mncs and sustainable business practice the case of the colombian and peruvian petroleum industries abstract multinational corporations mncs play an increasingly important role in the economic development strategies of many less developed countries ldcs at the same time the sustainable development of ldcs requires economic growth to be accompanied by environmental protection and greater social equity this paper contributes to the literature concerned with mncs contribution to the sustainable development of ldcs the concept of sustainable business practice sbp is proposed as relevant to understanding mncs contribution and an analytical framework incorporating the content context and process of sbp is used to examine what sbp might consist of as well as those conditions important for its widespread adoption results from a study examining the colombian and peruvian petroleum industries show that despite important contributions by mncs to sustainable development sbp is not yet widespread the study also shows the importance of external institutional pressures principally in the form of local legislation for mncs contribution to the sustainable development of ldcs finally the paper shows how the process of change toward more sbp is closely linked to the external context in which mncs operate the characteristics of their internal context and the internal and external processes linking these contexts

occupational choice and the process of development this paper models economic development as a process of institutional transformation by focusing on the interplay between agents occupational decisions and the distribution of wealth because of capital market imperfections poor agents choose working for a wage over self employment and wealthy agents become entrepreneurs who monitor workers only with sufficient inequality however will there be employment contracts otherwise there is either subsistence or self employment thus in static equilibrium the occupational structure depends on distribution since the latter is itself endogenous we demonstrate the robustness of this result by extending the model dynamically and studying examples in which initial wealth distributions have long run effects in one case the economy develops either widespread cottage industry self employment or factory production employment contracts depending on the initial distribution in the other example it develops into prosperity or stagnation

universal banks and corporate control evidence from the global syndicated loan market we investigate the effects of bank control over borrowerfirms whether by representation on boards of directors or by the holding of shares through bank asset management divisions using a large sample of syndicated loans we find that banks are more likely to act as lead arrangers in loans when they exert some control over the borrower firm bank firm governance links are associated with higher loan spreads during the 2003 2006 credit boom but lower spreads during the 2007 2008 financial crisis additionally these links mitigate credit rationing effects during the crisis the results are robust to several methods to correct for the endogeneity of the bank firm governance link our evidence consistent with intertemporal smoothing of loan rates suggests that there are costs and benefits from banks involvement in firm governance jel g21 g32

the emergence and persistence of the anglo saxon and german financial systems we use a moral hazard model to compare monitored nontraded bank loans and traded nonmonitored bonds as sources of external funds for industry we contrast the theoretical conditions that favor each system with the historical conditions prevailing when these financial systems evolved during the british and german industrial revolutions to study persistence we consider an entry model where financiers take the industrial structure as given when they lend and firms take the financial system as given when they borrow we show multiple equilibria can exist compare equilibria in welfare terms and discuss their robustness to coordination between lenders and borrowers copyright 2004 oxford university press

comparing virtue consequentialist and deontological ethics based corporate social responsibility mitigating microfinance risk in institutional voids due to the nature of lending practices and support services offered to the poor in developing countries portfolio risk is a growing concern for the microfinance industry though previous research highlights the importance of risk for microfinance organizations not much is known about how microfinance organizations can mitigate risks incurred from providing loans to the poor in developing countries further though many microfinance organizations practice corporate social responsibility csr to help create economic and social wealth in developing countries the impact of such csr practices remains an underdeveloped area of inquiry we use a normative ethics lens to develop an ethics based csr theory that differentiates between three forms of ethics based csr virtue consequentialist and deontological we argue that while all three forms can help mitigate risk virtue ethics based csr is potentially the most useful form of csr toward mitigating microfinance portfolio risk we test our hypotheses using a sample of microfinance organizations from across the world our findings suggest that virtue ethics based csr is not just an important philosophical paradigm it can actually help mitigate microfinance portfolio risk when implemented in practice

