corporate social responsibility for supply chain management a literature review and bibliometric analysis corporate social responsibility csr in supply chain management scm has gained an increasing research attention in recent years extant studies have discussed stakeholder interests performance evaluation ethical sourcing and sustainable production the purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic study quantitatively depicting the knowledge structure and the intellectual progress of csr for scm this research adopts bibliometric analysis in conjunction with network analysis to systematically evaluate the csr related publications for scm the analysis involves 628 peer reviewed articles identified with careful selection of influential work data analytic techniques including citation analysis co citation analysis and co word analysis are used key findings for researchers include 1 an analytical discussion of the five sub fields that constitute the intellectual structure of csr for scm 2 theoretical and conceptual research significantly dominate in this field 3 the topics of sustainable development and economic and social effects are more frequently discussed among scholars 4 key research gaps include lacking of practical and normative modeling research and considering from the supplier perspectives in emerging economies the findings suggest that future research would emerge a greater depth of practical and modeling analysis to enrich the theories

social welfare cooperators advantage and the option of not playing the game the aa outline a model of how freedom to choose between playing and not playing particular pisoner s dilemma games can 1 increase social welfare and 2 provide relative gains to intending cooperators when cooperators are relatively more willing to play they will interact more frequently with each other and their pay off per encounter will be higher potentially higher than that of intending defectors the aa speculate about the cognitive processes that underlie this result

combining day ahead forecasts for british electricity prices abstract this paper considers how well the approach of combining forecasts extends to the context of electricity prices with the increasing popularity of regime switching and time varying parameter models for predicting power prices the multi model and evolutionary considerations that usually support the combining of simpler time series methods may be less applicable when the individual models incorporate these features we address this question with a backtesting analysis on british day ahead prices furthermore given the volatility of power prices and concerns about accurate forecasting under extreme price excursions we evaluate the results using various error metrics including expected shortfall the comparisons are furthermore carefully simulated to consider model selection uncertainty in order to realistically test the value of combining as an ex ante policy overall our results support combining for both accurate operational planning and risk management

value creation management competencies and global corporate citizenship an ordonomic approach to business ethics in the age of globalization this article develops an ordonomic approach to business ethics in the age of globalization through the use of a three tiered conceptual framework that distinguishes between the basic game of antagonistic social cooperation the meta game of rule setting and the meta meta game of rule finding discourse we address three questions the answers to which we believe are crucial to fostering effective business leadership and corporate social responsibility first the purpose of business in society is value creation companies have a social mandate to organize mutually advantageous cooperation second business ethics should teach the management competencies necessary to fulfill business s societal mandate these competencies are optimization competence in the basic game of value creation governance competence in the meta game of political rule setting and the three discourse related skills of orientation competence reception competence and communication competence necessary for engaging in the meta meta game third companies can help solve global problems through global corporate citizenship if they participate as political and moral actors in rule setting processes and rule finding discourse aimed at laying the foundation for value creation on a global scale

psychological contracts a nano level perspective on social contract theory social contract theory has been criticized as a theory in search of application we argue that incorporating the nano or individual level of analysis into social contract inquiry will yield more descriptive theory we draw upon the psychological contract perspective to address two critiques of social contract theory its rigid macro orientation and inattention to the process of contract formation we demonstrate how a psychological contract approach offers practical insight into the impact of social contracting on day to day human interaction we then articulate several potentially testable propositions that emerge from this nano level perspective

an evolutionary approach to norms iorms provide a powerful mechanism for regulating conflict in groups even when there are more than two people and no central authority this paper investigates the emergence and stability of behavioral norms in the context of a game played by people of limited rationality the dynamics of this new norms game are analyzed with a computer simulation based upon the evolutionary principle that strategies shown to be relatively effective will be used more in the future than less effective strategies the results show the conditions under which norms can evolve and prove stable one interesting possibility is the employment of metanorms the willingness to punish someone who did not enforce a norm many historical examples of domestic and international norms are used to illustrate the wide variety of mechanisms that can support norms including metanorms dominance internalization deterrence social proof membership in groups law and reputation

analysis of the nonlinear response of electricity prices to fundamental and strategic factors this paper seeks to characterize the nonlinear effects of exogenous factors on wholesale electricity price formation using a special type of regime switching the logistic smooth transition regression model we capture the mean reverting and spiky characteristics of spot prices and at the same time estimate their rather complex relationships to fundamentals we show that for different trading periods within the day prices can be a function of fundamentally different drivers in addition to including the usual fuel price demand and reserve margin drivers this analysis tests whether a market concentration variable is as significant in the high frequency context as it is known to be over the longer term the analysis is also innovative in testing the nonlinear influence of carbon emission trading

codes of ethics partly as a result of much recent evidence of business and government crime a large proportion of major corporations have adopted codes of ethics government service is also making more use of them the electrical manufacturing anti trust conspiracy and 1973 1976 investigation of foreign and domestic bribery were immediate prods there are also government codes of which the aspa code is most widely distributed corporate codes discuss relations to employees interemployee relationships whistle blowing effect on environment commercial bribery insider information other conflicts of interest anti trust accounting consumer relations and political activities a discussion of use of codes shows partly favorable results a number of corporation decisions have not yet become a subject of code provisions codes will be more useful if the reasons behind each order are stated and team work is encouraged

the role of ethics in global corporate culture whatever ethnic religious or other cultural boundaries may have evolved through history a global corporate culture is increasingly subsuming these traditional divisions multinational corporations internationally linked securities markets and omnipresent communication networks characterize this global corporate culture the dynamics of corporate culture centres on the intricate web of contractual relations between stakeholders this study addresses the question of how these stakeholder contracts can be most efficiently enforced three alternative contractual enforcement mechanisms are identified the legal system a generally accepted moral code and stakeholders desire to build and maintain reputations each alternative is critically evaluated and conclusions are drawn as to the relative feasibility and desirability of each enforcement mechanism

