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The Phillips curve, which illustrates a negative relationship between inflation and unemployment, has long been a cornerstone of macroeconomic models. However, it often fails to reflect reality and the flattening of the curve is widely discussed. This study addresses the question of whether a weakening of workers’ bargaining power contributed to this phenomenon. The first part of the analysis involves estimating a Kaleckian Phillips curve using Swedish time-series data to assess the impact of workers’ bargaining power on inflation. While the study does not reveal statistically significant results, the investigation offers insights into the complexities and chal- lenges with estimating the Kaleckian Phillips curve. The second part of the analysis compares the slopes of the traditional Phillips curve across OECD countries with varying trade union densities. The estimations show that the relationship between unemployment and inflation is stronger in countries with higher trade union density. This study provides important insights about the relationship between inflation and the trade unions’ bargaining power on the labour market.

Gender has always explicitly or implicitly played a critical role in contracting and in contracts opinions—from the early nineteenth century, when married women lacked the legal capacity altogether to contract, through the next century, when women gained the right to contract but continued to lack bargaining power and to be disadvantaged in the bargaining process in many cases, to today, when women are present in greater numbers in business and commerce, but face continued, yet less overt, obstacles. Typical casebooks provide ample offerings for discussions of the ways in which parties can be and have been disadvantaged because of their gender and gender identity. At the core, gender inequity often stems from long-held stereotypes about women in contracting, which are often on full display in the cases. The vast majority of cases in the typical Contracts casebook are drawn primarily from the commercial context; sales, franchise, employment, and transfer of property cases predominate most Contracts casebooks, with many fewer cases in the family context. In the commercial cases, women and other people who do not identify as men, rarely seen as the businessperson, seller, or landowner, are sorely underrepresented, and the “non-male” perspective tends to be obscured. Casebook offerings involving non-male parties still tend to be clustered in certain areas—namely contract defenses, promissory estoppel, and family cases. The result is a Contracts curriculum that typically confines women to certain traditional roles and relegates women’s issues to a secondary status, privileging rational, arms-length market promises at the expense of family-based promises. The overall gender allocation in cases may or may not be reflective of the actual presence of women in the universe of American contracts cases. But either way, it raises some issues regarding how the typical casebook presents women in the realm of contracts cases, and overall, the role of women in contracting. There is

In my dissertation, I investigate the relationships between the non-contractibility in household labor, spousal bargaining power, and labor-intensive technological change. I extend the conjugal contract model introduced by Carter and Katz (1997) to understand (1) why non-contractibility in spousal labor matters and (2) how bargaining power may affect the efficiency loss due to non-contractibility in spousal labor. The model suggests that in households with greater bargaining power for the wife, the wife provides more labor on the farm, even if the husband controls the production. As a result, the household can take better advantage of a labor-intensive technological change that benefits the husband's sphere of control. I then discuss how to measure bargaining power and analyze the impact of a technological change based on spousal bargaining power. In addition, I propose a strategy to mitigate the non-adoption problem when assessing the effectiveness of agricultural technologies. I find that encouraging farmers to self-select into the sample yields more statistically powerful results than selecting from an experimental population. This sampling method is then applied to the randomized controlled trial study design to evaluate the impact of large-scale in-person agronomy training offered to smallholder coffee households in Uganda.

Household is a fundamental unit where family members collaborate and compete for resources. Pakistan is a patriarchal society where women participate and facilitate labor force participation. This research analyzed the relationship between women’s financial status, autonomy and bargaining power within the Punjabi household. The study was conducted in five districts of the Punjab (Multan, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Gujranwala, and Sargodha). The research respondents were having different socio-economic background, culture, religion, urban rural locations, conservative, liberal, educated and uneducated setup and families. To explore women’s bargaining experiences, qualitative research methodology was used and in-depth interviews were conducted by designing an interview guide. In-depth interviews were very helpful for the researchers to understand the dynamics and perspectives of household bargaining prevailing in urban and rural Punjab. The sample consisted of 39 women respondents and their age was between 21 to 70 years. Research findings concluded that women were having limited access to family resources but their active participation in income generating and saving activities ensured better fallback position. Due to cultural notion, rural women were having restricted access to inheritance rights but dowry was a source of up gradation in their financial status, autonomy and better participation in household bargaining. Moreover, working and elderly women were having better bargaining and fallback position in household as compared to widows and divorcees.

