Roaming in the Mobile Internet: when coverage sharing agreements call for regulation

Revised: 2006-06

Consumer Expertise or Credit Risk? An empirical analysis of mortgage pricing

Loan mortgage interest rates are usually the result of a bank-customer negotiation process. Credit risk, consumer cross-buying potential, bundling, financial market competition and other features affecting the bargaining power of the parties could affect price. We argue that, since mortgage loan is a complex product, consumer expertise could be a relevant factor for mortgage pricing. Using data on mortgage loan prices for a sample of 1055 households for the year 2005 (Bank of Spain Survey of Household Finances, EFF-2005), and including credit risk, costs, potential capacity of the consumer to generate future business and bank competition variables, the regression results indicate that consumer expertise-related metrics are highly significant as predictors of mortgage loan prices. Other factors such as credit risk and consumer cross-buying potential do not have such a significant impact on mortgage prices. Our empirical results are affected by the credit conditions prior to the financial crisis and could shed some light on this issue.

多对一供应链零售商驱动型收入共享契约下的生产决策

针对多对一供应链结构中零售商具有较强议价能力的特点,建立了零售商为主方、制造商为从方的Stackelberg主从对策模型;给出在零售商提供契约条款的对称博弈中,制造商生产产品策略存在唯一最优解的证明;分析了零售商契约参数变量的决策问题;讨论了收入共享契约下分散供应链同集中供应链决策的关系.通过仿真实验,分析验证了契约参数及产品的可替代性对供应链绩效的影响。

Strategic non-cooperation as soft balancing: Why Iraq was not just about Iraq

Many commentators explain recent transatlantic rifts by pointing to diverging norms, interests and geopolitical preferences. This paper proceeds from the premise that not all situations of conflict are necessarily due to underlying deadlocked preferences. Rather, non-cooperation may be a strategic form of soft balancing. That is, more generally, if they believe that they are being shortchanged in terms of influence and payoffs, weaker states may deliberately reject possible cooperation in the short run to improve their influence vis-à-vis stronger states in the long run. This need not be due to traditional relative gains concern. States merely calculate that their reputation as a weak negotiator will erode future bargaining power and subsequently their future share of absolute gains. Strategic non-cooperation is therefore a rational signal of resolve. This paper develops the concept of strategic non-cooperation as a soft balancing tool and applies it to the Iraq case in 2002-2003. © 2005 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.

Global value chains in a post-Washington Consensus world

Contemporary globalization has been marked by significant shifts in the organization and governance of global industries. In the 1970s and 1980s, one such shift was characterized by the emergence of buyer-driven and producer-driven commodity chains. In the early 2000s, a more differentiated typology of governance structures was introduced, which focused on new types of coordination in global value chains (GVCs). Today the organization of the global economy is entering another phase, with transformations that are reshaping the governance structures of both GVCs and global capitalism at various levels: (1) the end of the Washington Consensus and the rise of contending centers of economic and political power; (2) a combination of geographic consolidation and value chain concentration in the global supply base, which, in some cases, is shifting bargaining power from lead firms in GVCs to large suppliers in developing economies; (3) new patterns of strategic coordination among value chain actors; (4) a shift in the end markets of many GVCs accelerated by the economic crisis of 2008-09, which is redefining regional geographies of investment and trade; and (5) a diffusion of the GVC approach to major international donor agencies, which is prompting a reformulation of established development paradigms. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Foreign Direct Investment and Country Risk::Is There Evidence of 'Malign Investment in the Former Soviet States'

This paper examines the relationship between concepts of MNE bargaining power and broader concepts of political power. It notes that the analysis of MNE bargaining power presents a number of puzzles from the perspective of political theory. These puzzles arise, in part, from the fact that the overlap between traditional concepts of MNE bargaining power and broader concepts of political power is only a partial one. Despite these problems, it is suggested that political- theory-based approaches can add realism to our understanding of bargaining power.

Estratégia de centralização de compras e minimização de custos estudo de caso do Grupo Pinto & Cruz

Trabalho de Projeto apresentado ao Instituto de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto, para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Auditoria, sob orientação de Doutora Alcina Dias

How to promote and enhance communication between a big retailer's after-sales department and its suppliers

W is the biggest electronic goods retailer in Portugal accounting with almost fifty percent of market share in its area. During the last years, many small W suppliers had to close their doors, and many others are in huge troubles. Among the reason for this situation, the huge bargaining power of W in the relationship seems crucial. The focus of the directed research will be in the after sales department where I did an internship from September 2014 to January 2015.