the impact of cross national carriers of business ethics on attitudes about questionable practices and form of moral reasoning the study explores the impact of cross national carriers of ethics on attitudes about questionable business practices and form of moral reasoning across mexican spanish and u s mbas results show substantial agreement across cultures on twelve personally most objectionable practices while form of moral reasoning varied significantly social cognitive theory is used to address the theoretical and practical implications

institutional pressures and ethical reckoning by business corporations prior studies have provided explanations for the presence use and dissemination of codes of corporate ethics or codes of corporate conduct of business corporations most such explanations are functional in nature and are descriptive as they are derived from the codes and their associated documents we search for more underlying explanations using two complementary theories first social contract theories explaining the exogenous and endogenous reasons of organizational behavior and then institutional theory explaining why organizations take similar measures in response to institutional pressures based on our explanations we contend that the codes and their use and dissemination are arising from underlying social and institutional pressures for firms to continuously validate their existence in the face of increasing changes and recurrent uncertainties

corporate autonomy and buyer supplier relationships the case of unsafe mattel toys this article analyses supplier buyer relationships where the suppliers adapt to the buyers needs and expectations to gain mutual advantages in some cases such closely knit relationships lead to violations of the autonomy of one or both partners a concept of corporate autonomy ca is developed to analyze this problem three different facets can be distinguished rule autonomy executive autonomy and control autonomy a case study of mattel s problems with lead contaminated toys produced in china shows that the ca of buyer and supplier can be restricted as a result of a dysfunctional partnership involving a moral dilemma

oil wealth and regime survival in the developing world 1960 1999 the global oil market and its associated booms and busts have generated a large literature in political science one contention in this literature is that political instability is a near certain long term outcome of oil wealth another line of argument maintains just the opposite that oil makes authoritarian regimes stronger by funding patronage and repressive apparatuses in this article i conduct the first cross national tests of these arguments and investigate the effects of oil wealth and the oil booms and busts on political stability drawing on data from 107 developing countries between 1960 and 1999 i estimate the effects of oil wealth on regime failure antistate social protest and domestic armed conflict thus as a first goal this article addresses an analytic shortcoming in previous studies by separating regime survival empirically from both economic policy and regime type democratic or authoritarian and by focusing on the direct effects of oil wealth on several measures of political stability i address the relationship between oil wealth and these outcomes both by comparing exporters to the rest of the developing world and by comparing oil rich states across pre boom boom and bust periods the results indicate that oil wealth is robustly associated with more durable regimes and significantly related to lower levels of protest and civil war moreover

multinationality and corporate ethics codes of conduct in the sporting goods industry the international operations of firms have substantial impact on the formulation and implementation of business ethical principles such as codes of conduct the international sporting goods industry has been a pioneer in setting up codes and thus provides much relevant experience different sourcing strategies degrees of multinationality and national backgrounds affect the contents of codes moreover international non governmental organizations prove equally effective in triggering sophisticated codes

the confines of stakeholder management evidence from the dutch manufacturing sector stakeholder theory is a pertinent example of a framework that has been stretched over many conceptual contexts and that has been applied to a wide variety of empirical phenomena a pressing issue involves the scope of application of stakeholder theory however because it is not a comprehensive ethical scheme or problem solving algorithm we begin our search for the boundaries of stakeholder management by identifying a presently under acknowledged yet major underlying assumption notably that the approach is rooted in voluntary action and association building on this presumption we argue that firm stakeholder relationships are best to be understood in contractualist terms i e as voluntary arrangements between two or more parties seeking mutual benefit this assertion subsequently allows us to identify three boundary conditions applying to stakeholder theory 1 the parties should be sufficiently autonomous 2 their interests need to be alignable and 3 they should be capableof living up to their commitments we substantiate these criteria with evidence from a collective case study of buyer supplier relationships in the dutch manufacturing sector demonstrating that the stakeholder management model fails when these boundary criteria are violated

child labor and multinational conduct a comparison of international business andstakeholder codes increasing attention to the issue of child labor has been reflected in codes of conduct that emerged in the past decade in particular this paper examines the way in which multinationals business associations governmental and non governmental organizations deal with child labor in their codes with a standardized framework it analyzes 55 codes drawn up by these different actors to influence firms external societal behavior the exploratory study helps to identify the main issues related to child labor and the use of voluntary instruments such as codes of conduct apart from a specific indication of the topics covered by the code especially minimum age requirements this also includes monitoring systems and monitoring parties most important to company codes are the sanctions imposed on business partners in case of non compliance severe measures may be counterproductive as they do not change the underlying causes of child labor and can worsen the situation of the child workers by driving them to more hazardous work in the informal sector this underlines the importance of a broad rather than a restrictive approach to child labor in codes of conduct the paper discusses the implications of this study offering suggestions for future research

reputation and imperfect information abstract a common observation in the informal literature of economics and elsewhere is that is multistage games players may seek early in the game to acquire a reputation for being tough or benevolent or something else but this phenomenon is not observed in some formal game theoretic analyses of finite games such as selten s finitely repeated chain store game or in the finitely repeated prisoners dilemma we reexamine selten s model adding to it a small amount of imperfect or incomplete information about players payoffs and we find that this addition is sufficient to give rise to the reputation effect that one intuitively expects