finance and employment evidence from u s banking reforms abstract economic theory offers competing hypotheses about how the cost and availability of finance influence labor market outcomes making use of the u s banking reforms between the 1970s and the 1990s as a quasi natural experiment this paper studies the impact of credit market development on employment this paper documents the significant effects of these reforms on employment growth potential channels between finance and employment are also investigated changes in the growth of the number of self employed individuals the entry and exit of firms and investment growth do not explain most of the employment growth following the reforms the reforms had a substantially higher impact in industries with higher labor intensity which is consistent with the idea that labor has fixed costs that need to be financed

budgetary policy and unemployment dynamics in an olg model with collective bargaining we consider a dynamic general equilibrium model with capital accumulation and collective wage bargaining and investigate how unemployment responds to structural shocks under two stylised budgetary policies under balanced budgets tax adjustments lead to higher unemployment on impact but enable a quick recovery of employment by contrast unbalanced budgets mitigate unemployment effects on impact but dynamics are more persistent due to weaker capital accumulation and future fiscal consolidations these results are consistent with empirical evidence on a positive cross country relationship between government borrowing and unemployment persistence this paper starts out from the well known fact that many european countries have suffered from persistently high unemployment over the past two decades there is a large literature which attempts to explain this development as resulting from a combination of structural shocks and mechanisms which make the effects of any such shifts more persistent one prominent branch of this literature stresses that adverse structural shocks tend to induce a slowdown in capital accumulation which reinforces the employment losses and adds to unemployment persistence bean 1989 benassy 1997 blanchard 1997 burda 1988 caballero and hammour 1998 daveri and tabellini 2000 similarly these studies point out that when the shock is over the recovery of employment depends critically on the speed with which investments in capital respond to the new situation the purpose of this paper is to reconsider this capital shortage hypothesis by linking it explicitly to the stance of fiscal policy to see the importance of fiscal policy in this context consider a government which faces an adverse structural shock such as a drop in employment due to a wage setting shock and decides whether it should keep its budget balanced or not this decision will affect the overall structure of assets in the economy i e the mix between capital and government bonds and this mix will in turn be an important determinant of the speed with which the economy can create employment once the shock is over in particular according to the capital shortage hypothesis the recovery in terms of employment is likely to take longer under a policy which temporarily accepts structural budget deficits particularly when crowding out effects have been substantial

welfare cost of fluctuations when labor market search interacts with financial frictions we provide a quantitative assessment of welfare costs of fluctuations in a search model with financial frictions the matching process in the labor market leads positive shocks to reduce unemployment less than negative shocks increase it we show that the magnitude of this non linearity is magnified frictions this asymmetric effect of the business cycle leads to sizable welfare costs the model also accounts for the responsiveness of the job finding rate to the business cycle as financial frictions endogenously generate counter cyclical opportunity costs of opening a vacancy and wage sluggishness

bond underwriting by banks and conflicts of interest evidence from japan during the pre war period abstract article 65 of the securities and exchange law of japan which was carried into effect in 1948 prohibited banks from underwriting corporate securities partially because of the concern that combining the banking and securities businesses might result in a potential conflict of interest this paper studies the pricing and long term default performance of industrial bonds underwritten by commercial banks the industrial bank of japan ibj and trust firms as compared to those underwritten by investment houses during the pre war period in japan when banks were allowed to underwrite industrial bonds the evidence rejects the concern about the conflicts of interest

is the glass steagall act justified a study of the u s experience with universal banking before the glass steagall act of 1933 removed commercial banks from the securities underwriting business we evaluate the argument for the separation of commercial and investment banking that conflicts of interest induce commercial banks to fool the public into investing in securities which turn out to be of low quality a comparison of the performance of securities underwritten by commercial and investment banks prior to the act shows no evidence of this instead the public appears to have rationally accounted for the possibility of conflicts of interest and this appears to have constrained the banks to underwrite high quality securities jel g21 g24 n22

