Bidding War Research Articles

Artists and the Rite of Passage North to the Temperate Zone

For an aspiring Australian artist, a sojourn north to the world’s large cultural centres has become a rite of passage and to some extent a requirement to achieve recognition both abroad and at home. Many of Australia’s most recognised artists have spent some or a considerable amount of time abroad, such as musician Peter Sculthorpe, painter Arthur Streeton and contemporary indigenous photographer Tracy Moffatt. Despite the frequency of this rite of passage, Australian art continues to struggle to achieve significant international recognition. This article considers the influence of this rite of passage for Australian artists in the context of a rapidly changing global art world, which is increasingly subject to changing production and consumption patterns. It does so in the context of what Bourdieu describes as a cultural field and which involves a complex arrangement of horizontal and vertical power relationships. The paper also considers the extent to which this rite of passage is relevant in the second decade of the 21st century and for a nation which, although having strong historical ties to Britain in particular, is geographically closer to Asia and in a time of the Asian century.

Food security implications of staple food substitution in Sahelian West Africa

Low-income households in Sahelian West Africa face multiple shocks that risk compressing their already-low food consumption levels. This paper develops a multi-market simulation model to evaluate the impact of common production and world-price shocks on food consumption of vulnerable groups in Sahelian West Africa. Empirical analysis confirms that poor households bear the brunt of ensuing consumption risks, particularly in closed markets, where trade barriers restrict imports, and the poor find themselves in a bidding war with richer consumers for limited food supplies. In the absence of trade, a drought that reduces domestic rainfed cereal production by 20% would compress already low calorie consumption of the rural poor by as much as 15%, four times as much as other household groups. Conversely, a 50% spike in world rice prices hits the urban poor hardest, compressing calorie consumption by up to 8%.Policy responses need to focus on two basic mechanisms that can help to moderate this pressure – consumer substitution among staple foods and trade. Immediately south of the Sahel, coastal West African countries enjoy higher rainfall, dual rainy seasons, more stable staple food production based on root crops (cassava and yams) as well as frequent double cropping of maize.Our simulation results suggest that regional trade in maize, yams and cassava-based prepared foods like gari and attieké could fill over one-third of the consumption shortfall resulting from a major drought in the Sahel. Increasing substitutability across starchy staples, for example through expansion of maize, cassava and sorghum-based convenience foods, would further moderate consumption pressure by expanding the array of food alternatives and hence supply responses available during periods of stress.

Heineken's Acquisition of Asia Pacific Breweries: Accounting for Business Combinations and Changes in Ownership Interests

ABSTRACT On July 20, 2012, Heineken, a Dutch brewery offered S$5.125 billion (Singapore dollars; approximately US$4.1 billion) to buy Asia Pacific Breweries Ltd (APB; formerly, Malayan Breweries Limited) from its Singapore-based joint venture partner, Fraser and Neave, Limited. (F&N). At that point, Heineken and F&N had joint control over APB through the joint venture vehicle Asia Pacific Investments Pte Ltd (APIPL). Brewery business under the joint arrangement had moved on quite predictably from the time APB was formed in 1931. However, the calm changed to high drama when Thai Beverage, owned by one of Thailand's tycoons, made a bid for F&N and APB. Heineken was quick to respond by aggressively buying shares of APB, leading to a large control premium being paid in the final offer price. The bidding war was largely motivated by the Dutch and Thai beer giants, each wanting to own the iconic Tiger beer brand that was owned by APB and thus take control of APB's strong market share in the fast-growing market of Asia. The Heineken bid for APB presents an interesting case study regarding the motivations for acquisitions, the nature of control, and accounting for acquisitions. The case also presents rich issues in accounting for changes in ownership interests with and without gain of control.

Underpricing Regimes in Housing Markets

I study a staggered policy change intended to reduce bidding wars for homes by increasing their list price and eliminating underpricing. Using a novel and large micro data set and a difference-in-difference methodology, I find that increasing the list price reduces the buyer arrival rates in all stages of the search process – online, at the open houses, and during bidding – and increases the probability of a failed sale. I find a strong null effect on the sales price which can be bounded to a tight interval around zero. I find no effect on the sales effort exerted by real estate agents, nor on time-on-market. To explain these findings, I develop a search model where a non-committing list price is set optimally by real estate agents and where the list price directs buyers’ search. The model is consistent with the empirical results if home buyers follow a simple rule of thumb, but not when they act fully rationally.

