price adjustment in long term contracts the case of coal in two recent papers i examined the effects of relationship specific investment on the duration of contracts negotiated between electric utilities and coal suppliers that work demonstrated that when relationshipspecific investment is important for a cost minimizing supply relationship contracts are frequently utilized that specify ex ante the terms and conditions of trade over many future years in this article i examine the characteristics of the price adjustment provisions specified in these long term coal contracts i utilize a sample of about 250 coal contracts to analyze the structure of formal price adjustment provisions in coal contracts in order to determine the factors that affect initial negotiated contract prices and to examine actual transaction price behavior over time there has been much recent theoretical work as well as some related empirical work that has focused on the benefits of long term contracts when relationship specific investments are important 2 there has also been some theoretical work that focuses on the contractual arrangements that may be chosen to mitigate opportunism problems and guard against

management of social issues in supply chains a literature review exploring social issues actions and performance outcomes the social dimension of sustainable development and its impact on supply chains have so far received less attention than the environmental dimension the aim of the research is to explore the intersection between social issues corporate social responsibility csr actions and performance outcomes a structured literature review of social issues in supply chains is presented analysing the research published so far in peer reviewed publications linking csr and supply chain management allows the exploration of strategies and performance outcomes with a focus on social issues the corresponding responsible supply chain actions adopted by firms to address these issues are grouped into communication compliance and supplier development strategies social and economic as well as buyer and supplier performance are identified as the key outcomes but the interactions among these constructs would require further research this paper contributes to the understanding of managing social issues in supply chains by linking social issues responsible supply chain actions and performance outcomes the paper consolidates related research by offering an overarching conceptual framework and points to future research directions and simultaneously provides insights into the management of social issues in supply chains

voluntary governance mechanisms in global supply chains beyond csr to a stakeholder utility perspective poor working conditions remain a serious problem in supplier facilities in developing countries while previous research has explored this from the developed buyers side we examine this phenomenon from the perspective of developing countries suppliers and subcontractors utilizing qualitative data from a major knitwear exporting cluster in india and a stakeholder management lens we develop a framework that shows how the assumptions of conventional buyer driven voluntary governance break down in the dilution of buyer power and in the web of factors rooted in suppliers traditions beliefs local demands and resource dependency we reveal out how success in governing collaborative global supply chains often falls short within the subcontracting stage where a stakeholder management mindset is elusive to most participants we suggest that success in governing collaborative global supply chains is dependent on concepts of stakeholder utility and the presence of shared value that is often at odds with the realities of power information asymmetry and compliance reward systems inherent in the non market coordination of global supply chains our findings offer important insights for delineating the concepts of value creation from csr concepts and practices and for modifying the basic assumptions of conventional supply chain governance

does governance matter keiretsu alliances and asset specificity as sources of japanese competitive advantage this empirical study suggests that japanese competitive advantage in complex product industries is at least partly due to differences in value chain governance and interfirm asset co specialization comparative data are offered which indicate that u s firms rely largely on markets and hierarchies to facilitate exchange whereas japanese firms rely largely on hybrid governance or alliances the empirical findings suggest that japanese automotive firms value chains have been able to achieve a competitive advantage over their u s counterparts by effectively using hybrid alliance governance for three primary reasons 1 japanese automotive value chains are characterized by greater interfirm asset co specialization than u s chains in particular greater human asset co specialization between firms results in superior coordination information sharing and learning which is critical in complex product industries 2 hybrids alliances as employed by japanese automakers realize virtually all of the advan

a variance ratio test of random walks in foreign exchange rates the separate variance ratio tests under homoscedasticity and heteroscedasticity both provide evidence rejecting the random walk hypothesis using five pairs of weekly nominal exchange rate series over the period from august 7 1974 to march 29 1989 the rejections cast doubt on the random walk hypothesis in exchange rates which has received support in the existing literature furthermore since the rejections are robust to heteroscedasticity they suggest autocorelations of weekly increments in the nominal exchange rate series which may be consistent with the exchange rate overshooting or undershooting phenomenon in the past decade there has been a consensus that nominal exchange rates follow a random walk process since a unit root and uncorrelated increments are both required for a random walk process the random walk is usually supported in the existing literature either because a unit root component is detected in the exchange rate series or because the increment in the exchange rate is found to be serially uncorrelated for example meese and singleton 1982 and baillie and bollerslev 1989 both find a unit root component in the exchange rate series and the evidence provided in giddy and dufey 1975 cornell and dietrich 1978 logue sweeney and willett 1978 and hsieh 1988 all suggest that the exchange rate series contains uncorrelated increments in this paper the random walk hypothesis for the nominal exchange rate series is reexamined by applying a variance ratio test developed in lo and mackinlay 1988 to five pairs of weekly nominal exchange rate series over the period from august 7 1974 to march 29 1989 while there are two implications of the random walk unit root and uncorrelated increments this paper focuses on the uncorrelated increments aspect this is not only because there are some important departures from the random walk that unit root test cannot detect but also because the autocorrelation aspect may yield