poverty alleviation as business strategy evaluating commitments of frontrunner multinational corporations summary in the debate on how to combat poverty the positive role of mncs is frequently mentioned nowadays although doubts and criticism remain facing this societal debate mncs feel the pressure to formulate a position this paper analyzes mncs policies on their poverty alleviating potential frontrunner mncs turn out not to be very outspoken especially not on those issues that have the largest potential to help alleviate poverty placed in the context of other mncs behavior a sector coordinated morality seems important which means that a meso approach to poverty alleviation needs to complement the current global macro and individual company micro focus

profit sharing credit market imperfections and equilibrium unemployment we investigate the interaction between labour and credit market imperfections for equilibrium unemployment in the presence of profit sharing in a partial equilibrium with exogenous outside options increased bargaining power of banks has adverse employment effects in a general equilibrium with endogenous outside options this relationship is frequently reversed reduced credit market imperfections increase equilibrium unemployment if the labour market imperfections measured by the bargaining power of trade unions are sufficiently strong and the benefit replacement ratio is sufficiently high finally we show that higher bankruptcy risks increase equilibrium unemployment under similar conditions

oil extraction and poverty reduction in the niger delta a critical examination of partnership initiatives the combination of corporate community conflicts and oil transnational corporations tncs rhetoric about being socially responsible has meant that the issue of community development and poverty reduction have recently moved from the periphery to the heart of strategic business thinking within the nigerian oil industry as a result oil tncs have increasingly responded to this challenge by adopting partnership strategies as a means to contribute to poverty reductions in their host communities as well as secure their social licence to operate this paper critically examines the strengths and weaknesses of the different community development partnership cdps initiatives employed by shell exxon mobil and total to contribute to poverty reduction within their host communities in the niger delta nigeria drawing on empirical data and critical analysis the paper argues that while the cdp initiatives by spdc mpn and epnl have the potential to contribute to community development the failure to integrate negative injunction duties into existing partnerships means that the partnerships make no difference to how oil tncs conduct their core business operation consequently cdps have had limited positive impact on poverty reduction in the niger delta the paper concludes by examining the implications of the emerging issues for partnership and poverty reduction

credit mismatch and breakdown abstract this paper studies the phenomenon of mismatch in a decentralized credit market where borrowers and lenders must engage in costly search to establish credit relationships our dynamic general equilibrium framework integrates incentive based informational frictions with a matching process highlighted by i borrowers endogenous market entry and exit decision entry frictions and ii time and resource costs necessary to locate credit opportunities search frictions a key feature of the incentive compatible loan contract negotiated between borrowers and lenders is the interaction of informational frictions in the form of moral hazard with entry and search frictions we find that the removal of entry barriers can eliminate incentive based equilibrium credit rationing more generally entry and incentive frictions are important in understanding the extent of credit rationing and credit mismatch while search and incentive frictions are important for understanding credit market breakdown

welfare gains from financial liberalization financial liberalization has been a controversial issue as empirical evidence for growth enhancing effects is mixed here we find sizable welfare gains from liberalization cost to repression though the gain in economic growth is ambiguous we take the view that financial liberalization is a government policy that alters the path of financial deepening while financial deepening is endogenously chosen by agents given a policy and occurs in transition towards a distant steady state this history dependent view necessitates the use of simulation analysis based on a growth model our application is a specific episode thailand from 1976 to 1996

venture capital availability and labor market performance around the world this article studies the effects of venture capital on the performance of the labour market using data from a much larger sample of countries than previous papers it finds more readily available venture capital to favourably affect both the unemployment and the employment rate the magnitude of the estimated effects is substantial we control for both endogeneity of venture capital availability and most major determinants of labour market performance the results are robust to variations in specification

trade credit and bank relationships evidence from pre world war i belgium we investigate the determinants of trade credit granted by suppliers in a historical environment which was characterized by high information asymmetries and strong banks focusing on the role of bank firm relationships our results which are based on a unique sample of 535 firm year observations for 125 listed belgian firms in four dominant industries in the period 1905 to 1909 are generally consistent with the financing role of trade credit they suggest that trade credit was a tool for channelling funds from firms with close bank ties to other firms which is consistent with findings for contemporary developing countries