Public Opinion Distribution and Party Competition in US Trade Policy

AbstractMass public opinion has generally been presumed to have little or no impact on American trade policy. I argue against this presumption. I assert that mass public opinion significantly affects US trade policy by shaping the way the two parties compete over that trade policy. When public opinion is unbalanced, the competition between the parties is likely to resemble a bidding war. When public opinion is balanced but split in a partisan manner the competition is likely to descend into Manichean conflict. When public opinion is balanced but split in a non‐partisan manner, the competition is likely to be characterised by political actors seeking to maintain the support of their core constituencies. To examine this relationship, I investigate three cases: the push to punish China over Tiananmen Square in 1989–90, the ratification of NAFTA in 1992–93 and the process through which President Bush was granted trade promotion authority in 2001–02.

The first civil right: how liberals built prison America

List of Figures and Illustrations List of Tables Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. The First Civil Right: Protection from Lawless Racial Violence 2. Freedom from Fear: White Violence, Black Criminality, _ and the Ideological Fight for Law-and-Order 3. Policing the Great Society: Modernizing Law Enforcemen t and Rehabilitating Criminal Sentencing 4. The Era of Big Punishment: Mandatory Minimums, Communi ty Policing, and Death Penalty Bidding Wars 5.The Last Civil Right: Freedom from State-Sanctioned Racial Violence Appendix Tables Abbreviations in Notes Notes Index

Changing cartographies of health in a globalizing world

Anthropologists have described, often in eloquent detail, local destruction of opportunities to lead a healthy life (the social determinants of health) attendant on the macroscale economic processes conveniently described as ‘globalization’. Recent reorganizations of production and finance redraw maps both literal and metaphorical of the inequalities that affect health. I argue that it is essential to focus attention on the common origins of such local destructions in new modalities and power structures of global capitalism, and in doing so to focus on what William Robinson has described as a shift from ‘territorial’ to ‘social cartographies’. These include a number of cross-border ‘emerging markets’ or bidding wars that are relevant to health and its social determinants. The article sets out three propositions about how the social science of health disparities should respond to globalization, emphasizing possibilities for research on globalization and health that draw on the complementary perspectives of anthropology and political economy.

Something New or More of the Same in the Bidding Wars for Big Business?

AbstractThe economic downturn that began in 2007–2008 was blamed by some commentators on neoliberalism and pro‐business policies. So we might expect U.S. state and local governments to have responded with policy changes affecting their neoliberal economic development strategies. Based on this assumption, this paper is a theoretically informed examination of recent high‐profile bidding wars in Wisconsin. The highest profile example was in 2009 when General Motors chose a plant in Michigan over Wisconsin and Tennessee for a new small car line. Wisconsin's Commerce Secretary characterized Michigan's $1.2 billion incentive offer as “absolutely crazy” (compared with his state's $409 million offer!). My main research question is how have Wisconsin state and local governments adjusted their neoliberal economic development efforts in these bidding wars given the recent economic downturn and weak economy? This paper uses the largest incentive offers in Wisconsin during the tenure of the current and previous state governors within the context of ten themes drawn from the literature to problematize the neoliberal policy of bidding for big business. It concludes by considering the implications for economic development policies.

Mobile's millimeter-wave makeover

People in real estate joke that there are only three things that matter in the business of buying and selling property: location, location, location. The same could be said for radio spectrum. The frequencies used for cellular communications have acquired the status of waterfront lots-highly coveted and woefully scarce. And like beach-home buyers in a bidding war, mobile operators must constantly jockey for these prime parcels, sometimes shelling out as much as tens of billions of dollars for just a small sliver of the electromagnetic pie.

Furiously Franchised: Clueless , Convergence Culture, and the Female-Focused Franchise

