keynes uncertainty and interest rates uncertainty plays an important role in the general theory particularly in the theory of interest rates keynes did not provide a theory of uncertainty but he did make some enlightening remarks about the direction he thought such a theory should take i argue that some modern innovations in the theory of probability allow us to build a theory which captures these keynesian insights if this is the right theory however uncertainty cannot carry its weight in keynes s arguments this does not mean that the conclusions of these arguments are necessarily mistaken in their best formulation they may succeed with merely an appeal to risk employment was a problem because investment was and investment was problematic because of the uncertainty of its return shapiro 1997 83 keynes clearly saw an important role for uncertainty in his general theory however few contemporaries agreed with him and subsequent keynesians generally obliterated the distinction between risk and uncertainty in part this was caused by keynes s informal presentation of his views on uncertainty in the general theory this paper has two aims the first is to sketch a formal theory of uncertainty which captures keynes s insights about the risk uncertainty distinction i argue that the theory of imprecise probabilities developed in recent years best captures keynes s intuitions about uncertainty in particular this theory provides a formal distinction between risk and uncertainty and allows for an analysis of keynes s weight of arguments however the second aim is to show that if this is right then keynes was wrong to draw the economic consequences of uncertainty that he did in broad terms i argue that uncertainty is economically impotent it only has effects in conjunction with some other feature of models or the world such as missing markets or agent irrationality but these features plus the existence of risk are sufficient to get the conclusions keynes wants these conclusions of keynes might be right but if so they can be justified without reference to keynesian uncertainty at the end of the day uncertainty is not as economically interesting as it appears

towards an attention based view of the firm the central argument is that firm behavior is the result of how firms channel and distribute the attention of their decision makers what decision makers do depends on what issues and answers they focus their attention on what issues and answers they focus on depends on the specific situation and on how the firm s rules resources and relationships distribute various issues answers and decision makers into specific communications and procedures the paper develops these theoretical principles into a model of firm behavior and presents its implications for explaining firm behavior and adaptation 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

lords of the harvest third party influence and regulatory approval of genetically modified organisms little is known about the factors that influence regulatory agency decision making we posit that regulatory agencies are influenced by the firms they regulate but not exclusively via dyadic exchanges as is traditionally argued in the regulatory capture and business government literatures instead regulatory decisions are indirectly shaped via third party actors who shield agencies from legitimacy threats focusing empirically on the united states department of agriculture s usda approval of genetically modified organisms gmos we find that product assessments by powerful stakeholders and peer agencies influence product approval and that their effects vary under different threats we also discuss the implications of these findings for businessgovernment relations nonmarket strategy and organization theory

redistributing toward the rich strategic policy crafting in the campaign to repeal the sixteenth amendment 1938 1958 beginning in 1938 some american business groups campaigned to repeal the sixteenth amendment and limit the federal taxation of income and wealth although their proposed upward redistributive policy would benefit few voters it won the support of 31 state legislatures to explain this outcome this article offers a theory of strategic policy crafting by advocacy groups such groups may succeed even in otherwise unfavorable institutional environments if they craft their proposals to fit the salient policy context archival evidence and event history analysis support this hypothesis public opinion also helps explain legislative support for upward redistributive policy

targeting capital a cultural economy approach to understanding the efficacy of two anti genetic engineering movements in the late 1990s the british anti genetic engineering ge movement effectively closed britain s market for genetically modified foods while the u s anti ge movement had a negligible impact in seeking to explain the different outcomes of these similar social movements the authors draw upon the global commodity chains gcc literature to extend the understanding of the economic and industry related openings and closures social movements face as they seek to promote social change this analysis not only illustrates the importance of economic structures and organization for movement outcomes but also shows how the economic sphere is culturally constituted in this fashion it broadens the social movement literature s understanding both of the way that political economy matters to movement efficacy and of the way that cultural processes infuse the economic sphere the study advances the gcc literature by showing how gccs are cultural as well as economic constructs

shaming the corporation the social production of targets and the anti sweatshop movement as social movements co evolve with changes in states and markets it is crucial to examine how they make particular kinds of actors into focal points for the expression of grievances and the demand for rights but researchers often bracket the question of why some kinds of organizations are more likely than others to become targets of social movement pressure we theorize the social production of targets by social movements rejecting a simple reflection model to focus on configurations of power and vulnerability that shape repertoires of contention empirically we extend structural accounts of global commodity chains and cultural accounts of markets to analyze the production of targets in the case of the anti sweatshop movement of the 1990s using a longitudinal firm level dataset and unique data on anti sweatshop activism we identify factors that attracted social movement pressure to particular companies firms power and positions strongly shaped their likelihood of becoming targets of anti swea

the role of corporate donations in chinese political markets many corporations actively engage in political activities to enhance their relationships with politicians facilitating access to scarce resources and creating competitive advantages we investigate corporate donations to explore how they initiate interactions between firms and new local leaders in china specifically we propose that political turnover creates unique opportunities for firms to win over new officials via corporate donations especially in competitive markets moreover we find that firms that make generous donations at the beginning of a new city secretary s tenure receive more attention from representatives of new local leaders especially firms that were politically disadvantaged under a predecessor s governance empirical studies on the turnover of city secretaries between 2001 and 2012 in china strongly support our hypotheses consequently this study improves our understanding of how corporate donations initiate social exchanges between firms and politicians