macro financial linkages the role of the institutional framework abstract in this paper we assess the quantitative impact of various financial shocks on the real activity and explicitly address the issue of heterogeneity in the macro financial linkages for that purpose we use var models as well as the local projection method for 18 oecd countries based on quarterly data between 1995 and 2014 we take into account three main dimensions of the institutional framework likely to explain the observed cross country heterogeneity in the propagation of financial shocks the product market regulation the employment protection and the financial structure our main findings indicate that financial shocks have a stronger impact in countries characterized by a higher competition friendly regulatory stance a stronger employment protection and a more market oriented financial structure we also show that the varieties of capitalism described by the particular mix of different institutional arrangements do not play a significant role in shaping the macro financial linkages this result suggests that although considered individually goods labor and financial markets regulations are robustly linked to macroeconomic fluctuations there is no prima facie evidence for superior performance of any given mix of institutional arrangements observed in oecd countries

mining and poverty reduction transforming rhetoric into reality abstract this article critically evaluates the contribution that mining has made to poverty reduction and assesses the prospects for better performance in the future the article starts from the two assumptions that mineral resources are a potentially great source of wealth for poor countries and that the various ill effects associated with the resource curse are not inevitable it then directs its attention toward the world bank a leading advocate of mining led development and an institution with a core mandate to reduce poverty employing the world bank s own conceptualization of poverty as an analytical framework the article demonstrates that mining has a dismal empirical track record to date in poverty reduction while the theoretical reasons to believe that mining can contribute to poverty alleviation are perhaps sound the reality of mineral led development has not lived up to its rhetorical promise the article elucidates problems with existing approaches and evaluates the world bank s recently concluded extractive industries review as a dramatic new paradigm shift in thinking on mining and poverty reduction it concludes that mining can positively contribute toward poverty alleviation but only if a variety of demanding preconditions are met

understanding america s hesitant steps toward financial capitalism politics the depression and the separation of commercial and investment banking few would disagree that the glass steagall act of 1933 is thecontinental divide in american financial and banking history bydisallowing banks from getting involved in the investment bankingindustry this act imposed an institutional change that shaped howfinancial institutions conduct their business even today in itsdecline conventional wisdom has it that the act was enacted tocorrect the deficient financial system that existed during theperiod in this paper we investigate whether this assertion can beempirically verified by analyzing the senate vote on a predecessorof this act which included the clause separating commercialbanking from investment banking activities using multinomiallogits we examine what may have motivated senators to vote for itspassage the econometric evidence indicates that the senate votewas significantly influenced by important interest groups including national banks as well as manufacturing sectorinterests despite the large populist outcry for financial marketreforms at the onset of the depression

investment banks as corporate monitors in the early twentieth century united states we study the effect of financial relationships on firms investment decisions and access to external finance in the early twentieth century securities underwriters commonly held directorships with american corporations section 10 of the clayton antitrust act prohibited bankers from serving on the boards of railroads for which they underwrote securities we find that following the implementation of section 10 railroads with strong preexisting relationships with underwriters saw declines in their investment rates valuations and leverage and increases in their costs of external funds reassuringly we do not observe similar effects among industrials and utilities which were not subject to section 10 our results are consistent with underwriters on corporate boards acting as delegated monitors and highlight the potential for regulations intended to address conflicts of interest to disrupt valuable information flows

multinational corporations economic and human rights impacts on developing countries a review and research agenda developing countries are attracting a significant portion of global foreign direct investments governments of such countries often compete fiercely for attracting multinational corporations mncs in the expectation of the advantages they will bring to their economies often prioritising economic goals over fundamental human rights for a long time economists have analysed the economic impacts of mncs while a parallel strand of work in political science business ethics and international law investigates the repercussions of mnc operations on human rights despite the significant relatedness and complementarities these two bodies of literature have so far poorly interacted this paper addresses this limitation and systematically analyses and integrates existing micro level empirical evidence on the economic and human rights impacts of mncs on developing countries it provides a critical analysis of what is known and highlights what we do not know about the factors that mediate the positive and or negative impacts of mnc operations on host developing countries based on a critical analysis of the literature it discusses avenues for future research in this field and sets the grounds for a new interdisciplinary research agenda on this subject