This paper analyzes the impact of reproductive outcomes on women's participation in their family's decision-making and on the share of the household's resources allocated to them. It also examines the effects on labor, time use, and health-related outcomes. Two main sources of variation in reproductive outcomes are used: an increase in the number of children, instrumented by the event of multiple births, and a change in gender composition of a woman's children, instrumented by having a firstborn son. It builds upon literature on bargaining power, on the effects of fertility on mothers' welfare and labor supply and on the impacts of gender distribution of the progeny on women's position within their household. The findings indicate that an increase in the number of children is associated with a lower probability of participating in the household's decision-making regarding the usage of family income, a lower likelihood of using preventative health services, lower monthly incomes and lower household's expenditures on women's clothing. Similarly, having a male son increases the probability that a woman is the owner or manager of a family-owned income generating activity.

In the 1980s and 1990s, during the high-water mark of Washington Consensus development, rural sociologists and geographers critical of contract farming described contract as a legal fiction—one that imagines formally equal and voluntary relations between large firms and small farmers and hence that functions purposefully to obscure unequal social relations. Today, however, development planners, who argue for contract farming as an integral part of value chain agriculture, describe unequal bargaining power as a problem for rural development to solve. Our article analyzes how proponents have domesticated what was once a radical critique of contract farming—a phenomenon that we suggest tells of value chain development more broadly. Via a qualitative case study of India, we describe how a range of actors—development planners, state officials, and farmers—now all make arguments about unequal bargaining power and yet hold disparate understandings of what bargaining inequalities mean and what reforms should therefore follow. More specifically, we show how and why common reform proposals—for contract regulation and farmer aggregation—remain constrained by the inequalities they would challenge and thus why farmers themselves speak different possibilities to the problem of unequal bargaining power.

Purpose:In recent times, women’s status has been upgraded through an increase in socio-economic factors, which had implications in determining their bargaining power. The bargaining process produces household decisions which usually consist of unequal bargaining power. This study investigating the socio-economic factors through which female education and income change their bargaining power at the household. Design/Methodology/Approach:For this purpose, a primary survey through a questionnaire has administered in different areas of Punjab, Pakistan. We have collected the data 200 working married women OLS ordinary least square model has been applied to estimate our results. Findings:The result of the study shows that the socio-economic factors has significant and positive role in determining the women bargaining power within and outside the household. Higher income and education not only enhance their bargaining power in decision-making within and outside the household but also increase the status of women in society. Implications/Originality/Value:Oursociety needs to change their prospective towards women by removing these obstacles and giving them freedom of voice and choice, so they can lead their life according to their will. Changing such social norms through education will create better position for women in the household as well in society.

This study examines whether and to what extent risk-associated firms that are affiliated with a business group affect audit pricing decisions. The results indicate that auditors spend more audit hours and charge higher audit fees for group-affiliated firms than for other firms. Furthermore, when a group-affiliated client is economically important to auditors’ total revenue, higher audit fees are mainly explained by the increased audit effort. This suggests that the extent of the risk premium attached to group-affiliated firms may be limited by client firms’ bargaining power, especially in a competitive audit market such as Korea.

This article presents a critical strategic analysis of the current strategic change in the context of the acquisition of Weetabix by Post Holding. It covers the corporate strategic position, stakeholder analysis, external analysis and industry analysis. The company faces a series of critical challenges, some of which are controllable, such as tastes against consumer preferences, others are external forces over which it has no control, such as the unpredictable political situation in the UK after Brexit. Post holding was advised to engage in innovative market research and introduce new brands matching consumer preferences. It should develop various shaped cereals and that can be eaten on the go, to keep up with the competition. Given that Post Holding enjoys lower bargaining power of suppliers giving it an advantage of negotiating quality inputs for lower prices; the company should use the opportunity to cover the increasing wage bills resulting the changing UK labor law.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the way in which the problem of the power of the working class has been approached. We undertake this task with the purpose of studying how the workers' structural power is expressed in their bargaining abilities and what role union strategies play in that relationship. For this, we critically revise a set of classic and contemporary written works, paying special attention to the distinction between structural and associative power proposed by Wright [2000] and adopted by Silver [2005], as well as the reworking carried out on the basis of the Power resources approach by researchers from the University of Jena (Germany). Despite the spread of this latter approach, we raise the need to review its theoretical and methodological assumptions. We underline the importance of structural conditions in the analysis of class struggle and to ask ourselves about the purpose of union strategies and the various forms of union building as key elements for the analysis of class power., El objetivo del presente artículo consiste en analizar el modo en que ha sido abordado el problema del poder de la clase trabajadora. Emprendemos esta tarea con el propósito de estudiar de qué modo el poder estructural de los/as trabajadores/as se expresa en su capacidad de negociación y qué papel tienen las estrategias sindicales en esa relación. Para ello recuperamos críticamente un conjunto de trabajos clásicos y contemporáneos, otorgando particular atención a la distinción entre poder estructural y poder asociativo planteada por Wright [2000] y adoptada por Silver [2005], así como a la reelaboración realizada a partir del enfoque de los recursos de poder por investigadores/as de la Universidad de Jena (Alemania). Pese a la difusión de este último enfoque, planteamos la necesidad de revisar sus supuestos teóricos y metodológicos, subrayando la importancia de las condiciones estructurales en el análisis de la lucha de clases y de interrogarnos en torno al para qué de las estrategias sindicales y las diversas formas de construcción sindical como elementos clave para el análisis del poder de clase