the two faces of governance responses to legal uncertainty in u s firms 1955 to 1985 recent neoinstitutional analyses have associated the rapid diffusion of due process governance mechanisms in the american workplace with government pressure for equal employment opportunity and affirmative action we carry the argument forward in three ways first we focus on grievance procedures and employment at will clauses to show that the legalization process produces both rights enhancing and rights negating rules second we focus on the private for profit economic sector to test more effectively the efficiency and labor control theories that have fared poorly in previous neoinstitutional studies third we explore the interactions among personnel professionals lawyers and the state in the adoption of legalistic governance mechanisms results sustain the neoinstitutional argument but also offer new support for efficiency and labor control hypotheses

lobbying as legislative subsidy professional lobbyists are among the most experienced knowledgeable and strategic actors one can find in the everyday practice of politics nonetheless their behavioral patterns often appear anomalous when viewed in the light of existing theories we revisit these anomalies in search of an alternative theory we model lobbying not as exchange vote buying or persuasion informative signaling but as a form of legislative subsidy a matching grant of policy information political intelligence and legislative labor to the enterprises of strategically selected legislators the proximate political objective of this strategy is not to change legislators minds but to assist natural allies in achieving their own coincident objectives the theory is simple in form realistic in its principal assumptions and counterintuitive in its main implications empirically the model renders otherwise anomalous regularities comprehensible and predictable in a later section we briefly bring preferences back in examining the important but relatively uncommon conditions under which preference centered lobbying should occur

corporate unity in american trade policy a network analysis of corporate dyad political action this essay examines factors that produce political unity among large u s corporations advocating free trade expanding on old debates these data and analyses validate the importance of organizational and class cohesion approaches to corporate political action methodologically the political unity of pairs dyads of firms in trade policy activism is analyzed with quadratic assignment procedure regression shared membership in prominent policy networks and board interlocks positively predict corporate political unity across three areas of trade policy influence from the executive branch to the legislature non network organizational indicators also significantly predicted corporate trade policy activism the findings support business unity accounts of corporate political action and suggest that higher levels of firm embeddedness within intercorporate networks facilitate collective corporate political action

keynesian uncertainty and liquidity preference in his economic writings keynes hints that his liquidity preference analysis is informed by the notion of evidential weight that first appears in his earlier treatise on probability this paper reviews keynes s distinction between probability and evidential weight and offers an account of its influence in his later work on the incentive to hold liquid assets alternative representations of the keynesian uncertainty liquidity preference relation are assessed in the light of this discussion james tobin s mean variance approach the keynesian fundamentalist view of paul davidson and the flexibility approach represented by louis makowski copyright 1994 by oxford university press

corporate economic power and the state a longitudinal assessment of two explanations much has been written about the relationship between the economic resources of corporations and their ability to control politics in advanced capitalist democracies the resource that has received the most attention is economic concentration but there is little agreement about the precise form of concentration that matters in an attempt to find the most useful image of the state this study looks at the connection between the aggregate concentration of assets among the leading manufacturing firms as well as the rate of business investment and taxes on business time series regressions computed on u s national level data show that theories of the state that emphasize the independet activities of private investors are not supported instead the aggrgate concentration of assets as measured by the share of assets held by the leading 100 firms has a strong negative influence on effective corporate tax rates these results are consistent with the theory that heightened aggregate concentration helps corpor

institutional sources of boundary spanning structures the establishment of investor relations departments in the fortune 500 industrials the authors analyze the coercive and mimetic conditions leading to the establishment of investor relations departments among fortune 500 industrial firms during the 1984 1994 period the results show that antimanagement resolutions brought to a vote by social movement activists significantly contributed to the establishment of investor relations departments intense scrutiny by financial analysts also impelled firms to create such departments whereas social movement activists framed shareholder rights as a problem and compelled organizations to uphold them professional analysts subtly coerced organizations to signal their commitment to investor rights by creating boundary spanning structures that solution was transmitted through board interlocks to other organizations

from streets to suites how the anti biotech movement affected german pharmaceutical firms how do social movements affect decisions within corporations such as the commercialization of new technologies we suggest that the effect of movement activism is conditioned by the internal polity and therefore varies across organizations this article examines how the anti genetic movement in germany during the 1980s affected six domestic pharmaceutical firms commercialization of biotechnology we develop a process model of how movements penetrate the relatively closed polity of private organizations external contestation weakened the position of internal champions of biotechnology precipitated divisions among organizational elites and undermined collective commitment to the technology the movement also increased perceptions of investment uncertainty but the consequences of this uncertainty depended on organizational logics of decision making as a result investments in some firms were tilted away from domestic biotechnology projects the model also explains this variation in organization level outcomes of movement contestation

organizational responses to public and private politics an analysis of climate change activists and u s oil and gas firms we explore how activists public and private politics elicit different organizational responses using data on u s petroleum companies from 1982 to 2010 we investigate how climate change activists serving as witnesses at congressional hearings and engaging in firm protests influenced firms internal and external responses we find that public politics induced internally focused practice adoption whereas private politics induced externally focused framing activities we also find that private and public politics had an interaction effect as firms faced more private political pressure they were less likely to respond to public political pressures similarly as firms faced greater public political pressure they were less likely to respond to private political pressures the results suggest that activists can have a significant impact on firm behavior depending on the mix of private and public political tactics they engage in we discuss the implications of our study for social movement research organ

