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Buyer-supplier negotiations play a central role in supply chain networks regulating the conditions for the exchange of goods. This paper investigates the relationships between influencing factors and their impact on bargaining power. In a multiple case study, we triangulate secondary data from 12 German automotive suppliers. Following a structural equation modelling approach, bargaining power and the effects of those influencing variables are analysed. Four relationships can be found. (1) The availability of internal resources and the existence of strong buyer-supplier relationships have a positive effect on bargaining power. (2) A positive influence of buyer-supplier relationships on gaining access to internal resources can be identified. (3) External market conditions have a small negative effect on bargaining power. (4) No significant effect can be found looking at the impact of external market conditions on internal resources or buyer-supplier relationships. The findings support theory by showing that internal resources and strong buyer-supplier relationships positively influence bargaining power. Based on these results, managers are advised to prioritise strategic resource allocation, implement win-win strategies, and employ benchmarking techniques to enhance competitiveness and strengthen bargaining positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of organizations breaking laws and norms in the pursuit of strategic advantage has received substantial attention in recent years. Such transgressions generally elicit the intervention of social control agents seeking to curb deviant behavior and defend the status quo. In some cases, their efforts result in the deviant behavior being suppressed; in other occasions, however, organizational deviance can persist and even be accepted into the very system of rules that was initially challenged. In this paper, we advance a structured view of this process by formulating a theory of the social control of organizational deviance. Building upon the sociological literature, we classify forms of social control based on their cooperativeness and formality; additionally, we shed light on the outcomes of social control by illustrating the conditions under which they are likely to be more, or less, accommodative of deviant behavior, as well as more, or less, permanent. In so doing, we contribute to scholarly understanding of the role of social control in organizational fields, as well as of the advantageousness of deviant behavior as a strategic option for organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary focus of brand equity research has been on how brand knowledge creates value for firms through customer behavior in product markets. Using archival data and five experiments, this article tests a framework that outlines the unique role brands play in the labor market. The framework distinguishes between vertical and horizontal differentiation and shows that vertical brand differentiation is associated with lower pay, whereas horizontal brand differentiation is associated with higher pay. Employees are also vertically and horizontally differentiated, and firms high in horizontal brand differentiation pay more for employees who match their brands' differentiating characteristics (i.e., brand-relevant complementarities). Results show that these brand–pay relationships have important downstream effects on employee behavior and, consequently, on firm profits. Specifically, leveraging vertical brand differentiation to lower pay represents a false economy because profits are attenuated by negative effects on employee productivity and retention. In contrast, when managers at firms high on horizontal brand differentiation pay more, profits increase via the same mediating employee behaviors. Six firm strategies and investments that influence firm bargaining power in the employee–brand matching process are found to moderate the brand–pay relationship and downstream effects on profits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tightening lending standards are motivating companies to adopt supply chain financing, with invoice backed lending to remedy financial stress. These financial objects depend on company-to-company relationships. The accumulation of these dyadic relationships creates complex supply network topologies. Companies within these networks are selfish and have varying degrees of bargaining power. To remain operational, they maximise their liquidity by negotiating longer repayment terms and cheaper financing, thus distributing risk onto weaker companies and propagating financial stress. To study this phenomenon, we created an agent-based supply network simulation model capturing these behaviours. We investigate structural conditions that make supply networks vulnerable to financial stress propagation and the resultant financial ripple effects using survivability analysis. We found firms with higher bargaining power are disproportionately more exposed to network risk. In diamond-shaped networks, firms occupying lower tiers are critical in financial stress propagation, becoming deep-tier nexus suppliers. Our results are relevant to industries with heterogeneous network composition. Practitioners must mitigate the effects of vulnerable network structures with careful supply chain financing design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the scarring effects of early life exposure to civil war, by examining the impact of exposure to conflict in childhood on the incidence of domestic violence in adulthood among married women. To estimate these effects, we use a difference-in-differences model which exploits variation in exposure to Nigeria's 30-month-long civil war by year of birth and ethnicity. Our results, based on the 2008 Nigerian Demographic Health Survey, show that women exposed to the war during childhood are more likely to be victims of domestic violence in adulthood compared to those not exposed to the war, with larger effects observed for those exposed at younger ages. Additionally, we explore the mechanisms through which exposure to civil war