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This article develops and tests an identity-based account of malfeasance in consumer markets. We hypothesize that multi-brand organizational structures help predatory firms short-circuit reputational discipline by rendering their underlying identities opaque to consumer audiences. The analysis utilizes comprehensive administrative data on all U.S. for-profit colleges, an industry characterized by widespread fraud and poor (although variable) educational outcomes. Consistent with the hypothesis that brand multiplicity facilitates malfeasance by reducing ex ante reputational risks, colleges that are part of multi-brand companies invest less in instruction, have worse student outcomes, and are more likely to face legal and regulatory sanctions (relative to single-brand firms). Maintaining multiple outward-facing brand identities also mitigates reputational penalties in the wake of law enforcement actions, as measured by news coverage of legal actions, and by subsequent enrollment growth. The results suggest identity multiplicity plays a key role in allowing firms to furnish substandard products, even amid frequent scandals and media scrutiny. Predatory practices are facilitated not only by the inherent informational asymmetries in a given product, but also by firms' efforts to make themselves less legible to audiences. The analysis contributes to research on higher education, organizational theory, and the sociology of markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberalism initially invoked the authority of competitive markets as the ideal epistemic mechanism for socio-economic coordination. Yet, the rise of neoliberal 'market society' in Western advanced economies since the 1970s has been underpinned by a normative political theory that advocates the reconfiguration of society and politics around the authority of economic theory and knowledge in both production, but especially finance. Conversely, the reform-era development of China's 'socialist market economy' has been underpinned by an insistence on retaining centralized political power over the allocation of financial capital. This article argues that the rise of digital algorithmic technologies constitutes one means by which these contrasting politico-economic visions are being more closely reconciled. It investigates the ways in which China's ongoing construction of an explicitly authoritarian capitalism is being facilitated by the deployment of complementary financial technologies that enable the Chinese Communist Party to embrace the micro-level epistemic coordinative function of markets without relinquishing macro-level political power and juridical sovereignty over these markets. Following a comparative historiography of the praxis of 'neoliberal' and 'neostatist' political theory in contemporary capitalism, two case studies of blockchain-enabled currency and big-data driven credit scoring in China illustrate the emergent Fintech foundations of Chinese authoritarian capitalism. The findings contribute to our understanding of how markets are being reshaped by new algorithmic technologies, as well as illuminate some of ideological contradictions in existing conceptions of markets as (neo)liberal institutions at the centre of capitalist political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quantum moment in International Relations theory challenges the taken for granted Newtonian assumptions of conventional theories, while offering a novel physical imaginary grounded in quantum mechanics. As part of the special issue on reconceptualizing markets, this article questions if prior efforts to conceptualize 'the market' have been unsuccessful at capturing the paradoxical microfoundational/macrostructural because of the Newtonian worldview within which much social science operates. By developing a new, quantum perspective on the market, taking the physical paradigm of the wavefunction, I seek to explore the connections between entanglement, nonlocality, interference and invisible social structures. To demonstrate the applicability of quantum thinking, I explore how global value chains and open economy politics might be 'quantized', through the mobilization of core concepts of quantum social theory, within the broad framework of the market as a quantum social wavefunction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I take the framework of neuroliberalism as an analytical lens to explore the functioning and implementation of a social impact bond-funded welfare service for young homeless people in the UK. After reflecting on the lines of connections and divergences between social impact bonds and neuroliberal logics, I draw attention to the limitations that exist in welfare interventions inspired by neuroliberal thought. On the one hand, the studied intervention functioned mainly through designing trustful, ideal-type relationships as a means to 'fix' people, thereby focusing on behavioural and biographical deficiencies and spreading good life ideals of a marketized world. On the other hand, I demonstrate how this focus on adjusting micro-contexts and tinkering with the affective, relational infrastructure fails to understand systemic constraints. Those were particularly evident with regard to the precarious labour market environment and colliding welfare agendas individuals were confronted with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a simulation-based method to consider the effect of different network structures on the propensity for economic producers to develop a complementary division of labor. We use a graph-coloring game, in which nodes are given incentives to find a color that does not match their nearest neighbors, to represent the interdependent coordination problems inherent to the division of labor. We find that a decentralized development of a division of labor is difficult, particularly when too many specializations are chosen. Counterintuitively, a division of labor is more likely to evolve when the ability of agents to specialize is more constrained. The ability to store property also facilitates the development of a division of labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world of escalating climate crisis, metastasizing market logic, structural racism, growing inequality, and a global pandemic, this essay argues, the tragedy is not one of the commons, but one of the private. The relentless capitalist focus on self-interest rather than common good, on efficiency rather than resilience, on more rather than better, on the private over the public, has brought societies and ecosystems alike to the breaking point. As COVID-19 has helped us rediscover, wellbeing instead depends on a healthy commons—resilience, reciprocity, solidarity, and sharing. The essay ends with practical