the evolutionary stability of cooperation is cooperation without central authority stable if so how robust is it despite what might be the conventional wisdom the evolution of cooperation did not solve this problem deductively in fact results obtained later by others seem to have contradicted the book s main message reexamining this exceptionally influential work yields a new picture part of axelrod s evolutionary story turns out to be false but the main intuition that retaliatory strategies of conditional cooperation are somehow advantaged proves correct in one specific and significant sense under a standard evolutionary dynamic these strategies require the minimal frequency to stabilize hence they support the most robust evolutionary equilibrium the easiest to reach and retain moreover the less efficient a strategy the larger is its minimal stabilizing frequency hobbesian strategies of pure defection are the least robust our main theorems hold for a large class of games that pose diverse cooperation problems prisoner s dilemma chicken stag hunt and many others

codes of ethics as contractarian constraints on the abuse of authority within hierarchies a perspective from the theory of the firm abuse of authority is an unsolved problem in the new institutional theory of the firm this paper attempts a double attack to this problem by developing a contractarian view of corporate codes of ethics from the ex ante standpoint the paper elaborates on the idea of a social contract based on co operative bargaining games and deduces from it the fair efficient constitution of the firm endorsed by means of a well devised corporate code of ethics from the ex post standpoint codes of ethics are proved to be self enforcing norms by showing how they put at work the mechanism of a repeated game of reputation within hierarchical transactions firms characterised by incomplete contracts and unforeseen events to accomplish this task a theory of rationality in the face of unforeseen contingencies is sketched by working out the idea that the domain of a principle of ethics defines a fuzzy event i e an event to which also the ex ante unforeseen unimaginable states of the world belong to a certain degree

a social contract account for csr as an extended model of corporate governance ii compliance reputation and reciprocity this essay seeks to give a contractarian foundation to the concept of corporate social responsibility csr meant as an extended model of corporate governance of the firm whereas justificatory issues have been discussed in a related paper sacconi l 2006b this journal in this essay i focus on the implementation of and compliance with this normative model the theory of reputation games with reference to the basic game of trust is introduced in order to make sense of self regulation as a way to implement the social contract on the multi fiduciary model of corporate governance this affords understanding of why self regulation meant as mere recourse to a long run strategy in a repeated trust game fails two basic problems for the functioning of the reputation mechanism are examined the cognitive fragility problem and the motivational problem as regards the cognitive fragilities of reputation which result from the impact of unforeseen contingencies and from bounded rationality the paper develops the logic and the structure that self regulatory norms must satisfy if they are to serve as gap filling tools with which to remedy cognitive limitations in the reputation mechanism the motivation problem then arises from the possibility of sophisticated abuse by the firm developed in this case is an entirely new application of the theory of conformism and reciprocity based preferences the result of which is that the stakeholders refuse to acquiesce to sophisticated abuse on the part of the firm

spot and derivative pricing in the eex power market using spot and futures price data from the german eex power market we test the adequacy of various one factor and two factor models for electricity spot prices the models are compared along two different dimensions 1 we assess their ability to explain the major data characteristics and 2 the forecasting accuracy for expected future spot prices is analyzed we find that the regime switching models clearly outperform its competitors in almost all respects the best results are obtained using a two regime model with a gaussian distribution in the spike regime furthermore for short and medium term periods our results underpin the frequently stated hypothesis that electricity futures quotes are consistently greater than the expected future spot a situation which is denoted as contango

understanding privacy online development of a social contract approach to privacy recent scholarship in philosophy law and information systems suggests that respecting privacy entails understanding the implicit privacy norms about what why and to whom information is shared within specific relationships these social contracts are important to understand if firms are to adequately manage the privacy expectations of stakeholders this paper explores a social contract approach to developing acknowledging and protecting privacy norms within specific contexts while privacy as a social contract a mutually beneficial agreement within a community about sharing and using information has been introduced theoretically and empirically the full impact on firms of an alternative framework to respecting the privacy expectations of stakeholders has not been examined the goal of this paper is to examine how privacy norms develop through social contract s narrative to redescribe privacy violations given the social contract approach and to critically examine the role of business as a contractor in developing privacy norms a social contract narrative dealing specifically with issues of privacy is an important next step in exploring a social contract approach to privacy here the narrative is used to explain to analyze the dynamic process of privacy norm generation within particular communities based on this narrative individuals within a given community discriminately share information with a particular set of obligations in mind as to who has access to the information and how it will be used rather than giving away privacy individuals discriminately share information within a particular community and with norms governing the use of their information similar to contractual business ethics impact on global commerce in explaining how and why norms vary across global contexts the social contract approach to privacy explains how and why norms vary across communities of actors focusing on agreements around privacy expectations shifts the responsibility of firms from adequate notification to the responsibility of firms as contractors to maintain a mutually beneficial and sustainable solution

the impacts of eu co2 emissions trading on electricity markets and electricity consumers in finland abstract in this paper the likely impacts of the eu emission trading system on the nordic electricity market and on the position of various market actors are assessed in its first phase the eu co 2 emission trading system includes power plants with thermal capacity greater than 20 mw metals industry pulp and paper industry mineral industry and oil refineries this paper describes the assessment done for the finnish minister of trade and industry analysing the likely impacts on power plant operators on energy intensive industries on other industries and on other consumer groups the impacts of emissions trading were studied with the vtt electricity market model and with the times energy system model the annual average electricity price was found to rise 0 74 eur mw h 1 for every 1 tonne co 2 1 in the nordic area large windfall profits were estimated to incur to electricity producers in the nordic electricity market in finland metals industry and private consumers were estimated to be most affected by the electricity market price increases expanded nuclear power generation could limit the increases in the prices of electricity to one third compared to those in the base case

stakeholder forces of socially responsible supply chain management orientation this project investigates salient stakeholder forces of socially responsible supply chain orientation srsco in the apparel and footwear sector focusing on fair labor management issues srsco was conceptualized as a composite of internal organizational direction and external partnership for a creation and continuation of fair labor conditions throughout the supply chain primary stakeholders identified were consumers regulation industry and media a total of 209 mail survey responses from sourcing managers of u s apparel and footwear companies were analyzed two dimensions of srsco were confirmed internal direction and external partnership consumer and industry peer pressures were found significantly related to internal direction while industry peers and media were significantly related to the external partnership regulation was not significantly related to either internal direction or external partnerships lack of regulation forces to govern labor issues and roles of consumers industry peers and media in promoting fair labor management are discussed in this article

