codes of conduct for transnational corporations the case of the who unicef code the who unicef international code of marketing of breast milk substitutes was passed by the 1981 world health assembly subsequent arrangements between the nestle corporation and its nongovernmental critics for the implementation of the code indicate what is possible within the normative framework of an emerging regime on investment and transnational corporations in the baby food case the context was particularly positive a high level of consensual knowledge the successful strategies of nongovernmental organizations the susceptibility of the involved industries to pressure the brevity of deliberations and the conducive atmosphere of the international organization setting all helped negotiators to develop a detailed code of marketing actions inside and outside the un system combined to delegitimize commonly accepted practices modify global marketing schemes and alter national health care practices in other issue areas however such as pharmaceuticals the same positive convergence of factors does not yet exist and the achievement of equally precise codes will be more difficult

student debt and enrollment in graduate and professional school a theoretical and empirical analysis of the impact of undergraduate debt on the propensity to enroll in graduate and professional school is presented the theoretical model does not unambiguously predict that undergraduate debt deters additional schooling indeed the reverse may be true the econometric work uses a sample of approximately 12000 recent college graduates a key finding is that among women undergraduate debt deters enrollment in graduate and professional school however the effect is quite small the empirical results also imply that undergraduate debt leads to a shift in enrollment towards doctoral study and away from other forms of post baccalaureate training

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

economists capitalists and the making of globalization north american free trade in comparative historical perspective why did globalization happen current explanations point to a variety of conditions under which states have made the free market policy changes driving international economic integration since the 1980s such accounts disagree however about the key actors involved this article provides a reconciliation showing how two different combinations of actors and two different political economic pathways have led to globalization in recent decades in developed countries mobilization by business has been central elsewhere technocrats both constrained and empowered by international finance have pursued globalization more independently of business in both contexts economists technical authority has helped legitimate liberalization despite the limited diffusion of their ideas the article validates and elaborates this model using a comparative historical study of how the united states canada and mexico proposed negotiated and ratified agreements for free trade in north america

the globalization of organic agro food networks summary this article analyzes the booming world trade in organic agro foods such as tropical products counterseasonal fresh produce and processed foods research focuses on expanding south north networks linking major us and european markets with major production regions particularly in latin america employing a commodity network approach i analyze organic production distribution and consumption patterns and the roles of social political and economic actors in consolidating international trade organic certification proves central to network governance shaping product specifications production parameters and enterprise participation my analysis identifies key contradictions between mainstream agro industrial and alternative movement conventions in global organic networks 2004 published by elsevier ltd

industry self regulation without sanctions the chemical industry s responsible care program industry self regulation the voluntary association of firms to control their collective action has been proposed as a complement to government regulation proponents argue that the establishment of

do sticky prices increase real exchange rate volatility at the sector level abstract we introduce the real exchange rate volatility curve as a useful device to understand the relationship between price stickiness and the fluctuations in law of one price deviations in the presence of both nominal and real shocks the theory predicts that the real exchange rate volatility curve is a u shaped function of the degree of price stickiness using sector level us european real exchange rate data and frequency of price changes we estimate the volatility curve and find the predominance of real effects over nominal effects good by good variance decompositions show that the relative contribution of nominal shocks is smaller at the sector level than what previous studies have found at the aggregate level consistent with significant averaging out of good specific real microeconomic shocks

aggregate real exchange rate persistence through the lens of sectoral data a novel approach to analyzing real exchange rate rer persistence and its sources is presented using highly disaggregated data for a group of eu 15 countries it is shown that the distribution of sectoral persistence is highly heterogeneous and skewed to the right so that a limited number of sectors are responsible for the high levels of persistence observed at the aggregate level quantile regression has been employed to investigate whether traditional theories such as the lack of arbitrage due to nontradability or imperfect competition combined with price stickiness are able to account for the slow reversion to parity of rers