suggestions as to how to move in the direction of an economy squarely focused on wellbeing of people and planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theoretical exploration of the construct of corporate entrepreneurship. Of the various dimensions of firm-level entrepreneurial orientation identified in the literature, it is argued that innovation, broadly defined, is the single common theme underlying all forms of corporate entrepreneurship. However, the presence of innovation per se is insufficient to label a firm entrepreneurial. Rather, it is suggested that this label be reserved for firms that use innovation as a mechanism to redefine or rejuvenate themselves, their positions within markets and industries, or the competitive arenas in which they compete. A typology is presented of the forms in which corporate entrepreneurship is often manifested, and the robustness of this typology is assessed using criteria that have been proposed for evaluating classificational schemata. Theoretical linkages are then drawn demonstrating how each of the generic forms of corporate entrepreneurship may be a path to competitive advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mary Douglas's cultural theory of grid and group provides a framework for the description of three distinct cultural types corresponding to three logics for the legitimation of collectivity and collective coercion. Each type is distinguished by characteristic structures of classification, power, and moral order operating at the individual cognitive level. In this paper, the theory is used to illuminate some of the major developments in the structuring of business organizations in the late twentieth century, including the introduction of matrix, project and network organizations, the focus on de-layering, downsizing and outsourcing, and the emergence of concerns with cultural control, organizational learning, and core competence. The problems arising from these developments are discussed in terms of an unresolved conflict between the cognitive frameworks of two of Douglas's cultural types, market, and hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns freedom and financial markets. First, I consider the republican case for liberalization, extending Robert Taylor's economic model of republicanism to financial markets. This case adopts what I call a "philosopher-king" approach to political theory, arguing by reference an ideal or first-best set of policies or reforms. Then, I investigate the negative externalities of several decades of financial market liberalization, including the erosion of political accountability and the growing concentration of political and economic power in the hands of those best suited to profit from the rise of finance. From this "political economy" perspective, the impact of liberalization is clear: we paid for greater access to credit with political and economic domination. In republican terms, we traded freedom for credit. My analysis, moreover, has implications for republican debates on freedom and the market. In second-best worlds, where reforms will almost certainly be incremental, shaping the balance of power in ways that impact future policy, judging reforms by reference to a vision of domination-free markets will often suggest policies that make individuals less free. The political economy approach is far more relevant to debates about which economic institutions further or hinder freedom as non-domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I attempt to advance the concept of embeddedness beyond the level of a programmatic statement by developing a formulation that specifies how embeddedness and network structure affect economic action. On the basis of existing theory and original ethnographies of 23 apparel firms, I develop a systematic scheme that more fully demarcates the unique features, functions, and sources of embeddedness. From this scheme, I derive a set of refutable implications and test their plausibility, using another data set on the network ties of all better dress apparel firms in the New York apparel economy. Results reveal that embeddedness is an exchange system with unique opportunities relative to markets and that firms organized in networks have higher survival chances than do firms which maintain arm's-length market relationships. The positive effect of embeddedness reaches a threshold, however, after which point the positive effect reverses itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the completion, by 1993, of a single European market and of the resulting liberalisation of internal borders, labour migration in Europe is attracting increased attention from policy-makers and social actors in the twelve member states. The present paper is an attempt to analyse and forecast the following major issues relating to migration in Europe after 1992: (i) the evolution and structure of intra-European flows in the forthcoming single European market; (ii) the integration, after 1992, of established immigrant communities, including ethnic minorities and second generation groups; (iii) future immigration from non-EC member states, in relation, inter alia, to the recent coming into play of the Eastern European periphery. The article explains that, in addition to policy-related mutations inherent in the completion of the internal market, other factors (demographic changes and insufficient enrolment of national graduate students in key disciplines) and issues (emergence of atypical groups such as second generation and Eastern European migrants), are due to generate new patterns and modified interests in European labour migration after 1992. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ramifications of using the individual rather than the family as the unit of analysis. Focusing on families provides a convenient micro-unit to gauge the private meanings and impacts of more macroeconomic events as reflected in rates of unemployment. Two issues in particular are discussed: the tendency to equate employment/unemployment with family economic well-being and the narrow operationalization of the term "unemployed." There are two basic issues in assessing family dimensions of unemployment. The first is the tendency to equate the employment/unemployment dichotomy with family economic well-being. The second issue is the narrow operationalization of the term "unemployed." Permeating both of these concerns is the tendency to focus on individuals rather than families as units of analysis-with the consequence that family considerations have been effectively ignored. Though unemployment is an individual level variable, when the individual is the family's breadwinner, it becomes a family level variable. Such an inadequate linkage of the family to the marketplace has repercussions for every family member.