Neutrality and the social contract

Given the fact of moral disagreement, theories of state neutrality which rely on moral premises will have limited application, in that they will fail to motivate anyone who rejects the moral premises on which they are based. By contrast, contractarian theories can be consistent with moral scepticism, and can therefore avoid this limitation. In this paper, I construct a contractarian model which I claim is sceptically consistent and includes a principle of state neutrality as a necessary condition. The principle of neutrality which I derive incorporates two conceptions of neutrality (consequential neutrality and justificatory neutrality) which have usually been thought of as distinct and incompatible. I argue that contractarianism gives us a unified account of these conceptions. Ultimately, the conclusion that neutrality can be derived without violating the constraint established by moral scepticism turns out to rely on an assumption of equal precontractual bargaining power. I do not attempt to defend this assumption here. If the assumption cannot be defended in a sceptically consistent fashion, then the argument for neutrality given here is claimed to be morally minimal, rather than fully consistent with moral scepticism.

The Food Crisis: Implications for Labor

Food prices have gone up to prohibitive levels for many of the world’s poor. The vast majority of those who are hungry in the world today are working in agriculture, either as small landholders or as waged agricultural workers. The majority of the food producers have not benefited from rising prices. Apparently, the bargaining power of many producers, just as that of the end consumers, has been weakened vis-à-vis the buyers and retailers of agricultural produce. This powerlessness is also in the face of governments that fail to provide an appropriate infrastructure for smallholders and social protection. The first part of the book provides an introduction to the immediate and structural causes of the food crisis. The second part contains contributions that not only highlight the plight of rural labour but also develop tools for measuring the decent work deficit. The last part emphasizes income security as a major precondition for food security. It looks at the experiences of Brazil and India with the extension of social protection for the poor.

Work and economic security in the 21st century

In recent decades there has been a transformation of two central concepts of modernity – labour and the household. Ela Bhatt – the founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association of India (SEWA), has made an important contribution to this transformation. Through the emergence of unions such as SEWA, the notion of who represents labour is being broadened; the marginalised are finding an institutional voice. Increasingly, the household is being recognised as a site of both production and reproduction. SEWA is not a traditional trade union that aims, through collective bargaining with an employer, to improve its members’ wages and working conditions as sellers of their labour power. Instead, it aims to empower women economically in the informal economy by bringing them into the mainstream economy as owners of their labour. The union dimension of SEWA builds their collective power through struggle; the cooperative dimension translates their bargaining power into the economic and social development of its members and their community. Besides, Bhatt’s approach to the self-employed was a direct challenge to the ILO’s tripartism when it was established in the early seventies. The first part of the paper provides a short biography of Ela Bhatt, describes the origins of SEWA, analyses a ‘classification struggle’ over how and who is to define what a worker is. In the second part the author considers SEWAs innovative organizing strategy and is rethinking modernity in the labour context. In the conclusion the paper discusses the lessons that can be learnt from Ela Bhatt.

Core Labor Rights

The working paper’s main objective is to explore the extent to which non-compliance to international labor rights is caused by global competition. From the perspective of institutional economics, compliance with core labor rights is beneficial for sustainable development. Nonetheless, violations of these rights occur on a massive scale. The violators usually blame competitive pressures. A number of studies have come to the conclusion that non-compliance does not provide for a competitive edge, thereby denying any economic rationale for non-compliance. While we sympathize with this conclusion, we find that these studies suffer from faulty assumptions in the design of their regression analyses. The assumption of perfect markets devoid of power relations is particularly unrealistic. While workers' rights promise long-term benefits, they may incur short-term production cost increases. On the supply side, the production sites with the highest amount of labor rights violations are characterized by a near perfect competitive situation. The demand side, however, is dominated by an oligopoly of brand name companies and large retailers. Facing a large pool of suppliers, these companies enjoy more bargaining power. Developing countries, the hosts to most of these suppliers, are therefore limited in their ability to raise labor standards on their own. This competitive situation, however, is the very reason why labor rights have to be negotiated internationally. Our exploration starts with an outline of the institutionalist argument of the benefits of core labor rights. Second, we briefly examine some cross-country empirical studies on the impact of trade liberalization (as a proxy for competitive pressures). Third, we develop our own argument which differentiates the impact of trade liberalization along the axes of labor- and capital-intensive production as well as low and medium skill production. Finally, we present evidence from a study on the impact of trade liberalization in Indonesia on the garment industry as an example of a low skill, laborintensive industry on the one hand, and the automobile as an example for a medium skill, capital-intensive industry on the other hand. Because the garment industry’s workforce consists mainly of women, we also discuss the gender dimension of trade liberalization.

