Fair Trade Managerial Practices: Strategy,Organisation and Engagement

The number of distributors selling Fair Trade products is constantly increasing. What are their motivations to distribute Fair Trade products? How do they organise this distribution? Do they apply and communicate the Fair Trade values? This research, based on five case studies in Switzerland, aims at understanding and structuring the strategies and the managerial practices related to Fair Trade product distribution, as well as analysing if they denote an engagement with Fair Trade principles. The results show a high heterogeneity of strategies and engagement. In general, strategies implemented by mainstream actors contribute to increase Fair Trade global sales but do not convey the transformative message of Fair Trade through their engagement. The latter is rather communicated through alternative channels. Problems and potential solutions to this issue are discussed.     

Does rapid economic growth enhance democratization? Time-series evidence from high performing Asian economies

We examine the long-run relationship between economic growth and democratization for the high performing Asian economies using a time-series technique called the autoregressive distributive lag bounds test. For all eight of such economies, we do not find a statistically significant long-run relationship running from growth to democratization. Instead, we find a statistically significant long-run relationship running from democratization to growth, which can be either positive or negative. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, our results suggest that rapid economic growth in the high performing Asian economies appears to have little effect on democratization in the long run.     

JUMPING THE CURSE: EARLY CONTRACTING WITH PRIVATE INFORMATION IN UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS*

This article introduces a new model of early contracting. Employers who have private information about the applicant's ability worry that applicants who accept their offer are precisely those who were not offered other jobs. To avoid this winner's curse, employers anticipate the time of contracting. The model is developed in the context of university admissions, and is shown to be consistent with several stylized facts in that “market.” We show that, in contrast to received wisdom, allocative efficiency may be improved by the presence of early contracting.     

Modelling with scenarios: Technology in North-South development

This article outlines work in progress on a study of technological choice in the context of North-South development. Its main purpose is to describe the methodology being developed in the pilot phase of the study. This is of interest because it links together a number of analytic techniques—sociopolitical scenario analysis, macroeconomic modelling, and certain microstudies. The methodological problems are general to much forecasting activity.     

Estimating the long-term effects of advertising on sales: a co-integration perspective

Co-integration econometrics have important theoretical advantages over more traditional approaches to estimating the long-term effects of one variable on another. When advertising and sales data are co-integrated, adaptations of common econometric procedures may be used to estimate the long-term effects directly rather than inferring them from short-term relationships. This paper presents a method for detecting and estimating co-integrating relationships using ordinary least-squares regression procedures. The method is illustrated with the well-known Lydia Pinkham data from 1907 through to 1961. The results show that there was a strong positive relationship between Lydia Pinkham advertising and sales in the long-term. Implications of the method and findings are discussed.     

Heterogeneous Risk Preferences and the Welfare Cost of Business Cycles

I study the welfare cost of business cycles in a complete-markets economy where some people are more risk averse than others. Relatively more risk-averse people buy insurance against aggregate risk, and relatively less risk-averse people sell insurance. These trades reduce the welfare cost of business cycles for everyone. Indeed, the least risk-averse people benefit from business cycles. Moreover, even infinitely risk-averse people suffer only finite and, in my empirical estimates, very small welfare losses. In other words, when there are complete insurance markets, aggregate fluctuations in consumption are essentially irrelevant not just for the average person - the surprising finding of Lucas (1987) - but for everyone in the economy, no matter how risk averse they are. If business cycles matter, it is because they affect productivity or interact with uninsured idiosyncratic risk, not because aggregate risk per se reduces welfare.     

The performance of black-owned commercial banks: A comparative analysis

The objective of this study was to examine performance differences among black banks of different asset sizes, as compared with average nonminority banks of similar asset size from 1985 to 1991. The study found that large black banks with assets over $50 million outperformed smaller black banks with assets less than $50 million in terms of return on assets (ROA) and return on owners’ equity. Also, when compared with average nonminority banks with assets less than $300 million, the large black banks exhibited a statistically significant higher ROA than average nonminority banks in 1985 through 1987. However, the differences were found to be statistically insignificant in terms of return on owners’ equity (ROE) during the study period. Regression results show that provision for loan loss, high liquidity, and investment in treasury and government securities continue to impact negatively on small black banks’ performance but these factors have no statistically significant impact on large black banks’ performance.     

The Decline of Antitrust Enforcement

American Antitrust policy has abandoned tight restrictions on mergers and on a variety of business practices, such as vertical restraints indistribution. I argue that the change is permanent for three reasons: 1)rising skepticism about government intervention generally, 2) lack ofdeleterious effects from the new policy, and 3) increasing irrelevance ofantitrust in global markets. Due process considerations will reinforce thechange in policy. New technologies may, however, revive traditionalantitrust concern with price fixing.