efficient adaptation in long term contracts take or pay provisions for natural gas to mitigate the inflexibility of long term contracting for natural gas parties will look for terms that minimize the need for costly adjudication while maintaining incentives for appropriate adaptation the authors examine the incident of take or pay provisions in contracts between natural gas producers and pipelines from this perspective they argue that take obligations can be viewed as a mechanism for effecting appropriate incentives for contractual performance and show that efficient breach considerations define an optimal take percentage as a function of characteristics of the transaction these incentives are distorted by regulated price ceilings which cause the adoption of take obligations in excess of optimal levels the findings refute the common perception that take or pay provisions are just an artifact of wellhead price regulation and serve no useful purpose in the absence of regulation 20 references 1 figure 1 table

the effect of derivative assets on information acquisition and price behavior in a rational expectations equilibrium this article shows that introducing derivative assets increases incentives to collect information about asset payoffs the increase in information collection makes the price of the underlying asset more informative and causes the expected price to increase extending the model to a dynamic setting with multiple risky assets we find the introducing derivative assets for one asset increases the expected prices of positively correlated assets and reduces price reaction to future earnings announcements these findings are consistent with the bulk of the empirical evidence on the relationship between the introduction of derivative assets and the behavior of asset prices article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

disentangling the theories of firm boundaries a path model and empirical test theories on the motivation underlying firm boundaries have recently sparked renewed debate what best explains whether a firm relies on market control or hierarchical control to secure required resources how do the characteristics of the resources come into play in this study we consider a comprehensive path model of the governance mode decision for sourcing technological know how by integrating different perspectives on firm boundaries including transaction cost economics a resource based view and an options perspective we link characteristics of the technology i e uniqueness barriers to imitation commercial uncertainty technological dynamism to the perceived threat of opportunism the potential for sustainable advantage and the pursuit of a licensing agreement vis a vis the outright acquisition of the firm that possesses the desired know how we use structural equation modeling to analyze 127 sourcing arrangements our results show that technological dynamism and barriers to imitation indirectly influence the governance mode decision by increasing the perceived threat of opportunism commercial uncertainty directly influences the governance mode and decreases the likelihood of an acquisition vis a vis a licensing agreement although uniqueness and barriers to imitation are also positively associated with the perceived potential for sustainable advantage the potential for sustainable advantage had no direct effect on governance mode implications and suggestions for further research are offered

currency derivatives and exchange rate forecastability by incorporating new information generated by currency derivatives trading underlying exchange rates should be less forecastable than previously and the underlying currency markets should therefore be more efficient this hypothesis was tested for the first time for the period 1982 through 1997 on a clean sample of three major types of currency derivatives launched in two prominent markets various statistical tests indicate that following the introduction of the derivative contracts the underlying exchange rates became more random and the currencies involved tended thus to be priced more efficiently which supports the hypothesis

clusters chains and compliance corporate social responsibility and governance in football manufacturing in south asia a recent concern in the debate on corporate social responsibility csr in developing countries relates to the tension between demands for csr compliance found in many global value chains gvcs and the search for locally appropriate responses to these pressures in this context an emerging and relatively understudied area of interest relates to small firm industrial clusters local clusters offer the potential for local joint action and thus a basis for improving local compliance on csr through collective monitoring and local governance this article explores the interrelationship between global governance exercised through gvc ties and local governance via cluster institutions in ensuring compliance with csr pressures it undertakes a comparative analysis of two leading export oriented football manufacturing clusters in south asia that have both faced common challenges on child labour the article shows that both forms vertical and horizontal governance have played a part in shaping the response of the two clusters on child labour moreover these two distinct forms of governance have also led to quite differentiated outcomes in terms of forms of work organization and child labour monitoring this raises broader questions on how global csr demands can locally be better embedded and the conditions under which football stitchers labour in these new work forms