Furiously Franchised: Clueless, Convergence Culture, and the Female-Focused Franchise Kyra Hunting (bio) In the summer of 1995 a low-budget comedy that Paramount picked up after Fox put it in turnaround became, in lead character Cher’s parlance, the “totally prominent” sleeper hit of the season.1 Amy Heckerling’s Clueless became a nearly instant teen classic, influencing the language, fashion, and style of a generation and challenging the popular opinion that a film whose core audience was teen girls wasn’t financially lucrative. While Heckerling’s film has received limited academic attention, primarily as an adaptation of Emma, the significance of Clueless extends beyond its cinematic iteration. The success of the film became the foundation for a complete multimedia brand, including a television show, a video game, and twenty-one novels. Heckerling and Paramount Pictures (purchased by Viacom) turned the teen flick into a franchise targeted at tween and teen girls as a niche market. Clueless has been credited by industry observer Isabel Walcott for starting the wave of teen films in the late 1990s by having “opened people’s eyes to the fact that if they could get teenage girls to come to a movie, they could make a killing,” although Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) usually receives credit for the industry trend.2 Similarly, while Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB, 1997–2001; UPN, 2001–2003) and Dawson’s Creek (WB, 1998–2003) have been discussed as shaping the niche market for television targeted at teen girls and innovating convergence media for that market, they were in fact predated by the Clueless television show (ABC, 1996–1997; UPN 1997–1999).3 [End Page 145] Tracing the history of the film Clueless reveals an extensive franchise that exemplifies media convergence centered on girls. This history destabilizes media myths that discursively posit the franchise as masculine or frame the female-driven franchise as a novel phenomenon. A perusal of the trade press reveals that Hollywood “discovers” that girls and women can support a media franchise fairly frequently. The achievements of Sex and the City (HBO, 1998–2004) and Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008; Chris Weitz, 2009; David Slade, 2010; Bill Condon, 2011, 2012) were met with ebullient press accounts touting the surprise of these franchises’ financial success. Summit ended up with Twilight because larger studios passed on it, largely because of the conventional wisdom that “female-driven properties aren’t always the safest bet.”4 A common narrative is that Sex and the City, Twilight, and High School Musical (Kenny Ortega, 2006) changed this attitude, as “films playing mainly to women . . . have gradually been seeping into Hollywood’s consciousness.”5 The acknowledgment of these female-centered franchises is important but all too familiar. After Clueless’s success a number of films targeting this audience followed, leading the Guardian to argue that “Hollywood has re-acquainted itself with the young female audience,” a process that apparently required repeating ten years later.6 When Clueless became a television show, it, along with Sabrina the Teenage Witch (ABC, 1996–2000; WB, 2000–2003), represented the crest of a similar televisual wave.7 Picked up by ABC after a bidding war, Clueless was paired with Sabrina to round out its family-oriented TGIF programming block and to attract young female viewers.8 A year later, Clueless was moved to parent company Viacom’s fledging UPN network to attract a similar audience. Clueless staked out an audience for its multimedia franchise that would later define the WB with programs like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which the Hollywood Reporter originally described as “sort of ‘Clueless’ meets ‘Dracula’”; Dawson’s Creek; and Felicity (WB, 1998–2002).9 Clueless can be seen not only as the start of a wave of 1990s teen films and an early iteration of niche teen programming but also as a strong example of convergence culture through its multimedia franchise, driven by the conglomeration that characterized the mid-1990s. The movie Clueless had originally been conceived as a television show called No Worries, when Fox asked Amy Heckerling to develop a television show about high school focused on the popular kids.10 Although Fox ultimately abandoned the project, in part because it desired a...

The Formation, Institutionalization and Consolidation of the LTTE: Religious Practices, Intra-Tamil Divisions and a Violent Nationalist Ideology

Utilizing the case of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, I make a three-part explanation for the critical role the religious organization, ideological fitness, and state capacity played in the formation, institutionalization and consolidation of the LTTE in the Tamil ethnic mobilization process. Firstly, I show how the Tamil religious re-awakening during the British colonial period led to religious practices which consolidated the social dominance of the Vellalar caste and blocked the upward economic, social and political mobility of the other Tamil castes, thus enabling the emergence of lower-caste groups such as the LTTE in the 1970s. Secondly, I demonstrate that the LTTE's ideology privileged its nationalist goals over Marxist doctrinal purity because of the LTTE's commitment to improved intra-Tamil caste equality; an ideological approach which only increased the LTTE's legitimacy within the Tamil community and solidified its institutionalization as a viable Tamil group. Finally, I demonstrate how the intense intra-Sinhalese elite-level bidding wars, driven by the partisan competition for power among the dominant Sinhalese parties of the early 1980s, reduced the autonomy and capacity of the Sri Lankan state and enabled the consolidation of the LTTE as the leader of the Tamil ethnic mobilization drive.

The Violent Consequences of the Nation

Many scholars assume that nationalism is inherently aggressive without systematically exploring the relationship between nationalism and interstate war initiation. Thus, many questions are unanswered. Does nationalism increase the risk of war and if so, how? Which types of nationalism are most likely to trigger warfare? The author argues that nationalist persuasion campaigns produce several mechanisms that encourage conflict. Nationalism provokes “national enemies” and their foreign allies, generates biased strategic assumptions, creates domestic interest groups that favor war, permits the suppression of opposition groups, and promotes “nationalist bidding wars.” When these processes exist, nationalism should increase the probability of war initiation. But, different forms of nationalism may not have similar effects. Using original data on the existence and type of state-level nationalism from 1816 to 1997, the author finds that nationalism significantly increases the probability of interstate war initiation. However, not all forms of nationalism are created equal in this regard.