towards a cost causation based tariff for distribution networks with dg this paper decomposes the effects of the transition from an average cost distribution tariff to a cost causation based distribution tariff in terms of time and location that uses nodal prices to recover losses and an extent of use method to recover fixed network costs based on use at coincident peak our decomposition is designed so that the effects of using coincident peak and location for fixed network charges as well as using marginal losses under constraints recovering the exact amount of losses and recovering exactly the cost of network service in total can be isolated and analyzed separately we apply our tariff transition and decomposition method to an example network with data from uruguay to isolate the various effects with and without a distributed generation dg resource we show moving to coincident peak charges and to fully charging for marginal losses while rebating the merchandising surplus through the fixed charges have the greatest effects on changes in distribution tariff charges dg provides countervailing cost changes to distribution tariffs for loads through loss reductions and the implicit creation of new network capacity for which it is paid the interaction of all these effects may lead to outcomes that are counter intuitive which further supports the need to decompose the tariff changes to fully understand the reasons for the direction and magnitude of changes in tariff charges in the transition to tariffs based more on cost causation

the hazards of expert control chief risk officers and risky derivatives at the turn of the century regulators introduced policies to control bank risk taking many banks appointed chief risk officers cros yet bank holdings of new complex and untested financial derivatives subsequently soared why did banks expand use of new derivatives we suggest that cros encouraged the rise of new derivatives in two ways first we build on institutional arguments about the expert construction of compliance suggesting that risk experts arrived with an agenda of maximizing risk adjusted returns which led them to favor the derivatives second we build on moral licensing arguments to suggest that bank appointment of cros induced organizational licensing leading trading desk managers to reduce policing of their own risky behavior we further argue that ceos and fund managers bolstered or restrained derivatives use depending on their financial interests we predict that ceos favored new derivatives when their compensation rewarded risk taking but that both ceos and fund managers op

gaining access by doing good the effect of sociopolitical reputation on firm participation in public policy making this paper examines the role of firms sociopolitical reputations as proxied by their perceived engagement in socially responsible practices in public policy makers decisions to grant access in the policy making process i argue that policy makers dependencies motivations and decision making processes lead them to evaluate firms by using sociopolitical reputation as a differentiating heuristic i hypothesize that firms that construct stronger sociopolitical reputations will be granted greater access and that firms existing political activity and policy makers partisanship will moderate this relationship i test these hypotheses using an 11 year panel on congressional testimony reputation and political and financial characteristics for the s p 500 and find support for all three these findings support the existence of a sociopolitical dimension to firms reputations that affects how public policy makers evaluate firms demonstrating that corporate social responsibility pays political benefits this paper was accepted by jesper sorensen organizations

transmission network cost allocation based on equivalent bilateral exchanges this paper presents a novel methodology for allocating the cost of a transmission network to its users based on the principle of equivalent bilateral exchanges which states that after all physical laws governing the flow of power have been met each demand is assigned a fraction of each generation and each generator is assigned a fraction of each demand in a uniform manner transmission cost allocation based on this principle presents several advantages namely independence from the choice of the slack bus recognition of counter flows and transmission use charges that are stable and always positive

social movements and organizational form cooperative alternatives to corporations in the american insurance dairy and grain industries how do social movements promote diversity and alternative organizational forms we address this question by analyzing how cooperative enterprise was affected by the grange a leading anticorporate movement in the united states during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries state level analyses across three industries yield three findings first the grange had positive effects on cooperatives and mutuals during the nineteenth century populist struggles over corporate capitalism second these effects were stronger where corporations counter mobilized to block challengers political efforts grangers pursued economic organization as an alternative to politics and in response to blocked political access third the grange continued to foster cooperatives even as populist revolts waned it did so however by buffering cooperatives from problems of group heterogeneity and population change rendering them less dependent on supportive communities and specific economic conditions these findings advance research at the movements organizations interface by documenting movement effects and by isolating different causal pathways through which mobilization counter mobilization and political opportunity shape economic organization the results also provide economic sociology with new evidence on how social structure moderates economic forces and help revise institutional analyses of american capitalism by showing how cooperatives emerged as significant rather than aberrant elements of the u s economy

mission control the development of personnel systems in u s industry this paper examines historical differences in personnel practices among u s industries to explore the roots of modern bureaucratic work control we report multivariate analyses of data describing organizational personnel practices collected by the national industrial conference board between 1935 and 1946 we find evidence of three early strands of bureaucratic labor control in different industrial sectors worker allocation and job evaluation techniques which evolved from scientific management in modern assembly line industries internal labor market mechanisms in white collar nonmanufacturing practices related to seniority and the formalization of rules in unionized and skilled industries our analyses suggest that the institutional environment and the historical period of an industry s founding were among the central contingencies shaping labor control in a particular sector as were several factors that past research has emphasized more such as technology and skills labor market conditions and unionization our analyses thus corroborate some previous accounts of industrial differences in bureaucratic control while also suggesting some revisions concerning where when and why employment relations first became bureaucratized

the stages of the policy process and the equal rights amendment 1972 1982 studies of how social movements impact policy outcomes typically treat policy change as a dichotomous phenomenon a governmental unit either adopts or does not adopt a particular policy in a particular time frame this simplistic view of the policy process runs the risk of masking how movements and other factors matter at various stages of the policy process each stage is characterized by different rules and different consequences thus movements and other factors ought to matter differently at each stage the authors examine three stages of policy development with regard to state ratification of the equal rights amendment results show that movements mattered more to legislative decisions in the earlier stages of the policy process but that their effects were eclipsed in later stages by public opinion