comparing smooth transition and markov switching autoregressive models of us unemployment logistic smooth transition and markov switching autoregressive models of a logistic transform of the monthly us unemployment rate are estimated by markov chain monte carlo methods the markov switching model is identified by constraining the first autoregression coefficient to differ across regimes the transition variable in the lstar model is the lagged seasonal difference of the unemployment rate out of sample forecasts are obtained from bayesian predictive densities although both models provide very similar descriptions bayes factors and predictive efficiency tests both bayesian and classical favor the smooth transition model copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

institutional environment managerial attitudes and environmental sustainability orientation of small firms this study examines the direct impact of three dimensions of the institutional environment on managerial attitudes toward the natural environment and the direct influence of the latter on the environmental sustainability orientation eso of small firms we contend that when the institutional environment is perceived by owner managers as supportive of sound natural environment management practices they are more likely to develop a positive attitude toward natural environment issues and concerns such owner manager attitudes are likely to lead to a positive and proactive orientation of their firms toward environmental sustainability the study uses survey data from 166 small manufacturing firms located in three philippine cities first the study develops and tests the measurement models to examine the validity of the constructs representing the firm s institutional environment managerial attitudes toward the natural environment and the eso of firms second the study develops and tests the structural models examining the institutional environment managerial attitudes eso linkages multi sample invariance structural model analysis shows the mediating role of managerial attitudes in the institutional environment eso nexus the findings show that eso is a construct comprising three dimensions knowledge of environmental issues sustainable practices and commitment toward environmental sustainability the cognitive regulatory and normative elements of the institutional environment are strongly linked to positive managerial attitudes toward environmental sustainability which in turn positively influences the firm s overall eso managerial attitudes play a mediating role in the institutional environment eso linkages the managerial practical research and policy implications of the research findings are discussed

economic ethics and institutional change our economic system the market economy is a part of a broader system or society we frequently study the operation of the market economy as if it were autonomous even though there are many complex and mutual relationships between society the economic system and the other systems political cultural religious legal etc that form part of society in a market economy we may identify several components a frame or background in which the economic activity takes place a set of ideas and theories the values shared by this society the set of institutions norms and rules that control the economic behavior of people and the incentives or motivations of the economic agents the play of these elements defines the operation of a market economy is ethics an institution or does it belong to the set of values and ideas in this paper i will discuss the role of institutions norms and rules in society with special reference to the economic system in order to gain insight into the relationship between institutions and ethics i study first the concept and features of social institutions and norms second institutional change and third the relationship between ethics and institutions

from resistance to opportunity seeking strategic responses to institutional pressures for corporate social responsibility in the nordic fashion industry using survey responses from 400 fashion companies in denmark norway sweden finland and iceland we examine the diversity of strategic responses to institutional pressures for corporate social responsibility csr within the nordic fashion industry we also develop and test a new model of strategic responses to institutional pressures that encompasses both resistance and opportunity seeking behaviour our results suggest that it is inconsistent pressures within rather than between stakeholder groups that shape strategic responses to csr pressures and that increasing pressures stimulates opportunity seeking at the expense of compliance

the language of business codes of ethics implications of knowledge and power in australia as is the case elsewhere ethics is a developing aspect of business behaviour many educational institutions and business enterprises have a strong interest in the subject particularly from the practical viewpoint of creating an ethical culture in business that has substantial practical effects in this paper the codes of ethics of five large enterprises are examined they were selected as being typical of a collection of corporate codes used in australia held by the ethics research group at the university of technology sydney two codes were from international companies a chemical manufacturing company and a health beauty and medical manufacturer the other codes were from an australian bank an australian federal government business agency and an australian mining company

scoring firms codes of ethics an explorative study of quality drivers research in the field of management has increasingly focused on strategies and tools related to corporate sustainability of the tools examined codes of ethics have been found to play a primary role many studies have investigated the content of such codes as well as their capacity to condition the behaviour of people within organizations however few studies have considered the intrinsic quality of codes of ethics this study aims to investigate the impact that specific factors firm size degree of internationalization and industry effect can have on the quality of codes of ethics based on a sample of 248 listed italian companies the results of the empirical analysis show that the quality standard is particularly high in larger companies and in those firms operating in industries in which relationships established with critical stakeholders and disclosure to those stakeholders play a crucial role these results have interesting implications for both researchers and practitioners

justice and corporate governance new insights from rawlsian social contract and sen s capabilities approach by considering what we identify as a problem inherent in the nature of the firm the risk of abuse of authority we propound the conception of a social contract theory of the firm which is truly rawlsian in its inspiration hence we link the social contract theory of the firm justice at firm s level with the general theory of justice justice at society s level through this path we enter the debate about whether firms can be part of rawlsian theory of justice showing that corporate governance principles enter the basic structure finally we concur with sen s aim to broaden the realm of social justice beyond what he calls the transcendental institutional perfectionism of rawls theory we maintain the contractarian approach to justice but introduce sen s capability concept as an element of the constitutional and post constitutional contract model of institutions with special reference to corporate governance accordingly rights over primary goods and capabilities are constitutionally granted by the basic institutions of society but many capabilities have to be turned into the functionings of many stakeholders through the operation of firms understood as post constitutional institutional domains the constitutional contract on the distribution of primary goods and capabilities should then shape the principles of corporate governance so that at post constitutional level anyone may achieve her his functionings in the corporate domain by exercising such capabilities in the absence of such a condition post constitutional contracts would distort the process that descends from constitutional rights and capabilities toward social outcomes