Commitment Problems or Bidding Wars? Rebel Fragmentation as Peace Building

After highly fragmented civil wars, order is often secured through the selective co-optation of rebel field commanders and atomized insurgents. This paper presents a formal model of civil war settlement as a coalition formation game between various regime and rebel factions. This approach emphasizes the ability of installed civilian rulers to lure warlords into the state based on promises of future wealth, then use divide-and-rule tactics to pit different warlord factions against one another. Quantitative and qualitative data from Tajikistan, including an original data set of warlord incorporation and regime purges during wartime reconstruction, are used to evaluate the model.

JOB SEARCH WITH BIDDER MEMORIES*

This article revisits the no-recall assumption in job search models with take-it-or-leave-it offers. Workers who can recall previously encountered potential employers in order to engage them in Bertrand bidding have a distinct advantage over workers without such attachments. Firms account for this difference when hiring a worker. When a worker first meets a firm, the firm offers the worker a sufficient share of the match rents to avoid a bidding war in the future. The pair share the gains to trade. In this case, the Diamond paradox no longer holds.

Tata Steel: Financing the Corus Acquisition

Tata Steel announced the acquisition of Corus group in October 2006. After a prolonged bidding war with the Brazilian steelmaker CSN, Tata Steel purchased Corus group for about $13b. The case considers the financing package put together by Tata Steel to fund the Corus acquisition. Students are asked to value the different securities offered and evaluate the financing package. This case can be used in a Corporate Finance course in a module on Financing or in a Mergers and Acquisitions course or in a Financial Instruments and Markets course. The case has the following objectives: 1. To introduce students to the characteristics of preferred stocks and convertible instruments. 2. To consider the factors relevant to the selection of different types of securities in financing. 3. To introduce concepts like dilution, leverage, debt capacity. 4. To introduce credit ratings. 5. To introduce valuation of contingent claims. 6. To build skills in designing and implementing an integrated acquisition and financing strategy. Instructors teaching this case could consider teaching Tata Steel (A): The Bid for Corus case first although these cases can be taught independently.

Repeated Auctions with Impatient Bidders and Externalities

This article studies collusion in repeated auctions both among patient and among impatient bidders when the outside option of the participation constraint is endogenous due to negative externalities. We find that (i) there are no bidding wars along the equilibrium path both for patient and for impatient bidders; compared to the optimal collusive bidding scheme for patient bidders, that for impatient bidders involves (ii) a lower threshold type above which bidding starts when externalities are small or (iii) more frequent jumps in a bidding scheme when externalities are large. The results carry an empirical implication that we should observe either a higher probability of sales or a higher number of bid levels in auctions that are repeatedly offered in unstable markets than those offered in stable markets.

Bidding for Investment Projects: Smart Public Policy or Corporate Welfare?

Even before the bailouts of GM and Chrysler in 2009, several governments in Canada have shown an in¬creased willingness to subsidize private investment projects, especially in the manufacturing sector, to the dismay of tax conservatives. I evaluate under what circumstances these government subsidies make sense, paying particular attention to the efforts of the Ontario and federal governments to attract new investments in the automobile sector. I show what governments should expect to pay when they join a bidding war and derive the expected welfare gain. The analysis suggests that, in contrast with the public debate and many previous studies, it is not the absolute size of benefits that matters, but the relative private attractiveness for the investing firm and the relative size of externalities in each location.

Bidding for Investment Projects: Smart Public Policy or Corporate Welfare?

Even before the bailouts of GM and Chrysler in 2009, several governments in Canada have shown an increased willingness to subsidize private investment projects, especially in the manufacturing sector, to the dismay of tax conservatives. I evaluate under what circumstances these government subsidies make sense, paying particular attention to the efforts of the Ontario and federal governments to attract new investments in the automobile sector. I show what governments should expect to pay when they join a bidding war and derive the expected welfare gain. The analysis suggests that, in contrast with the public debate and many previous studies, it is not the absolute size of benefits that matters, but the relative private attractiveness for the investing firm and the relative size of externalities in each location.

Bidding for brains: Intellectual property rights and the international migration of knowledge workers

We introduce international mobility of knowledge workers into a model of Nash equilibrium IPR policy choice among countries. We show that governments have incentives to use IPRs in a bidding war for global talent, resulting in Nash equilibrium IPRs that can be too high, rather than too low, from a global welfare perspective. These incentives become stronger as developing countries grow in size and wealth, thus allowing them to prevent the ‘poaching’ of their ‘brains’ by larger, wealthier markets.

Bidding for Brains: Intellectual Property Rights and the International Migration of Knowledge Workers

We introduce international mobility of knowledge workers into a model of Nash equilibrium IPR policy choice among countries. We show that governments have incentives to use IPRs in a bidding war for global talent, resulting in Nash equilibrium IPRs that can be too high, rather than too low, from a global welfare perspective. These incentives become stronger as developing countries grow in size and wealth, thus allowing them to prevent the 'poaching' of their 'brains' by larger, wealthier markets.