nonlinearity and intraday efficiency tests on energy futures markets using high frequency data this paper first time comprehensively examines the intraday efficiency of four major energy crude oil heating oil gasoline natural gas futures markets in contrast to earlier studies which focus on in sample evidence and assume linearity the paper employs various nonlinear models and several model evaluation criteria to examine market efficiency in an out of sample forecasting context overall there is evidence for intraday market inefficiency of two of the four energy future markets heating oil and natural gas which exists particularly during the bull market condition but not during the bear market condition the evidence is also robust against the data snooping bias and the model overfitting problem and its economic significance can be very substantial

the power lessness of industry self regulation to promote responsible labor standards insights from the chinese toy industry the provision of responsible labor standards along the entire value chain poses considerable challenges for corporations in particular management shortcomings and institutional deficits which are partly related to cultural issues frequently impede the realization of responsible business practices in emerging and developing countries it is widely established in theory that industry self regulation constitutes a particularly promising approach for overcoming these challenges nonetheless it is still an open question as to whether industry initiatives effectively promote responsible standards in practice this contribution aims to enrich the current discussion about the power of industry self regulation to ensure responsible labor standards in factories in emerging and developing countries for this purpose we analyze the icti care process icp the self regulation initiative of the international toy industry that aims to promote responsible business practices in chinese toy factories the assessment of the icp shows that corporations buying behavior is decisive in order for industry self regulation to become an appropriate means of improving labor standards based on the insights from the study and from theoretical reasoning we develop a framework for effective industry self regulation that integrates the perspective of factories

contract duration and relationship specific investments empirical evidence from coal markets this paper examines the importance of specific relationship investments in determining the duration of coal contracts negotiated between coal suppliers and electric utilities data for 277 coal contracts are used to perform the analysis the results provide strong support for the view that buyers and sellers make longer commitments to the terms of future trade at the contract execution stage and rely less on repeated bargaining when relationship specific investments are more important

supply chain specific understanding the patchy success of ethical sourcing initiatives as a number of high profile companies have found to their cost corporate reputations can be significantly affected by firms management of sustainability issue including those that are outside their direct control such as the environmental and social impacts of their supply networks this paper begins by examining the relationship between corporate social responsibility reputation and supply network conditions it then looks at the effectiveness of one tool for managing supply network sustainability issues ethical sourcing codes of conduct by examining how the characteristics of three supply networks branded clothes diy wood products and branded confectionary affects the implementation ethical sourcing codes of conduct it ends by setting out conclusions on why implementation of such codes has been so much more successful in some sectors than others and recommendations on effective approaches to managing sustainability issues in supply networks

an empirical investigation of oliver williamson s organization of work oliver williamson argues that the attributes of the employment contract like intermediate transactions in general are essentially driven by the specificity of assets in the case of the organization of work it is the particular attributes of labour that determines the transaction costs of any given governance structure the paper presents a stylized account of the transaction cost model of the efficient organization of work stressing an underlying tension and ambiguity in the transaction cost framework the paper exploits a unique dataset to test for the first time with british data williamson s transaction cost predictions concerning the nature of employment contracts williamson tacitly assumes that asset specificity is exogenous in general however there is evidence in the literature that labour specificity is endogenous to employment contracts the paper endeavours to demonstrate that there is empirical evidence to suggest that specialized labour is indeed endogenous in the transaction cost mode

a review of sustainable supply chain management practices in canada there is a growing body of research on the theory and practice of sustainable supply chain management sscm however relatively little research has been conducted on the extent to which corporations have integrated sustainability principles into the management of their supply chain and the evaluation of supplier performance the purpose of this article is to explore the extent to which corporate sustainability principles are integrated into supply chain management scm in corporations canada is used as a case study in this article the study included a content analysis of one hundred canadian corporate sustainable development reports and in depth interviews with 18 canadian experts on sscm the article highlights the wide array of ways in which canadian corporations address sscm issues amongst other topics issues associated with supply chain governance standards for sscm collaboration with suppliers performance measurement and accountability within the supply chain are explored the findings reveal that there are many challenges in integrating sustainability into scm these challenges shed light on possible future directions for research in sscm this article underlines the need for research that reflects the interconnected nature of the economic environmental and social dimensions of sustainability particularly as it relates to measuring supplier performance on sustainability initiatives

