EFFECT OF MERGERS ON THE SHARE PRICE MOVEMENT OF THE ACQUIRING FIRMS: A UK STUDY

The profitability of mergers in Britain has not received the same attention as in the USA. This study examines mergers for the UK industrial sector as a whole for a period (1974–76) when merger activity was relatively slack. A standard methodology is used, but the size effects and the activeness of acquirors as well as the financing of the acquisition are examined. The conclusions contradict to some extent those found by other researchers in that the evidence was inconsis- tent with the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. The effect of taking firm size into account was found to reduce the standard deviations of the sample and it would appear that the cash mergers were viewed as less desirable by the market com- pared to equity exchange. For the separation of merger activehon active firms it was found that there was less dispersion of the residuals for non-merger active firms.     

A research program for establishing the validity of the price-quality relationship

Despite over 30 years of empirical investigations, it remains unclear whether (1) there is an actual positive relationship between price and product quality, and (2) whether buyers perceive a positive relationship between price and product quality. Although there has been a plethora of studies on the relationship, there is little agreement on what we know about the relationship. The paper assesses the current state of knowledge on the relationship and argues for a better conceptual framework for understanding the price-quality relationship. Then the paper outlines a systematic research program for establishing the validity of the relationship, and establishes a set of criteria for evaluating the contribution to knowledge of future research on the price-quality relationship.     

Screening Geopolitics: James Bond and the Early Cold War films (1962–1967)

This paper seeks to extend the remit of popular geopolitics by considering the role and significance of places and their inhabitants in shaping the narrative structures of films. By using the example of the James Bond series from the 1960s, it is suggested that there is more complex series of geographies to be acknowledged. Arguably most of the trade press reviewers were largely content to argue that places were simply ‘exotic locations’. With a detailed examination of screenplays from five Bond films, it is shown that United Artists and Eon Productions played an important and creative role in shaping the geographies of dangers and threats confronted by James Bond. Moreover, austere and or remote locations also played important roles in generating a sense of climax between the British secret agent and his enemies regardless of whether they were part of a criminal network or an evil genius. Finally, the paper concludes with an assessment of some of the outstanding challenges facing a popular geopolitics.     

It's Not a Laughing Matter: Critical Geopolitics,Humour and Unlaughter

This paper explores the possibilities of considering humour and laughter as a serious matter of concern for critical geopolitics and political geography more generally. While there has been some interest in this topic, there is scope to devise a more expansive research agenda. Using both laughter and Michael Billig's notion of unlaughter, the paper considers how these visceral expressions contribute, often in subtle ways, to the making of geopolitical subjectivities. The final part of the paper considers some possibilities for future research.     

Modeling social interactions: Identification, empirical methods and policy implications

Social interactions occur when agents in a network affect other agents’ choices directly, as opposed to via the intermediation of markets. The study of such interactions and the resultant outcomes has long been an area of interest across a wide variety of social sciences. With the advent of electronic media that facilitate and record such interactions, this interest has grown sharply in the business world as well. In this paper, we provide a brief summary of what is known so far, discuss the main challenges for researchers interested in this area, and provide a common vocabulary that will hopefully engender future (cross disciplinary) research. The paper considers the challenges of distinguishing actual causal social interactions from other phenomena that may lead to a false inference of causality. Further, we distinguish between two broadly defined types of social interactions that relate to how strongly interactions spread through a network. We also provide a very selective review of how insights from other disciplines can improve and inform modeling choices. Finally, we discuss how models of social interaction can be used to provide guidelines for marketing policy and conclude with thoughts on future research directions.     