macroeconomic effects of regulation and deregulation in goods and labor markets product and labor market deregulation reduce and redistribute rents leading economic players to adjust to this new distribution it typically comes with distribution and dynamic effects to study these effects we build a macroeconomic model on two central assumptions monopolistic competition in the goods market which determines the size of rents and bargaining in the labor market which determines the distribution of rents product market regulation determines entry costs and the degree of competition labor market regulation determines the bargaining power of workers we show the effects of deregulation we then use our results to discuss the political economy of deregulation and recent macroeconomic evolutions in europe

the influence of the economic approaches to regulation on banking regulations a short history of banking regulations this article highlights the theoretical foundations of the regulations at work in the banking sector and examines their responsibility in the onset of the 2007 2008 financial crisis drawing a parallel between the main changes in banking regulations since the 1960s and the evolutions in the economic analyses of regulation over the same period it shows that the shift from the public interest theory of regulation that prevailed until the late 1960s towards the private interest theory of regulation accounts for the substitution of micro prudential regulations for macro prudential ones and explains a paradigmatic change in the conception of the regulatory instruments of the banking authorities it also shows that although the outcome of several factors the 2007 2008 crisis was also a consequence of the fact that the economic analysis of banking regulations supported micro prudential regulations that fail to take the global features and impact of banking activities into account and have proved unable to recommend effective solutions in a context of crisis

relationship banking liquidity and investment in the german industrialization close bank relationships are thought to ameliorate firms liquidity constraints a phenomenon frequently measured by liquidity sensitivity of investment using german firms during the formative years of universal banking 1903 1913 this paper shows that even controlling for selection bias investment is more sensitive to internal liquidity for bank networked firms than unattached firms the firm exhibiting the greatest liquidity sensitivity however faced no apparent liquidity constraint the findings yield two implications they support recent research rejecting a linear relationship between liquidity sensitivity and financing constraints and they suggest that relationship banking provides no consistent lessening of firms liquidity sensitivity

credit market imperfections and persistent unemployment abstract this paper develops the thesis that credit market frictions may be an important contributor to high unemployment in europe when a change in the technological regime necessitates the creation of new firms this can happen relatively rapidly in the u s where credit markets function efficiently in contrast in europe job creation is constrained by credit market imperfections so unemployment rises and remains high for an extended period the data show that there has not been slower growth in the most credit dependent industries in europe relative to the u s but the share of employment in these industries is lower than in the u s this suggests that although credit market imperfections are unlikely to have been the major cause of the increase in european unemployment they may have played some role in limiting european employment growth

banking finance and the role of the state this paper provides an overview of the issue it considers the existing structure of financial regulation the deficiencies that were encountered during the financial crisis and the proposed reforms it discusses whether these are likely to be adequate and argues that there are fundamental failures in product markets capital markets and government relations with financial institutions highlighted in the articles in this issue that question whether current reforms will prove sufficient in particular the article argues that a clearly defined partnership between the state and the banking system needs to be established by which the state protects certain core components of the banking system that perform key functions in an economic system and well specified rules are put in place to avoid renegotiation and lobbying copyright 2011 oxford university press

did j p morgan s men add liquidity corporate investment cash flow and financial structure at the turn of the twentieth century this article presents evidence suggesting that the relationship that existed between the partnership of j p morgan and its client firms partially resolved the latter s external financing problems by diminishing the principal agent and asymmetric information problems i estimate and compare investment regression equations for a sample of morgan affiliated companies and a control group of nonaffiliated companies the econometric results seem to indicate that companies not affiliated to the house of morgan were liquidity constrained