do codes of conduct improve worker rights in supply chains a study of fair wear foundation the rise of private regulation of sustainability in global production networks has led to intensive debates about the impact of this regulation at the point of production yet few empirical studies have systematically examined this impact in practice based on multiple factory audits of 43 garment factories conducted by the multi stakeholder initiative fair wear foundation we show that codes of conduct improve although marginally worker rights on an overall level but that few significant results are found for specific worker rights our findings also lend support to the widespread argument that codes have uneven impact furthermore we show that even rigorous multi stakeholder factory audits seldom are able to identify process rights violations such as those affecting freedom of association and discrimination and that auditing is thus is more fundamentally flawed than assumed in previous research given companies extensive investments in private regulation of worker rights the findings have important implications for both scholars and managers

a profit driven approach to building a people responsible supply chain abstract today an increasing number of companies have publicized policies to improve corporate social responsibility performance related to human resources in their supply chain management practices such as safer and healthier working conditions higher payment better benefits and fewer working hours however there are still concerns about the sincerity and effectiveness of such efforts this could be attributed to the fact that the economic benefit of those improvements is not clearly structured as an integral part in the companies decision making process in this paper we develop a stylized analytic framework that links a firm s supply chain social performance in people with its economic performance in profit specifically we examine how consumers responses to the outbreak of social misconduct in supply chains affect competing firms market segmentation and profit and subsequently provide economic incentive for proactive social responsibility investment closed form optimal solutions for proactive social responsibility strategy are found for our model setup numerical tests and sensitivity analyses have been conducted to study the effects of various factors on the firms supply chain social responsibility strategies factors such as consumers ethical disposition the social environment and consumers perception of a product s functional versus social value are a few among them the results of our analysis demonstrate that proactive investment in supply chain social responsibility can enhance a firm s competitive advantage and economic performance thereby suggesting a profit driven approach to achieving supply chain social responsibility and sustainability

what s to know about hypothetical bias in stated preference valuation studies abstract hypothetical bias arises in stated preference valuation studies when respondents report a willingness to pay wtp that exceeds what they actually pay using their own money in laboratory or field experiments although this bias is not found in all stated preference surveys hypothetical wtp typically exceeds the actual value by a factor of two to three unfortunately there is no widely accepted general theory of respondent behaviour that explains hypothetical bias therefore two meta analyses are reviewed to test current hypotheses regarding the causes of this overstatement of wtp and the associated recommendations to mitigate the bias suggestions for future research are made including the development of a general theory

make buy or ally a transaction cost theory meta analysis since the publication of williamson s markets and hierarchies many empirical articles have investigated the tenets of transaction cost theory using meta analytic techniques we quantitatively syn

the impacts of international tourism demand on economic growth of small economies dependent on tourism abstract this paper studies the impacts on economic growth of a small tourism driven economy caused by an increase in the growth rate of international tourism demand we present a formal model and empirical evidence the ingredients of the dynamic model are a large population of intertemporally optimizing agents and an ak technology representing tourism production the model shows that an increase in the growth of tourism demand leads to transitional dynamics with gradually increasing economic growth and increasing terms of trade in our empirical application an econometric methodology is applied to annual data of antigua and barbuda from 1970 to 2008 we perform a cointegration analysis to look for the existence of a long run relationship among variables of economic growth international tourism earnings and the real exchange rate the exercise confirms the theoretical findings

how to deliver foreign aid the case of projects governed by the spanish international agency summary international agencies use two alternative modes of governance to deliver international aid projects under bilateral agreements with recipient governments in house or through incumbent ngos through the lenses of institutional and transaction cost economics this article examines 95 international aid projects delivered in morocco and ecuador by the spanish international agency finding that those projects delivered in house present different features than those projects outsourced through incumbent ngos specifically international aid projects delivered in house involve important investments in specific assets are much more complex and can turn the public agency into a hostage of its own disbursement

improving channel coordination through franchising in this paper we explore the role of franchising arrangements in improving coordination between channel members in particular we focus on two elements of the franchising contract namely the royalty structure and the monitoring technology we begin with a simple analysis where a manufacturer distributes its product through a retailer and the retail demand is affected by the retail price and the service provided by the retailer in this context we show that neither royalty payments nor monitoring are needed for full coordination we then extend the model to allow for free riding by franchisees and show that although monitoring helps affect the behavior of the franchisees royalty payments are still unnecessary to coordinate the activities of the franchisor and the franchisees finally we show that in environments where factors affecting retail sales are controlled by both the franchisor and the franchisee royalty payments provide the necessary incentives for the franchisor while monitoring systems are used to ensure that franchisees also behave in the best interest of the channel our general results are found to be consistent with those in brickley and dark 1987 and norton 1988 who conclude that franchising is affected by principal agent problems our theory finds special support in the work of lafontaine 1988 where it is concluded that the incidence of franchising is related to cost of monitoring and the importance of franchisor investments