ties that grind corroborating a typology of social contracting problems contractualism conceives of firm stakeholder relations as cooperative schemes for mutual benefit in essence contractualism holds that these schemes as well as the normative principles that guide and constrain them are ultimately ratified by the consent and endorsement of those subject to them this paper explores the empirical validity of a contractualist perspective on firm stakeholder relations it first develops a typology of firm stakeholder contracting problems it subsequently confronts this typology with empirical data collected in an interview study of concrete stakeholder management practices involving in depth research interviews with forty four managers working in the dutch financial services industry the findings of this theory building study suggest that there are limits to the applicability of the contract model in the context of stakeholder management and that disregarding either the model or its limitations may lead to highly ineffective firm stakeholder relations

a neoclassical model of unemployment and the business cycle this paper investigates a general equilibrium model of unemployment and the business cycle in which specialization of labor plays a key role a rational expectations equilibrium with fully flexible wages and prices can exhibit unemployment in which the marginal product of employed workers exceeds the reservation wage of those who are without jobs workers are unemployed either because they are in the process of relocating for a better job or because they are waiting for conditions in the depressed sector to improve moreover seemingly small disruptions in the supplies of primary commodities such as energy could be the source of fluctuations in aggregate employment and can exert surprisingly large effects on real output

electricity pool prices a case study in nonlinear time series modelling this paper considers modelling the behaviour of prices in the english and welsh wholesale electricity pool since the creation of this spot market in 1990 the process turns out to be nonlinear and a logistic smooth transition autoregressive model is fitted and shown to be superior to a linear alternative the behaviour of the estimated model is discussed and it is seen that nonlinearity is needed to describe the institutional characteristics and historical path of pool prices

dealing with uncertainties when governing csr policies as corporate social responsibility involves a voluntary business endeavour to address social and environmental issues beyond legal compliance governments cannot fall back on hierarchical command and control policies to support it as such it is complementary with the increasing popularity of public policies known as new governance policies where the government is engaged in a horizontal inter organizational network of societal actors and where public policy is both formed and executed by the interacting and voluntary efforts from a multitude of stakeholders however such policies are known to generate substantive uncertainty about the content of csr and its related issues strategic uncertainty regarding the behavior of the actors involved and institutional uncertainty related to the interaction process involved in the institutional change we explore new governance policy instruments to address these uncertainties in the context csr and discuss the experiences with these methods in the european union

institutions and the resource curse countries rich in natural resources constitute both growth losers and growth winners we claim that the main reason for these diverging experiences is differences in the quality of institutions more natural resources push aggregate income down when institutions are grabber friendly while more resources raise income when institutions are producer friendly we test this theory building on sachs and warner s influential works on the resource curse our main hypothesis that institutions are decisive for the resource curse is confirmed our results contrast the claims of sachs and warner that institutions do not play a role

forecasting electricity spot prices using time series models with a double temporal segmentation the french wholesale market is set to expand in the next few years under european pressure and national decisions in this article we assess the forecasting ability of several classes of time series models for electricity wholesale spot prices at a day ahead horizon in france electricity spot prices display a strong seasonal pattern particularly in france given the high share of electric heating in housing during winter time to deal with this pattern we implement a double temporal segmentation of the data for each trading period and season we use a large number of specifications based on market fundamentals linear regressions markov switching ms models and threshold models with a smooth transition an extensive evaluation on french data shows that modelling each season independently leads to better results among nonlinear models ms models designed to capture the sudden and fast reverting spikes in the price dynamics yield more accurate forecasts finally pooling forecasts give more reliable results

booming sector and de industrialisation in a small open economy this paper presents a theoretical analysis of the dutch disease the phenomenon whereby a boom in one traded goods sector squeezes porfitability in other traded goods sectors both by directly bi

this is what happened to the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract many of the quarterly oil price increases observed since 1985 are corrections to even bigger oil price decreases the previous quarter when one looks at the net increase in oil prices over the year recent data are consistent with the historical correlation between oil shocks and recessions

an analysis of u s multinationals recruitment practices in mexico the frequency of discriminatory language in job advertisements placed by u s multinational corporations operating in mexico was compared with that of mexican companies using content analysis a sample of 300 ads placed by companies from each culture was analyzed and coded by two groups of coders to calculate the frequency of discriminatory language in the job ads with respect to age gender physical appearance and marital status results of a chi square analysis revealed that u s multinationals firms in mexico utilize discriminatory language in job ads less frequently in the categories of age gender and marital status this result suggests that the legal and cultural framework of the country of origin of u s enterprises in mexico may be influencing their actual recruitment practice in mexico and in turn help them in setting a positive example of non discrimination in recruitment among their mexican counterparts

living in agreement with a contract the management of moral and viable firm stakeholder relationships in a contractual firm stakeholder relationship the participants are expected to act according to the agreement and for mutual benefit by acting against the agreement at the expense of the other participant however may result in higher individual profits within a short period of time building on the unlocked iterated prisoner s dilemma pd setting scanlon s scanlon t m 1998 what we owe to each other belknap press of harvard university press cambridge mass version of contractualism and the social dilemma literature this article considers what types of behaviors should be followed by both parties in an established firm stakeholder relationship in order to reach an outcome that is defensible both in terms of morality and viability it is argued that a normative foundation which advises firms and stakeholders to ground their behavior on principles that could not reasonably be rejected by others forms a basis for moral and viable behavior that can be expressed in the form of a strategic rule that excludes defection and utilizes the option to exit in response to the other participant s defection then a set of testable propositions is developed that describe how a firm and its stakeholders can further promote moral and viable relationships