This paper presents a discontinuous analysis of organizational development and the part played by administrative capacity considered as a summation of individual attributes. Based on 20 years' study of one kibbutz, it is suggested that there are qualitatively different levels of demand for administrative capacity, which can be identified and which, if they are not in equilibrium with available aggregate supply, cause serious organizational disturbance. In particular, imbalance in the supply-demand equation is presented as an alternative explanation of large-scale defection of members in the case study. Analysis of the career progressions of a number of kibbutz managers supports the contention that the rate of development of administrative capacity varies and that training cannot lift managers through the critical boundaries associated with different strata of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is more coordination in the modern world than is plausibly explained by the classical mechanisms of community, market, hierarchy and their commonly discussed variants. This paper explores modalities of non-market coordination whose application is not constrained by the narrow motivational and cognitive limitations of pure forms of hierarchical and negotiated coordination. The focus is on two varieties of negotiated self-coordination under conditions where actual negotiations are embedded in a pre-existing structural context - either within hierarchical organizations or within self-organizing networks of cooperative relationships. Extrapolating from empirical findings in a variety of settings, it is argued that embeddedness will, at the same time, increase the scope of welfare maximizing 'positive coordination' and create conditions under which externalities are inhibited through 'negative coordination'. In combination, these mechanisms are able to explain much of the de facto coordination that seems to exist beyond the confines of efficient markets and hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urethane polymers exhibit a wide range of properties making them one of the most versatile polymers of today. Urethanes range from very hard and brittle materials to soft, pliable and highly extensible polymers. Also, they can now be made non-yellowing in contrast to earlier urethane coatings which yellowed when exposed to light They are avail able in several types - e.g. two component systems, moisture cures, and lacquers which can be applied to substrates via different processes such as direct casting, transfer coating, spraying, or curtain coating. The polymer manufacturer, depending on his end product need, selects combinations of raw material building blocks and tailor makes his coating. The uses of urethane coatings, in addition to textile applications, include automotive exterior trim parts (i.e. GTO Endura bumper), industrial maintenance coatings, aircraft coatings, wood finish, floor coverings, and marine appli cations Economics show urethane coatings give a very high dollar-in-use value. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the subject index of the articles published in this journal. Some of the articles based on economics are "Auto Trade Policy and the Press: Auto Elite as a Source of the Media Agenda," by Kuang-Kuo Chang, "Collusion and Price Fixing in the American Newspaper Industry: Market Preservation Trends, 1890-1910," by Edward H. Adams, "Content Differences between Daily Newspapers with Strong and Weak Market Orientations," by Randal A. Beam, "Diversity versus Concentration in the Deregulated Mass Media Domain," by Petros Iosifides, "How Public Ownership Affects Publisher Autonomy," by Martha N. Matthews, "The Impact of Intermedia and Newspaper Competition on Advertising Linage in Daily Newspapers," by Mary Alice Shaver and Stephen Lacy, "Intercounty Group Ownership of Daily Newspapers and the Decline of Competition for Readers," by Stephen Lacy and Todd F. Simon, "Measuring Newspaper Profits: Developing a Standard of Comparison," by Hugh J. Martin.