physician choice of medical specialty do economic incentives matter in this paper a probabilistic discrete choice approach is used to examine the influence of economic and non economic factors on the choice of medical specialty by new physicians a two level nested logit model is estimated that relaxes the independence from irrelevant alternatives assumption and allows for a potentially more realistic pattern of substitution across specialty choices the results from this specification are compared to those obtained from joint and conditional logit models the findings which are relatively robust across models indicate that economic incentives play an important role in the specialty choice process in particular expected hours worked and medical school indebtedness physician tastes for specialties also appear to have an important influence

potential pitfalls for the purchasing power parity puzzle sampling and specification biases in mean reversion tests of the law of one price the ppp puzzle is based on empirical evidence that international price differences for individual goods loop or baskets of goods ppp appear highly persistent or even nonstationary the present consensus is these price differences have a half life that is of the order of five years at best and infinity at worst this seems unreasonable in a world where transportation and transaction costs appear so low as to encourage arbitrage and the convergence of price gaps over much shorter horizons typically days or weeks however current empirics rely on a particular choice of methodology involving i relatively low frequency monthly quarterly or annual data and ii a linear model specification in fact these methodological choices are not innocent and they can be shown to bias analysis towards findings of slow convergence and a random walk intuitively if we suspect that the actual adjustment horizon is of the order of days then monthly and annual data cannot be expected to reveal it if we suspect arbitrage costs are high enough to produce a substantial band of inaction then a linear model will fail to support convergence if the process spends considerable time random walking in that band thus when testing for ppp or loop model specification and data sampling should not proceed without consideration of the actual institutional context and logistical framework of markets

accounting for persistence and volatility of good level real exchange rates the role of sticky information abstract volatile and persistent real exchange rates are observed not only in aggregate series but also in micro price data at the retail level kehoe and midrigan 2007 recently showed that under a standard assumption on nominal price stickiness empirical frequencies of micro price adjustment cannot replicate the time series properties of the law of one price lop deviations we extend their sticky price model by combining good specific price adjustment with information stickiness in the sense of mankiw and reis 2002 our framework allows for multiple cities within a country using a panel of u s canadian city pairs we estimate a dynamic price adjustment process for 165 individual goods under a reasonable assumption on the money growth process we show that the model matches the persistence of the lop deviation for the median good and accounts for the majority of its volatility when information updates occur every 12 months

corporate mobilization and political power the transformation of u s economic policy in the 1970s despite their otherwise divergent arguments pluralist state centered and neo marxist relative autonomy conceptions of political power in capitalist societies share the view that the capitalist class is generally incapable of unified political action yet a striking feature of policy struggles in the united states between 1974 and 1981 was the dominant influence of a well organized and unified business lobby i examine business unity and political influence in the context of recent u s policy history tracing the legislative histories of the unsuccessful labor law reform and consumer protection agency bills of the 1 970s and the successful economic recovery tax act of 1981 a class based corporate power structure perspective is supported the historical conditionsfostering the political mobilization and intraclass cohesion of business in the 1970s and the theoretical implications of the breakdown of business unity after 1981 are also examined

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

the law of one price a case study we use retail transaction prices for a multinational retailer to examine the extent and permanence of violations of the law of one price for identical products we find typical deviations of 20 50 percent with some evidence for convergence over time such differences might be due to differences in local costs if so relative prices of similar products round versus square mirrors should be equal across countries in fact relative prices vary significantly across very similar goods within a product group the finding suggests that differences in local distribution costs local taxes and probably tariffs do not explain the price pattern leaving strategic pricing or other factors resulting in varying markups as alternative explanations jel classification f41 l11