trade linkages and macroeconomic effects of the price of oil in this paper we assess the impact of oil price shocks on oil producer and oil consuming economies var models for different countries are linked together via a trade matrix as in abeysinghe 2001 as expected we find that oil producers here russia and canada benefit from oil price shocks for example a large oil shock leading to a price increase of 50 boosts russian gdp by about 6 however oil producers are hurt by indirect effects of positive oil price shocks as economic activity in their exporter countries suffers for oil consumers the effects are more diverse in some countries output falls in response to an oil price shock while other countries seem to be relatively immune to oil price changes finally indirect effects are also detected for oil consumer countries those countries which trade more with oil producers gain indirect benefits via higher demand from oil producing countries in general the largest negative total effects from positive oil price shocks are found for japan china the usa finland and switzerland while other countries in our sample seem to have fared quite well during recent positive oil price shocks the indirect effects are negative for russia finland germany and netherlands

ethics in finance and public policy the ibercorp case our research has found that companies which have diverged from traditional management in order to adopt strategies which include ethics cooperation and a joint vision of management obtain a greater added value the new challenges of competitiveness require a position of active cooperation between firms and their suppliers which should be considered as collaborators rather than adversaries an active cooperation management may well allow the company to improve the quality of its products and its image speed up delivery to its clients and make its production and trading more agile thus enhancing the perception the client has of the product an improved ethical quality in our dealings generating trust improving communication and establishing long term relationships with joint added value results in higher competitiveness and greater creation of wealth

the impact of renewable energies on eex day ahead electricity prices in this paper we analyze the impact of renewable energies wind and photovoltaic on the formation of day ahead electricity prices at eex we give an overview of the policy decisions concerning the promotion of renewable energy sources in germany and discuss their consequences on day ahead prices an analysis of electricity spot prices reveals that the introduction of renewable energies enhances extreme price changes in the frame of a dynamic fundamental model we show that there has been a continuous electricity price adaption process to market fundamentals furthermore the fundamental drivers of prices differ among hours with different load profiles our results imply that renewable energies decrease market spot prices and have implications on the traditional fuel mix for electricity production however the prices for the final consumers increased overall because they must pay in addition the feed in tariffs for the promotion of renewable energy

oil revenue shocks and government spending behavior in iran abstract oil revenues play an important role in the political economy of iran on average 60 of the iranian government revenues and 90 of export revenues originate from oil and gas resources current international sanctions on iran have mainly targeted the oil production capacity of iran and its exports to the global markets in this study we analyze the dynamic effects of oil shocks on different categories of the iranian government expenditures from 1959 to 2007 using impulse response functions irf and variance decomposition analysis vdc techniques the main results show that iran s military and security expenditures significantly respond to a shock in oil revenues or oil prices while social spending components do not show significant reactions to such shocks

forecasting power prices using a hybrid fundamental econometric model we investigate the performance of two hybrid forecasting models to predict the next day base load electricity prices on the apx power exchange for great britain hybrid models have often been advocated as a synthetic method for forecasting but it is an open question how well they perform at the day ahead stage a conventional hybrid approach combines a fundamental model formulated with supply stack modeling with an econometric model using data on price drivers we extend this model to one based upon logistic smooth transition regression which represents a regime switching for periods of structural change empirical results for out of sample forecasting using both hybrid approaches are discussed and compared to non hybrid time series forecasting methods

help harm or avoid on the personal advantage of dispositions to cooperate and punish in multilateral pd games with exit abstract simulated round robin tournaments are used 1 to assess the relative performance of non defecting conditionally cooperative programs in a three person pd setting where exit is possible pdes and 2 to assess the importance of sanctions for the success of joint enterprises we find that the possibility of exit allows individuals to escape from dysfunctional teams which increases the potential benefits of cooperation while reducing those associated with free riding we also find that punishment especially targeted punishment is critical to the success of shorter term enterprises similar results held in evolutionary settings where successful behavioral programs can be imitated or propagated by non rational biological or social processes our results suggest that non defecting programs of conditional cooperation can be rational average payoff maximizing strategies for participating in small multilateral settings where individuals can choose to participate in a pd game or not

market culture and authority a comparative analysis of management and organization in the far east three frameworks purport to explain industrial arrangements and practices a market approach that emphasizes economic characteristics a cultural approach that sees organization as the expression of patterned values and an authority approach that explains organization as a historically developed structure of domination the efficacy of each approach is tested in explaining the organizational structures of three rapidly growing east asian economies japan south korea and taiwan the paper argues through comparative analysis that organizational growth is best explained by market and cultural factors but that authority patterns and legitimation strategies best explain organizational structure

an analysis of the ethical codes of corporations and business schools reports of ethical lapses in the business world have been numerous and widespread ethical awareness in business education has received a great deal of attention because of the number and severity of business scandals given sarbanes oxley legislation and recent association to advance collegiate schools of business international s aacsbi recommendations this study examined respective websites of securities and exchange commission sec regulated public companies and aacsbi accredited business schools for ethical policy statement content the analysis was accomplished by classifying ethical expressions into a framework consisting of the attributes of thematic content and focus themes partially based on the 2004 research of gaumnitz and lere findings indicate that public companies have been diligent in presenting website ethical content that closely follows authoritative recommendations business schools appear not to have prioritized such disclosure to the extent done so by public companies although there was improvement between two samples taken in 2005 and 2007 this study provides evidence that many accredited business schools have little or no disclosed ethical expectations in their mission vision goals or other similar types of statements on their websites additional findings provide several opportunities for future research