might affect domestic violence and find some support for both the normalisation of violence and weakened bargaining power hypotheses. Understanding the root causes of domestic violence is important given the high prevalence in developing countries and the deleterious consequences for women and their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the ability to renegotiate in a supply chain setting with the possibility of supply disruption. Disruptions are a real threat to supply chains, especially as the supply chains become longer and more complex. When buyers and sellers write a purchase contract, specifying every possible contingency related to disruptions may not be realistic. However, the ability to renegotiate once a disruption occurs can help buyers and suppliers find efficient solutions. We conducted a controlled laboratory experiment consisting of three studies, each exploring different conditions regarding relationship length, bargaining power, and communication. Our findings indicate that the ability to renegotiate increases buyer profit and decreases disruption inefficiency in short-term relationships but not in long-term ones. In free bargaining, where bargaining power is equal, the impact of renegotiation is greater than in ultimatum bargaining, where bargaining power is unequal. Additionally, when communication is not allowed in ultimatum bargaining, renegotiation significantly enhances buyer profit and reduces disruption inefficiency. These insights can assist managers in designing and negotiating incomplete contracts in environments prone to supply disruptions. The findings can aid managers in designing and negotiating incomplete contracts in environments with supply disruptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis study explores how economic development and gender-egalitarian ideologies and institutions are associated with gender inequalities in the intergenerational transfer of socio-economic status within families. Using 2005 EU-SILC survey data from 21 European countries, it examines how fathers’ and mothers’ roles and statuses during their children’s adolescence influence their achievements in adulthood, and whether these effects vary with changes in economic development and gender equality from 1955 to 1991. The results show significant gender disparities in parental roles and how mothers’ specialization, socio-economic status, and bargaining power affect children’s outcomes. Gender-friendly institutions and policies are more strongly associated with gender equality of opportunity than economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the impacts of social influence on the stakeholders in the live-streaming market by considering a one-to-two channel in which a common manufacturer sells products via two heterogeneous influencers who may compete for sales. In such a market, consumer purchase decisions depend not only on their intrinsic preferences but also on their social utilities. We adopt a multiunit bilateral bargaining framework to investigate parallel negotiations between the manufacturer and each influencer and determine a rational expectations equilibrium. Our analysis shows that as the social influence level increases, the stronger influencer gradually cannibalizes the weaker influencer's market share. Moreover, the stronger influencer's profit is always enhanced from live streaming due to the social influence but the weaker influencer's profit may not. The results highlight that the social influence combined with channel competition results in the so-called Matthew effect, which describes the phenomenon that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer in societies. Besides, as the social influence level increases, the manufacturer should switch from cooperating with both influencers to cooperating with the stronger one. In addition, whether the manufacturer's profit is enhanced from live streaming depends on influencers' intrinsic differences, social influence levels and the relative value of influencers' bargaining power. Finally, we find that even if the prices of the product sold by influencers are higher than those sold without social influence, consumer surplus is always enhanced from live streaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For contractualist accounts of morality, actions are moral if they correspond to what rational or reasonable agents would agree to do, were they to negotiate explicitly. This, in turn, often depends on each party's bargaining power, which varies with each party's stakes in the potential agreement and available alternatives in case of disagreement. If there is an asymmetry, with one party enjoying higher bargaining power than another, this party can usually get a better deal, as often happens in real negotiations. A strong test of contractualist accounts of morality, then, is whether moral judgments do take bargaining power into account. We explore this in five preregistered experiments (n = 3,025; U.S.-based Prolific participants). We construct scenarios depicting everyday social interactions between two parties in which one of them can perform a mutually beneficial but unpleasant action. We find that the same actions (asking the other to perform the unpleasant action or explicitly refusing to do it) are perceived as less morally appropriate when performed by the party with lower bargaining power, as compared to the party with higher bargaining power. In other words, participants tend to give more moral leeway to parties with better bargaining positions and to hold disadvantaged parties to stricter moral standards. This effect appears to depend only on the relative bargaining power of each party but not on the magnitude of the bargaining power asymmetry between them. We discuss implications for contractualist theories of moral cognition and the emergence and persistence of unfair norms and inequality. Public Significance Statement: Many social interactions involve opportunities for mutual benefit. By engaging in negotiation—sometimes explicitly, but often tacitly—we decide what each party should do and enter arrangements that we anticipate will be advantageous