leveraging reputational risk sustainable sourcing campaigns for improving labour standards in production networks ethical or socially sustainable sourcing mechanisms mandating labour standards among the suppliers and subcontractors that organisations source goods and services from are becoming more common the issue of how labour activist groups such as trade unions can encourage organisations to adopt and strengthen these mechanisms within domestic production networks is largely unexplored using three cases of domestic sustainable sourcing campaigns developed by unions in britain the strategies used by labour activists the characteristics of the organisations targeted and the motivations of lead firms for improving sourcing practices are analysed the article makes a significant contribution by demonstrating that organisational susceptibility to reputational risk is a key factor influencing the capacity of activist groups to convince and compel their targets to improve sourcing practices it argues that different types of organisations are susceptible to reputational damage in different ways that risk events provide opportunities for unions to strengthen their leverage against target organisations and that the multidimensional nature of corporate reputation needs to be better considered for understanding how campaigns are framed and executed

price index convergence among united states cities we study the dynamics of price indices for major u s cities using panel econometric methods and find that relative price levels among cities mean revert at an exceptionally slow rate in a panel of 19 cities from 1918 to 1995 we estimate the half life of convergence to be approximately nine years the surprisingly slow rate of convergence can be explained by a combination of the presence of transportation costs differential speeds of adjustment to small and large shocks and the inclusion of nontraded goods prices in the overall price index do price indices in major u s cities share a common trend and if so how quickly do they revert to that trend following a local shock to the price index to answer this question we study the dynamics of consumer price indices for 19 major u s cities over the period from 1918 to 1995 the panel time series methods we employ are now commonly used for studying real output growth rates and levels of real exchange rates across countries we estimate that price index divergences across u s cities are temporary but surprisingly persistent with a half life of nearly nine years our research has two primary motivations first we hope to gain a better understanding of the sources of persistence in the deviations from purchasing power parity ppp found in studies of national price indices and exchange rate data second and more importantly we see the european monetary union as having many similarities to the united states and believe that studying the behavior of prices across u s cities will help us in understanding the likely nature of inflation convergence in the euro area the european central bank s stated inflation objective is a year on year change in the harmonized index of consumer prices hicp of not more than 2 but how large might we expect regional deviations from this euro area wide average to be and how long are they likely to persist the lack of data prevents us from answering this question directly using european prices under monetary union instead we look to the united states a mature common currency area of similar regional diversity size and industrial development

the eclipse of the state reflections on stateness in an era of globalization the economic logic of the current international economy does not predict the eclipse of the state economic globalization does restrict state power but transnational capital needs capable states as much or more than does domestically oriented business national success in the current global political economy has been associated not with minimal states but with states that are capable active and engaged pressure for eclipse flows from the conjunction between transnational economic forces and the political hegemony of an anglo american ideology that in j p nettl s words simply leaves no room for any valid notion of the state even this combination of economic and political pressure is unlikely to eclipse the state but it is likely to put public institutions on the defensive eclipsing any possibility of the embedded liberalism described by john ruggie a leaner meaner state is the likely outcome the possibility of a more progressive alternative outcome would depend in part on whether current zero sum visions of the relation between the state and civil society can be replaced by a more synergistic view

constructing polities and markets an institutionalist account of european integration as institutions and governance structures develop in modern markets they tend to feed back onto economic activity through such feedback loops market and political arenas can develop symbiotically into relatively coherent fields that gradually embed actors orientations and activities using these insights this article develops and tests a theory of european integration focusing on the case of the european community the first pillar of the european union traders organized interests courts and the ec s policy making organs over time have produced a self sustaining causal system that has driven the construction of the european market and polity the generality of this explanation to a sociology of markets and polity building projects is discussed in the conclusion

inside the hybrid iron cage political origins of hybridization this paper examines how social movement type political interactions between conflicting parties within an organization influence the adoption of a hybrid practice we argue that a hybrid practice is likely to be adopted when power balance between challengers and incumbents is achieved to shed light on conditions for organizational settlement based on such power balance we focus on three factors structures actors and processes of social movement type political interactions within organizations by studying changes in the presidential selection systems of korean universities between 1988 and 2006 this paper illustrates how organizational settlement resulted in the adoption of a hybrid system by combining elements of two previous competing presidential selection systems appointment and direct voting systems the general implications for the understanding of hybridization organizational settlement and organizational heterogeneity are discussed