If homo economicus exists anywhere, surely he must be found among financial traders. Amid the shouting and shoving of trading pits and the manic clicking and phone slamming of electronic trading desks, the atomized, rational, self-interested agency of neoclassical economic theory appears to emerge. Ethnographers of traders have refuted atomism and instead proposed a socially embedded but still rational and self-interested agent: an embedded homo economicus. I take this critique a step further and argue that traders are neither rational nor self-interested. Certainly, traders present themselves as rational and self-interested, but a 'thick' understanding of their social performances and cultural forms proves otherwise. My analysis focuses on the practice of friendly betting among Chicago traders. Despite its competitive appearances, friendly betting constitutes a non-rational, non-self-interested system of gift exchange and evinces why the myth of embedded homo economicus is both beguiling and false. This conclusion cuts to fundamental issues of agency and practice, and calls for widespread scepticism of theories of rational self-interest. As neoclassical economic theory and market ideology spread around the globe and rational self-interest becomes increasingly normalized, we must be wary of confirmation bias and remember the old ethnographic principle that people aren't always what they say they are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though rarely described as such, vulnerability to climate change is fundamentally a matter of political economy. This progress report provides a reading of contemporary research on vulnerability to climate change through a political economic lens. It interprets the research as explaining the interplay between ideas about vulnerability, the institutions that create vulnerability, and those actors with interests in vulnerability. It highlights research that critiques the idea of vulnerability, and that demonstrates the agency of those at risk as they navigate the intersecting, multi-scalar and teleconnected institutions that shape their choices in adapting to climate change. The report also highlights research that is tracking the way powerful institutions and interests that create vulnerability are themselves adapting by appropriating the cause of the vulnerable, depoliticising the causes of vulnerability, and promoting innovations in finance and markets as solutions. In these ways, political and economic institutions are sustaining themselves and capitalising on the opportunities presented by climate change at the expense of those most at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work shows cultural capital taking increasingly vague and embodied forms. Attitudes and understandings of "creativity" and "authenticity," for example, hold more symbolic value than any particular objects. How are these culturally valuable understandings defined and transmitted? This project examines thrift-store shopping to show how symbolic meanings are defined and employed as a form of embodied cultural capital. Ethnographic observation and interviews with shoppers at thrift stores in Portland, Oregon, reveal competing symbolic understandings among two groups of consumers. One group, the "thrift-seekers," is motivated by a desire to find bargains. Members of this group describe their consumption as a game in which they are able to compete with other consumers. The other group, the "creativists," comes from a more privileged background and is motivated by a rejection of conventional stores. They describe their consumption as an exercise of creativity through which they establish superiority over other consumers. Each group implicates the other as it constructs its narrative of consumption. Outside of the thrift store, the creativists employ their narratives of creativity as a form of cultural capital, giving them status in relation to similarly privileged peers. This project illustrates the embodied nature of contemporary cultural capital and shows how classes implicate one another in definitions of it. Furthermore, it demonstrates how thrift stores hold particular significance as sites in which embodied cultural capital is defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Europe, energy efficiency obligations are imposed on energy retailers competing in liberalized energy markets. They comply by subsidizing energy efficiency investments made by energy end-users from within or outside their customer base. We develop a model describing how competition in the energy market affects compliance strategies. We find that, instead of selecting the most cost-effective investments options, firms may either target their most elastic customers, which enables them to increase their retail price, or their competitor's customers, which protects their sales. Allowing firms to trade obligations can restore cost-effectiveness, but reduces consumer surplus. Overall, the degree of flexibility that should be incorporated into such programs crucially depends on the degree of heterogeneity across investment costs and the relative weights governments assign to cost-effectiveness and consumer surplus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates the performative effects of mutualist ideas in the context of market-making. Mutualism is a variety of anarchism associated with the work of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who argued for the centrality of market exchanges and mutual credit as a means for emancipating workers from capitalist exploitation. The discussion is informed by an ethnographic inquiry within a Local Exchange Trading System in Spain – the Moneda Social Puma – which illustrates how actors put mutualist ideas to work. This research makes three contributions: first, it frames a view of market multiplicity and plasticity that broadens the current scope of market studies beyond a managerialist focus. Second, it reveals how actors mobilise anarchist theories to shape – rather than escape – markets. Third, this work elucidates how actors negotiate and stabilise conflicting forms of valuation as mutualist ideas are implemented. In particular, we draw attention to a set of infrastructural practices and mutual credit arrangements whereby the market is cooperatively managed as a common. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our work for extant debates concerning post-capitalist politics, markets and anarchism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulation, welfare, and markets grow interdependently, shaping, reinforcing, and supporting each other: markets allow for the expansion of welfare states, and welfare states create demand for regulatory state services that help to solve perceived welfare problems. Crises can drive this path dependency because they create opportunities for growth in markets, regulation, and welfare institutions. The momentum toward interdependent risk of ecological crises, economic crises, and security crises is formidable, but regulatory-welfare-market path dependencies might be mustered to counter it. This article proposes a meta governance of path dependence, emphasizing multiple interactions in the regulation-welfare-market system and suggesting that meta governance can steer path-dependent regulation, welfare, and markets in the governance of crises. I discuss whether patterns of path dependence explain why regulation, welfare, and markets interdependently persist and grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how two fundamental features of many intermediaries—that intermediaries provide ratings across a set of candidates (their portfolio), and that intermediaries wish to look credible to their audiences—may create the potential for bias in evaluation outcomes. I examine how having too many positive ratings, which risks intermediary credibility, may bias an intermediary in favor of giving a subsequent negative rating, which I term strategic balancing. My setting is the ratings given by equity analysts on publicly traded firms. I find evidence consistent with a strategic balancing effect, such that having a greater allocation of high ratings in an analyst's portfolio is associated with a subsequent negative rating, particularly when such ratings can be justified. My findings suggest that lower ratings may not be the result of poor firm performance, but instead may occur because such a rating allows an intermediary to maintain credibility. That is, the very features that define the role of the intermediary—one who interprets many market offerings for a particular audience—can