Matriz de marco lógico Municipio Mesitas de el Colegio para la comercialización del mango

Este documento es el la primera parte del proyecto de Municipio saludable y polo de desarrollo local en la fase de Matriz de Marco Lógico, para el municipio de Mesitas del Colegio. Busca encontrar soluciones al problema de comercialización de mango que existe en los productores de la región, a través del uso de la metodología de marco lógico. Luego de realizar un análisis profundo, se encontró, que: la falla principal, es la inexistencia de un modelo de comercialización, lo cual implica un desconocimiento de los canales de distribución, los agentes que intervienen en este proceso y otros aspectos técnicos que impiden el crecimiento de la asociación y de los productores. Debido a esto, a través del proyecto se plantea, que: lo más importante para solucionar este problema, es crear un modelo de comercialización de mango, que permita mejorar el precio de venta del producto, conocer su costo de producción, aumentar la rentabilidad que se obtiene por la venta de este y generar un poder de negociación por medio del posicionamiento de marca de la Asociación. Para llevar a cabo, este proyecto, es necesario que se integren los productores de mago a la Asociación y que exista compromiso por parte de los integrantes, lo cual mejorará el poder de negociación en el mercado. Finalmente queda el proyecto en poder de los productores, la asociación y el gobierno, para que ellos realicen las diferentes actividades propuestas y logren cumplir con los objetivos aquí planteados.

The impact of a permanent Income shock on the situation of women in the household: the case of a pension reform in Argentina

Transfers to women may affect their bargaining power within the household and consequently their well-being. We analyze the effects of the 2004/2005 pension reform in Argentina, that resulted in an unexpected and substantial increase in permanent income for around 1.8 million women, on outcomes arguably related to women’s bargaining power within the household. We estimate the effects of the reform in the probability of divorce/separation, the distribution of household chores, and the probability of women being the head of the household, using a Difference-in-Differences approach. Our results show that despite the low divorce probability among seniors, transfers to senior women have substantial effects on their situation in the household. More specifically, we find that the reform had statistically significant effects on the probability of divorce/separation increasing it by 1.8 − 2.7 percentage points implying an increase of around 18 − 19% on the divorce/separation rate of 60 − 65 year old women. Moreover, the probability of being the head of the household also increased by 2.8−3.3 percentage points representing an increase of 7−19% in the probability amongst women of 60 − 65 years of age. In the case of married women, the probability of being the head of the household increased by 1.3 − 1.5 percentage points, which represents an increase of 20 − 22%. Results show that the distribution of household chores within the couples was also affected by the reform. More precisely, the probability that the wife is the only person in charge of the housework decreased by 5 percentage points, an 11% decrease. The participation of husbands in housework, however, did not change significantly.

Sector agrícola y política de competencia

Los procesos de integración económica han puesto en evidencia que la separación tradicionalmente hecha entre las políticas comercial y de competencia no sólo es ficticia, sino que mantenerla es simplemente contradictorio con la realidad de la economía internacional. En la medida en que los mercados domésticos se han abierto al comercio internacional, se ha considerado que las políticas de competencia pueden hacerse redundantes, ya que la competencia extranjera tiende a garantizar que dichos mercados tienen un nivel adecuado de contestabilidad. Sin embargo, como se muestra en este documento para el caso del sector agrícola, en estas circunstancias, la política de competencia adquiere un nuevo e importante papel que cumplir. Acá se discute la relación general entre el sector agrícola y la política de competencia, en un contexto de relativa liberalización comercial. Se sostiene que es necesario aplicar la política de competencia al sector, ya que esto garantiza las mejores condiciones posibles para incentivar los procesos de cambio tecnológico, indispensables para desarrollar una agricultura dinámica. Igualmente, se afirma que es indispensable una aplicación rigurosa de la política de competencia que, teniendo en cuenta las particularidades de la estructura de mercado de los sectores vinculados a la agricultura hacia adelante y hacia atrás, garantice que el más competitivo sector agrícola no sea sujeto de prácticas anticompetitivas por otros agentes. Esto puede incluir la instauración de algunas excepciones puntuales para el sector, con relación a la política de competencia,