Organizations & Markets

For managers, intercultural effectiveness requires forging close working relationships with people from different cultural backgrounds (Black, Mendenhall, & Oddou, 1991). Recent research with executives has found that higher cultural metacognition is associated with affective closeness and creative collaboration in intercultural relationships (Chua, Morris, & Mor, & 2012). However, little is known about the social cognitive mechanisms that facilitate the performance of individuals who score high on cultural metacognition.

People habitually use round prices as first offers in negotiations. We test whether the specificity with which a first offer is expressed has appreciable effects on first-offer recipients' perceptions and strategic choices. Studies 1a & b establish that first-offer recipients make greater counteroffer adjustments to round versus precise offers. Study 2 demonstrates this phenomenon in an interactive, strategic exchange.

An interview with Gilles Fontaine, deputy chief executive officer (CEO) of IDATE, and economics professor Eli Noam of Columbia Business School is presented. When asked to define cord-cutting from a U.S. or European perspective, Noam says it refers to the dropping by consumers of expensive cable television (TV) subscriptions in exchange for online TV access. Fontaine explains why cord-cutting is not happening in Europe. Noam discusses his outlook for the triple-play model of cable firms.

Eurozone members are supposedly constrained by the fiscal caps of the Stability and Growth Pact. Yet ever since the birth of the euro, members have postponed painful adjustment. Wishful thinking has played an important role in this failure. We find that governments' forecasts are biased in the optimistic direction, especially during booms. Eurozone governments are especially over-optimistic when the budget deficit is over the 3 % of GDP ceiling at the time the forecasts are made. Those exceeding this cap systematically but falsely forecast a rapid future improvement.

The financial crisis that erupted in late 2007 has resurfaced debates about the role of accounting and external financial reporting by financial institutions in helping detect or mask systemic risks and in exacerbating or mitigating such risks. The debate has largely focused on the role of fair value accounting, securitization and special purpose entities, off-balance sheet reporting and pro-cyclicality. We consider these and other issues using a single company's published accounts.

Past work has argued that comparison mindsets affect stereotyping: perceivers in a difference mindset stereotype less than those in a similarity mindset, contrasting their judgments of an individual away from their representation of the group. Here, we argue that the self can also act as a reference point, implying that the impact of comparison mindsets depends on what is focal.

In smart grids the formerly separated worlds of energy and telecommunication converge to an interactive and automated energy supply system. Driven by social, legal, and economic pressures, energy systems around the globe are updated with information and communication technology. These investments aim at enhancing energy efficiency, securing affordable energy supply, and mitigate climate change.

There is a conventional wisdom in economics that public debt can serve as a substitute for private credit if private borrowing is limited. The purpose of this paper is to show that, while a government could in principle use such a policy to fully relax borrowing limits, this is not generally optimal. In our economy, agents invest in a short term asset, a long term asset, and government bonds. Agents are subject to idiosyncratic liquidity shocks prior to the maturity of the long term asset. We show that a high public debt policy fully relaxes private borrowing limits and is suboptimal.