for everyone involved. Contractualist theories of morality insist on the fundamental role played by such bargaining procedures in determining what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behavior. But the outcome of a negotiation often depends on each party's bargaining power and their relative positions if an agreement cannot be reached. And situations in which each party enjoys equal bargaining power are rare. Here, we investigate the influence of bargaining power on our moral judgments. Consistent with contractualist accounts, we find that moral judgments take bargaining power considerations into account, to the benefit of the powerful party, and that parties with lower bargaining power are held to stricter moral standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a model of health-care demand to study health-care choices in resource-limited settings with poor health indicators, especially for women. Using data from rural Nigeria on individual illnesses and injuries as well as the entire portfolio of locally available providers, we estimate the effect of price, distance, and quality on access to care, focusing on the heterogeneous responses to these three factors by gender. We find that women are more price sensitive than men, in particular in households where they have low bargaining power, while being equally responsive to quality or distance. Using our model to simulate ex ante the effects of price interventions, we predict that a full price subsidy in public clinics would substantially increase both men's and women's access to formal care and almost eliminate the observed gender gap in formal health-care utilization. Subsidizing both public and private clinics only marginally improves overall access, but it fully eliminates the observed gender gap in addition to broadening the capacity of the health sector to respond to increased demand when public facilities have limited capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to investigate whether mainland Chinese audit firms' entry into the H-share market to provide audit services affects their mainland audit pricing. Design/methodology/approach: Using data on A-share listed companies in China from 2008 to 2018, a difference-in-differences model to test the research question is designed. Robustness tests are conducted to rule out alternative explanations and additional tests to shed light on the extent and inner workings of the main effect. Findings: The entry of mainland audit firms into the H-share audit market leads to a significant decrease in mainland audit pricing. Moreover, this main effect is (i) growing with the importance of H-share audit services to mainland auditors, (ii) stronger for mainland auditors with lower industry specialisation and shorter tenures, (iii) partially mediated by audit efficiency and (iv) greater when mainland clients have higher bargaining power. Furthermore, mainland auditors' entry into the H-share audit market does not result in significant deterioration in their mainland audit quality, and significantly increases their market share in the mainland audit market. Originality/value: This study provides new empirical evidence of the relationship between audit firms' development strategy for internationalisation and audit pricing, extends the literature on auditing issues in emerging markets and should be of potential interest to regulators and investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing interest in the firm bargaining process, little research focuses on the structure of bargaining within multi‐establishment firms. We question whether running negotiations at the workplace level and/or firm level is a strategic choice for employers. We hypothesize that the level chosen depends on the geography of the firm. Employers face a trade‐off: workplace bargaining is more efficient because it meets local conditions; yet higher level negotiations increase coordination costs for workers and weakens their bargaining power, which can benefit the employer. Using a French representative survey, we find a significant relation between the level of bargaining within a firm and the number, spatial distribution and heterogeneity of its establishments, suggesting that the structure of multi‐establishment firms can inform the level at which collective bargaining takes place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the impact of reviews on product choices when consumers can negotiate price. Although prior research has examined the impact of reviews in various contexts, none has considered a setting in which the purchase price is negotiated. We postulate that online reviews affect demand through consumer baseline product preference and consumer bargaining power. Leveraging a unique data set of consumer reviews of new car purchases, we developed and estimated a structural model to decompose and quantify the two mechanisms of how reviews affect demand: baseline preference mechanism versus bargaining power mechanism. Our counterfactual analysis suggests that the bargaining power mechanism is more important than the baseline preference mechanism in explaining how historical price and discount frequency information in reviews affect seller profits. Ignoring the impact of reviews on the negotiated price leads to a biased estimation of the effectiveness of reviews. We call into caution a popular selling practice of using discounts in exchange for positive reviews, as it can backfire when future consumers leverage this discount information to negotiate a lower price. This paper was accepted by Kartik Hosanagar, information systems. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.02658. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how mandatory ESG disclosure influences firms' access to trade credit. Using data from 79 jurisdictions from 1998 to 2020, we find that affected firms receive more trade credit following the introduction of mandatory ESG disclosure. The main result holds for a series of robustness tests. Further mechanism analysis indicates that mandatory ESG disclosure reduces affected firms' information opacity and financial risk, which exposes their suppliers to less credit risk and thus increases trade credit. In addition, cross‐sectional analysis shows that the positive effect of mandatory ESG disclosure is more pronounced for firms with low bargaining power and jurisdictions with effective legal enforcement. Overall, our findings highlight the role mandatory ESG disclosure plays in facilitating informal financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using uniquely rich administrative matched employer–employee data for Italy from 2008 to 2018, we investigate the impact of firms' formal network agreements (FNAs) on firm performance and employee wages. We find an overall significant and economically relevant positive effect of FNAs on various measures of firm performance, but there are no tangible benefits for the workers, and wages decrease slightly, on average. There is, however, marked heterogeneity in the impact on both firms and workers. Estimated rent‐sharing equations, as well as other tests that exploit unionization data, suggest that the negative effects on wages can be explained by a decrease in workers' bargaining power following the introduction of FNAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has examined the link between initiatives promoting entrepreneurship and compensation, but scholars have predominantly focused on earnings of individuals directly engaged in the founding process, such as founders, cofounders, and start-up employees. Shifting our focus to incumbent workers, we instead propose that a decline in the cost of entrepreneurship increases the variance in pay among incumbent workers who are not involved in entrepreneurial activities. We posit that, as entrepreneurship becomes a more attractive career option, due to institutional changes, the outside option value of entrepreneurship increases. The resulting increase in mobility threat will disproportionately benefit high earners or those employees who are more difficult to replace: As their bargaining power increases, incumbents will disproportionately reward these workers, especially when they are systematically more inclined to leave for entrepreneurship. We explore these arguments using a difference-in-differences methodology, based on the enactment of an entry reform that reduced the cost of entry in Portugal between 1995 and 2009. We find that an exogenous decrease in the administrative costs of establishing a new venture led to high earners capturing disproportionate rewards relative to low earners. We further show that this relationship was especially pronounced among high earners who (a) exhibited a higher ex ante propensity to transition into entrepreneurship; (b) had fewer credible outside options in paid employment; and (c) operated in industries with decentralized wage bargaining arrangements. By documenting the impact of institutional changes that promote entrepreneurship on incumbent workers' pay, our study contributes to recent debates about the impact of entrepreneurship on individual earnings. Funding: This work was supported by the CY Initiative, the FCT—Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology, and the Knowledge, Technology and Organization Research Center at Skema. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16201. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a vertical supply chain model that considers bargaining power to explore independent innovation and co‐innovation decisions and their impacts and analyzes the optimal subsidy strategy for co‐innovation. We find that collaboration promotes technology innovation. Increases in consumer innovation preferences and government subsidies are conducive to co‐innovation. Both independent and co‐innovation can promote Pareto improvements under limiting conditions. Government subsidies can improve co‐innovation performance, but the subsidy parameter needs to be regulated. The optimal subsidy strategy is influenced by the subsidy target and budget. Governments prefer an innovative degree subsidy or a production cost subsidy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2022, this paper confirms that customers' management tone has a spillover effect in the supply chain, which in turn affects suppliers' provision of trade credit. The results show that the more positive customers' management tone is, the more trade credit suppliers provide. A further analysis finds that the disclosure of customers' management tone increases analyst attention, which in turn promotes suppliers' provision of trade credit.In addition, when the supplier's bargaining power is lower, the regional product market is more developed, and the customers' annual report information quality is higher, the relationship between customers' management tone and suppliers' provision of trade credit is more significant. This study enriches the relevant literature on supply chain management and has important practical significance for promoting the stable development of supply chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of news media bargaining codes as a way of regulating relations between digital platforms and news publishers. Taking the Codes developed in Australia and Canada as policy case studies, the paper discusses recent reforms which respond to the unequal bargaining power between digital platforms and news media publishers. Despite these reforms, there are few guarantees that funds received by news publishers will be reinvested into public interest journalism. The article asks whether the discourse surrounding digital platform regulation generally, and measures by nation-states to rebalance market relations to the benefit of news publishers, are likely to yield necessary safeguards required to sustain public interest journalism, promote reliable information, and stabilise democratic societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A differentiated product is commoditized over time. We investigate the impacts of product commoditization and a change in bargaining power between upstream and downstream firms on the choice between vertical separation and integration. We demonstrate first that vertical separation by the upstream firm dominates