Food quality schemes (FQS: organic and geographical indication products) are often supposed to be more sustainable by their political advocates. We explore the social sustainability advantage of FQS through the lens of supply chains’ bargaining power (BP) distribution. We propose an indicator synthesizing different sources underlying BP (competition-based, transactional, institutional) and counting two dimensions (fair BP distribution and adaptation capacity), that we apply to 18 FQS supply chains and corresponding reference. FQS perform better than their reference products on both dimensions. This better performance is due to a combination of sources., Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::12 - Producció i Consum Responsables, Postprint (published version)

Microfinance institutions (MFI) provide collateral free loans which the subsisting populations of developing countries use as a mean to improve the living conditions of their family. Group lending processes of MFIs also provide peer support for borrowers. This study uses feminist theory and Sen’s capability approach to entrepreneurship to investigate how these loans may change the social and economic status of women, thus empowering them. Participating in lending groups helps women to develop business skills and make decisions, while enhancing their confidence and providing a mutual guarantee for loan repayment. When women are engaged in income generation, they develop liberty and awareness about their rights, learn how to manage small businesses, and enhance their responsibilities towards household finances. This social and economic change, in turn enhances their leadership abilities. The effect of microcredit loans through group lending in empowering women, progress in the community and reducing poverty are observed.

This paper has shown that soft budget constraints are more likely to arise when a firm's bargaining power is larger and when the liquidation value of its project is smaller. An increase in the firm's bargaining power and a decrease in the liquidation value of its project augment the debt forgiveness to the firm, which reduces the firm's incentive to exert effort to circumvent financial distress, thereby bringing about soft budget constraints. This paper suggests that the bubble burst may be a contributing factor to soft budget constraints in Japan and that an injection of public capital into banks that suffered from large nonperforming loans can help to harden the budget constraints of borrowing firms.

This paper deals with the impact of self-help groups (SHGs) in apple production on empowering women in the Chencha district of Southern Ethiopia. Impact is traced on the basis of a cross-sectional survey among SHG members and nonmembers, using propensity score matching. Apart from the attitudinal changes among SHG and non-SHG women, we also scrutinize differences in male attitudes concerning the status of women. The results point towards positive and significant impacts of SHG participation on empowerment at the community level, which suggests that SHGs offer an effective space for women to share information and raise awareness about their rights. This could in turn be harnessed collectively to negotiate more “room to maneuver” in the community. At the same time, however, the data hint at negative effects from group participation at the household level. The attitudinal differences between treatment and control group indicate more conflictive relations between spouses, arguably due to an intensified fight to assert control over household resources. Hence, the evidence is consistent with a potential “backlash effect” from husbands.

We develop a new measure of underwriter bargaining power and a novel empirical approach, based on underwriters’ comparative ability to place bonds. When an issuer has few “outside options” to take her bond to the market, the underwriter enjoys a stronger bargaining power over her. The key feature of our approach is that bargaining power varies for a given underwriter at a given point in time across different issuers, allowing us to separate the effects of bargaining power from those of reputation and certification with a fixed effects strategy. Using our measure, we document that powerful underwriters are able to extract rents at the expense of bond issuers. For issues with the highest underwriter bargaining power, fees and bond offering yields increase by a combined cost of USD 1.5 million, or about 7% of the average costs for the issuer. We rule out alternative mechanisms based on issuer-underwriter “loyalty”. Our findings suggest that lack of competition increases underwriter bargaining power, resulting in material costs for corporate bond issuers.

This paper examines the role of parental transfers on family size. We introduce a simple theoretical model of fertility decision where preferences towards children may differ between female and male spouses. Parental transfers increase both the household income and the bargaining power of the recipient spouse. Therefore, transfers from wife's and husband's parents may have dissimilar effects on the number of children. We empirically test and confirm this hypothesis using a unique household-level data for Japan. In particular, received transfers from the wife's parents reduce the demand for children. In contrast, both received and expected transfers from the husband's parents increase the demand for children. These results hold important policy implications.