self interest and business ethics some lessons of the recent corporate scandals the recent accounting scandals at enron worldcom and other corporations have helped to fuel a massive loss of confidence in the integrity of american business and have contributed to a very sharp decline in the u s stock market inasmuch as these events have brought ethical questions about business to the forefront in the media and public consciousness as never before they are of signal importance for the field of business ethics i offer some observations and conjectures about the bearing of the recent scandals on the literature on business ethics i defend the following contentions 1 recent events reveal serious weaknesses of the stakeholder theory about the social responsibilities of business which lacks prohibitions against fraud and deception this is a glaring deficiency of standard versions of the stakeholder theory but it is easily remedied by adding explicit prohibitions against fraud and deception in addition recent events highlight the stakeholder theory s very naive and unrealistic hopes and expectations for business executives as moral arbiters and agents of social improvement 2 recent events do not constitute an objection to the shareholder theory about the social responsibilities of business however these events make evident the implausibility of strong versions of the invisible hand theory 3 schemes of payment and reward often create perverse incentives for individuals to engage in unethical conduct 4 both the shareholder theory and the stakeholder theory need to add a constraint that requires executives to respect the professional obligations of employees

first evidence of asymmetric cost pass through of eu emissions allowances examining wholesale electricity prices in germany abstract we test the hypothesis that rising prices of emission allowances have a stronger impact on wholesale electricity prices than falling prices asymmetric cost pass through using an autoregressive distributed lag model we confirm this hypothesis for the german market

estimation of direct and indirect impact of oil price on growth abstract using a new methodology this paper measures the direct and indirect effects of oil prices on gdp growth of 12 economies because of the indirect effect which is transmitted through a trade matrix even the net oil exporters like indonesia and malaysia cannot escape the negative influence of high oil prices

recent evolutionary theorizing about economic change this famous passage from marshall s principles of economics it first appeared in the fifth edition which came out in 1907 nicely brings out two issues which are as germane to economics today as they were when marshall wrote the first is the heavy reliance by economists in their formal theorizing on the notion of equilibrium the other is the appeal that biological conceptions3x201d have for many economists particularly when their focus is on economic change

business codes of multinational firms what do they say business codes are an oft cited management instrument but how common are codes among multinationals and what is their content in an unprecedented study the codes of the largest corporations in the world have been collected and thoroughly analyzed this paper presents the results of that study of the 200 largest companies in the world 52 5 have a code more than half f these codes describe company responsibilities regarding quality of products and services 67 adherence to local laws and regulations 57 and the protection of the natural environment 56 many codes make reference to principles governing stake holder relations e g transparency 55 honesty 50 and fairness 45 corporate core values e g teamwork 43 appropriate conduct among employees e g discrimination 44 and intimidation 43 and treatment of company property by employees e g conflict of interests 52 corruption 46 and fraud 45 monitoring compliance with the code is addressed in 52 of the codes based on this content study three types of codes are distinguished the stakeholder statute 72 the values statement 49 and the code of conduct 46 the results of this inquiry present a benchmark for the evaluation and development of both individual and international business codes

oil price shocks sectoral and dynamic adjustments in a small open developed and oil exporting economy the recent uptrend in oil prices represents both an opportunity and a challenge for small open developed and oil exporting countries using canada as a study case and in contrast to most studies that use aggregate models this paper employs a multi sector intertemporal general equilibrium model to provide perspectives on the sectoral aggregate and dynamic adjustments of a sustained increase in oil prices it highlights the transmission channels through which the rise in oil prices affects the domestic economy the simulation results suggest that the shock would have positive aggregate impacts but would also spur the reallocation of resources and would therefore induce disparities in sectoral adjustments the suggested contraction in some industries could not however be attributed to a pure dutch disease phenomenon because of among other factors the cost push effect induced by the increase in oil prices

the effects of oil price shocks in a federation the case of interregional trade and labour migration abstract oil price shocks generate heterogeneous effects across and within countries the primary effects of the shocks are on the supply side of the economy in oil importing countries and on the demand side in oil exporting countries however in addition to these direct effects which are widely studied in the literature the oil price shocks also generate spillover effects through trade and labour migration the multi country studies often do not consider the heterogeneities and spillover effects and cannot fully capture the differences in institutions and political structures across countries in this study we investigate the heterogeneous effects of oil price shocks on the canadian economy which includes autonomous oil exporting and oil importing provinces in a federal system under the same institutions monetary policy and political structure furthermore trade and labour migration take place across provinces without significant barriers observed in international relations we set up a panel var model to estimate the dynamic responses of provinces to oil price shocks accounting for the provincial heterogeneities and the spillover effects we also test for asymmetric effects of positive and negative oil price shocks on provinces and examine the differences in the pre and post 2000 periods the results indicate that the oil price shocks generate positive impacts on both oil exporting and oil importing provinces which is in contrast to the results often reported for individual countries or regions the effects are asymmetric for positive and negative oil price shocks and more pronounced in the post 2000 period

corporate governance and codes of ethics as a result of recent corporate scandals several rules have focused on the role played by boards of directors on the planning and monitoring of corporate codes of ethics in theory outside directors are in a better position than insiders to protect and further the interests of all stakeholders because of their experience and their sense of moral and legal obligations female directors also tend to be more sensitive to ethics according to several past studies which explain this affirmation by early gender socialization the fact that women are thought to place a greater emphasis on harmonious relations and the fact that men and women use different ethical frameworks in their judgments the goal of this paper is to determine the influence of these characteristics of the board in terms of promoting and hindering the creation of a code of ethics our findings show that a greater number of female directors does not necessarily lead to more ethical companies moreover within europe as a continent board ownership leads to an entrenchment of upper level management generating a divergence between the ethical interests of owners and managers in light of this situation the presence of independent directors is necessary to reduce such conflicts

reputation and equilibrium selection in games with a patient player a single long run player plays a simultaneous move stage game against a sequence of opponents who play only once but observe all previous play let the stackelberg strategy be the pure strategy to which the long run player would most like to commit himself if there is positive prior probability that the long run player will always play the stackelberg strategy then his payoff in any nash equilibrium exceeds a bound that converges to the stackelberg payoff as his discount factor approaches one when the stage game is not simultaneous move this result must be modified to account for the possibility that distinct strategies of the long run player are observationally equivalent