create the conditions in which its evaluations may be subjective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Goal-based categories have recently emerged as an alternative perspective to the dominant account of prototypical market categories. However, key questions remain regarding the mechanisms that would enable stable market exchanges to form around ad hoc and idiosyncratic goal-based categories. Thus, we sought to answer the following question: How can goal-based categorization enable stable market transactions? Through an inductive study drawing on industry discourse, participant observation, and interview data from the online advertising industry, we describe the category infrastructure that enables buyers and sellers to engage in market exchanges using goal-based categorization. Three mechanisms are integral to goal-based categorization in market exchanges: dimensioning (establishing a possibility space in which valuation can take place through the identification, addition, and/or deletion of product features), scoping (selecting particular features in the possibility space), and bracketing (excluding certain actors from participating in market transactions). Moreover, the fundamental principle of valuation in goal-based categorization is goal-based attribution, which involves iteratively adding and deleting features to accommodate evolving goals. Our findings suggest novel directions for work on goal-based categorization as an important element of valuation in modern markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a century of international drug prohibition, and amidst growing consensus that it has been a costly policy failure, arguments for drug law reform are gathering momentum globally. Despite a large body of empirically oriented policy research, the area remains underdeveloped conceptually and theoretically. This article seeks to address this gap by assembling some intellectual resources for a critical socio-legal analysis of drug law reform, drawing on insights from regulation studies, economics, political economy and economic sociology. Reframing the problem as one of market regulation, and using Shearing's constitutive approach, opens up some new ways of thinking about how drug laws function and the possibilities for reform. It also highlights the importance of taking normative thinking about drug policy futures seriously. In conclusion, it is suggested that a new concept of exchangespace may be key to further theoretical development in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a diagnostic tool to identify destinations "at risk" as a result of markets' interest or lack thereof in a place. "At risk" is used in a similar manner to the medical profession's use of the term "patients at risk" to identify those patients at risk of deterioration in order to trigger early intervention. Two situations are identified: market indifference, where markets as a whole show little interest in a destination, and destination dependence/market irrelevance, where destinations are overly reliant on markets that in the larger scheme of outbound travel show little interest in the destination. The study analyzed 162 destinations using UNWTO data. Almost 80 are affected potentially by one of these conditions. Most at-risk destinations are either small island countries, micro states, or countries with an underdeveloped tourism sector. Interestingly, no differences were found in the contribution tourism makes to GDP between seemingly at risk and not at risk places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of research on moral markets—sectors whose raison d'être is to create social value by offering market solutions to social and environmental issues—has offered critical insights into the emergence and growth of these sectors. Less is known, however, about why some firms enter moral markets while others do not. Drawing from research on market entry, organizational identity, and social movements, we develop a theory that highlights the potential of organizational identity to explain variation in entry into moral markets. We then expand our framework by theorizing about contingencies that alter the shape of the relationship between organizational identity and market entry: the flexibility of the organizations' identity, the type, and orientation of the social movement supporting the moral market, and the mode of market entry (de novo vs de alio). Finally, we discuss the contributions of our framework and opportunities for its extension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates recent policy pronouncements around the promotion of emerging financial technologies (fintech) as means of enabling financial inclusion. It is argued that situating this emergent 'turn to technology' in the context of a longer-running pattern of failed efforts to promote the development of financial markets for the poor in the Global South offers us a useful lens on the dynamics of neoliberalism. The article develops this analysis by drawing together interlinked discussions of 'neoliberal reason', highlighting the central role played by the diffusion of market institutions in neoliberal projects with Marxian discussions highlighting the crucial underlying role of labour in enabling the operation of markets. In this context the appeal to ever-more fine-grained information with which to allocate credit underlying the turn to technology can both be read as yet another attempt to 're-engineer' the market, and also seen as a doomed project. Empirically, this argument is fleshed out through an engagement with key framework documents around financial inclusion and technology from the World Bank and G20. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing interest in the marketing discipline to adopt an institutional perspective when examining markets. This requires seeing markets as complex systems that evolve through time, rather than as preexisting, stable structures. Using a historical, longitudinal case study, we integrate the "institutional work" framework as a lens to understand the process of market change in the novel, historic case of circus in North America through the 20th century. We explore the decline of the market for traditional American circus, and the emergence, in the 1970s, of the adjacent market for new circus, with a specific focus on the world's preeminent new circus company, Cirque du Soleil. Theoretical contributions of the article include a "market-shaping activities" framework that illustrates market shaping involves considerably more actors than the dyad of producer and consumer. Market-shaping occurs through an interdependent process involving institutionalized practices, beliefs and expectations, and the intentional activities of market actors at any institutional level. Market change is shared, iterative, and recursive, that is cocreated, and undertaken by market actors both formal and informal. Market shapers do not necessarily work in an orchestrated fashion; nevertheless, vibrant networks of complementary actors contribute positively to the construction of shared identities and normative networks. From a managerial perspective, we find implications for policy makers, funders, strategists, and marketers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of competition policy enforcement on the functioning of European energy markets while accounting for sectoral regulation. For this purpose, we compile a novel dataset on the European Commission's (EC) and EU member states' competition policy decisions in energy markets and combine it with firm- and sector-level data. We find that EC merger policy has a positive and robust impact on (i) the level of competition, (ii) investment and (iii) productivity. This impact, however, only shows up in low-regulated sectors. Other competition policy tools--EC state aid control and anti-trust, as well as all member state policy variables--do not have a uniform effect on energy markets. Our findings are consistent with the idea that the EC's merger policy actions have been used to overcome obstacles to a well-functioning EU energy sector and may have contributed to the overall development of gas and electricity markets in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author examines the social science theories of Fred Block, particularly on such topics as capitalism, finance, markets, and government. Other topics include Block's opinions on Polanyian socioeconomics, his thoughts on economic diversity and capitalist transformation, as well as the universalist model of capitalism as free-market globalism.