instabilities of strategic alliances an internal tensions perspective the instabilities of strategic alliances have been examined in the literature through a number of theoretical approaches alliance instabilities refer to major changes or dissolutions of alliances that are unplanned from the perspective of one or more partners although the literature identifies certain characteristics of strategic alliances that may lead to their unplanned dissolution the extent of our understanding of this subject appears to be fragmented and incomplete in this article we propose a comprehensive framework for adequately understanding alliance instabilities based on the notion of internal tensions we suggest that strategic alliances are sites in which conflicting forces develop and which can be viewed as being constituted by three key pairs of competing forces namely cooperation versus competition rigidity versus flexibility and short term versus long term orientation this tensions framework helps us in explaining the intrinsic vulnerability of alliances in terms of a wide range of internal contradictions and enables us to examine in an integrated manner the incidence dynamics and eventual dissipation of the inherent instabilities we discuss the interrelationships among the different internal tensions and their impacts on different types of strategic alliances we also examine the termination of alliances through mergers acquisitions and dissolution finally we suggest ways to empirically test the various ideas and propositions developed here and indicate directions for further research

a transaction costs analysis of innovations in the organization of pharmaceutical r d abstract this paper uses transaction costs economics to analyze the increasing importance of vertical disintegration of r d by large pharmaceutical and chemical firms first it discusses three characteristics of the research based pharmaceutical industry then it shows that market failures related to long term joint venture r d contracts between firms and university laboratories are less significant than appears at first and may account for their striking increase over the past fifteen years

revisiting supplier compliance with mnc codes of conduct recoupling policy and practice at chinese toy suppliers does private regulation of workers rights in global value chains improve working conditions on the factory floor drawing on one of the first systematic longitudinal studies of supplier compliance with multinational corporation mnc codes of conduct this paper finds in contrast to previous research substantial improvements over time while in 2004 the four examined chinese toy suppliers violated most of the evaluated code of conduct criteria and consciously decoupled the code of conduct policy from actual practices by 2009 they had recoupled policy and practice and complied with nearly all examined criteria except working hours the paper contributes to the private regulation literature by challenging previous research claims identifying factors that could make private regulation effective and outlining a research method for empirically studying the effects of codes of conduct over time the paper also contributes to new institutional theory by discussing how recoupling could be influenced by two factors not identified in previous research i trusting relationships between the organization and the stakeholder exerting pressure and ii factors unrelated to main external pressures leading to accidental recoupling

corporate social and financial performance an investigation in the u k supermarket industry the comparison of corporate social performance with corporate financial performance has been a popular field of study over the past 25 years the results while broadly conclusive of a positive relationship are not entirely consistent in addition most of the previous studies have concentrated on large scale cross industry studies and often with a single variable for corporate social performance in order to produce statistically significant results this weakens the richness of understanding that might be obtained from a single industry study with multiple social variables which would also allow investigation of inter relationships between individual and sub sets of social performance measures and between individual and sub sets of social performance and financial performance measures there have also been criticisms that the results lack a rigorous theoretical basis and the paper demonstrates clearly how stakeholder theory must form the basis for this area of research following a review of the literature this paper presents the initial findings from a study of the u k supermarket industry which suggest that contemporaneous social and financial performance are negatively related while prior period financial performance is positively related with subsequent social performance positive relationships between both age and size of the company with social performance are also found

choice modeling and tests of benefit transfer choice modelling cm is a stated preference technique that is increasingly being used to generate estimates of non market values in cm applications respondents to a survey are presented with several sets of options which contain common attributes but at varying levels and are asked to select their preferred alternative from each set the information provided by respondents choices is used to estimate marginal rates of substitution and hence estimates of value in this paper the results from three separate cm applications are presented estimates are made of the value of improving the quality of wetlands the first two applications focused on the gwydir wetlands in new south wales australia one survey was conducted in sydney a major urban centre and the second was conducted in moree a rural centre close to the gwydir wetlands the third survey which was also conducted in sydney focused on the macquarie marshes another wetland in new south wales an objective of the study was to test the suitability of using cm derived estimates for benefit transfer both across different populations and across different wetlands cm is potentially suited to benefit transfer because it is possible to allow for differences in environmental improvements between sites as well as differences in socio economic characteristics between respondent populations several tests aimed at determining the validity of transfers using cm across sites and populations are presented these include tests of the equality of models implicit prices and estimates of compensating surplus