who should control a corporation toward a contingency stakeholder model for allocating ownership rights a number of companies allocate ownership rights to stakeholders different from shareholders despite the fact that the law attributes these rights to the equity holders this article contributes to an understanding of this evidence by developing a contingency model for the allocation of ownership rights the model sheds light on why companies despite pressures from the law vary in their allocation of ownership rights the model is based on the assumption that corporations increase their chance to survive and prosper if the stakeholders supplying critical contributions receive the ownership rights according to the model critical contributions involve 1 contractual problems due to specific investments long term relationships and low measurability 2 the assumption of the uncertainty resting on the company and 3 the supply of scarce and valuable resources the model is dynamic because it also provides a basis for understanding why the allocation of ownership rights changes with time finally the article presents the strategies companies can use to realize an efficient distribution of ownership rights among their stakeholders

the autonomy of the contracting partners an argument for heuristic contractarian business ethics due to the domain characteristics of business ethics a contractarian theory for business ethics will need to be essentially different from the contract model as it is applied to other domains much of the current criticism of contractarian business ethics cbe can be traced back to autonomy one of its three boundary conditions after explaining why autonomy is so important this article considers the notion carefully vis a vis the contracting partners in the contractarian approaches in business ethics autonomy is too demanding a condition for the realm of cbe but a less stringent version of the contract may be possible a version which uses the contract as a heuristic device which merely requires moral responsibility furthermore it is argued that views of human agency and the moral subject should be made explicit in such a theory

do corporate codes of ethics reflect national character evidence from europe and the united states this paper analyses the usage and contents of corporate codes of ethics the results from a sample of 600 large european companies are contrasted with findings reported for similar u s firms the comparison reveals that significantly fewer european than u s firms adopted codes of ethics in europe the large majority of codes have been introduced only very recently and there are indications that codes made their way into europe via subsidiaries of u s firms however there are striking differences in content between u s and european codes of ethics pointing to the existence of a distinctly european approach to codifying ethics

ethical sourcing codes of large uk based corporations prevalence content limitations codes of conduct have become the perhaps most often used tool to manage corporate social responsibility csr researchers have primarily analysed such documents at company wide or trans company levels whereas there is a dearth of studies into the use of codes for particular corporate functions hence this article will examine one particular group of sub company level codes namely codes of conduct that stipulate csr criteria for suppliers examining such ethical sourcing policies adopted by the ftse100 corporations the article draws out what environmental social and economic issues large corporations perceive to be important in the management of their supply chains at an aggregate level the coverage of csr issues is rather extensive yet at the level of the individual corporation a degree of selectivity in the issues that are addressed becomes noticeable the code content analysis furthermore confirms the business case and public pressure to be the most important drivers of csr finally the study highlights the role of isomorphic processes in the adoption of csr tools

a social contract account for csr as an extended model of corporate governance i rational bargaining and justification this essay seeks to give a contractarian foundation to the concept of corporate social responsibility csr meant as an extended model of corporate governance of the firm it focuses on justification according to the contractarian point of view leaving compliance and implementation problems to a related article sacconi 2004b forthcoming in the journal of business ethics it begins by providing a definition of csr as an extended model of corporate governance based on the fiduciary duties owed to all the firm s stakeholders then by establishing the basic context of incompleteness of contracts and abuse of authority it analyses how the extended view of corporate governance arises directly from criticism of the contemporary neo institutional economic theory of the firm thereafter an application of the theory of bargaining games is used to deduce the structure of a multi stakeholder firm on the basis of the idea of a constitutional contract which satisfies basic requirements of impartial justification and accordance with intuitions of social justice this is a sequential model of constitutional bargaining whereby a constitution is first chosen and then a post constitutional coalition game is played on the basis of the unique solution given to each step in the bargaining model the quest for a prescriptive theory of governance and strategic management is accomplished so that i am able to define an objective function for the firm consistent with the idea of csr finally a contractarian potential explanation for the emergence of the multi fiduciary firm is provided

from chain liability to chain responsibility this article examines whether the involvement of stakeholders in the design of corporate codes of conduct leads to a higher implementation likelihood of the code the empirical focus is on occupational safety and health osh the article compares the inclusion of osh issues in the codes of conduct of 30 companies involved in international framework agreements ifas agreed upon by trade unions and multinational enterprises with those of a benchmark sample of 38 leading multinational enterprises in comparable industries it is found that codes of the ifa group have a higher implementation likelihood in osh than the codes of the benchmark group further european firms culturally more used to stakeholder involvement score higher than their us and japanese competitors and hence are more capable of addressing the safety and health issues in international supply chains the implementation likelihood of codes seems closely related to the type of corporate csr approach

a study of codes of ethics for mexican microfinance institutions most scholarly interest in codes of ethics or conduct has focused on traditional companies little is known about the codes of social enterprises or hybrid organizations such as microfinance institutions mfis our paper provides a comparative case study of the codes of a mexican microfinance network and seven mfis using the corporate integrity model we analyze the content of mfis codes compared to those of traditional organizations we then examine to what extent some specific features of mfis such as their mission target group and applied credit methodologies are factors that determine the content of their code we find that mfis codes like those of traditional companies include traditional stakeholder principles nevertheless they put greater emphasis on socially oriented principles or on terms such as people and common good mfis codes differ with respect to the items they include and exclude and the size of the covered sections we also find that these codes attempt to address prevailing concerns in microfinance but rarely tackle two critical debates namely levels of interest rates and of profitability we finally argue that it is difficult to move toward a global code owing to regional disparities and the variety of organizational models and missions