media legitimation effects in the market for initial public offerings in this study we argue that media provided information affects investors impressions of newly public firms in 225 initial public offerings ipos the volume of mediaprovided information had a negative diminishing relationship with underpricing and a positive diminishing relationship with stock turnover on the first day of trading the relationship between the tenor of media provided information and underpricing increases at a nonlinear rate and decreases similarly for turnover findings provide important evidence that publicly available information not only reflects ipos legitimacy but also adds to their legitimacy and influences investor behavior in the last 20 years an increasing amount of research on markets has been conducted from a social constructionist perspective emphasizing how social structures enhance the flow of useful and credible information that market participants use to reduce the uncertainty of market exchanges e g aldrich fiol 1994 zuckerman 1999 further recent organizational research has begun to stress the influence of information intermediaries such as financial analysts and the media on mar

the impact of stakeholder power on corporate reputation a cross country corporate governance perspective corporate reputation has roots in national beliefs about the role of the business corporation in society these beliefs are constructed in accordance with the preferences of powerful stakeholders building on a stakeholder power approach to corporate governance we investigate whether differences in the legal rights and protections of shareholders creditors and workers across countries affect the general public s reputation assessments of business corporations using a sample of 593 of the largest publicly traded companies in the world from 32 countries during 2007 to 2011 we find that in societies where shareholders enjoy a high degree of legal rights the impact of stock market returns on corporate reputation becomes more positive likewise the negative relationship between earnings volatility and reputation becomes greater when creditor rights are stronger contrary to expectations we found no evidence of an interaction effect between labor rights and corporate social performance on corporate repu

the law of one price intranational evidence for canada this study investigates the behaviour of intranational prices for 45 specific consumer goods across 25 canadian cities it finds positive roles for distance and provincial borders in intercity price disparities while sizable the provincial border effect is an order of magnitude smaller than the estimates for the canada u s border a majority of the intercity relative price series are stationary around small mean values indicating that long run price differences are close to zero the intercity prices converge at rates considerably faster than the consensus estimates for international prices in fact half lives for intercity price deviations average well under a year jel classification f15 f31 la loi d un seul prix resultats intra nationaux pour le canada ce memoire examine le comportement des prix intra nationaux de 45 biens de consommation specifiques dans 25 villes canadiennes il semble que la distance et les frontieres inter provinciales ont un impact sur les differentiels de prix entre villes meme si l impact des frontieres inter provinciales est important il est beaucoupplus petit que l impact de la frontiere canada u s une majorite des series de prix relatifs entre villes sont stationnaires autour de petites valeurs moyennes ce qui suggere que les differences de prix a long terme s approchent de zero il est clair que les prix entre villes convergent a des taux considerablement plus rapides que ce qu on observe au niveau international en fait les deviations de prix entre villes ont une esperance de vie qui en moyenne est de moins d un an

policy generosity employer heterogeneity and women s employment opportunities the welfare state paradox reexamined scholars of comparative family policy research have raised concerns about potential negative outcomes of generous family policies an issue known as the welfare state paradox they suspect that s

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

the rebirth of the liberal creed paths to neoliberalism in four countries1 since the 1970s market based economic policies have been institutionalized as a nearly global policy paradigm using four national case studies this article shows that economic and financial globalization played a critical role in fostering the transition to neoliberal policies but that local institutional conditions were decisive in shaping the nature and meaning of the shift while the analysis finds that developing countries appear more dependent upon direct external pressures than developed ones it also shows that institutionalized patterns of state society relations determined the way in which neoliberal transitions were carried out somewhat irrespectively of the level of economic development in chile and britain poorly mediated distributional conflict created the ideological conditions for a monetarist revolution in mexico and france on the other hand neoliberalism was understood mainly as a necessary step to adapt the country to the international economy