do political connections buffer firms from or bind firms to the government a study of corporate charitable donations of chinese firms do political connections buffer firms from or bind firms to the government to examine this theoretical puzzle we distinguish two types of managerial political connections ascribed and achieved

the effect of online protests and firm responses on shareholder and consumer evaluation protests that target firms socially irresponsible behavior are increasingly organized via digital media this study uses two methods to investigate the effects that online protests and mitigating firm responses have on shareholders and consumers evaluation the first method is a financial analysis that includes an event study which measures the effect of online protests on the target firm s share price as well as an investigation of the boundary effects of protest characteristics the second method is an online experiment that assesses the effect of an online protest campaign on consumers perception and purchase intention as well as any mitigating effects that a firm s response may have contrary to recent studies suggesting that participation in online protests is only token support without any substantive effects our results show that online protests do hurt firms can expect to suffer financial reputational and sales damage when an online protest campaign mobilizes consumers successfully we also show that online protests are more likely to take firms by surprise than offline protests firms can exacerbate or reduce the damage by their response we find that although firms may repair the damage to consumers purchase intentions the negative effects on a brand s image are harder to rectify the results have valuable implications for protest organizers and managers faced with the task of responding

uncertainty and money keynes tobin and kahn and the disappearance of the precautionary demand for money from liquidity preference theory keynes answered to critics of the general theory in 1937 that they failed to realize that there were two main innovations in that work the first was the relationship between money demand and uncertainty the second was the consumption multiplier the relation between money demand and uncertainty was in fact the main reason to explain why aggregate demand could fall short of full employment income however this was explained by keynes in 1937 by recourse to a form of precautionary demand for money in the gt keynes had actually merged the precautionary demand into the transactions demand for money making it very difficult for any reader friendly or unfriendly to actually see what he meant in 1937 as a result keynes liquidity preference theory of the interest rate in the gt exhibited some important shortcomings that were the subject of many reexaminations including one by richard kahn and another by james tobin the paper evaluates keynes s views kahn s and tobin s solutions to keynes s dilemmas at its conclusion it is shown why these themes remain relevant today particularly when financial systems are in turmoil copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

employment relations in dual labor markets it s nice work if you can get it jobs in big firms command higher wages i examine four theories that could explain this relation first large firms incur higher fixed employment costs including more specific training second monitoring costs are greater in big firms and can be spread by hiring more productive workers third large firms may choose to pay efficiency wages to deter shirking finally large employers organize production around teams and pay higher wages to get workers who comply with the discipline of team production the dispersion of wages and working conditions in the u s labor market reflect the heterogeneity of jobs employment relations and individuals

regulating american industries markets politics and the institutional determinants of fire insurance regulation1 this article assesses three approaches to state regulation capture theory interest group analyses and neoinstitutional research state level event history analyses of fire insurance rate regulation from 1906 to 1930 are used contrary to capture theory regulation was not driven simply by firms interests in market control instead consistent with interest group analyses regulation was more likely when anticompany forces farmers and small businesses could challenge big business politically further as neoinstitutional research suggests regulation was more likely when industry governance evoked legitimacy crises when courts and professions endorsed regulation and its underlying models and when states developed system wide administrative capacities institutional conditions also mediated the effects of markets and politics on regulation using these findings we develop a theory of how political and institutional conditions shape industries governance options

analysis of reflectivity predictability of electricity network tariff structures for household consumers distribution network operators charge household consumers with a network tariff so they can recover their network investment and operational costs with the transition towards a sustainable energy system the household load is changing through the introduction of photovoltaics and electric vehicles the tariff structures which are currently employed in the eu are either capacity and or energy consumption based in light of the changes in the household load the question whether these tariff structures are the most suitable merits renewed attention in this work the cost reflectivity of various tariff structures has been computed based on a distribution network planning approach next to this the predictability of a network tariff i e how much change would a household experience in network charges in two consecutive years has also been computed to gain insight into how well users will be able to react to the tariff the results show that a peak load based network tariffs score best on the reflectivity while having an acceptable level of predictability the switch from an energy consumption based network tariff which is now most often applied towards a peak load based network tariff should therefore be considered

racial diversity and union organizing in the united states 1999 2008 does racial diversity make forming a union harder case studies offer conflicting answers and little large scale research on the question exists most quantitative research on race and unionization has studied trends in membership rather than the outcome of specific organizing drives and has assumed that the main problem is mistrust between workers and unions paying less attention for example to the role of employers the author explores the role of racial and ethnic diversity in the outcomes of nearly 7 000 organizing drives launched between 1999 and 2008 by matching the national labor relations board s information on union activity with the equal employment opportunity commission s surveys of large establishments the author reconstructs the demographic composition of the work groups involved in each mobilization the study finds that more diverse establishments are less likely to see successful organizing attempts little evidence is found however that this is because workers are less interested

social democracy christian democracy constitutional structure and the welfare state the literature on the determinants of welfare state effort displays many inconsistencies and contradictins this article takes imoprtant stepts toward resolving these issues with the use of pooled