mitigating contractual hazards unilateral options and contract length in this article we consider the ways in which the desire for efficient low cost adaptation to change influences the tradeoff between the design and duration of long term contractual relationships we examine the distortions in contract terms occasioned by nonprice competition for natural gas in the presence of wellhead price regulation deviations from optimal contract incentives significantly raise the cost of being bound to long term agreements and shorten the duration of contracts the approach we adopt suggests a method for empirically assessing the efficiency of alternative contracting practices and legal standards

tourism residents welfare and economic choice a literature review over the past decades tourism development has raised economics social and environmental issues particularly for host communities this paper provides a wide ranging review of the existing literature aimed at underpinning empirical tourism research with a robust economic framework so far tourism research has mostly focused on either quantitative or qualitative approaches that lack a strong economic theoretical setting most of the literature on resident s welfare analysis concentrates on their attitudes and perceptions without taking explicitly into account their preferences about policy development based on a cost benefit assessment hence the purpose of this paper is to draw connections within the current body of research to explain the relationship between residents and tourism activity as well as consumer theory and economic choice in this way it is possible to construct a multidimensional framework that allows one to analyse residents welfare in a systematic and more comprehensive manner

buyer investment export variety and intrafirm trade abstract this paper studies a model of buyer investment and its effect on the variety and vertical structure of international trade a distinction is made between two types of buyer investment flexible and specific which differ in the ability of a buyer to match with a seller the interaction of buyer investment with the entry and pricing incentives of suppliers are analyzed it is shown that i there can be multiple equilibria in the variety of products traded and ii less product variety is associated with more intrafirm trade the possibility of multiple equilibria is consistent with the observation that some similar economies such as taiwan and south korea differ substantially in their export varieties to the u s a cross country empirical analysis confirms the negative correlation between export variety and intrafirm trade

private regulation and trade union rights why codes of conduct have limited impact on trade union rights codes of conduct are the main tools to privately regulate worker rights in global value chains scholars have shown that while codes may improve outcome standards such as occupational health and safety they have had limited impact on process rights such as freedom of association and collective bargaining scholars have though only provided vague or general explanations for this empirical finding we address this shortcoming by providing a holistic and detailed explanation and argue that codes in their current form have limited impact on trade union rights due to i buyers paying lip service to trade union rights ii workers being treated as passive objects of regulation in codes of conduct iii auditing being unable to detect and remediate violations of trade union rights iv codes emphasizing parallel means of organizing v suppliers having limited incentives for compliance and vi codes being unable to open up space for union organizing when leveraged in grassroots struggles our arguments suggest that there is no quick fix for codes limited impact on trade union rights and that codes in their current form have limited potential to improve trade union rights we conclude by discussing ways in which codes of conduct and private regulation of worker rights more generally could be transformed to more effectively address trade union rights

choice modelling approaches a superior alternative for environmental valuation in this paper we examine some popular choice modelling approaches to environmental valuation which can be considered as alternatives to more familiar valuation techniques based on stated preferences such as the contingent valuation method a number of choice modelling methods are consistent with consumer theory and its focus on an attribute based theory of value permits a superior representation of many environmental management contexts however choice modelling surveys can place a severe cognitive burden upon respondents and induce satisficing rather than maximising behavioural patterns in this framework we seek to identify the best available choice modelling alternative and investigate its potential to solve some of the major biases associated with standard contingent valuation we then discuss its use in the light of policy appraisal needs within the eu an application to the demand for rock climbing in scotland is provided as an illustration

social sustainability in selecting emerging economy suppliers despite the growing public awareness of social sustainability issues little is known about what drives firms to emphasize social criteria in their supplier management practices and what the precise benefits of such efforts are this is especially true for relationships with international suppliers from the world s emerging economies in asia latin america and eastern europe building on stakeholder theory we address the issue by examining how pressures from customers the government and employees as primary constituencies of the firm determine the extent to which firms consider social aspects in the selection of emerging economy suppliers further we analyze how such socially sustainable supplier selection relates to the capabilities of the firm s suppliers its market reputation and the learning in its supply management organization we test the developed research framework empirically using data from 244 u s and german corporations our findings consistent with our hypothesized model suggest that middle level supply managers as internal stakeholders play a major driving role for firms socially sustainable supplier selection and that strong positive links exist between that selection and the investigated outcomes