vertical integration if and only if the upstream firm's bargaining power is below a certain threshold. Second, the upstream firm's gain from vertical separation decreases with its own bargaining power and the degree of product commoditization. Third, however, product commoditization marginally diminishes the loss in the gain from vertical separation due to a higher bargaining power of the upstream firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A firm undertakes workers' productivity improving R&D before negotiating wage with the union, where negotiation can take place between their incentivised delegates. Under bilateral delegation profit, R&D and productivity-wage gap all increase, whilst the union's utility decreases, along with the union's bargaining power. However, to secure wage gains from productivity improvements via greater R&D and to ensure Pareto improvement in payoffs, the union should refrain from its own delegation, while the firm delegates alone. This will indeed be the equilibrium outcome if the union can commit not to delegate and if its bargaining power is above a critical level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade book publishing is characterised by authors with weaker bargaining power than the commercial intermediaries, including publishers and distributors. One key solution representing the empowerment of authors is self-publishing works, thereby cutting out the gatekeeper. However, self-publication has failed to improve the position of authors: their incomes continue to fall across the sector. Using social network analysis as well as industry practices, this article examines UK trade book publishing dynamics. It argues that the reason for the self-publication route's 'underperformance' is structural, explained by a realistic view of the publishing sector and the relationships it entails. The self- publishing author is shown to have little information and bargaining power, while self-published books are subject to inherent commercial limitations. The wider structural impact of market concentration in book distribution is clarified. The findings suggest that solutions need to combine copyright with competition law interventions as bargaining and market issues require different but coherently designed remedies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study's primary focus is on examining fairness deliberations of bargainers in Germany and in China under symmetric and asymmetric bargaining power to understand whether they incorporate fairness into their decision process and, if so, how this affects bargaining outcomes. To this end, we conducted an incentivized ultimatum bargaining experiment with symmetric and asymmetric outside options. Groups (N = 142) of three persons interact as proposers and responders in dyads and decide simultaneously on their offer or which offers to accept or reject. Communication between parties is inhibited. We videotaped in-group discussions; the resulting transcripts were text analyzed by eliciting whether groups make fairness an issue, which fairness norms they discuss, and whether they use fairness-related perspective-taking to overcome the communication constraint. We find that asymmetry of bargaining power in favor of the proposer leads to lower offers relative to the symmetric situation. Not all groups make fairness an issue, and fairness deliberations alone have no significant impact on offers. However, when associated with the equal-payoff norm, and in Chinese groups in particular, discussing fairness increases offers in symmetric but also in asymmetric situations, in which other fairness norms could have been applied, too. Fairness-related perspective-taking is used by German and Chinese groups and is associated with higher offers in the former. Our study makes an epistemological and related methodological contribution: a possibly biased interpretation of bargaining outcomes can be mitigated if information on decision processes and underlying mechanisms were available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the limitations of the Match-Motive Matrix proposed by the World Bank in the 2023 World Development Report on Migration. The matrix aims to match migrant skills with destination needs to maximize benefits and minimize costs of migration. However, the article highlights concerns about the categorization of skills, vulnerability of temporary labor regimes, and challenges faced by temporary workers with limited protections, especially in countries like the Gulf Cooperation Council. It also raises questions about surveillance for skills matching and emphasizes the need for a more robust framework prioritizing access to justice for migrant workers. [Extracted from the article]

Greater women's bargaining power and decision‐making within a household have been shown to increase investments in human capital. This study links women's participation in decision‐making in dairy production with household investment in girls and boys in health, nutrition, and education. We survey households in the urbanizing region of Bangalore, India. We utilize a multinomial treatment effects model to analyze the individual and household factors that are associated with women's participation in sole or joint decision‐making. We then assess how the type of decision‐making influences a household's investments. The results first show that female decision‐making households are more disadvantaged on average than other types of decision‐making households. Second, we observe that female decision‐makers for dairy production are more likely to have more children and earn a higher income than their husbands. Third, the main findings show that households in which women engage in joint decision‐making have higher levels of investment across all categories for girls. Conversely, investments decrease in education and nutrition for both girls and boys when the wife is the sole decision‐maker. Lastly, investments are enhanced further for girls when households can sell milk at a higher price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reverse factoring is a retailer-led supply chain financing system that