Reference points for measuring social performance: Case study of a social business venture

We present a longitudinal qualitative case study to elaborate on how a social venture forms reference points for social performance. Although organizations increasingly use various social performance targets to direct their operations, the scholarly knowledge on social performance reference points remains limited. We make use of the prior accounting literature and draw on the idea of compromising accounts to discuss how provisional and performative metrics can have a significant role in how organizations develop new ways to evaluate their social performance. Given that the social performance reference point criteria are ambiguous and the corresponding referents malleable, performative accounts are helpful as they can intervene in the organizational life by making particular things visible, providing space for interpretations, and facilitating discussion, thus creating temporary settlements and enabling opportunities for productive compromises between different organizational groups and evaluative principles. The recursive feedback loops between reference point referents, criteria and accounting artefacts help the organization to make sense of its own social performance and interpret the associated performance feedback, and thereby provide ground for organizational decisions on further action. Moreover, we discuss how imperfect accounts can be useful for social businesses in their pursuit of developing their activities and achieving social impact.     

The Falsification of Four Popular Hypotheses About the Asian Crisis

Various claims have been made about the causes of the Asian crisis and its spread. Here, we use data on the behaviour of capital flows during the crisis to test the strong forms of four such hypotheses, that portfolio investors and hedge funds played a dominant role in initiating and/or spreading the crisis; that moral hazard kept efficient markets from predicting the crisis; and, finally, the common lender hypothesis of Kaminsky and Reinhart. In the process we also test implications of the Calvo-Mendoza model of rational investor ignorance. All are falsified as monocausal explanations. For example, portfolio investments that could not have been subject to substantial moral hazard continued to flow into Asia until very shortly before the crisis. Likewise, banks were a much larger source of capital outflows during the crisis than were portfolio investors. While falsified in their strongest forms, several of these hypotheses in less strong forms should play a role in a more nuanced analysis. It is necessary to move past simple single-factor approaches in order to produce a more complete, synthetic explanation of this episode.     

On the smoothness of optimal paths II: some local turnpike results

We study the local turnpike property for two classes of infinite-horizon discrete-time deterministic maximization problems which have common applications, e.g., optimal growth theory. We follow a functional-analytic approach and rely on an implicit function theorem for the space of the sequences which converge to zero. We shall assume the existence of an optimal path which is not necessarily a steady-state. Relying on material developped in Blot and Crettez (Decis Econo Finance 27:1–34, 2004), “On the smoothness of optimal paths” Decis Econ Finance, 21:1–34, 2004), we provide conditions under which a variation in the initial conditions (i.e., capital stock and discount rate) yields an optimal solution which converges toward a reference solution when time becomes infinite. We also provide new results on bounded solutions of difference equations. We gratefully thank the editor, Silvano Holzer, and two anonymous referees for remarks and advices on a previous version of this paper.     

Uniqueness of stationary equilibria in a one-dimensional model of bargaining

We prove uniqueness of stationary equilibria in a one-dimensional model of bargaining with quadratic utilities, for an arbitrary common discount factor. For general concave utilities, we prove existence and uniqueness of a “minimal” stationary equilibrium and of a “maximal” stationary equilibrium. We provide an example of multiple stationary equilibria with concave (nonquadratic) utilities.     

The business cycle with nominal contracts

Summary In this paper we study the quantitative implications of nominal wage contracts for business cycle fluctuations. We address this issue using a model economy based on the neoclassical growth model supplemented by the assumption that cash is needed to purchase goods. We consider a variation of the standard recursive competitive equilibrium concept that is intended to capture the important features of wage contracting. We use this equilibrium construct to address three issues. First, we consider whether monetary shocks, propagated by nominal contracts, constitute a viable alternative to technology shocks as a source of aggregate fluctuations. Our results suggest that, while monetary shocks and nominal rigidities succeed in causing output volatility of the required magnitude, the resulting data have properties that are inconsistent with several key features of U.S. data. Second, we consider how the behavior of the economy varies with contract length. We find that the volatility induced by both monetary and technology shocks increases sharply with contract length. Finally we consider how much rigidity would be necessary to match the volatility of U.S. output. We find that only a very small amount of rigidity would be necessary to cause output volatility of the magnitude observed.We have received helpful comments from David Chapman, Paul Gomme, Jeremy Greenwood, Gary Hansen, Michael Keane, Tim Kehoe, Lee Ohanian, Edward Prescott, and Warren Weber. The usual disclaimer applies. This research is supported in part by NSF Grant SES-8921346 and the John M. Olin Foundation.     

韩国电信(KT)移动WiMAX(WiBro)服务介绍

移动WiMAX与WiBro之间的关系WiBro源自韩国。早在2004年7月韩国信息通讯部(MIC)正式公布移动WiMAX(WiBro)的服务要求之前,韩国电信技术协会(TTA)内部就开展了一项本地     

Employer Penalties for Failure to Provide Individual Employee Notification Under the Family and Medical Leave Act: “Clarifications” Following Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide, Inc.

This article examines the Supreme Court's ruling in Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide, Inc. (2002) and considers its implications for employer and employee rights and responsibilities relative to implementing the FMLA policies. We provide an overview of the pre-decision regulatory environment including the general leave provisions of the FMLA and DOL's regulations requiring employer notification of leave designated as FMLA leave. We also identify those provisions that the decision did not alter and provide a broader consideration of the issues and implication of this decision for employers and employees.     

Evolution of harvesting strategies: replicator and resource dynamics

Abstract. Economic theories of managing renewable resources, such as fisheries and forestry, traditionally assume that individual harvesters are perfectly rational and thus able to compute the harvesting strategy that maximizes their discounted profits. The current paper presents an alternative approach based on bounded rationality and evolutionary mechanisms. It is assumed that individual harvesters face a choice between two harvesting strategies. The evolution of the distribution of strategies in the population is modeled through a replicator dynamics equation. The latter captures the idea that strategies yielding above average profits are demanded more than strategies yielding below average profits, so that the first type ends up accounting for a larger part in the population. From a mathematical perspective, the combination of resource and evolutionary processes leads to complex dynamics. The paper presents the existence and stability conditions for each steady-state of the system and analyzes dynamic paths to the equilibrium. In addition, effects of changes in prices are analyzed. A main result of the paper is that under certain conditions both strategies can survive in the long-run. Correspondence to: J. Noailly     

A Filtering Process to Remove the Stochastic Component from Intraday Seasonal Volatility

The intraday seasonal variance pattern contains stochastic as well as deterministic components. Therefore, the estimation of information arrivals in the associated volatility process requires the proper filtering of both of these seasonal components. However, popular current models remove only the deterministic part of the typical U‐shape volatility. Here, we provide the first empirical results of the importance of the stochastic component, as developed by Cho and Daigler (2012). We show that a highly significant additional 8.5% to 12.9% of the total seasonal variance is explained by the stochastic seasonal variance component for S&P500 futures, live cattle futures, and the Japanese yen‐U.S. dollar spot exchange rate. Moreover, we show that the stochastic seasonal filtering model implemented here does not create any statistical distortions of the filtered series, as occurs with deterministic‐based seasonal adjustment processes, as well as comparing the model examined here with the most popular current deterministic model. As part of our analysis we examine the application of the model to macroeconomic news and out‐of‐sample results for the model. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 34:479–495, 2014