Thought leadership in investment banking: The beginning of a new era

The paper argues that although considerations such as industry consolidation, the role of lending and the effects of technology are still important in shaping the future of investment banking, sustainable competitive advantage necessitates that emphasis is also placed on thought leadership. This entails quite a radical change in terms of the way in which the industry approaches the problem of competition and requires emphasis on value creation for all the constituent parts of the industry: corporations, investors, the banks themselves and research departments. Accordingly, the paper provides a rationale for this change and provides inter alia a range of examples to illustrate how thought leadership could lead to a fundamental change in the future of the investment banking industry.     

On the Opportunity Cost of Crop Diversification

Distance functions are increasingly being augmented, with environmental goods treated as conventional outputs. A common approach to evaluate the opportunity cost of providing an environmental good is the exploitation of the distance function's dual relationship to the value function. This implies that the opportunity cost is assumed to be non‐negative. This approach also requires a convex technology set. Focusing on crop diversification for a balanced sample of 44 cereal farms in the East of England for the years 2007–2013, this paper develops a novel opportunity cost measure that does not depend on these strong assumptions. We find that the opportunity cost of crop diversification is negative for most farms.     

A COMPARISON OF RISK EFFICIENCY CRITERIA IN EVALUATING GROUNDNUT PERFORMANCE IN DROUGHT-PRONE AREAS

This paper contributes to an evaluation of the performance of ground nuts in drought-prone areas by estimating yield response functions to water from experimental data. They are combined with meteorological data to simulate yields by location. Efficient genotypes are identified by several risk criteria. Genotype rankings based on these risk criteria and simulated yields are different from those based on experimental data and plant scientists' traditional methods of evaluation.     

Rural land ownership in the United Kingdom: Changing patterns and future possibilities for land use

The broad pattern of rural land ownership exhibits quite modest change over the past 30 years, but this impression is misleading. It understates substantial changes in property rights, evidence of which is not readily available from published statistics. These changes reflect the growing urbanisation of the countryside, which has required owners to pay more attention to consumption interests, sometimes at the expense of traditional agricultural and forestry interests, which in turn have experienced mixed fortunes. Rural land is expected to supply, and is increasingly valued in terms of, multiple goods and services.Major trends in ownership, occupancy and land prices are reviewed, noting that the divisibility and flexibility of the bundle of rights which constitute ownership have allowed holders to respond to urban pressures and farming difficulties with practices including short-term leasing, contracting, supplying life-style residential properties and accommodating increased environmental regulation. But linking land use to land ownership type is difficult, not least because there are many other drivers of land-use change. Moreover, local and individual circumstances are now more significant than in the past, not least the ageing occupational structure of farming. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of some of the political, economic and environmental drivers that may affect future land ownership patterns.     

The present and future use of ‘land’ below ground

The world's subsurface space, including Britain's, is already used in a variety of ways, ranging from occupancy to disposal and the bulk storage of materials and fuels. In the future it is likely that it will be put to further use in response to trends in technology, resource supply and demand, socioeconomics and geopolitics. Here the present and future uses of underground space, and the potential planning and social issues affecting its development, are reviewed. Future uses are likely to be in the area of increasing occupancy (both commercial and residential), the secure storage of documents and data, the storage of carbon dioxide for carbon abatement, natural gas, compressed air stores of energy from traditional and renewable sources, the use of underground heat in buildings and the proposed deep geological disposal of radioactive waste. The article will also explore pressure points and challenges. These will include the regulation of multiple uses of subsurface storage space and, for projects of national importance including natural gas and radioactive waste storage, legislation to lessen the effect of local opposition relative to the ‘national need’. This article does not discuss future mining, hydrocarbon extraction, or water resources.     