can enhance liquidity of suppliers and reduce factoring fraud. This paper proposes a bargaining game theory model to analyze the profit distribution in reverse factoring for a two-echelon supply chain system that comprises a core retailer and a capital-constrained supplier. By taking into account the retailer's credit loss risk, the impact of buying back and bargaining is investigated. Our study shows that in reverse factoring without buying back, the supplier would rather not bargain but the retailer would like to negotiate the wholesale price if the supplier's bargaining power is low. If buying back exists and the supplier's bargaining power is low, the retailer is also willing to negotiate the wholesale price. If there is no bargaining but the supplier takes a large portion of the supply chain's profit, buying back is preferred. Furthermore, when there is bargaining on the wholesale price, both supplier and retailer can benefit from buying back. In addition, bargaining on the buy-back price in reverse factoring is bargaining-proof. Our study first contributes to the growing body of literature on reverse factoring and bargaining game theory. Two managerial implications for reverse factoring also emerge from the study. We find that bargaining should be considered if the supplier tends to coordinate the supply chain financing system by buying back the retailer's unsold products. In addition, both supplier and retailer should negotiate the wholesale price as they cannot benefit from bargaining on the buy-back price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of reparations as balance, analyzing various justifications for reparations, including justice, morality/recognition, and reconciliation/relational justifications. The author argues that reparations should be seen as a negotiated process involving victims and responsible actors finding common ground to redress the past and prevent its recurrence. The article emphasizes the importance of victim agency, ownership by responsible actors, and assessing the balance in determining appropriate reparations. The author suggests that a balance approach to reparations is necessary to address the complexities of redressing past violations and finding common ground between conflicting parties. [Extracted from the article]

A universal basic income (UBI) would be a guaranteed income floor for both the employed and the unemployed, from which economic theory predicts a gain in bargaining power and a disincentive to work. For high earners, the increase in taxes necessary to fund this program would decrease their motivation to earn. To assess these aspects, we conducted a lab-in-the-field experiment at a State Employment Service office in Spain. The unemployed participants received either an initial unconditional endowment, framed under the logic of the solidarity condition of UBI (UBI treatment) – to examine the taxes' effect – or as a participation fee (FEE) or no initial endowment (NONUBI). Subsequently, they faced one default randomized task from a set of four paid real-effort tasks. To study bargaining power, they could change the task up to three times and/or skip all tasks and conclude the experiment. In the FEE treatment, they yielded the highest earnings. While we did not find a statistically significant difference in earnings between the FEE and the NON-UBI treatments, the UBI differed from the NON-UBI and FEE. A likely reason could be a crowding-out of motivation by the pressure to reciprocate without believing in other participants' deservingness of the UBI. In addition, the results reveal that females change tasks more frequently than males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firm's outsourcing decision changes the match surplus to be split as well as the rule for splitting the surplus with employees. This study proposes and estimates a simple wage bargaining model that tracks down the time variation of revenue, cost, and input variables while taking the outsourcing patterns as given. The model is examined using a firm-level panel data containing administrative information on income statement and balance sheet provided by the National Tax Service of South Korea. Evidence suggests that outsourcing firms tend to have (i) higher bargaining power against employees, (ii) a larger fixed cost of bargaining failure, and (iii) match surplus more responsive to the cost of purchases. These observed patterns are strong for large-sized firms with 300 or more employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper uncovers the nexus between global value chain participation and firm exit during COVID‐19 using merged data from World Bank Enterprises Survey and the Enterprise Survey Follow‐Up on COVID‐19. Empirical results suggest that participation in global value chain could positively extend firm survival and is robust to several specifications, including alternative measures of firm exit and global value chain participation. Further analysis indicates that global value chain participation helps a firm to improve productivity, enhance bargaining power, and mitigate financial constraints, thereby lifting the firm survival. Our paper contributes to understanding how global value chain participation influences firm exit, suggesting several policy and managerial implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to provide empirical evidence on a possible economic explanation for changes in borrowing costs of US private firms that are going public. Design/methodology/approach: Using an OLS regression with firm fixed effects and the IPO as an information releasing event that alters information asymmetries between borrowers and lenders and relying on several proxies for pre-IPO information asymmetries, I analyze the impact of the IPO on changes in borrowing costs from before to right after an IPO of firms with high pre-IPO information asymmetries. Findings: My findings indicate that small firms, firms with high R&D, firms with negative EBITDA and firms with a single lending relationship benefit more from going public by realizing larger decreases in borrowing costs after an IPO than firms with lower pre-IPO information