The paper investigates actions and decisions of agricultural resource users and explores their implications for institutional change and natural resource management in the post-socialist context of Central Asia. More specifically, the authors propose a novel methodological approach for the aforementioned context to support policy-relevant research that explicitly addresses behavioral responses of pastoralists in Kyrgyzstan. The paper builds on distributive and economic theories of institutional change and combines findings from lab and field framed economic experiments with complementary qualitative methods (questionnaires, group discussions and semi-structured interviews). By these means the authors test the impact of a specific variable on institutional change in pasture use: the role of power and specifically the difference in the ability of players to “survive” in a bargaining game without an agreement. The impact of power asymmetries and its implications for cooperation and the efficiency of bargaining outcomes are discussed and analyzed. Experimental results largely confirm findings reported in the literature: as players learn about the game and the behavior of others, they adjust their decisions accordingly; the subjects also exhibit other-regarding preferences, resulting to the prevalence of relatively equally distributed gains as an outcome. Furthermore, the findings of the study suggest that under the condition of incomplete information about the preferences of other players, the experimental subjects internalize the game as a group. The authors propose that an explanatory variable for such situations might be that actual shared beliefs of pasture users assist players to economize on information processing and coordinate the bargaining in an effective way. From this perspective, the paper raises a series of questions regarding the proposition that power asymmetry leads to inefficient bargaining outcomes, and provides some first insights for further investi, Peer Reviewed

Bargaining is a tool to share collaborative gains and to facilitate reaching agreement. To improve incentives to join an international climate agreement (ICA), the Nash bargaining solution can be used to distribute cooperative gains across signatories. In this paper, we examine how the formation of ICAs and their mitigation efficiency are impacted by the use of the Nash bargaining solution. In a Nash bargaining game with heterogeneous players, bargaining powers are unequal and may be driven by different characteristics of the players. We employ different sets of asymmetric bargaining weights in order to examine the effectiveness of climate coalitions that emerge as stable agreements. Using the Nash bargaining solution, we obtain results from the stability of coalition model (STACO). We find that the Nash bargaining solution can improve the participation incentives and performances of ICAs as compared to agreements that do not redistribute gains from cooperation, but its capacity to overcome free-riding incentives is limited. However, if Nash bargaining accounts for outside options of players, we find larger stable coalitions and higher global abatement levels. In fact, Nash bargaining with outside options can stabilise the largest coalitions that can possibly be stable in our game.

This paper exploits the experimental set-up of the cash transfer program PROGRESA in rural Mexico to estimate a collective model of the household in order to investigate how parents allocate household resources. We show that household decisions are compatible with the collective model at the beginning of the program, but reject it later on. This shows that second order effects of cash transfer programs are important and suggests we need richer structural models to thoroughly analyse these policy interventions. We end this paper by proposing such a simple and tractable model of household behaviour, where decision makers may have misaligned preferences as a result of the treatment about the importance of a public good., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We show that a local average treatment effect (LATE) can sometimes be point identified and consistently estimated when treatment is mismeasured, or when treatment is estimated using a possibly misspecified structural model. Our associated estimator, which we call Mismeasurement Robust LATE (MR-LATE), is based on differencing two mismeasures of treatment. In our empirical application, treatment is women’s empowerment: whether a wife has significant control of household resources. Due to measurement difficulties and sharing of goods within a household, this treatment cannot be directly observed without error, and so must be estimated. Our outcomes are health indicators of family members. We first estimate a structural model to obtain the otherwise unobserved treatment indicator. Then, using changes in inheritance laws in India as an instrument, we apply our new MR-LATE estimator. We find that women’s empowerment substantially decreases their probability of being anemic or underweight, and children’s likelihood to suffer from cough, fever or diarrhea. We find no significant positive or negative effects on men’s health., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

In this paper, we study how foreign ownership of Swedish companies affects employment and wages. To study these effects, we specify a model based on the assumption that the Swedish labour market can be described as one where trade unions and employers bargain over employment and wages. Our hypothesis is that bargaining power is affected by institutional settings and the ownership of the firm. To test our hypothesis, we used a panel data set of 242 large Swedish manufacturing firms over the period 1980–2005. The results indicate no significant impact of foreign ownership on employment or wages in Sweden

Our main objective is to investigate the influence of the bargaining power within a chain on its industry. As a building block, we first discuss the implications of bargaining within a single chain by considering an asymmetric Nash bargaining over the wholesale price (BW). We show that both Manufacturer Stackelberg (MS) and vertical integration (VI) strategies are special cases of the BW contract. We then develop the Nash equilibrium in an industry with two supply chains that use BW. We identify the profit-maximizing (coordinating) bargaining power within this industry. We show that when a chain is not monopolistic, VI does not coordinate the chain and that the MS contract, where the manufacturer has all the bargaining power, is coordinating when competition is intense. We find that the main determinant of the equilibrium in mature industries is to respond well to the actions of the competing chain rather than to directly maximize the profit of each chain. That is, the equilibrium does not necessarily maximize the profit of the entire industry. While a coordination of the industry could then increase the profitability of both chains, such a coordination is likely against antitrust law. Moreover, if one chain cannot change its actions, the other chain may unilaterally improve its profitability by deviating from the equilibrium. Our results lead to several predictions supported by empirical findings, such as that in competitive industries chains will work close to the MS contract.