the impact of the listing of options in the foreign exchange market abstract this paper documents the impact of the introduction of foreign currency options and options on foreign currency futures on the underlying securities we find that the volatility of exchange rates decreases following the listing of options for a majority of the currencies under consideration in addition we find that trading volume and open interest in currency futures increases after option introduction this evidence is consistent with the notion that derivative securities are important innovations for stabilizing and increasing liquidity in the market for the underlying assets

choice of contracts in the british national health service an empirical study following major reforms of the british national health service nhs in 1990 the roles of purchasing and providing health services were separated with the relationship between purchasers and providers governed by contracts using a mixed multinomial logit analysis we show how this policy shift led to a selection of contracts that is consistent with the predictions of a simple model based on contract theory in which the characteristics of the health services being purchased and of the contracting parties influence the choice of contract form the paper thus provides evidence in support of the practical relevance of theory in understanding health care market reform

learning to contract evidence from the personal computer industry organizational forms involving more detailed contracts than are found in traditional spot market exchanges appear to be increasingly prevalent there has been relatively little analysis however of the extent to which firms learn how to use contracts to manage their interfirm relationships over time in this paper we conduct a detailed case study of a time series of 11 contracts concluded during 1989 1997 between the same two partners both of whom participate in the personal computer industry to explore whether and how firms learn to contract we find many changes to the structure of the contracts that cannot be fully explained by changes in the assets at risk in the relationship and evidence that these changes are largely the result of processes in which the firms were learning how to work together including learning how to contract with each other the nature of this learning appears to have been quite incremental and local that is not very far sighted we suggest how and when contracts might serve as repositories for knowledge about how to govern collaborations and suggest some boundary conditions for this phenomenon our findings also provide implications for the debate about whether contracts have a positive or negative effect on interorganizational trust we conclude with suggestions for future research

limits to community participation in the tourism development process in developing countries abstract this study deals with a normative concept of participatory development approach which originates in the developed world in particular it analyses and explains the limitations to the participatory tourism development approach in the context of developing countries it was found that there are operational structural and cultural limits to community participation in the tdp in many developing countries although they do not equally exist in every tourist destination moreover while these limits tend to exhibit higher intensity and greater persistence in the developing world than in the developed world they appear to be a reflection of prevailing socio political economic and cultural structure in many developing countries on the other hand it was also found that although these limitations may vary over time according to types scale and levels of tourism development the market served and cultural attributes of local communities forms and scale of tourism developed are beyond the control of local communities it concludes that formulating and implementing the participatory tourism development approach requires a total change in socio political legal administrative and economic structure of many developing countries for which hard political choices and logical decisions based on cumbersome social economic and environmental trade offs are sine qua non alongside deliberate help collaboration and co operation of major international donor agencies ngos international tour operators and multinational companies

weak form efficiency in currency markets many past studies have found that currencies trend so technical trading rules produced statistically and economically significant profits in other words foreign exchange markets were weak form inefficient the study reported here reexamined this phenomenon with use of a new database of currency futures for 1975 2006 that includes old and newly liquid currencies the findings from the recent data are contradictory the profitability of trend following eroded for major currencies and their associated cross exchange rates around the mid 1990s newly liquid currencies after 2000 do trend however just as major currencies did in earlier years the evidence is consistent with early weak form inefficiency followed by vanishing trends as traders learn and adapt their strategies

implementing supplier codes of conduct in global supply chains process explanations from theoretic and empirical perspectives western buying companies impose supplier codes of conduct scc on their suppliers in developing countries however many suppliers cannot fully comply with scc and some of them even cheat in scc in this research we link contract characteristics price pressure production complexity contract duration to the likelihood of supplier s commitment to scc through a mediating process how the buying companies govern their suppliers our structural equation model analysis shows that the hierarchy relational norms governance is a perfect mediator of contract characteristics effects on the likelihood of supplier s commitment the market governance an insignificant one the managerial implications are provided for successfully implementing scc in global supply chains