asymmetries. The results are consistent with changing information asymmetries caused by the IPO event playing a role in changes in borrowing costs after the IPO. Furthermore, I provide empirical evidence that a reduction in the lender's bargaining power due to the IPO event plays an important role in explaining changes in borrowing costs around that time. Originality/value: This study uses a hand-collected data set of loans obtained from financial statements issued by US firms at the time of their IPO. As a result, I am able to comprehensively document changes of borrowing costs of US private firms going public and shed light on one of the economic forces behind those changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preference for sons has been shown in various ways, but is it still up to date? I investigate how sex preference has evolved during the past 50 years using population-wide data from Finland. I find that having a first-born girl increases fertility and decreases the probability of being together with the child's father in the 1960s to 1980s but not after the 1990s. Families with a first-born girl had 0.03 more children in the years 1960–1980. The effect decreases to an imprecise zero in the 1990s and to 0.007 fewer children in the 2000s. This shift occurs at the same time as the female and male employment rates approach each other. As the costs of raising a girl are not greater than those of raising a boy in Finland, the results suggest that the shift might be due to increased female bargaining power. Past literature has shown that females prefer girls over boys or are more neutral than males, who prefer having sons over daughters more often. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the causal effect of a targeted panic button program—implemented in two Turkish provinces between 2012 and 2016—on domestic violence. Difference-in-differences and synthetic control estimates suggest that the program notably increased physical violence against women both at the extensive and intensive margins. The likelihood of physical violence in the treated provinces increased by more than 5 percentage points relative to the control provinces, and the number of physical violence incidents increased by about 10 percent. The increase comes almost entirely from the increase in violence against less-educated women. Employment rates and economic independence indicators improved for women in the treated provinces, which suggests that the program empowered vulnerable women. However, male partners increased physical violence in response to female empowerment. The results are consistent with the male backlash theories and a class of non-cooperative models incorporating violence as a vehicle for enhancing males' bargaining power, but inconsistent with the models predicting that economic empowerment of women reduces violence by balancing bargaining power within the household. We also develop a method based on retrospective violence information to understand whether the increase is attributable to actual or self-reported violence and conclude that the estimates are entirely driven by the increase in actual violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the recent SEC-mandated disclosures of CEO-worker pay ratios, we find that firms significantly decrease (increase) their CEO-worker pay ratios when their prior pay ratios are high (low) relative to peers. More importantly, the decrease in pay ratio among high pay ratio firms is significantly more pronounced with stronger stakeholder influences, proxied by employees with greater bargaining power, communities with higher social capital, and states with more stringent minimum wage legislation. These results are robust to controlling for CEO and median worker pay benchmarking as well as the influences of shareholders. Using state-level pay ratio tax proposals as another proxy for stakeholder influence, we find high pay ratio firms in states with these proposals reduce pay ratios significantly more than firms with similar high pay ratios in other states. Overall, our results highlight the influence of corporate stakeholders in mitigating high CEO-worker pay gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the relationship between the share of assets held by institutional investors relative to GDP and a synthetic index of union bargaining power in 20 OECD countries from 1980 to 2017. Findings from the use of fixed-effects OLS and instrumental variables regressions show that the share of assets held by institutional investors, especially insurance companies and pension funds, is correlated with a decline in union bargaining power. The authors argue that by contributing to significant changes in corporate strategies and governance through potential effects on jobs and wages, institutional investors in most OECD countries may have weakened the influence of trade unions, thereby leading to a higher decentralization of wage bargaining. Mixed evidence is found, however, when investigating the role of complementarity across institutions to explain cross-country heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the relationship between AI applications and supply chain concentration. We measure the AI applications of Chinese listed firms based on text analytics on annual reports from 2007 to 2021. Our results show that AI applications reduce supply chain concentration, and these results are robust to endogeneity examination. In addition, AI reduces companies' supply chain concentration by enhancing their bargaining power and, in turn, improving their operational performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2021 136 countries reached a political agreement to transform the global tax regime for the first time since its creation. The disconnect between the digitalized economy and the global tax system was a key driver of the agreement, but it was not sufficient as negotiations only a few years earlier had failed to address the problem. This article advances a three-part explanation to resolve this puzzle. First, developments on one side of the Atlantic changed the default conditions and so increased support