transmission loss allocation a comparison of different practical algorithms a pool operated electricity market based on hourly auctions usually neglects network constraints and network losses while applying its market clearing mechanism this mechanism determines the accepted and nonaccepted energy bids as well as the hourly market clearing prices as a result ex post procedures are needed to resolve network congestions and to allocate transmission losses to generators and demands this paper focuses on transmission loss allocation procedures and provides a detailed comparison of four alternative algorithms 1 pro rata pr 2 marginal allocation 3 unsubsidized marginal allocation and 4 proportional sharing a case study based on the ieee rts is provided different load scenarios covering a whole year are analyzed finally conclusions and recommendations are stated

nodal pricing for distribution networks efficient pricing for efficiency enhancing dg as distributed generation dg becomes more widely deployed distribution networks become more active and take on many of the same characteristics as transmission we propose the use of nodal pricing that is often used in the pricing of short term operations in transmission as an economically efficient mechanism nodal pricing would properly reward dg for reducing line losses through increased revenues at nodal prices and signal prospective dg where it ought to connect with the distribution network applying nodal pricing to a model distribution network we show significant price differences between buses reflecting high marginal losses moreover we show the contribution of a dg resource located at the end of the network to significant reductions in losses and line loading we also show the dg resource has significantly greater revenue under nodal pricing reflecting its contribution to reduced line losses and loading

change actors in the u s electric energy system the role of environmental groups in utility adoption and diffusion of wind power we study the contribution of environmental groups to new technology adoption and diffusion by dominant incumbents building on institutional and social movement theory we develop a theoretical framework that sheds light on environmental groups as change actors we theorize that by approaching embedded key constituents with various strategic actions environmental groups affect taken for granted beliefs build legitimacy for renewable energy technologies and convince skeptical constituents to support the new technology we verify our theoretical framework with a case study of wind power development in colorado we find that environmentalists educate constituents on the benefits of the new technology engage in activities leading to regulatory and legislative decisions for wind while also providing direct assistance to the utility as a result utilities are both pressured and encouraged to adopt and diffuse wind power on a large scale this research directs attention to the role of environmental groups as change actors and the legitimating effects of their actions it highlights their part in creating a more favorable institutional environment for new technologies while directly influencing the incumbent s technology choice this paper contributes to an understanding of bottom up actor initiated changes in energy systems taking into account both the systemic technological infrastructure and the institutional context

you can t always get what you need organizational determinants of diversity programs while some u s corporations have adopted a host of diversity management programs many have done little or nothing we explore the forces promoting six diversity programs in a national sample of 816 firms over 23 years institutional theory suggests that external pressure for innovation reinforces internal advocacy we argue that external pressure and internal advocacy serve as alternatives such that when external pressure is already high increases in internal advocacy will not alter the likelihood of program adoption moreover institutional theory points to functional need as a driver of innovation we argue that in the case of innovations designed to achieve new societal goals functional need as defined in this case by the absence of workforce diversity or the presence of regulatory oversight is less important than corporate culture our findings help explain the spotty coverage of diversity programs firms that lack workforce diversity are no more likely than others to adopt programs but firms with large contingents of women managers are more likely to do so pro diversity industry and corporate cultures promote diversity programs the findings carry implications for public policy

the economics of movement success business responses to civil rights mobilization1 this article explores why movements are successful in obtaining concessions from economic actors while social movement theorists have suggested that economic actors weigh the costliness of protests the author considers the vulnerability of movement targets to both the cost of disruptions in routine transactions and the cost of conceding to movement demands by addressing the magnitude of these costs and their interaction the author derives an economic opportunity structure to predict the receptivity of economic actors to movement demands and the likely struggles among them over the decision to yield also this cost assessment approach reveals patterns of vulnerability across economic sectors to the costs of disruptive mobilization the author tests this analysis based on case studies of the responses of economic actors to civil rights mobilization in the 1960s in five southern localities these cases depict how the character of protest and variation in the configuration of business communities defined

the effects of top management team integrative complexity and decentralized decision making on corporate social performance we examine the influence of top management teams tmts integrative complexity and decentralization of decision making on corporate social performance we argue that both factors increase tmt ability to gather information on and attend to stakeholder needs thereby yielding higher corporate social performance we further predict that decentralization moderates the relationship between integrative complexity and corporate social performance in such a way that the relationship is stronger under conditions of centralization using a q sort methodology which translates complex qualitative observations into quantitative metrics we examined integrative complexity and decentralization in 61 fortune 500 firms and found support for our predictions in the wake of numerous corporate scandals corporate social performance has garnered much attention from business practitioners and academics alike corporate social performance refers to a business organization s configuration of principles of social responsibility processes of social responsiveness and policies programs and observable outcomes as they relate to the firm s societal relationships wood 1991 693 the dominant perspective taken in evaluating a firm s corporate social performance is the stakeholder approach according to which firms act in a socially responsible manner when they take the interests of multiple stakeholders e g customers employees into account mcguire dow argheyd 2003 ruf muralidhar brown janney paul 2001

allocation of fixed costs in distribution networks with distributed generation in this paper we propose a method for the allocation of fixed capital and nonvariable operation and maintenance costs at the medium voltage mv distribution level the method is derived from the philosophy behind the widely used mw mile methodology for transmission networks that bases fixed cost allocations on the extent of use that is derived from load flows we calculate the extent of use by multiplying the total consumption or generation at a busbar by the marginal current variations or power to current distribution factors pidfs that an increment of active and reactive power consumed or generated in the case of distributed generation at each busbar produces in each circuit these pidfs are analogous to power transfer distribution factors ptdfs unlike traditional tariff designs that average fixed costs on a per kwh basis across all customers the proposed method provides more cost reflective price signals and helps eliminate possible cross subsidies that deter profitable in the case of competition or cost effective in the case of a fully regulated industry deployment of dg by directly accounting for use and location in the allocation of fixed costs an application of this method for a rural radial distribution network is presented

