FOCUS: Ethical Business: Thinking Thoughts and Facilitating Processes

Doing business ethics and conducting ethical business has to be much more than conducting a rational enquiry. Much also depends on the motivation of individuals and how a positive moral vision of business can unite intellectual and affective approaches to the conduct of business. The author is a lecturer in Philosophy at Warwick University, Coventry CV4 7AL, and a Research Associate at the Local Government Centre at Warwick Business School. He is also an independent organisation development consultant specialising in helping organisations develop their learning processes and value-based forms of leadership.     

Pricing continuously sampled Asian options with perturbation method

This article explores the price of continuously sampled Asian options. For geometric Asian options, we present pricing formulas for both backward‐starting and forward‐starting cases. For arithmetic Asian options, we demonstrate that the governing partial differential equation (PDE) cannot be transformed into a heat equation with constant coefficients; therefore, these options do not have a closed‐form solution of the Black–Scholes type, that is, the solution is not given in terms of the cumulative normal distribution function. We then solve the PDE with a perturbation method and obtain an analytical solution in a series form. Numerical results show that as compared with Zhang's ( 2001 ) highly accurate numerical results, the series converges very quickly and gives a good approximate value that is more accurate than any other approximate method in the literature, at least for the options tested in this article. Graphical results determine that the solution converges globally very quickly especially near the origin, which is the area in which most of the traded Asian options fall. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 23:535–560, 2003     

B‐TO‐B E‐COMMERCE: A CONTENT ANALYTICAL ASSESSMENT OF MOTOR CARRIER WEBSITES

An Internet presence is a critical early component in the process of building towards a fully operational and unified e‐commerce strategy. E‐commerce has significantly impacted logistics/supply chain strategies and the development and implementation of a website have become key issues for many firms within the transportation industry. This study provides an overview of website content within the motor carrier industry. Content analysis was used to assess the site design, informational content, and the interactive content of 152 motor carrier websites, and to compare the features offered on the Top 100 motor carrier firm websites with those offered on the sites of smaller carrier firms.     

Does brand name imprinting in memory increase brand information retention?

This article introduces and explores the concept of brand name imprinting. Brand name imprinting is the process of creating and strengthening the brand name node in the brand memory network through brand name exposure. Brand name imprinting at a time prior to the presentation of specific brand information is posited to improve the retention of that information by strengthening the association between the brand name and brand information. The effect is proposed to be automatic and independent of other known means to strengthen memory associations (e.g., level of attention, cognitive elaboration, stimuli vividness, and stimuli distinctiveness). This research also proposes that brand names with neutral meaning better facilitate the imprinting effect, because they do not carry perceptual baggage that can interfere with the creation of new brand name–information associations. An experiment involving brand name imprinting and the learning of brand information supports these assertions. Implications for communication strategy and brand name selection are discussed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Changing Risk Premia: Evidence from a Small Open Economy

Little is known about the differences in the relation between risk and return in large economies such as the U.S. compared with smaller, less studied, markets. In this paper, Sweden serves as a representative for small open economies. The price of risk on the Swedish stock market is estimated using a conditional asset pricing model that allows for time variation in the risk. Four different GARCH-M models are used in the econometric specification. The estimates of the price of risk are invariably positive and significant, and we conclude that there exists a time-varying risk premium in the Swedish stock market. Our results show that there are small differences in the preferences towards risk of representative investors in small and large economies.     

Information Disclosure to Employees and Rational Expectations: a Game-Theoretical Perspective: a Comment

In this comment we identify the key features of the Frantz and Walker (1997) game theoretic model that drive the non-disclosure equilibrium result in their paper. We argue that, although technically correct, their model fails to capture certain aspects of real-world wage bargaining that will be important in determining optimal disclosure strategies in practice. However, Frantz and Walker's paper illustrates the potential of analytical techniques to contribute to the employee disclosure debate.     

Position limits for cash‐settled derivative contracts

Cash settlement of derivative contracts makes them susceptible to manipulation by traders who expect to close large positions upon final settlement. Cash settlement also increases underlying volatility when hedgers unwind their hedges if they have no incentives to control their trading costs. Limits on the positions that traders can carry into final settlement can be used to mitigate associated economic inefficiencies when surveillance is insufficient. This article develops a model that regulators can use to set these limits that is based upon microstructure theory. The empirical findings indicate that existing position limits are largely inconsistent with those suggested by the model. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 25:945–965, 2005