Previous studies imply that a positive regional fiscal shock, such as a resource boom, strengthens the desire for separation. In this paper we present a new and opposite perspective. We construct a model of endogenous fiscal decentralization that builds on two key notions: a trade-off between risk sharing and heterogeneity, and a positive association between resource booms and risk. The model shows that a resource windfall causes the nation to centralize as a mechanism to either share risk and/or prevent local capture, depending on the relative bargaining power of the central and regional governments. We provide cross country empirical evidence for the main hypotheses, finding that resource booms: (i) decrease the level of fiscal decentralization with no U-shaped patterns, (ii) cause the former due to risk sharing incentives primarily when regional governments are relatively strong, and (iii) have no effect on political decentralization.

In this paper, we study how foreign ownership of Swedish companies affects employment and wages. To study these effects, we specify a model based on the assumption that the Swedish labour market can be described as one where trade unions and employers bargain over employment and wages. Our hypothesis is that bargaining power is affected by institutional settings and the ownership of the firm. To test our hypothesis, we used a panel data set of 242 large Swedish manufacturing firms over the period 1980–2005. The results indicate no significant impact of foreign ownership on employment or wages in Sweden., In this paper, we study how foreign ownership of Swedish companies affects employment and wages. To study these effects, we specify a model based on the assumption that the Swedish labour market can be described as one where trade unions and employers bargain over employment and wages. Our hypothesis is that bargaining power is affected by institutional settings and the ownership of the firm. To test our hypothesis, we used a panel data set of 242 large Swedish manufacturing firms over the period 1980–2005. The results indicate no significant impact of foreign ownership on employment or wages in Sweden.

Despite the perceived importance of labor market opportunities in shaping married women’s outside option, and their bargaining power within households as a result, this link has received very little empirical attention. Using longitudinal data on who makes the decision on a wide range of issues within Mexican households and data from the administrative records of the Mexican Social Security Institute, this paper identifies the effects of relative changes in labor market opportunities for men and women on both working and non-working women’s decision making power. I find that increases in labor market opportunities improve women’s decision-making power as well as children’s health. Using differential labor demand shocks across Mexican industries caused by China’s admission to the WTO gives similar results.

This paper estimates a collective model of the household and investigates how parents reach decisions to allocate household resources. Using data from PROGRESA, we test the restrictions of collective rationality on a large variety of specifications and show that, contrary to previous results, this modeling approach cannot rationalize the household decision process. We provide some evidence that the observed inefficiency is driven by the group receiving the cash transfers. These results are consistent with the idea that a possible indirect effect of CCT programs may be to enhance disagreements between the spouses which trigger an inefficient allocation of their resources., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Um die Auswirkung der Liberalisierung der EU-Erdgasmärkte auf die Macht der Marktteilnehmer zu studieren, entwickeln wir ein disaggregiertes Modell der eurasischen Erdgasversorgung. Wir modellieren die Abhängigkeiten zwischen den Spielern als kooperatives Spiel und berücksichtigen verschiedene Lösungen: den Shapley-Wert, den Nukleolus und den Kern. Im Kapitel 1 untersuchen wir die regionalen Auswirkungen der Liberalisierung des Zugangs zu den Übertragungsnetzen, sowie die Anreize für Fusionen und Kartelle. Im Kapitel 2 untersuchen wir die Auswirkung der Liberalisierung auf die Machtbalance zwischen den lokalen Champions, den Kunden und den Produzenten außerhalb EU. Wir unterscheiden zwischen zwei Schritten der Reform: 1.die Öffnung des Zugangs zu den Übertragungsnetzen und 2.die Öffnung des Zugangs zu den Vertriebssystemen. Für den Shapley-Wert finden wir geringe und heterogene Effekte des ersten Schritts. Die Auswirkungen des zweiten Schritts sind viel größer und ergeben ein klares Muster: alle lokalen Champions verlieren, während alle Kunden und alle externen Produzenten gewinnen. Da ein Drittel der Verluste der Champions innerhalb EU zu den Spielern im Ausland abfließt, können die aktuellen Reformen die Dominanz der bereits starken externen Produzenten verbessern. Wenn wir den Nukleolus heranziehen, profitieren die Produzenten außerhalb EU von der vollen Liberalisierung hingegen nicht. Im Kapitel 3 untersuchen wir die Beziehungen zwischen Shapley-Wert, Nukleolus und Kern. Für unser Modell ist der Shapley-Wert nie im Kern. Um ein Maß der Instabilität von Auszahlungen, die nicht im Kern liegen, zu erhalten, schlagen wir eine Erweiterung des starken epsilon-Kerns vor und betrachten 3 Metriken. Wir finden, daß die Liberalisierung die Instabilität des Shapley-Werts erhöht. Wir zeigen, daß die Liberalisierung den Kern komprimiert. Die Auswirkung auf den Nukleolus korrespondiert jedoch nicht immer mit der Verschiebung von Minimal- und Maximalwerten der Spieler im Kern., To study the impact of the liberalization of EU natural gas markets on the power of market players we develop a disaggregated model of the Eurasian natural gas supply system. We model interdependenices among the players as a cooperative game for which we consider various solutions: the Shapley value, the nucleolus and the core. In the first paper we study regional impact of liberalization of access to transmission networks, incentives for mergers and cartels. In the second paper we study the impact of liberalization on the balance of power between ''local champions'', customers, and outside producers, such as Russian Gazprom. We distinguish between two steps of the reform: 1. opening access to transit pipes and 2. opening access to distribution systems, hence customers. Using the Shapley value, we find a modest and rather heterogeneous impact from the first step. The impact of the second step is much larger and yields a clear pattern: all local champions lose, while all customers and all outside producers gain. As one third of the losses of champions within EU leaks to players abroad, current reforms might enhance the dominance of already powerful outside producers. When we apply the nucleolus, in contrast, full liberalization does not benefit outside producers at all. In the third paper we focus on the relation of the Shapley value and the nucleolus to the core. For our model the Shapley value is never in the core. To evaluate the degree of instability of a payoff allocation which is not in the core, we propose an extension of the strong epsilon-core and consider three metrics. We find that liberalization increases the degree of instability of the Shapley value for all metrics. We show that liberalization compresses the core, but not always the nucleolus corresponds well to the shifts in the minimal and maximal values of players in the core.