for compromise in the other. Second, those changes enhanced the bargaining power of higher-tax jurisdictions relative to lower-tax ones. Third, the Biden administration saw securing a multilateral agreement on minimum corporate taxes as a way to realize domestic tax objectives. The linking of the issues gave it an incentive to compromise on taxing the digital economy and paved the way for agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To fulfill its constitutional functions, Congress must have access to information from within the executive branch. Whether it is assessing the need to amend the authorities of administrative agencies, determining whether to fund executive branch programs, or investigating allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse, Congress can act responsibly only if it is able to compile an accurate picture of executive branch activities. When executive branch officials resist these requests--for either legitimate or problematic reasons--the resulting conflict is traditionally resolved amicably through interbranch negotiations, not inter-branch litigation. Indeed, courts heard a total of four congressional-executive information disputes in the nation's first two hundred and forty years. Depending on how you count, however, the Trump administration alone generated at least five. This Article argues that Congress's recent litigiousness is the culmination of a long-term trend. Over the past half-century, the executive branch has unilaterally developed numerous legal doctrines that aggrandize its own bargaining power at Congress's expense, enable it to circumvent the checks and balances established by the Constitution, and justify rebuffing valid congressional information requests. The Article uses the Trump-era cases to explore this evolution, and its consequences, in the context of executive branch doctrine surrounding three issues--the claim that presidential advisors are absolutely immune from testifying before Congress, the claim that Congress must clear a high bar to request information from the executive branch, and the claim that congressional lawsuits to enforce subpoenas are not justiciable in federal court. It demonstrates the extravagance of the executive branch's claims and explores the significance of the courts' nearly universal rejection of them in the Trump-era suits. It concludes that the cases' impact will not be as significant as the courts' decisive rejections of the executive's theories might suggest, and that both Congress and the courts must act more aggressively to recalibrate the branches' bargaining power to bring the executive back to the bargaining table, where such disputes should be resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a unique hand-collected dataset of purchase obligations, we find that customers' financial reporting quality is positively associated with future supply contracts, indicating that suppliers are more willing to contract with customers who provide them with better information. Further, the association between customers' financial reporting quality and future supply contracts is stronger for customers with strong bargaining power, which is consistent with suppliers relying more on financial reports when they have less access to customers' private information. Collectively, our results suggest that customers' financial reporting quality plays an important role in influencing suppliers' decisions to contract with customers for the future supply of goods and services. Data Availability: Data for dependent variable are manually collected and data for all other variables are available from public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: D80; M41. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Question/Issue: This study investigates the role of board‐level employee representatives (BLERs), a common corporate governance practice in Europe, in determining the pay ratio between CEOs and average employees. Research Findings/Insights: Using 15,340 firm‐year observations from 17 European countries between 2001 and 2019, we find that BLERs provide greater bargaining power to the board for dealing with CEOs and use this power to reduce the pay gap between CEOs and employees. Subsample analyses indicate that bargaining power is more apparent when BLERs are more socially connected, have longer tenure, and hold more seats on the board. Theoretical/Academic Implications: This study supports the role of BLERs in providing workers with more bargaining power to create fairer wage distribution in firms. Furthermore, it supports the fair wage–effort theory, indicating a positive effect of lower pay ratios on firm value following the presence of BLERs. Practitioner/Policy Implications: This study demonstrates the effects of a unique corporate governance practice, the presence of BLERs, on companies' wage distribution, with significant policy implications. In particular, the results indicate that when presented with opportunities in affecting companies decision‐making BLERs provide fairer environments for the workers who they represent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effects of takeover feasibility on asset prices and returns in a unified framework. We show theoretically that takeover protections increase equity risk, stock returns, and bond yields by removing a valuable put option to sell the firm, notably for firms approaching distress. We investigate these claims empirically and find that distressed firms experience a significant decrease in value and increase in returns and market betas after the passage of antitakeover laws, in line with our predictions. At issue bond yields are also higher when an antitakeover law is in effect. Consistent with the model, the effects of antitakeover laws on stock returns, respectively, bond yields, are greater when shareholders, respectively, bondholders, have greater bargaining power. This paper was accepted by Lukas Schmid, finance. Funding: E. Morellec acknowledges financial support from the Swiss Finance Institute. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.03111. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]