the latte revolution regulation markets and consumption in the global coffee chain abstract coffee is a truly global commodity and a major foreign exchange earner in many developing countries the global coffee chain has changed dramatically as a result of deregulation new consumption patterns and evolving corporate strategies from a balanced contest between producing and consuming countries within the politics of international coffee agreements power relations shifted to the advantage of transnational corporations a relatively stable institutional environment where proportions of generated income were fairly distributed between producing and consuming countries turned into one that is more informal unstable and unequal through the lenses of global commodity chain analysis this paper examines how these transformations affect developing countries and what policy instruments are available to address the emerging imbalances

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

increasing returns path dependence and the study of politics it is increasingly common for social scientists to describe political processes as path dependent the concept however is often employed without careful elaboration this article conceptualizes path dependence as a social process grounded in a dynamic of increasing returns reviewing recent literature in economics and suggesting extensions to the world of politics the article demonstrates that increasing returns processes are likely to be prevalent and that good analytical foundations exist for exploring their causes and consequences the investigation of increasing returns can provide a more rigorous framework for developing some of the key claims of recent scholarship in historical institutionalism specific patterns of timing and sequence matter a wide range of social outcomes may be possible large consequences may result from relatively small or contingent events particular courses of action once introduced can be almost impossible to reverse and consequently political development is punctuated by critical moments or junctures that shape the basic contours of social life

ripples of fear the diffusion of a bank panic community reactions against organizations can be driven by negative information spread through a diffusion process that is distinct from the diffusion of organizational practices bank panics offer

the law of one price without the border the role of distance versus sticky prices we examine the role of nominal price rigidities in explaining the deviations from the law of one price lop across cities in japan focusing on intra national relative prices isolates the border eect and thus enables us to extract the pure eect of sticky prices a two city model with nominal rigidities and transportation costs predicts that the variation of lop deviations is lower for goods with less frequent price adjustment after controlling for the distance separating the cities using retail price data for individual goods and services collected in japanese cities we find strong evidence supporting this prediction adapting the engel and rogers 1996 regression framework to our theoretical setting we quantify the separate roles of nominal rigidities and trade costs proxied by distance in generating lop variability our estimates suggest that the distance equivalent of nominal rigidities can be as large as the width of the border typically found in the literature on international lop deviations the findings point to both the utility of the regression framework in identifying qualitative eects i e sign of a coecient and the challenges interpreting their quantitative implications

national contexts matter the co evolution of sustainability standards in global value chains in this paper we investigate the role of key industry and other stakeholders and their embeddedness in particular national contexts in driving the proliferation and co evolution of sustainability standards based on the case of the global coffee industry we find that institutional conditions and market opportunity structures in consuming countries have been important sources of standards variation for example in the cases of fairtrade utz certified and the common code for the coffee community 4c in turn supplier structures in producing countries as well as their linkages with traders and buyers targeting particular consuming countries have been key mechanisms of standards transmission and selection unlike prior research which has emphasized the role of global actors and structures in promoting and hindering sustainability initiatives we argue that national economic and institutional conditions in consuming and producing countries have not only served as important drivers of standards multiplicity and co evolution but also as catalysts for the entire global sustainability movement

the micro macro disconnect of purchasing power parity abstract this paper reconciles the persistence of aggregate real exchange rates with the faster adjustment of international relative prices in microeconomic data error correction model estimates indicate that a different mix of shocks drives international price deviations at the microeconomic level and that dynamic adjustment works through arbitrage in the goods market rather than the foreign exchange market when half lives are estimated conditional on a common set of estimated macro shocks we find that micro relative prices exhibit every bit as much persistence as aggregate real exchange rates these results challenge theories of real exchange rate persistence based on sticky prices and heterogeneity across goods