Could an even larger push for women empowerment be a viable development strategy for developing countries? A large literature relates the bargaining power of women to improved health and education of their children (Majlesi, 2015; Qian, 2008; Bobonis, 2009; Duflo, 2003; Lundberg, Pollak and Wales, 1997). However, it remains a challenge to find a good proxy for bargaining power that truly reflects the decision-making power of the mother in the household. This thesis aims to contribute to the literature by using women's earnings, relative to that of their husband, as a proxy for bargaining power and tracking whether decisions made in the household change hands as the income of the mother rises. Using two waves of panel data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey and a fixed effects methodology, this thesis finds that women's bargaining power has a significant effect on children's health, but not on education. Mothers with a relatively high income display stronger effects for girls, while mothers with a comparatively low income prefer to invest in the health of sons. Curiously, as the income of the mother rises, her decision-making power over education increases while her influence over child health does not change significantly.

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

An increasing number of companies are using Supplier Codes of Conduct to ensure socially responsible behavior in their supply chains. Previous research on SCCs have focused on powerful brand owning multinational corporations and have concluded that a cooperative approach, the cooperation model, has yielded better results than a more traditional approach based on monitoring and sanctions, the compliance model. This study will investigate how organizations with low bargaining power use these two approaches to SCCs to get suppliers to comply with their SCCs, and how this is influenced by the organizations purchasing strategy towards that supplier. Semi structured interviews were conducted with 9 diverse Swedish organizations that use SCCs. The results of the study reveal that the buying organizations focus their efforts on certain suppliers that are selected using different criteria. The results do not conflict with previous findings, however, no strong support for the previous findings is observed either. The results of the study suggest that strong bargaining power is well suited with the compliance model.

Familias en Acción, during more than a decade, has encouraged investments in human capital and children’s health in poor households in Colombia. The program has been able to benefit a wide range of population to such a great extent, that now the program has become a national public policy. While the positive effects on health and education have been widely studied, there are some other important issues that this program is trying to affect that have not been analyzed enough. That is why this study seeks to test the unitary model of household behaviour and to measure changes in women’s bargaining power inside households. We performed a diff in diff model to see the change of the share of the household budget spent on certain assignable and nonassignable goods in the short and long run. The main results provide evidence of a change of the consumption pattern of the household, which leads us to the rejection of the unitary model. Also, results give certain evidence indicating that women’s bargaining power within the household might have been improved.

This paper analyses the effects of high-performance work systems (HPWS) on the rent appropriation of employees and shareholders in firms from the viewpoint of appropriation theory. Applying a meta-analytical approach I test the hypothesis that HPWS shift the balance of power between stakeholder groups in an organization, favouring employees over other stakeholders. This hypothesis is confirmed. However, the overall results of HPWS are positive for both stakeholder groups, as HPWS also increase firm value creation. My study also emphasizes the need to decompose the construct firm performance' into value creation and value distribution among stakeholder groups. Directions for future research and recommendations for management practice conclude the paper.