Introduction to the Special Issue: Subterranean Geopolitics

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship in political geography and allied disciplines such as Anthropology and Architecture has used registers such as the elemental and volumetric to explore the calculative, material, technical, and atmospheric interventions in, on, through and beneath the earth’s surface. In this special issue, our contributors engage in a ‘subterranean turn’, as they drill down, dive into, travel through and speculate with underground and underwater domains. Although varied in their geographical environments and locales, and diverse in their time-frames, the papers speak to four themes that constitute a ‘subterranean geopolitics.’ First, the subterranean is conceptualised as volume with distinct material qualities including height, pressure, depth and shape. There are multiple undergrounds on offer. Second, the subterranean is integral to nation-state building and geopolitical strategies of control, enclosure and exclusion. Third, there is evidence of and for subterranean infrastructures aplenty. States and other actors want to design, experiment and plan with the underground and underwater environments. Finally, the subterranean is never divorced from calculative, legal and technical regimes of regulation, and the cultivation of expertise – scientific, military, engineering – is a crucial element in these contributions to subterranean geopolitics. Taken together, the nine papers in this special issue offer a rich array of case studies including the nineteenth-century volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean (Hawkins 2018 Hawkins, H. 2018. A volcanic incident’: Towards a geopolitical aesthetics of the subterranean. Geopolitics. online published 25th September 2018. doi:10.1080/14650045.2017.1399877.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), subterranean nationalism in the South Atlantic (Benwell), lead mining in nineteenth-century English Peak District (Endfield and Van Lieshout 2019 Endfield, G., and C. Van Lieshout. 2019. Water and vertical territory: Teh volatile and hidden historical geographies of Derbyshire’s lead mining soughs, 1650s–1830s. Geopolitics. online published 9th October 2018. doi:10.1080/14650045.2018.1486299.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), a transnational gas pipeline running through Italy (Barry and Gambino 2019 Barry, A., and E. Gambino. 2019. Pipeline geopolitics: Subaquatic materials and the tactical point. Geopolitics. online published 14th March 2019. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2019.1570921.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), subterranean security in Israel/Palestine (Slesinger 2019 Slesinger, I. 2019. A cartography of the unknowable: Technology, territory and subterranean agencies in Israel’s management of the gaza tunnels. Geopolitics. online published 8th February 2018. doi:10.1080/14650045.2017.1399878.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), natural gas infrastructure (Forman 2019 Forman, P. 2019. Security and the subsurface: Natural gas and the visualisation of possibility spaces. Geopolitics. online published 17th October 2018. doi:10.1080/14650045.2018.1513918.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), deep sea mining off Papua New Guinea (Childs 2019b Childs, J. 2019b. Extraction in four dimensions: Time, space and the emerging geo(-)politics of deep-sea mining. Geopolitics. online published 14th June 2018. doi:10.1080/14650045.2018.1465041.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), US military planning in and under Greenland’s inland ice (Bruun 2018 Bruun, J. 2018. Invading the whiteness: Science, (sub)terrain, and US militarisation of the Greenland ice sheet. Geopolitics. online published 17 November 2018. doi:10.1080/14650045.2018.1543269.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), and managing the shipping routes of the English Channel (Peters 2019 Peters, K. 2019. Deep routeing and the making of ‘Maritime Motorways’: Beyond surficial geographies of connection for governing global shipping. Geopolitics. online published 1st February 2019. doi:10.1080/14650045.2019.1567499.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]).     

THE STRUCTURE AND PERFORMANCE OF THE UK BUILDING SOCIETY INDUSTRY 1970–78

This article seeks to discuss some of the issues concerning the evolving structure of the Building Society Movement in the UK during the 1970's and to present some statistical evidence for certain hypotheses concerning the performance during this period. It is hypothesized that the successful operation of the price cartel affected its performance in a number of ways; for instance, with regard to its discretionary policies. The article cites branching policies particularly of the medium sized Societies and the regression results presented cast doubt upon the efficacy of such policies, validating in turn the hypotheses of expense preference and X inefficiency. In addition, evidence is offered on the concentration and competition within the Movement which together with the apparent discretionary policies found, provide a justification, in the view of the authors, for future legislative action.