corporate reputation and philanthropy an empirical analysis this paper analyzes the determinants of corporate reputation within a sample of large uk companies drawn from a diverse range of industries we pay particular attention to the role that philanthropic expenditures and policies may play in shaping the perceptions of companies among their stakeholders our findings highlight that companies which make higher levels of philanthropic expenditures have better reputations and that this effect varies significantly across industries given that reputational indices tend to reflect the financial performance of organizations above other factors fryxell g e and j wang 1994 journal of management 20 1 14 and that elements of the literature emphasise that discretionary aspects of social responsibility including corporate donations may not be in the financial interests of organizations e g friedman m 1970 the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits new york times magazine september 13 this is a significant finding it suggests that philanthropic expenditures may play a significant role in stakeholder management and may in particular lead to stakeholders holding more positive impressions of philanthropic corporations

why is there so little money in u s politics in this paper we argue that campaign contributions are not a form of policy buying but are rather a form of political participation and consumption we summarize the data on campaign spending and show through our descriptive statistics and our econometric analysis that individuals not special interests are the main source of campaign contributions moreover we demonstrate that campaign giving is a normal good dependent upon income and campaign contributions as a percent of gdp have not risen appreciably in over 100 years if anything they have probably fallen we then show that only one in four studies from the previous literature support the popular notion that contributions buy legislators votes finally we illustrate that when one controls for unobserved constituent and legislator effects there is little relationship between money and legislator votes thus the question is not why there is so little money politics but rather why organized interests give at all we conclude by offering potential answers to this question this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a theory of dual labor markets with application to industrial policy discrimination and keynesian unemployment this paper develops a model of dual labor markets based on employers need to motivate workers in order to elicit effort from their workers employers may find it optimal to pay more than the going wage this changes fundamentally the character of labor markets the model is applied to a wide range of labor market phenomena it provides a coherent framework for understanding the claims of industrial policy advocates it also can provide the basis for a theory of occupational segregation and discrimination that will not be eroded by market forces finally the model provides the basis for a theory of involuntary unemployment

the economic effect of electricity net metering with solar pv consequences for network cost recovery cross subsidies and policy objectives abstract net metering is commonly known as a practice by which owners of distributed generation dg units may offset their electricity consumption from the grid with local generation the increasing number of prosumers consumers that both produce and consume electricity with solar photovoltaic pv generation combined with net metering results in reduced incomes for many network utilities worldwide consequently this pushes utilities to increase charges per kw h in order to recover costs for non pv owners this could result into inequality issues due to the fact that also non pv owners have to pay higher chargers for their electricity consumed to make up for netted costs of pv owners in order to provide insight in those inequality issues caused by net metering this study presents the effects on cross subsidies cost recovery and policy objectives evolving from different applied netmetering and tariff designs for a residential consumer eventually this paper provides recommendations regarding tariffs and metering that will result in more explicit incentives for pv instead of the current implicit incentives which are present to pv owners due to net metering

the coevolution of industries social movements and institutions wind power in the united states this study of the u s wind energy industry extends theory on the process of industry emergence by developing and testing a coevolutionary model of the relationship between social movement organizations smos institutions and industries building on research that suggests that smos can influence institutions and the path of emerging industries we show that the growth of an industry can also influence the diversity of social movements by motivating the participation of specialist smos these new smos in turn deploy distinct knowledge capabilities goals and strategies to produce institutional changes that are necessary for the continued growth of the industry our study offers a more complete conceptualization of the influence of social movements on industry emergence and growth and it extends understanding of how smo diversity is produced

determining the impact of federal antidiscrimination policy on the economic status of blacks a study of south carolina this paper evaluates alternative explanations for the dramatic increase in black employment in south carolina manufacturing that occurred in the mid 1960s black progress in traditionally segregated sectors of manufacturing in operation at the time jim crow laws were passed cannot be attributed to tight labor markets the decline of agriculture or the growth of education of the black workforce the only plausible explanation is federal government civil rights and affirmative action policy for newer industries that entered the state on a large scale after world war ii the growth of skills among blacks accounts for black economic progress copyright 1989 by american economic association

some reflections on keynes s finance motive for the demand for money this essay offers a fresh interpretation of keynes s finance motive some competing interpretations are assessed which it is argued are inconsistent with the conceptual framework of keynes s monetary analysis the finance motive is interpreted as an intrinsically dynamic conception which displays important aspects of keynes s monetary thought not brought out in the current macroeconomic paradigm the essay attempts to show that liquidity preference theory should be understood in a dynamic context as a theory of financial intermediation 1995 academic press limited

bargaining power strike durations and wage outcomes an analysis of strikes in the 1880s strike outcomes in the 1880s had a winner take all character successful strikes ended with a discrete wage gain failed strikes ended with a return to work at the prestrike wage we present a theoretical interpretation of these outcomes based on a war of attrition model we fit an empirical model specifying the capitulation times of the two parties and the size of the wage gain in the event of a strike success the results show a systematic relation between the determinants of strike success and the determinants of the wage gain for a successful strike