efficient sourcing and debt financing in imperfect product markets supplier relations play an important role in determining a firm s product market strategy and position by affecting the cost and quality of the product produced by the firm these relations are especially significant because the cost of purchased materials for an average firm is more than half its total sales in this paper we model the adverse incentives of a firm that sources from a competitive supplier industry we show that a firm s propensity to behave opportunistically towards its suppliers raises the firm s input costs by decreasing the number of suppliers servicing it this results in a suboptimal production decision compared to the firm s first best choice we argue that an appropriate level of debt financing alters the shareholder incentives and mitigates the hold up problem further we also show that at the optimal debt level the firm produces its first best level of output

licensing duration in foreign markets a real options perspective licensing can be considered an initial trial of a foreign market before a firm fully commits to it through other investment modes the length of trial has great importance because licensing duration represents part of the licensing agreement when it is too short the firm may not acquire the necessary experience and knowledge of the foreign market but if it is too long the firm misses optimal expansion timing arguing that licensing can be considered as a european style real option with a fixed holding period we develop and test a model of the determinants of licensing duration in foreign markets empirical results based on a sample of firms in various countries show that uncertainty and threat of competitive pre emption in the foreign market are related to shorter duration of the technology licensing agreements we also find that irreversibility of the impending investment moderates the relationships between uncertainty and duration specifically market and technology uncertainties in the foreign market induce shorter contracts under low levels of irreversibility

the performance of long term contracts further evidence from coal markets this article extends my previous work on price adjustment in long term coal contracts to cover a period in which the nominal market prices for coal were below the prices specified in the preexisting long term contracts two related sets of questions are explored first did actual transactions prices for coal delivered pursuant to old contracts follow contractual pricing formulas leading to higher rather than lower prices or did they adapt quickly to changing market conditions second what were the relative roles offormal contractual provisions voluntary renegotiation and breach of contractual promises in determining actual transactions prices quantities and the durability of contractual relations it appears that actual transactions prices for coal delivered pursuant to old contracts were rigid downward following written contractual provisions rather than changes in current market values changing economic conditions led to an increase in renegotiation breach and litigation but the vast majority of existing long term contracts endured through the market downturn without major changes in prices or quantities from those previously agreed to by contract the threat of legal sanctions appears to have played an important role in sustaining contractual promises

choice experiments site similarity and benefits transfer choice experiments are designed to account for variations in environmental resources and site characteristics as well as potential implications of these variations for willingness to pay as a result choice experiment results may be well suited for benefits transfer it is unclear however whether the flexibility of choice experiments renders the similarity of study and transfer sites less critical for transfer validity drawing from identical choice experiments conducted in different rhode island communities this model assesses the extent to which error in function based benefits transfer is related to the similarity of communities across a variety of observable dimensions results suggest that site similarity at least across some dimensions influences the validity of choice experiment benefits transfers however the use of some measures of similarity as indicators of transfer error may provide misleading results

dynamic pricing in the presence of inventory considerations research overview current practices and future directions the benefits of dynamic pricing methods have long been known in industries such as airlines hotels and electric utilities where the capacity is fixed in the short term and perishable in recent years there has been an increasing adoption of dynamic pricing policies in retail and other industries where the sellers have the ability to store inventory three factors contributed to this phenomenon 1 the increased availability of demand data 2 the ease of changing prices due to new technologies and 3 the availability of decision support tools for analyzing demand data and for dynamic pricing this paper constitutes a review of the literature and current practices in dynamic pricing given its applicability in most markets and its increasing adoption in practice our focus is on dynamic intertemporal pricing in the presence of inventory considerations

why are different services outsourced to different countries the tradability revolution in services has led to a dramatic expansion of offshore outsourcing of services allowing firms to take advantage of lower production costs in foreign countries however production costs alone cannot explain the location determinants of offshore outsourcing of services in this paper we argue that minimizing transaction costs is also an important determinant of the location of offshore outsourcing of services we empirically analyze characteristics of services and characteristics of foreign countries that may impact on transaction costs in an outsourcing relationship and hence determine where services will be outsourced offshore we derive measures of service characteristics routineness complexity and interactiveness based on the tasks required to provide them further we posit that there are interaction effects between service and country characteristics using bureau of economic analysis data on us service outsourcing across 11 types of services to 31 countries between 1992 and 2005 we find that 1 services that are more routine less complex or less interactive are outsourced more to foreign countries 2 services are outsourced more to countries with higher institutional quality and greater cultural proximity 3 non routine complex and interactive services are outsourced relatively more to countries with a better institutional quality