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

organizational environments in flux the impact of regulatory punctuations on organizational domains ceo succession and performance a central debate in organizational theory concerns how organizations evolve there are two diametrically opposing viewpoints adaptation theories predict that change occurs as fluid organizations adjust to meet shifting environmental demands while selection theories predict that change occurs through the differential selection and replacement of inert organizations as environmental demands vary over time our paper bridges these polar opposites by using a punctuated equilibrium framework to examine organizations responses to discontinuous industry level change this framework recognizes that the histories of many industries are occasionally punctuated by dramatic exogenous shocks such as radical technological innovation social and political turmoil major changes in government regulation and economic crashes our central thesis is that such environmental punctuations dramatically reduce pressures and rewards for organizational inertia and thereby alter both organizations propensities for change and their survival chances following change we focus on one form of punctuation major regulatory change and study firms in two industries general hospitals and savings and loan associations for organizations in both industries we examine three important outcomes shifts in organizational domain ceo succession and changes in financial performance our analyses show that punctuational regulatory change prompts shifts in organizational domains and executive leadership additionally post punctuation domain change and post punctuation ceo succession both affect subsequent performance we discuss our results in light of current thinking about the content and process effects of core organizational change which has been developed in the context of stable environments finally we argue for the development of more temporally sensitive theories of organizational action

intranational price convergence and price stickiness evidence from denmark we show that estimates of the half life of deviations from loop are biased when not taking into account the precision when aggregating over types of goods using a comprehensive dataset with monthly price data for 124 homogeneous products across regions in denmark over the period 1997 2010 we find a large positive aggregation bias on average we find that the half life is 8 4 months when taking the bias into account compared to 28 7 months when applying the standard method the heterogeneity in estimated half life can be explained by price stickiness distance between regions and whether the good is traded or non traded this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

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

global versus local shocks in micro price dynamics a number of recent papers point to the importance of distinguishing between the price reaction to macro and micro shocks we emphasize instead the importance of distinguishing between global and local shocks we exploit a panel of 276 micro price levels collected on a semi annual frequency over two decades in 59 countries around the world that enables us to distinguish between different types global and local of macro and micro shocks we find that global macro and micro shocks are always associated with a slower response of prices than the respective local shocks focusing on structural monetary macro shocks we show that prices reach their long run value much slower in response to a global macro shock as compared to the time it takes for prices to reach their long run value in response to a local macro shock

governance and trade in fresh vegetables the impact of uk supermarkets on the african horticulture industry production of fresh vegetables for export has grown rapidly in a number of countries in sub saharan africa over the last decade this trade brings producers and exporters based in africa together with importers and retailers in europe large retailers in europe play a decisive role in structuring the production and processing of fresh vegetables exported from africa the requirements they specify for cost quality delivery product variety innovation food safety and quality systems help top determine what types of producers and processors are able to gain access to the fresh vegetables chain and the activities they must carry out the control over the fresh vegetables trade exercised by uk supermarkets has clear consequences for inclusion and exclusion of producers and exporters of differing types and for the long term prospects for the fresh vegetables industry in the two major exporting countries studied kenya and zimbabwe

five facts about prices a reevaluation of menu cost models are price decreases 3 the frequency of price increases covaries strongly with inflation whereas the frequency of price decreases and the size of price increases and price decreases do not 4 the frequency of price change is highly seasonal it is highest in the first quarter and then declines 5 we find no evidence of upwardsloping hazard functions of price changes for individual products we show that the first second and third facts are consistent with a benchmark menu cost model whereas the fourth and fifth facts are not

price level convergence new evidence from u s cities abstract this paper tests the bilateral price level convergence among 52 u s cities at the good level by using a new econometric approach the estimated median half lives are far below the half lives found in the corresponding studies for the u s