electoral competition in the american states electoral competition is a concept that has played a central role in much of the state politics literature one commonly used indicator of competition in the states is the ranney index we offer an alternative indicator of competition one based on district level outcomes of state legislative elections after evaluating both indicators in terms of validity and reliability the analysis suggests that the district level indicator is both empirically and intuitively superior as a measure of electoral competition the implications of this finding are discussed

votes or money theory and evidence from the us congress abstract this paper investigates the relationship between the size of interest groups in terms of voter representation and the interest group s campaign contributions to politicians we uncover a robust hump shaped relationship between the voting share of an interest group and its contributions to a legislator this pattern is rationalized in a simultaneous bilateral bargaining model where the larger size of an interest group affects the amount of surplus to be split with the politician thereby increasing contributions but is also correlated with the strength of direct voter support the group can offer instead of monetary funds thereby decreasing contributions the model yields simple structural equations that we estimate at the district level employing data on individual and pac donations and local employment by sector this procedure yields estimates of electoral uncertainty and politicians effectiveness as perceived by the interest groups our approach also implicitly delivers a novel method for estimating the impact of campaign spending on election outcomes we find that an additional vote costs a politician on average 145

the liquidity of money in his general theory keynes implicitly defines liquidity as stability of value with respect to changes in the state of long term expectation this contrasts with the usual conception of liquidity as convertibility and with leading post keynesian interpretations the proposed definition explains why keynes places so much emphasis on liquidity while assuming perfect markets for capital goods and writes of the liquidity of land it also sheds new light on the distinction keynes makes between the liquidity of money and the liquidity of organised investment markets

welfare capitalism and the social security act of 1935 a central concern of political theorists has been the relationship between the state and the economy or more specifically how political power gets translated into economic power recent debates have been shaped around critiques of the corporate liberal thesis which contends that class conscious capitalists manipulate the polity so that government comes to pursue policies favorable to capitalism alternative theories suggest that the state is capable of transcending the demands or interests of any particular social group or class the social security act of 1935 which represented the beginning of the welfare state in the united states was a conservative measure that tied social insurance benefits to labor force participation and left administration of its public assistance programs to the states in this paper the social security act is used as a case study to adjudicate between several competing theories of the state the analysis demonstrates that the state functions as a mediating body weighing the priorities of various interest groups with unequal access to power negotiating compromises between class factions and incorporating working class demands into legislation on capitalist terms a central concern of political theorists has been the relationship between the state and the economy or more specifically how economic power gets translated into political power recent debates have been shaped around critiques of the corporate liberal thesis which stresses the strategies of class conscious capitalists to manipulate the polity alternative theories suggest that the state is capable of transcending the demands or interests of any particular social group or class the core agenda of those espousing some variant of corporate liberalism has been to explain how major economic interests manipulated the polity in the twentieth century so that government came to pursue policies favorable to capitalism domhoff 1979 kolko 1963 o connor 1973 useem 1983 according to this perspective capitalists rationally pursued a series of policies designed to allow them control of the political process resulting in a synthesis of politics and economics for example kolko 1963 has argued that the regulatory reforms of the progressive era traditionally explained as a respose to muckraker s criticism were actually desired by large industry as a way not only of controlling

a bilevel approach to operational decision making of a distribution company in competitive environments this paper presents a model for operational decision making of a distribution company disco with distributed generation dg and interruptible loads il in a competitive market the disco objective modeled through the upper level problem is to minimize the cost of market purchases and dg unit dispatch while taking into account the responses of the other discos this upper level problem is constrained by a lower level market clearing problem whose objective corresponds to maximization of social welfare such a setting results in a multi disco equilibrium problem formulated as an equilibrium problem with equilibrium constraints epec by combining the optimality conditions of all upper level problems using a nonlinear approach the epec problem is reformulated as a single nonlinear optimization model which is simultaneously solved for all discos the proposed approach is applied to an ac model of a power system to account for voltage and reactive power constraints of the transmission and distribution networks numerical examples based on two test systems are presented to illustrate the application of the proposed method

a technical definition of uncertainty and the long run non neutrality of money ever since knight s 1921 seminal work some economists have drawn a distinction between uncertainty and risk in order to demonstrate that this difference has important implications for understanding the operations of an entrepreneurial economy lawson 1985 is the latest to discuss the need for the analysis of societal interaction 1 in an economic world where uncertainty as opposed to mathematical risk is a pervasive fact of life p 909 lawson correctly associates the concept of uncertainty with the situation where there is no basis whatever upon which to form any calculable probability uncertainty in this account arises when the probability relation is numerically indeterminate and non comparable to other probability relations 1985 p 914

dared to care organizational vulnerability institutional logics and mncs social responsiveness in emerging markets a significant gap exists in our understanding of what explains the varying responses of multinational corporations mncs to social issues in emerging markets arguably in a setting where both market institutions and regulations and norms of corporate social responsibility are underdeveloped it is more difficult for corporations to take actions beyond those that serve their immediate economic interests proposing a social movement perspective on mncs responsiveness to social issues in emerging markets we identify the mechanisms by which online activists grab firms attention and force them to become more socially responsive a perception of organizational vulnerability and a home country institutional logic that is consistent with the demands of the online campaign provide political opportunity structures that hasten the corporate response but affect the magnitude of firm response differently we test our framework in the empirical context of corporate philanthropic action following the 2008 earthquake in sichuan province in china which triggered an online campaign that questioned mncs donations to the disaster relief effort our study contributes to the literature on heterogeneous organizational responses to social movements a better understanding of the antecedents for mncs social responsiveness in emerging markets and research on mncs