real interest rate and labor market performance around the world this article studies the effects of the real interest rate on labor market performance using a much larger sample of countries and more indicators of labor market performance than have been used in previous articles it finds that a rise in the real interest rate increases the unemployment rate raises the share of long term unemployed and reduces the employment rate the magnitude of these effects is very small in the short run but much more pronounced though still fairly small in the long run young people are disproportionately affected the results are robust to variations in specification

the social and environmental responsibilities of multinationals evidence from the brent spar case this paper argues that multinational corporations face levels of environmental and social responsibility higher than their national counterparts drawing on the literatures of stakeholder salience corporate reputation management and evidence from the confrontation between shell and greenpeace over the brent spar in 1995 two mechanisms international reputation side effects and foreign stakeholder salience are identified and their contribution in creating an environment more restrictive in terms of environmental and social responsibility is elaborated on the paper concludes with discussing the links of the work presented here with a number of ongoing debates within the filed of international business ethics and the managerial implications of the two mechanisms identified

business strategy and poverty alleviation currently entrepreneurs and corporations overwhelmingly do not view the alleviation of global poverty as a strategic priority yet business activity can have a negative as well as a positive effect on each distinctive form of poverty in order to reduce poverty entrepreneurs have to find ways of limiting the negative aspects this might be achieved by deliberately augmenting strategies so that they can achieve a synthesis in partnership with governments and ngo s

the labor market and corporate structure abstract we analyze the impact of labor demand and labor market regulations on the corporate structure of firms higher wages are associated with lower monitoring irrespective of whether these high wages are caused by labor market regulations unions or higher labor demand we also find that the organization of firms has important macroeconomic implications in particular monitoring is a type of rent seeking activity and the decentralized equilibrium spends excessive resources on monitoring labor market regulations that reduce monitoring by pushing wages up may increase net output or reduce it only by a small amount even though they reduce employment

understanding the clayton act of 1914 an analysis of the interest group hypothesis the trusts issue culminated in the passage of the clayton act in1914 which conventional wisdom holds was a response to theperceived ineffectiveness of the sherman antitrust act of 1890 using ordered and multinomial logit analysis we were able todetect economic interest variables that explain the senators votes the empirical findings strongly support the wealth transferhypothesis and the regression results clearly show that senatorsresponded to interest groups while we also found some support forthe ideological perspective it is clear that there was much moreto the vote than the conventional story would suggest

skills search and the persistence of high unemployment abstract the persistence of high unemployment rates in europe has fueled theories advocating the existence of multiple natural rates of unemployment labor market institutions and increasing returns to scale have been singled out as the main causes of multiplicity and therefore of high unemployment traps the contribution of this paper is both to expand the set of mechanisms leading to multiple natural rates of unemployment and to establish a minimum set of assumptions under which such multiplicity may arise to this aim a search matching model is presented where households allocate time to market and non market activities and invest both in physical and human capital it is shown that under the standard assumption of concavity in production and matching such a model yields multiple long run equilibria with different rates of unemployment this result does not rely on labor market institutions or increasing returns to scale multiplicity in our model arises from differences in the intensity of use of human capital across time consuming activities

investigating the impact of auto loans on unemployment the us experience this paper explores the impact of automobile loan debt on us unemployment individuals with heterogeneous economic positions deem automobiles as important durable goods for unemployment exit and ex

corporate structure liquidity and investment evidence from japanese industrial groups this paper presents evidence suggesting that information and incentive problems in the capital market affect investment we come to this conclusion by examining two sets of japanese firms the first set has close financial ties to large japanese banks that serve as their primary source of external finance and are likely to be well informed about the firm the second set of firms has weaker links to a main bank and presumably faces greater problems raising capital investment is more sensitive to liquidity for the second set of firms than for the first set the analysis also highlights the role of financial intermediaries in the investment process

