driven advertising. This paper invokes the panoptic metaphor to position the knowledge gathered by and on behalf of advertising agencies as a major dynamic in the production of consumer culture. The consumer of advertising is a known entity for advertising agencies: the subject is watched, filmed, questioned, recorded, and tracked. Indeed, consumer biography and subjectivity itself has become material that is both produced and consumed by advertising agencies in order to produce culturally constitutive advertising. The paper integrates disparate literatures to situate knowledge of consumer culture at the hub of advertising's constitutive ideological influence.     

Contending Discourses of Marginality: The Case of Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad is argued to raise profound questions regarding the role, power and influence of marginal actors in EU–Russian relations as well as international politics at large. Such entities may have to confine themselves to a totally subordinated position but they can also gain, as seems increasing to have been the case with Kaliningrad, considerable influence. As spaces in-between, or as potentially emergent third spaces that significantly problematise the idea of territorial sovereignty, they do not only influence – by blurring borders and various conceptual categories – the setting of local or regional agendas. They may also impact upon the very constitution of subjectivity, in the cases of both the EU and Russia. In this essay these processes are tackled, above all by scrutinising how margins are understood in both common and theoretical discourses with the departures unfolding then explored in the case of Kaliningrad.     

Empirical implementation of nonparametric first-price auction models

Nonparametric estimators provide a flexible means of uncovering salient features of auction data. Although these estimators are popular in the literature, many key features necessary for proper implementation have yet to be uncovered. Here we provide several suggestions for nonparametric estimation of first-price auction models. Specifically, we show how to impose monotonicity of the equilibrium bidding strategy; a key property of structural auction models not guaranteed in standard nonparametric estimation. We further develop methods for automatic bandwidth selection. Finally, we discuss how to impose monotonicity in auctions with differing numbers of bidders, reserve prices, and auction-specific characteristics. Finite sample performance is examined using simulated data as well as experimental auction data.