The transition to a low-carbon power system requires growing the share of generation from (intermittent) renewables while ensuring security of supply. Policymakers and economists increasingly see a capacity mechanism as a way to deal with this challenge. Yet this raises new concerns about the exercise of market power by large players via the capacity auction. We present a new modelling approach that captures such strategic behaviour together with a set of ex ante empirical estimates for the new Irish electricity market design (I-SEM)--in which a single firm controls 44% of generation capacity (excluding wind). We find significant costs of strategic behaviour, even with new entry: In our baseline scenarios, procurement costs in the capacity auction are around 150-400 million EUR (or 40-100%) above the competitive least-cost solution. From a policy perspective, we also examine how market power can be measured and mitigated through auction design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate when market making can be profitable in the European Carbon Futures market, by developing an order type selection rule, based solely on transaction level data. We employ a granular approach that uses an observable variable, i.e. trading intensity, to extract the liquidity and information price components and we investigate their impact on spreads, volatility and ultimately on the profitability of different order types. We find that market orders are always less profitable than limit orders. In addition, market makers are expected to derive most of their profits in a low trading intensity environment, mainly due to higher liquidity commissions and a lower probability of dealing with better informed agents. In contrast, an unconditional limit order submission strategy from an off-floor trader should not be preferred, apart from a medium trading intensity environment, where information and liquidity premia adequately compensate them for execution and information risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Markets and finance have long attracted ethnographic interest but the nature of their activity – opaque, secretive and increasingly placeless – precludes traditional ethnographic fieldwork. In this article, we propose documents as an alternative access point to these organisations as an ethnographic object of enquiry. Documents do not only present a written record, but they also enact relationships and encode tacit understandings. We develop Geertz's work on the bazaar by taking an indirect route to access the field site – collateralised debt obligation – through documents. In reading these documents, we assume the position of investors who, in the absence of alternative publicly available information, are dependent on the documentary accounts made available to them by the sellers. These media act in ways that are similar to tourist guidebooks, a comparison we use to reframe the exchange as one that builds upon sociocultural relations rather than the abstract market relationships described by mainstream economists. We propose that these documents are not merely representational artefacts of the organisation but serve to establish and maintain social relationships between buyers and sellers through the management, standardisation and ritualisation of information disclosed to the investor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of a project examining the long-term process of price display digitalization, ranging from manually written prices to contemporary electronic shelf labels. Based on the etymology of the term 'digital' (from digitus, finger or toe), we intend to show that the display of prices in retail settings surprisingly rests on a long-term digitalization process that started in the early 20th century. The study is based on a systematic reading of the trade magazine The Progressive Grocer during its first decades (1922-1947). This magazine assisted independent American grocers in their move from counter-service to self-service, and in facing the challenges of new competitors like chain stores and supermarkets. In this process, the disclosure of prices and their proper writing—their ethno-graphy—was central. We focus on a crucial and transitional period: the move from coded to open prices. This period entailed a double development of price 'fingerization' (using the fingers to write the prices) and price 'de-fingerization' (getting rid of handwriting thanks to novel price tag and printing devices). Ethnographying these mundane evolutions illuminates the role of the fingers of the invisible hand that animates the market, so to say. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to understand the process of market-based identity-building by looking at the life stories of female hardcore gamers. A dual theoretical framework is used: identity-building through consumption and gender via symbolic violence. Analysis of the meaning attributed to the underlying consumption practices and identity mindsets in the face of a masculine market norm reveals the following: (1) the relationship between female hardcore gamers and the gendered norm of the gaming market for hyper-players; (2) the ways in which this norm is appropriated and (3) the typical path of the female gamers concerned. The findings enable a discussion about the notion of symbolic violence driven by the market, where gender becomes an identity resource that can be manipulated through consumption practices that can lead to a certain emancipation, primarily linked to the possession of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social embeddedness has provided a compelling challenge to neoclassical descriptions of markets. Nevertheless, without a corresponding description of the micro-social forces that counter embeddedness, the description of embeddedness is essentially static, and does not integrate the dual forces of embeddedness and markets. In this study, we identify a sociological force counter to embeddedness residing in third parties whose presence may interrupt socially embedded informal trading partnerships. Using data from the Helsinki Stock Exchange in 1996–1997, we confirm that stock trades are socially embedded in partnerships