My dissertation includes three essays which focus on employee departure from organizations. In the first two essays, I study how employee departure allows individuals to capture more value from their firms. The third essay examines the effect of employee departure on firm performance. Each essay identifies an important theoretical puzzle or tension related to employee departures and sheds light on its resolution through careful research design. In total, this dissertation aims to challenge the way that researchers typically think about employee departures, both theoretically and empirically. The theoretical puzzle in the first essay relates to the connection between the failure of one firm and the birth of other firms. Does the failure of a rival firm cause the employees of existing firms to create entrepreneurial startups? On the one hand, theory suggests that the answer is yes - rival failures may release resources that potential entrepreneurs can use to start new firms. On the other hand, theory suggests that the answer is no - rival failures indicate to potential entrepreneurs that the environment is not munificent enough to support new entry. Using US Census data on the legal services industry, I disentangle these two arguments by examining law firm failures that are preceded by the unexpected deaths of highly paid attorneys. I find strong evidence that these quasi-random failures (which are likely to be weakly related to the broader economic environment) cause attorneys in rival firms to create startups, while other types of rival failures depress entry rates, probably because they proxy for weakness in the local industry. This essay thus provides a theoretical rationale for when the failure of one firm will lead to the creation of another while demonstrating an often-discussed but rarely demonstrated positive side effect of firm failure - a failed firm provides the component parts for new organizations. The puzzle in my second essay relates to the effect that

A long-controversial issue, one that divides academics, government officials, elected representatives, and the U.S. defense industry, is whether defense contractors earn abnormal or excessive profits at the expense of taxpayers. Using an innovative industry-year-size matched measure of excessive profit, we demonstrate three findings. First, when compared with their industry peers, defense contractors earn excessive profits. This result is evident when profit is measured by Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Common Equity (ROCE), and Profit Margin Ratio (PMR). The evidence of excessive profit is less consistent if profit is measured by Operating Margin Ratio (OMR). Second, defense contractors' excessive profit is more pronounced after 1992, consistent with the conjecture that the post-1992 significant industry consolidation enabled superior profitability due to both the improved bargaining power and increased political influence of the newly combined firms. Finally, defense contractors' excessive profitability increases with poorer corporate governance, as measured by the duality of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the Chairman of the Board., Acquisition Research Sponsored Report Series.

In this paper, we explore the relationships between subsidiary technology transfer competence, bargaining power and rent-seeking. In the multinational corporation, technology transfer competence is generally perceived as something desirable. We connect this bright side of subsidiary-level processes to a potentially uglier and darker side of the organization, namely that subsidiaries gain bargaining power that is exercised for bad ends, i.e., rent-seeking. Using an empirical analysis that comprises intrafirm technology transfers, this paper finds that technology transfer competence leads to greater subsidiary bargaining power that in turn increases rent-seeking behavior; but this competence does not directly affect rent-seeking. We suggest that bargaining power offers a key explanation for rent-seeking. This paper advances the understanding of subsidiary sources of power within the multinational corporation and the organizational determinants of rent-seeking, which is relevant to theory development as well as to managers.

Bargainers in an open-ended alternating-offer bargaining situation may perceive envy, a utility loss caused by receiving the smaller share that is modeled in some social preferences in addition to self-interest. I extend Rubinstein (1982)’s original solution of the bargaining problem for two self-interested bargainers to this strategic situation. Bargainers still reach agreement in the first period and their bargaining shares increase in the strength of their own envy.

Bargainers in an open-ended alternating-offer bargaining situation may perceive envy, a utility loss caused by receiving the smaller share that is modeled in some social preferences in addition to self-interest. I extend Rubinstein (1982)’s original solution of the bargaining problem for two self-interested bargainers to this strategic situation. Bargainers still reach agreement in the first period and their bargaining shares increase in the strength of their own envy.

Bargainers in an open-ended alternating-offer bargaining situation may perceive envy, a utility loss caused by receiving the smaller share that is modeled in some social preferences in addition to self-interest. I extend Rubinstein (1982)’s original solution of the bargaining problem for two self-interested bargainers to this strategic situation. Bargainers still reach agreement in the first period and their bargaining shares increase in the strength of their own envy.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are informationally opaque and bank dependent. In SME lending, banks largely rely on soft information, because the scale and scope of hard information are limited. We analyze whether and how hard and soft information affects the borrower's bargaining power vis-à-vis its bank. We use the fact that, for a given credit rating, certain borrowers obtain better loan terms than others to define measures of relative bargaining power. Using SME loan data from the USA and Germany, we find that more favorable soft information (management skills and character) increases borrower bargaining power. We also show that more favorable soft than hard information improves borrower bargaining power. The results are not driven by manipulation or statistical limitations of the credit ratings. Our study suggests that soft information represents an important and direct determinant of borrower bargaining power, affecting the outcomes of the loan contracting process.

