Employee Identities in Corporate Codes of Ethics: The Equal,Responsible, Subordinating,and Self‐Monitoring Employee

The article invites the reader to engage in a critical perspective. It emphasizes the role of language in formal corporate documents and the discursive practices of language use. It presents the results of a study that analyzes the corporate codes of ethics of the German Dax30‐companies. The study conceives codes of ethics as texts deploying discursive practices in order to position the various actors addressed in the documents. Four distinct identities have been elaborated: the equal, the responsible, the subordinating, and the self‐monitoring employee. This study demonstrates that codes of ethics propose various subject positions of the employee and through this positioning aim to regulate the identification processes. Copyright © 2011 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Relationship between Anthropology and Economics

This article provides an institutional perspective on a recent effort by the author to develop a comprehensive empirical model of the “high-tech” sector of the Texas economy.¹ The model is unique in that it incorporates institutional phenomena into econometric analysis. This approach has been suggested by the author in previous work.²     

Contributors

After a quarter century of environmental regulation in this country, significant environmental threats remain. Why has the regulatory system failed to fully address our environmental problems?

The goal of this paper is to suggest that the roots of environmental problems, and the failure of environmental regulation, are deeply embedded in the processes that generate economic growth. The logic of the argument to be presented will take the following form: long-run economic growth relies on the creation of new industries and new forms of economic activity; these new forms of economic activity create new kinds of environmental problems; these new forms of economic activity constitute vested political interests that oppose environmental regulation. Each of the three main sections of the paper will provide theoretical and empirical justification for each component part of the basic argument.     

The Church and Community Responsibility

A theoretical anlysis of contemporary institutional changes in the developed economies is attempted in order to characterize what a post fordist growth regime could be. One starts to recall some stylized facts about the present growth regime, i.e. about the contemporary dynamics of productivity on one side and of demand formation on the other side. We then discuss the main theoretical tools provided by the Regulation theory to analyse the institutional nexus which frames the growth regimes. The analytical framework of institutional change that we derive insist on the predominance at each period of one of the five structural forms that are distinguished by the Regulation School. As did the dynamics of institutional changes with the wage labor relationships in the previous period, today's evolutions of the forms of competition (broadly taken) condition all institutional changes. This gives us a general grid to define the features of a post Fordist regime. Still differences in history and structures leave room for sizeable differentiation in the national trajectories of the developed economies, all the more so that competition between nation States much prevent them to launch the structural policies that would be relevant with the new regime.     

New financial elites,or financial dualism in historical perspective? An extended reply to Folkman,Froud, Johal and Williams

This paper challenges the recent suggestion that a new financial elite has evolved which is able to capture substantial profit shares for itself. Specifically, it questions the assumption that new groups of financial intermediaries have increased in significance primarily because there is evidence that various types of financial speculators have played a similarly extensive role at several junctures of economic development. The paper then develops the alternative hypothesis that, rather than being a recent development, the rise of these financial intermediaries is a cyclical phenomenon which is linked to specific regimes of capital accumulation. The hypothesis is underpinned by historical data from the US National Income and Product Accounts for the period from 1930 to 2000, which suggest that the activities of `mainstream' financial intermediaries have been accompanied by the frequently countercyclical activities of a `speculative' sector of security and commodity brokers. Based on the combination of this qualitative and quantitative evidence, the paper concludes that the rise of a speculative financial sector is a potentially recurrent phenomenon which is linked to periods of economic restructuring and turmoil.     

Efficiency and risk in commercial banking: empirical evidence from East Asian countries

This paper analyses the effects of off-balance sheet (OBS) activities and various types of risks on the cost and profit efficiencies of banks in seven East Asian countries between 2001 and 2008. Cost and profit efficiency scores are estimated using the data envelopment analysis approach. The results of this analysis are then used to identify the impact of OBS activities and risk exposures on cost and profit efficiencies using a Tobit regression. Bank insolvency risk (as measured by z-scores) is positively related to profit efficiency, while interest sensitivity, size, equity to total assets and OBS exposures all impact on cost efficiency. The analysis of the impact of input and output slacks illustrates that in around 1 in 5 cases banks’ cost efficiency can be improved by adjusting the former variables, whereas in only around 1 in 100 cases a similar outcome is possible for profit efficiency.     

Macroprudential Stress-Testing Practices of Central Banks in Central and Southeastern Europe: Comparison and Challenges Ahead

This paper reviews and compares stress-testing practices of central banks in Central and Southeastern Europe (CSEECBs) and outlines challenges in the area of stress testing going forward. The authors, focusing their comparison on CSEECBs, construct the baseline and stress scenarios, map macroeconomic scenarios and microeconomic factors to risk factors, calculate risk exposures to different risk indicators, and estimate outcome indicators to inform macroprudential policy. The main challenges going forward concern data reliability, consideration of quantitative microprudential indicators, incorporation of feedback effects in stress tests, institutionalization of macroprudential policy responses to alarming stress-test results, and information exchange for better cross-border supervision.     

上海合作组织国际连接模型的基本构造及其经济模拟——以新疆为主

本文以凯恩斯需求理论为指导,建立上海合作组织各成员国、观察员国以及新疆和内地封闭式宏观经济模型,再以"贸易连接方式"将各宏观经济主体连为一体,建立上合组织国际连接计量经济模型,并利用该模型对各类宏观经济政策(包括财政政策、西部大开发政策、经济援助政策)的经济效果进行实证研究。通过对比分析得知,中国、哈萨克斯坦和俄罗斯的财政政策均对新疆产生较大的正面影响,而且这些财政政策对产业发展程度较高的国家和地区更具有经济意义。与此同时,任何一种经济援助政策最终均演变为SCO整体的援助政策。     

On the Influence of China＇s Online Overseas Purchasing Agency and the Countermeasures

近年来，新兴的网络海外代购行业迅猛发展，缺乏监管和规范的海外代购逐渐引起政府相关部门的重视。网络海外代购促进国际间资源的优化配置、丰富了国内百姓的消费选择、带给国内企业积极的竞争环境，但会造成国家税收损失，关税保护能力削弱，网上跨境支付可能引发多种金融风险，对国内相关企业尤其零售企业造成冲击，国内消费者和代购商也面临多种风险。解决对策是：规范行业操作标准及相关规范；构建合理完善的电子商务税收法规体系，构建网络信息时代的外汇监管体系；增强消费者风险防范及维权意识，鼓励行业转型及创新。     

CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS – WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION OR RELIABLE INDICATOR?

Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are said to increase systemic vulnerability, but they also serve as an ex‐ante indicator of default probabilities, more finely‐tuned and more responsive than ratings agency reports. And they provide a useful mechanism for trading risk and an incentive for good management by businesses and governments.