in which trading persists from week to week and in which prices deviate from immediate trading prices. Importantly, we find that trading partnerships are more likely to be interrupted when prices deviate from immediate trading prices and when third parties are present who trade with one or both members of the partnership. Thus, third parties are a critical sociological force in the embeddedness-market dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epistemic questions have become an important area of debate within democratic theory. Epistemic democrats have revived epistemic justification of democracy, while social scientific research has speared a significant debate on voter knowledge. An area which has received less attention, however, is the epistemic case for markets. Market advocates have developed a number of epistemic critiques of democracy which suggest that most goods are better provided by markets than democratic institutions. Despite representing important challenges to democracy, these critiques have gone without reply as democratic theorists have tended to exclude markets from consideration. This article responds to these critiques and argues that there are good epistemic grounds for granting a much greater role to democracy than its market critics have claimed. It argues that there is a broad range of goods, including important ethical goods, which are better provided by democracy than markets due to the particular epistemic burdens they create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market definition is the first step of competition analysis. In practice, relevant markets are mostly defined for the end products and services and it is also the same for current cases concerning Internet-based businesses (IBBs). Data has important influence on the competition of IBBs. However, instead of selling data directly, the IBBs usually use data to produce, improve and innovate products and services. Under such circumstances, there may be no relevant market defined for such data following the conventional market definition methods. This article's investigation shows that online data play different roles in the competition of IBBs and the conventional competition analysis methods only miss some aspects but not all of them. Alternative approaches including the input market definition and the putative online data market definition proposition fail to solve the problem. What might be of help is to switch focus to improving the relevant market definition methods for products and services which online data are related to and pay more attention to the inner relationship between online data and the Internet-based products and services when identifying which market to define. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to open the black box of top management team (TMT) diversity research by examining the following research questions: (a) how TMT diversity has effects on emergent team processes, (b) when those effects are shaped by key environmental contingencies, and (c) whether emergent team processes mediate the TMT diversity and firm performance relationship. To address these issues, we conduct a series of meta-analytic examination. First, using a sample of 208 effect sizes from 51 studies covering multiple industries across 10 countries, we test how two distinct types of diversity (task- and relations-oriented diversity) are differentially associated with two types of emergent team processes (information elaboration and social categorization) in TMTs. Second, meta-analytic regression analyses are conducted to examine how national culture (power distance and collectivism) and industry characteristics (munificence and dynamism) influence the diversity effects on emergent team processes. Third, we conduct a structural equation modeling analysis to examine the relationships among diversity (input)–information elaboration and social categorization–based processes (mediators)–firm performance (output), incorporating additional 895 effect sizes from 152 studies. Our findings indicate that while relations-oriented diversity has apparent relationships with social categorization–based processes, task-oriented diversity is strongly associated with both information elaboration and social categorization–based processes. Industry munificence and dynamism as well as collectivism in national culture moderate the diversity–social categorization relationships. The result of structural equation modeling also confirms the mediating paths of the TMT diversity–information elaboration/social categorization–performance links. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent sociological work shows that culture is an important causal variable in labor market outcomes. Does the same hold for product markets? To answer this question, we study a product market in which selection decisions occur absent face-to-face interaction between intermediaries and short-term contract workers. We find evidence of "product-based" cultural matching operating as a pathway to inequality. Relying on quantitative and qualitative observational data and semi-structured interviews with intermediaries in trade fiction publishing, we show intermediaries culturally match themselves to manuscripts as a normal feature of doing "good work." We propose three organizational conditions under which "encultured biases" come to the fore in product selection, and a fourth resulting in inequalities along demographic lines and other markers of perceived cultural proximity and distance. We close with a discussion of other settings in which product-based cultural matching is likely to occur, call for the investigation of cultural matching beyond previously theorized conditions, and argue for the inclusion of cultural products in the broader movement toward reconsidering culture as a causal factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article defends deliberative democracy against the problem of tacit knowledge. It has been argued that deliberative democracy gives a privileged position to linguistic communication and therefore excludes tacit forms of knowledge which cannot be expressed propositionally. This article shows how the exclusion of such knowledge