The crisis in El Salvador has evolved through several distinct bargaining phases. Each phase has involved the interaction/conflict between various political power contenders, resulting in a reassessment of relative positions and a new phase. This has led to the present condition in which the major actors are realizing that the need for limited concessions and a peaceful settlement outweigh the potential gains and costs of continued conflict. This thesis is a study of the historical and cultural bases of bargaining powers in El Salvador, and how they have been utilized and transformed within each socio-political power faction in reaching the present situation, and what it portends for the future., http://archive.org/details/theroadfromlapal1094521536, Lieutenant, United States Navy, Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

We analyze the effect of liquidated damage rules in exclusive contracts that are negotiated in a sequential bargaining process between one seller and two buyers with endogenous outside options. We show that assumptions on the distribution of bargaining power influence the size of the payment of damages and determine which contractual party benefits from including liquidated damage rules. Furthermore, we show that the effect of the payment of damages on the efficiency of the consummated deals depends on the possibility to sign more than one contract. Only if this is not possible, damage rules may prevent the breaking and entering of contracts and thus lead to inefficient deals in the market of corporate control, or allow for ‘naked’ exclusion in the context of supplier contracts with externalities.

The early state came into existence as the necessary result of the innovation of metal tools under the condition that the selfish motives of preceding communities' chieftains for making the transaction of external trade more profitable by resorting to a military force, the net-benefit of whose use could be sure to be increased by innovating bronze weapons, later taken over by iron ones. Though the main propositions are based on the recent empirical studies of ancient history and evolution anthropology, they are subsumed under the categorical frameworks of the transcendental philosophy. To prove them, some expected hypotheses are inferred and deducted by the analysis of a two-stage game comprised of both the "network game with hierarchies" abstracting an irrigation economic community and the "two-stage bargaining game" modeling the process of bargaining in a foreign trade, both of which are modeled in accordance with the Kantian categorical frameworks

This paper examines headquarters allocation of resources to specific innovation transfer projects within the multinational enterprise between sending and receiving subsidiaries, focusing on the role of the subsidiary hosting the transfer. Resource allocation is of key strategic importance for the organization given that resources are limited in the multinational enterprise and that headquarters is the principal actor in distributing resources internally between competing innovation transfer projects. Findings from a dataset of 169 innovation transfer projects reveal that headquarters tend to favor established lines of innovation at the subsidiary level, as opposed to overall subsidiary operational relatedness for additional corporate resources. It is found that headquarters also tend to allocate resources to acquired subsidiaries' transfer projects to a higher degree than to those of greenfield ones. A curvilinear effect is found for subsidiary bargaining power which is initially positive and subsequently negative. The results highlight that certain subsidiary and innovation traits are determinants of headquarters resource allocation.

Smart Grid (SG) achieves bidirectional energy and information flow between the energy user and the utility grid, allowing energy users not only to consume energy, but also to generate the energy and share with the utility grid or with other energy consumers. This type of energy user is called the "prosumer". The sustainability of the SG energy sharing process depends on its participating prosumers. Hence the prosumer management schemes are crucial within the energy sharing field. However, the existing literature on SG energy sharing has shown little attention on prosumer participation and management. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First we critically analyze the prosumer management schemes used by existing approaches and identify the open research issues. Second, we introduce a novel concept to manage the prosumers in the form of goal oriented virtual prosumer-communities and we discuss the aspects of prosumer-community formation, growth and overall management. The main significance of this approach is that the prosumer-communities facilitate the prosumers with similar interest to join together and increase the quantity of energy to be auctioned to the SG and accordingly increase the bargaining power in the energy market. In addition, the prosumer communities can attain more sustainable energy sharing process in long-term.

This paper proposes a new methodology for evaluating the market imperfection and the bargaining power of each agent acting on a given market. The new methodology is an extension of DEA to the two frontiers case with respect to a privileged direction. A particular attention is paid to the treatment of bidirectional free disposability. This model is motivated by the analysis of survey data consisting of a set of contracts described in the space of price and attributes.

We provide a theory that is able to account for the observed comovement between the shift in intergenerational living arrangements from coresidence to non-coresidence and economic development. Our theory is consistent with the diminution in the status of the elderly documented by some sociologists. The results from our analysis show that, when technical progress is fast enough, the economy experiences a shift from stagnation to growth, there is a transition from coresidence to non-coresidence, and the social status of the elderly tends to deteriorate.