Managing Public IP with Downstream Interfirm Research Spillovers

The paper examines the economic impact of pricing and access to public basic research‐related intellectual property (IP) in the presence of downstream interfirm spillovers using a Salop circle model of monopolistic competition. Depending on the nature and extent of spillovers and with free access to upstream basic research, firm entry can be excessive, insufficient, or socially optimal. When interfirm lump‐sum spillovers are absent or sufficiently small, competitive entry is excessive, so policies that restrict access to basic research IP can enhance social welfare. When lump‐sum research spillovers are sufficiently large, policies to induce entry and a clustering of downstream research activity can be welfare enhancing. Le présent article examine, à l’aide du modèle de Salop de concurrence monopolistique positionnant les firmes sur un cercle, l’impact économique de l’attribution d’une valeur à la propriété intellectuelle de la recherche fondamentale financée par des fonds publics et de l’accès à cette recherche lorsqu’il y a des retombées entre firmes en aval. Selon la nature et l’étendue des retombées et compte tenu de l’accès gratuit à la recherche fondamentale en amont, l’entrée de firmes peut‐être excessive, insuffisante ou optimale sur le plan social. Lorsque les débordements de la recherche vers d’autres firmes sont absents ou faibles, le niveau d’entrée de concurrence parfaite est excessif. Dans ce cas, les politiques qui restreignent l’accès à la recherche fondamentale financée par des fonds publics peuvent accroître le bien‐être social. Lorsque les débordements de la recherche sont assez importants, les politiques mises en ?uvre pour encourager l’entrée et le regroupement des activités de recherche en amont peuvent améliorer le bien‐être.     

Impacts of Australia’s free trade agreements on trade in agricultural products: an aggregative and disaggregative analysis

The importance of free trade agreements (FTAs) has been increasing as such agreements help reduce barriers to trade. This paper estimates the agricultural trade creation and export diversion effects of Australia’s free trade agreements (FTAs) at the aggregate and disaggregate levels, using the Poisson pseudo‐maximum‐likelihood (PPML) estimator. It includes 24 of Australia’s major trading partner countries comprising FTA and non‐FTA members and covers 22 years from 1996 to 2017. The heteroscedasticity robust regression error specification test (RESET) confirms the relevance of PPML over the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimator. Results showed that China–Australia, Korea–Australia, Australia–USA and Japan–Australia have larger trade creation effects in the agricultural sector. At the commodity level, variation in trade creation effects is estimated from the different trade agreements. Among the selected commodities, the larger effects were generated in trade in sugar and wine by the implementation of the majority of the trade agreements. Overall, the trade creation was greater than the export diversion of the FTAs. The findings of the study have implications for Australia’s future trade agreements.     

Speaking Platitudes to Power: Observing American Business Ethics in an Age of Declining Hegemony

The use of technology in marketing has become an increasingly important competitive tool in developing and maintaining efficient and productive customer relationships. However, the ethics of using this technology has received little attention. This study investigates how and if marketing organizations are adapting their ethics policies to incorporate use of sales technology (ST). Based on in-depth interviews with executives from a variety of highly regulated to nonregulated business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries, our results show that, although most organizations indeed have codes of ethics, there appears to be a gray area of how these codes address ST. Further, it appears that monitoring the ethical use of ST varies and can be a frustrating and time-consuming issue for marketing and sales executives. Implications of our findings are discussed for the benefit of marketing practitioners, ethics managers, and researchers.     

International website disclosure of codes of ethics: auditor‐specific and stock‐exchange‐listing differences

This research examines whether having a readily available code of ethics on a corporation's website associates with either their auditor or stock exchange listing. As such, it is the first research that studies the association among readily available codes of ethics, client auditor and stock exchange listing on a longitudinal basis. In our data gathering, we went to the website of each corporation and searched for a readily available disclosure of its code of ethics at the beginning of April 2006 through April 2009 – third‐through‐sixth anniversaries of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act. Our data indicate that the average readily available rate of codes of ethics for Ernst and Young's clients was significantly lower than the average readily available rate for the clients of Deloitte and Touche in 2006 and 2007 and PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2007. However, our data indicate no differences among the Big Four firms in 2008 and 2009. Our data indicate that the average readily available rates for the clients listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) were significantly higher than for clients that were not listed on the NYSE for all four observation points (2006–2009).     

A proposed model of online consumer behavior: Assessing the role of gender

This research examined the influence of Internet experience and web atmospherics on consumer online behavior. It developed a model of web navigation behavior where these antecedent variables drove website exploratory behavior and website involvement, which in turn, drove site attitudes and pre-purchase evaluations. These relationships were tested and confirmed in the context of a pharmaceutical website. Further, men and women differed in web navigation behavior, with men engaging in less exploratory behavior and developing less website involvement than women. However, across the two sexes, entertainment, challenge, and effectiveness of information content were the key drivers of website attitudes. The findings provide several guidelines for online communication strategy.