how environmentalists greened trade policy strategic action and the architecture of field overlap this article examines why and how environmental activists despite considerable political weakness and disproportionally few resources won substantive negotiating concessions that far outstripped labor achievements during nafta s negotiation despite a trade policy arena hostile to their demands environmentalists gained official recognition for the legitimacy of their claims obtained a seat at the negotiating table turned a previously technocratic concern into a highly visible populist issue and won an environmental side agreement stronger than its labor counterpart we argue that this unexpected outcome is best explained by environmentalists strategic use of mechanisms available at the intersection of multiple fields while field theory mainly focuses on interactions within a particular field we suggest that the structure of overlap between fields the architecture of field overlap creates unique points of leverage that render particular targets more vulnerable and certain strategies more effective

shopping at the labour market a real tale of fiction abstract this paper presents results from a survey in which employers in the netherlands reveal the way they select applicants the survey uses descriptions of fictitious lower skilled job seekers who do not have a job the data are analyzed by means of logit models the results show a strong preference for young healthy native dutch men employers hardly care about qualities as education and experience or even about the wage rate questions are raised about the cost efficiency of the observed preferences

disentangling the multiple effects of affiliate reputation on resource attraction in new firms past research has established that new firms can enhance their attractiveness to prospective resource providers by affiliating with more reputable firms but research on this process has yet to fully account for two critical realities underscored by recent research 1 firms need to acquire resources from different groups of resource providers and 2 reputation is multidimensional drawing on the organizational reputation literature and on information processing theory we propose that two groups of resource providers will respond differently to new firms affiliations in accordance with differences in the groups abilities to recognize and interpret reputation related signals we also propose that within a single group of resource providers distinct characteristics of the affiliate will exert different influences we test these propositions using longitudinal data from belgian firms that affiliated with venture capital vc investors consistent with our predictions we find that characteristics of a

does educational indebtedness affect physician specialty choice there has been much debate over the effect of educational indebtedness on the specialty choices of new physicians especially in light of the perceived shortage of primary care physicians this paper explores the theoretical foundations on which this debate is based in addition the paper estimates the effects of various types of debt on specialty choice the results suggest that an increase in debt from subsidized loan sources i e guaranteed student loans national direct student loans or health professions student loans has mixed effects while an increase in debt from health education assistance loans reduces the likelihood of becoming a primary care physician though these effects are significant they are very small in magnitude economic returns to certain specialties and personal background appear to play a more important role in specialty choice

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

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

the decline of social entrenchment social network cohesion and board responsiveness to shareholder activism shareholder activism through corporate governance proposals is a prominent avenue for investors to voice their concerns in corporate governance matters however shareholder proposals have an uneven effect on corporate governance this paper contributes to research on shareholder activism by joining social movement approaches to activism with network theoretic approaches to corporate governance the paper examines how firms position within cohesive sections of the board interlock network termed social entrenchment predicts 1 the likelihood of being targeted by activist investors and 2 firms responsiveness to proposal demands first a firm s position in the board network serves as a salient network prism attracting activists attention this is especially true for activist investors who lack other backchannel avenues for engagement or seek to use public reputational penalties as part of their activism strategy second the board network traditionally served as an important collective infrastruc

socially embedding the commodity chain an exercise in relation to coir yarn spinning in southern india abstract most of the available studies on commodity chains and upgrading pursue a narrow economic view this paper points to the need for mapping the social linkages of production and movement of commodities in relation to upgrading the paper emphasizes the importance of looking at their social implications toward these goals the paper advances the idea of socially embedding the commodity chain the idea is demonstrated by examining from a long run historical perspective the global coir yarn commodity chain of southern india

character conformity or the bottom line how and why downsizing affected corporate reputation the aim of this study is to illuminate reputational change processes and identify the underlying theoretical mechanisms we draw upon extant literature to develop three distinct explanations for reputational change respectively emphasizing criteria of organizational character symbolic conformity and technical efficacy we evaluate these explanations by examining the reputational consequences of corporate downsizing our results show that downsizing exerted a strong negative effect on reputation consistently with the character explanation however significant moderation of this negative effect by other factors including stock market reaction and downsizing s overall prevalence indicates the need for a multitheoretical approach to reputational change