presents important challenges to both proceduralist and epistemic conceptions of deliberative democracy, and how it has been taken by some to favour markets over democratic institutions. After pointing to the limitations of market alternatives, deliberative democracy is defended by arguing that tacit knowledge can be brought into deliberation through the mechanism of trust in testimony. By trusting the testimony of a speaker, deliberators are able to act on knowledge even without it being explicitly expressed. The article then goes on to discuss the implications of this defence for deliberative theory, and particularly, the forms of reason which deliberative democrats must see as legitimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to economic theory, the incidence of a unit tax is independent of the statutory assignment of the liability to pay the tax. However, the theory is silent on the possible effects of market institutions on tax incidence. We report data from an experiment designed to address two questions. Is tax incidence independent of the assignment of the liability to pay tax to sellers or to buyers? Is tax incidence independent of market institutions? We conduct laboratory experiments with double auction (DA) and posted offer (PO) markets. Based on the results of nonparametric and parametric tests of prices generated by laboratory markets, we conclude that the answer to both questions is “no.” We report that observed differences from liability-side equivalence are statistically significant and economically meaningful. We also report that the incidence of the same tax differs between DA and PO markets with the same demand and supply schedules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I've studied the arguments and the evidence for and against a minimum wage increase I believe that the weight of the evidence is that a modest increase does not cost jobs, and may even lure people into the job market. But the most important thing is, you can't make a living on $4.25 an hour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines male-female wage differences with the use of national data for a specific occupation. Eighteen thousand members of the American Physical Therapy Association were surveyed. There are only 61 schools offering physical therapy training in the U.S. Estimates of the mean values of the variables were obtained by the preliminary analysis of the national data. The article also examines the variables that measure the job setting, family situation, degree of job satisfaction and the market situation.

The article examines a collective bargaining model to have a better understanding of the duration of strikes and lockouts. The model assumes that the negotiators of the labor union and the management always maintain a partnership in which they make use of their joint utility within the limitations imposed by the market and their constituents' expectations. Data for the 1953-1970 period of the private nonagricultural sector was used in testing the model. Ever since, economists have focused with the creation of bargaining theory. By this, they just examined the bargaining process as a bilateral monopoly confrontation.

In this study, we investigate whether incentive regulation (IR) is associated with improvements in firm performance. We also examine the effect of IR type on the information contents of earnings and cash flows. The empirical analysis uses price-to-book ratio, earnings, and cash flows as the empirical proxies of firm performance. The analysis also controls for the potential effects of firm size and regulatory climate on the results. We find that firms operating under IR exhibit improvements in each of the performance metrics. It is shown that the information contents of earnings and cash flows for the price-to-book ratio are higher for IR than for non-IR firms, after controlling for the effects of firm size and regulatory climate. The results also reveal that variation in IR type is associated with differences in the information contents of earnings and cash flows. We also find that, prior to the introduction of IR, the performances of IR and non-IR firms are not fundamentally different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the behavior of stock prices at the time of post-1974-75 LIFO adoption announcements. We exploit recent theoretical and empirical developments in the LIFO adoption literature in an attempt to resolve some of the mixed findings in Hand (1993). We study LIFO adoptions announced prior to as well as at the time of annual earnings announcements. Previous research has mostly centered on 1974-75 adoptions made at the time of annual earnings announcements. Our study of LIFO adoptions announced prior to annual earnings announcement dates enables us to provide evidence on whether the early announcement of a LIFO adoption is used by firms to signal positive information about earnings growth. Collectively, our results suggest that in explaining the market response to LIFO adoption announcements, extant models of the LIFO adoption decision do not fully capture the richness of differing inflationary environments or of alternative disclosure times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the relationship between accounting gains and losses resulting from early debt redemptions (EDRs) and abnormal returns at the initial announcement of the EDRs. We explore alternative explanations that were omitted from prior literature and test for both income-based and leverage-based explanations for the market's reaction to the EDRs. We find a positive association between the EDR income effect and abnormal returns, and negative relation with both the pre-EDR debt-equity ratio and leverage reduction resulting from the EDRs. We discriminate between alternative explanations using interaction effects between the EDR income and leverage variables. Although the overall results are consistent with the information signaling hypothesis, they also provide mixed support for the contracting hypothesis. Additional evidence indicates that the signaling effect of the EDRs is stronger for smaller firms and EDRs subject to taxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]