Ownership concentration and corporate governance practices: substitution or expropriation effects?

The objective of this study is to analyze the relation between ownership concentration and corporate governance practices of a group of Canadian companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. We rely on the corporate governance index developed by the Report on Business (ROB) in 2002. Our empirical results are consistent with the expropriation effect argument that predicts a negative relation between deviation from the one share‐one vote rule and corporate governance best practices. In this context, the dominant shareholder has incentives to maintain weak internal controls in order to facilitate expropriation. In addition, consistent with prior research, our results give partial support to the substitution effect argument by showing a negative impact of ownership concentration on the board composition subindex. Copyright © 2007 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reframing gender and feminist knowledge construction in marketing and consumer research: missing feminisms and the case of men and masculinities

Abstract

Gender has been theorised and studied in many ways and across different disciplines. Although a number of these theorisations have been recognised and adopted in marketing and consumer research, the significance of feminism in knowledge construction has largely remained what we would call ‘unfinished’. Based on a critical reframing of gender research in marketing and consumer research, in dialogue with feminist theory, this article offers theoretical and practical suggestions for how to reinvigorate these research efforts. The analysis highlights dominant theorisations of gender, relating to gender as variable, difference and role; as fundamental difference and structuring; and as cultural and identity constructions. This reframing emphasises various neglected or ‘missing feminisms’, including queer theory; critical race, intersectional and transnational feminisms; material-discursive feminism; and critical studies on men and masculinities. A more detailed discussion of the latter, as a relatively new, growing and politically contentious area, is further developed to highlight more specifically which feminist and gender theories are mainly in use in marketing and consumer research and which are little or not used. In the light of this, it is argued that marketing and related disciplines have thus far largely neglected several key contemporary gender and feminist theorisations, particularly those that centre on gender power relations. The potential impact of these theoretical frames on transdisciplinary studies in marketing and consumer research and research agenda(s) is discussed.     

贷款行业集中度对商业银行系统性风险影响的实证研究——基于MES方法

金融危机爆发后,银行业系统性风险得到了广泛的关注。基于2007-2012年中国10家上市银行的相关数据,文章利用MES方法测算系统性风险贡献度,分析贷款行业集中度对商业银行系统性风险的影响。研究结果表明,贷款行业集中度对商业银行系统性风险存在正向影响。因此,商业银行在投放贷款过程中,应该防范贷款行业投向的过度集中,从而减少系统性风险爆发的可能性。该研究结论为我国商业银行合理配置信贷资源提供了有利的依据。     

Industry concentration,excess returns and innovation in Australia

This paper examines market concentration and stock returns on the Australian Securities Exchange. We find that dominant companies operating in concentrated industries in Australia are able to generate significant risk‐adjusted excess stock returns. Our results for Australian data are opposite to that found by Hou and Robinson (2006) for United States market data. Hou and Robinson reason that United States firms which operate in concentrated industries are insulated from competitive pressures, have lower levels of innovation (Arrow, 1962) and therefore experience lower profitability and stock returns. By contrast, the Australian data show a significant and positive relationship between concentration and innovation expenditure. Therefore, the excess stock returns of dominant companies in Australia are consistent with previous research linking innovation expenditure with excess stock returns. We hypothesize that the apparent contradiction of our results compared with Hou and Robinson (2006) for the United States market is resolved by an examination of the differences in size and competition in United States and Australian industries and the consequent differential ability of dominant companies in the two countries to generate monopoly rents and invest in ‘Schumpeterian’ (Schumpeter, 1942) innovation.     

Price Rigidity and Industrial Concentration: Evidence from the Indonesian Food and Beverages Industry

This paper investigates the relationship between industrial concentration and price rigidity in the Indonesian food and beverages industry. A Cournot model of firm behavior is used in which prices adjust according to a partial adjustment mechanism. The model is applied to panel data of the Indonesian food and beverages industry over the period 1995–2006. The results suggest that industrial concentration has a positive effect on percentage price changes. Furthermore, the speed of price adjustment is higher when the per unit cost of production rises.     

并购与种子产业发展

并购是现代经济史上一个十分突出的现象,现代种子产业的发展就是一部种子企业的并购史。从微观层次上看,并购是企业发展和追逐利润的内在要求,是实现企业扩张和资本集中的快速有效形式,从宏观层次看,是产业结构调整,合理配置资源的手段。从并购这一企业行为对市场结构和产业发展影响的角度,对世界种子产业发展中的并购过程和并购效应进行实证分析,证实了国际种子产业的并购实践对现阶段国内种子产业的借鉴意义。     

A Typology of Communicative Strategies in Online Privacy Policies: Ethics, Power and Informed Consent

The opaque use of data collection methods on the WWW has given rise to privacy concerns among Internet users. Privacy policies on websites may ease these concerns, if they communicate clearly and unequivocally when, how and for what purpose data are collected, used or shared. This paper examines privacy policies from a linguistic angle to determine whether the language of these documents is adequate for communicating data-handling practices in a manner that enables informed consent on the part of the user. The findings highlight that corporate privacy policies obfuscate, enhance and mitigate unethical data handling practices and use persuasive appeals to increase companies’ trustworthiness. The communicative strategies identified provide starting points for redesigning existing privacy statements with a view to communicating data handling practices in a more transparent and responsible manner, laying the groundwork for informed consent.     

流通垄断的福利经济学分析及其测度

本文主要考察流通垄断的特殊性及其福利经济学测度。流通垄断与生产垄断相比，其垄断行为和垄断结构具有很多特殊性和复杂性。在目前阶段，流通市场的低集中度是制约我国流通产业发展的一个重要原因，大型流通企业之间的合并和重组一方面可以实现流通的规模经济，另一方面又有可能导致垄断程度的提高，本文通过一个简单的流通企业合并模型，从福利经济学的视角探讨了这种合并的两难效应，并进一步分析了此种情形下的反垄断措施。     

Invariances and Diversities in the Patterns of Industrial Evolution: Some Evidence from Italian Manufacturing Industries

This work explores and compares some basic properties of corporate growth process at both aggregate manufacturing level and disaggregated sectoral levels. Using an extensive dataset on Italian manufacturing firms, we investigate which properties of firm growth dynamics are robust under disaggregation. We compare the results obtained with three different definitions of firm size, namely total sales, number of employees and value added. Our analysis suggests that while different sectors are characterized by significant differences in firm size distributions, in the degrees of concentration and in the autoregressive structure of the growth processes, there are also regularities which hold across all of them, such as the approximate unit root nature of the growth process and the power exponential shape of the growth rates density. Together, these “stylized facts” suggest challenging puzzles on the drivers of corporate growth and the resulting industrial structures.     

From reviving tradition to fostering innovation and changing marketing: the evolution of micro-brewing in the UK and US, 1980–2012

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore and examine the impressive growth of small and micro-breweries registered in the UK and US from the early 1980s. While the majority of British and American breweries continue to operate in spatially restricted areas and niche markets, a few businesses expanded significantly in terms of production and turnover, gradually acquiring larger shares of the market and competing with multinational producers at home as well as abroad. The cases of BrewDog and Sierra Nevada, used as case study examples in this article, provide an original account on how once-upon-a-time micro-breweries grew into well established companies by pursuing aggressive strategies in terms of marketing and innovation respectively.