sex differences in the economic advantages of physician board certification the study of wage differentials has received considerable attention in the economic literature economists who have studied minority majority wage differentials have observed that for minority workers the earnings advantage associated with the investment to obtain above average credentials is greater than the earnings advantage for majority workers who have obtained identical credentials however for minority workers of average credentials or below average credentials the effect of investment in human capital on their earnings is lower than it is for majority workers 6 22 some researchers have argued that these differences in earnings related to human capital arise as a result of uncertainty about productivity levels combined with differential signaling costs golbe 8 for example provides a theoretical model that indicates that differences in signaling costs between minority and majority workers can lead to the observed pattern of differences in the earnings of minority majority workers even in the absence of discrimination this differential in earnings results if low productivity minority workers have a lower probability of providing a high market signal than low productivity majority workers or if high productivity minority workers have a higher probability of providing a high market signal than high productivity majority workers under these circumstances employers offer lower wages to low signal minority workers and higher wages to high signal minority workers relative to majority workers 8 846 47 even in the absence of differential signaling costs this wage differential will result if employers face an affirmative action constraint the affirmative action constraint would

in the market but not of it fair trade coffee and forest stewardship council certification as market based social change summary this paper discusses two well known market based social change initiatives fair trade coffee and forest stewardship council certification which harness market forces to pursue social and environmental objectives a serious challenge for both is to operate in the conventional market without undermining their original objectives a global commodity chain analysis approach is combined with insights from economic sociology embeddedness theory to explore the social cultural and organizational factors shaping the initiatives governance structures both initiatives are seen to move along opposite organizational trajectories but face similar pressures from conventional market logics practices and dominant actors a preliminary framework is proposed for comparative assessment focusing on distribution of benefits how conventional market institutions may be questioned and how internal governance manages diverse stakeholder interests and influence

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

aggregation is not the solution the ppp puzzle strikes back we acknowledge financial support from the spanish ministry of education through grants sej2006 00369 and sej2005 05215 the fundacion ramon areces the barcelona economics program of crea and from the aragon s research unit seim

unbiased estimation of the half life to ppp convergence in panel data three potential sources of bias introduce complications for panel data estimation of the half life of purchasing power parity deviations they are bias induced by inappropriate cross sectional aggregation of heterogeneous coefficients small sample estimation bias of dynamic lag coefficients and bias induced by time aggregation of commodity prices all of these biases have been addressed individually in the literature in this paper we address all three biases in arriving at our estimates using an annual panel data set of cpi based real exchange rates for 21 oecd countries from 1973 to 1998 we obtain a point estimate of the unbiased half life of 3 0 years with a 95 confidence interval of 2 3 4 2 years

the behaviour of relative prices in the european union a sectoral analysis using multivariate unit root test methods this paper investigates the purchasing power parity ppp hypothesis at the sectoral level across six european countries over the last 17 years evidence of mean reversion towards ppp is found for the relative prices of some sectors and countries mean reversion in relative prices is explained by cross country and cross sectoral characteristics such as the distance between countries nominal exchange rate volatility differences in gdp per capita non tariff barriers research and development advertising industrial concentration and tradeability of the products

from poverty to perversity ideas markets and institutions over 200 years of welfare debate to understand the rise of market fundamentalism from the margins of influence to mainstream hegemony we compare the u s 1996 personal responsibility and work opportunities reconciliation act and the english 1834 new poor law two episodes in which existing welfare regimes were overturned by market driven ones despite dramatic differences across the cases both outcomes were mobilized by the perversity thesis a public discourse that reassigned blame for the poor s condition from poverty to perversity we use the term ideational embeddedness to characterize the power of such ideas to shape structure and change market regimes the success of the perversity thesis is based on the foundations of social naturalism theoretical realism and the conversion narrative in the poverty to perversity conversion narrative structural blame for poverty is discredited as empiricist appearance while the real problem is attributed to the corrosive effects of welfare s perverse incentives on poor people themselves