Board Committees in Corporate Governance: A Cross‐Disciplinary Review and Agenda for the Future

The importance of board committees – specialized subgroups that exist to perform many of the board's most critical functions, such as setting executive compensation, identifying potential board members, and overseeing financial reporting – has grown over time due to increased legal requirements and greater complexity of the environment in which firms operate. This has resulted in a large body of work examining board committees across the accounting, finance, and management disciplines. However, this research has developed rather independently within each discipline, preventing scholars and practitioners from developing a comprehensive understanding of board committees. To address this issue, we conduct a comprehensive review of the literature that: 1) summarizes and synthesizes antecedents and outcomes associated with board committees in publicly‐traded firms in English common law countries; and 2) offers a critical analysis of existing research, providing recommendations for advancements and new directions in board committee research.     

Debating liberalism: Walter Eucken,F. A. Hayek and the early history of the Mont Pèlerin Society

The Review of Austrian Economics - Walter Eucken is mostly known for his impact on establishing the Social Market Economy in post-war Germany. In this paper we identify how Eucken was highly...     

Besieged by the left and the right: The order of liberal globalism

The Review of Austrian Economics - This paper provides a critical reading of Quinn Slobodian’s “Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism”. Slobodian’s...     

Exploring firm characteristics that differentiate leaders from followers in industry merger waves: a competitive dynamics perspective

Research in strategic management has shown that the timing of firm participation in a merger wave matters, as early movers have been shown to outperform later ones. However, while the consequences of the timing of action within a merger wave have been assessed, the causes that drive these timing effects remain unknown. We draw on the competitive dynamics perspective to investigate firm‐level factors that influence the large‐scale strategic behavior of leading or following within industry merger waves. We develop hypotheses based on the competitive dynamics argument that the awareness‐motivation‐capability of firms will influence the timing of competitive action. Consistent with this perspective, we show that a firm's strategic orientation, its structure, and its resource base influence the timing of firm entry in merger waves. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TTIP – Probleme und Chancen

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is the most important trade policy decision that European leaders have faced in many years. The new generation of free trade agreements, including TTIP, aim at deep economic integration. Thus, they are essentially focused upon the removal or alignment of standards, regulations and administrative procedures that impede international trade and investment. Therefore, TTIP goes beyond the dimensions of traditional preferential trade agreements in the sense that it not only concerns tariffs and non tariff barriers to trade in goods, but it also concerns trade in services and the foreign investment environment. Regulatory cooperation under TTIP might thus well extend into core domains of public policy, including health and food safety or environmental regulation. Regulation, however, confers both benefits and costs to society. A proper assessment of TTIP must therefore also consider the benefits of regulation to society and must embed regulatory cooperation between the EU and US into a firm democratic framework. The potential of such an agreement is substantial, due to improved market access, regulatory cooperation and greater global reach, while the downside risk is limited. While some of the arguments critical of TTIP are justified, others seem rather excessive and seem intent on stirring up unnecessary anxiety among the population. An objective and constructive discussion is crucial to ensure that the needs of the population are heard during the negotiation process and that an agreement capable of achieving majority support can be concluded. The debate over TTIP has to consider not only the economic effects of increased trade but also the legal and political dimensions of the trade agreement.     

Zum Problem des zweiarmigen Bernoulli-Banditen mit einer bekannten Erfolgswahrscheinlichkeit und unendlich vielen Spielen

Zusammenfassung In dieser Arbeit wird das Modell des sogenannten zweiarmigen Bernoulli-Banditen mit einer bekannten Erfolgswahrscheinlichkeit betrachtet. Wir nehmen an, daß die a priori Erfolgswahrscheinlichkeit am unbekannten Arm verteilt ist gemäß einer beliebigen Verteilungsfunktion. Wir formulieren das Problem als ein Markoffsches Entscheidungsmodell mit unendlichem Horizont und zeigen verschiedene Monotonieeigenschaften der Wertfunktion des Entscheidungsmodells. Wir stellen Optimalitätskriterien bereit, beweisen die Gültigkeit einer Stoppregel und zeigen abschließend die Existenz einer optimalen monotonen Strategie.

---

Summary In this paper we consider the so called two-armed Bernoulli-bandit problem with one success probability known. We assume that the prior success probability for the unknown arm is distributed according to an arbitrary distribution function. We formulate this problem as a Markovian decision model with infinite horizon and show several monotonic properties of the value function of the decision model. We give a criterion for optimality and establish the existence of a stopping rule as well of a monotone optimal strategy.

---

---

Diese Arbeit ist mit Unterstützung des von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft getragenen Sonderforschungsbereichs 72 entstanden.     

The Role of the Safety Net and the Labor Market on Falling Cash Consumption in Russia: 1994–96 A Quintile-Based Decomposition Analysis

This paper investigates the relative importance of changes in social safety net support and labor market in explaining the decline in the purchasing power of Russian households that occurred during the period 1994–96. Drawing on three cross-sections of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, we find that labor market changes have been the main cause of the observed decline in cash consumption. Among these changes, reductions in the impact of the time spent in employment and increasing frequency of wage arrears are most important, more so than increases in open unemployment or the fall in real wages among workers who were fully paid. The contribution of falling state transfers to cash consumption is nonetheless substantial. We also find that the sources of the decline in household welfare vary substantially across quintiles in the distribution.