a novel policy for locational marginal price calculation in distribution systems based on loss reduction allocation using game theory in this paper a novel locational marginal price lmp policy for distribution system with significant penetration of distribution generation dg in competitive electricity market is presented this new lmp method is based on remunerating dg units for their participation in reduced amount of energy losses in distribution systems brought about by participation of all dg units in supplying demand also this method is combined with an iterative solution this approach provides an efficient tool for distribution companies discos to estimate the state of the system in the next step which other existing approaches of lmp fail to provide this system state estimation finally in order to expand lmp method and provide effective prediction method for discos to estimate the day ahead state of the system ann tool is employed to predict the market price and demand for the next 24 h this lmp prediction is a powerful operational tool for disco to exert its control over private dg units however prediction methods contain error therefore uncertainty modeling is implemented for modeling the effect of error in prediction on the lmp calculation for the next day

the determinants of industry political activity 1978 1986 c ampaign contributions made by corporate political action committees pacs are increasingly important and controversial in u s elections influence purchasing is often alleged by pundits and campaign finance reform is continually debated in congress in the academy social scientists have analyzed the allocation of interest group monies and have looked for possible impacts on legislation few however have tried to explain the total contributions of economic interest groups we shall analyze variations in contributions across industries and over time with an empirical model based on organizationally constrained profit maximizing behavior we assume that corporate pac contributions in an industry are raised to enhance industry profits subject to the constraints of organization costs and freeriding incentives our empirical work covers 124 industries over five election cycles from 1978 through 1986 both the costs and benefits of political activity vary across industries we argue that the benefits of political action are determined by direct contact with the government as a regulator or purchaser of industry output by government s ability to ameliorate adverse market conditions and by the industry s ability to solve collective action problems without government assistance the costs of industry political action arise mainly from collective action problems because effective political activity often requires concerted action by the constituent firms in each industry we also make a methodological contribution previous studies use statistical techniques that suffer from sample selectivity bias or else force the probability of acting politically to be explained by the same set of coefficients as is the amount of action taken we explain and employ a technique that accounts for both problems the results are consistent with the theses that industries follow investment oriented goals in deciding the amount of political action to undertake and that collective action problems are important constraints on industry political activity we can explain between 60 and 80 of the variation in contributions in our sample first we review existing work on corporate political activity particularly papers examining patterns of aggregate pac spending by industry then we present an organization cost constrained industryprofit maximizing model based on a comparison between an idealized zero organization cost industry and the more realistic case where organizing collective action is difficult the independent variables used in the analysis are also discussed and defined next we discuss the dependent variable and total industry contributions and explain our statistical method then the results are presented followed by a discussion of industry structure and political activity to make clear how our results can explain different contribution patterns we give examples using five actual industries

institutional emergence in an era of globalization the rise of transnational private regulation of labor and environmental conditions1 why have systems of transnational private regulation recently emerged to certify corporate social and environmental performance different conceptions of institutional emergence underlie different answers to this question many scholars argue that firms create certification systems to solve problems in the market a view rooted in a conception of institutions as solutions to collective action problems the author develops a different account by viewing institutions as the outcome of political contestation and by analyzing conflict and institutional entrepreneurship among a wide array of actors using a comparative case study design the analysis shows how these arguments explain the formation of social and environmental certification associations both theoretical approaches are needed but strong versions of the market based approach overlook an important set of dynamics that the author calls the political construction of market institutions the analysis shows how both problem solving in markets and

laws of attraction regulatory arbitrage in the face of activism in right to work states past research recognizes that firms exploit regulatory variations to their advantage but depicts such regulatory arbitrage as a dyadic process between firms and regulators we extend this account b

cost causation based allocations of costs for market integration of renewable energy an important problem in modern electrical power systems is the inherent variability and uncertainty of renewable energy resources allocating the costs generated by the variable resources in a just and reasonable manner is crucial for economic efficiency in this paper we develop an axiomatic framework for allocating the deviation costs generated by variable resources using the cost causation based principle the cost causation principle has a long historical tradition in electrical energy systems and has been proved to provide economic efficiency we apply the new cost causation based framework to allocate the cost in the production deviation of a group of renewable energy producers and thereby help promote the market integration of renewable energy the resulting cost allocation framework is then applied to five wind power producers bidding in the iberian electricity market in europe using real data on wind speeds and market prices

a novel policy for lmp calculation in distribution networks based on loss and emission reduction allocation using nucleolus theory this paper proposes a new policy to calculate the locational marginal price lmp in the distribution networks containing distributed generation dg the proposed policy is based on remunerating the dg units to reduce the loss and emission of the network lmp at each dg bus is calculated according to the contribution of the dg to the reduced amount of loss and emission an iterative algorithm which is based on the nucleolus theory is proposed to allocate the loss and emission reduction the proposed algorithm will provide a robust state estimation tool for distribution companies discos in the next step of operation the state estimation tool provides the decision maker with the ability to exert its control over private dg units when the loss and emission are minimized also the proposed pricing policy requires decision maker to simply apply its best response strategy to the lmp based on the priority of loss emission and disco s extra benefit the proposed methodology is applied to two realistic distribution networks and efficiency and accuracy of the method are verified