new convergences in poverty reduction conflict and state fragility what business should know a common moral imperative to reduce human suffering in developing countries has helped to bring the international poverty reduction and conflict mitigation agendas together but while research and practice are well established in the fields of poverty and conflict the nexus between these two fields at the theoretical and practical levels is largely nascent lack of a shared body of knowledge has arguably impeded the ability of these communities to work together toward the overlapping goals of reducing poverty and conflict in countries affected by violence and instability business as a key sector of the international community could potentially make significant contributions to the joint agenda if it were better integrated in efforts to develop the nexus this article surveys the current states of knowledge in the fields of poverty and conflict including the increasing influence of the fragile states theory it then discusses some of the major schools of thought helping to bring poverty reduction efforts into alliance with conflict mitigation efforts the third section identifies important conceptual convergences and divergences between the fields and reconsiders the prominent assumption that economic opportunity can be a powerful incentive for peace and stability finally this article discusses potential areas that could advance the nexus of poverty and conflict at both a theoretical and practical level

why regulate insider trading evidence from the first great merger wave 1897 1903 we use event time methodology to study legal insider trading associated with mergers circa 1900 for mergers with prospective disclosures similar to today s we find substantial value gains at announcement implying participation by outside shareholders despite the absence of insider constraints furthermore preannouncement stock price runups relative to total value gain are no more than those observed for modern mergers insider regulation apparently has produced little benefit for outsiders with the inside information pricing function and related gains shifting to external information specialists other results suggest market penalties for nondisclosure i e insider trading is less successful in a restricted information environment

does bank affiliation mitigate liquidity constraints evidence from germany s universal banks in the pre world war i period this paper compares two similar samples of mining and steel corporations in pre world war i germany one sample consists of corporations that were affiliated to one or more of the german universal banks and the second sample consists of companies that had to rely on other sources of finance statistical analysis conducted in the framework of a linear fixed effects model indicates that the non affiliated companies were liquidity constrained the paper also sets out the corporate control structure as laid down in the trade law reform of 1884 and traces the origins of the current german dual board system as well as the origins of several other aspects of the institutions that tied the german banking system to industrial concerns

paradoxes and dilemmas for stakeholder responsive firms in the extractive sector lessons from the case of shell and the ogoni this paper examines some of the paradoxes and dilemmas facing firms in the extractive sector when they attempt to take on a more stakeholder responsive orientation towards issues of environmental and social responsibility we describe the case of shell and the ogoni and attempt to draw out some of the lessons of that case for more sustainable operations in the developing world we argue that firms such as shell rio tinto and others may well exhibit increasingly stakeholder responsive behaviours at the corporate strategic level however for reasons of strategy lack of competency or institutional will this increasing level of corporate responsiveness may not be mirrored effectively in dealings between subsidiary business units and their most important direct stakeholders for example local communities and in the developing world we contrast the struggles of shell to replicate its corporate stakeholder responsiveness at the local level in nigeria with the experiences of other firms that seem to have developed managerial capabilities at a somewhat deeper level throughout the firm with consequent benefits both for stakeholders and the business

the effect of employment protection and product market regulation on labour market performance substitution or complementarity this article provides new evidence on the linkages between various forms of market regulation and joblessness and its components unemployment and inactivity one crucial contribution of this article is the analysis of the interdependence across product market regulation pmr and labour markets regulation employment protection legislation epl with the help of a dynamic fixed effect model with an interaction term we estimate the marginal impact of epl and pmr at different levels of the other interacted variable to cope with problems related to the inclusion of time invariant institutional variables in fixed effect models we present results of regressions based on a new procedure specifically designed to treat slowly changing variables we build time series data to account for the annual evolution of epl and use new data for unemployment insurance net replacement rates among other results we find evidence of a positive negative effect of epl pmr on employment performance as well as of subst

interest group competition and the organization of congress theory and evidence from financial services political action committees we develop a positive theory of how interest group competition shapes the organization of congress and use it to explain campaign contribution patterns in financial services since interest groups cannot enforce fee for service contracts with legislators legislators have an incentive to create specialized standing committees which foster repeated dealing between interests and committee members the resulting reputational equilibrium supports high contributions and high legislative effort for the interests contribution patterns by competing interests in the congressional battle over whether banks can enter new businesses support the theory which also has implications for term limits and campaign reform