Fair Contract Research Articles

Treating Stakeholders Fairly

Entrepreneurs have a unique opportunity to cultivate the moral direction and development of their organizations, precisely because those organizations are new. Towards this end, we suggest that the Golden Rule is a simple, practical heuristic for entrepreneurs seeking to establish a fair social contract with their stakeholders. Because justice is an impor tant central moral criterion in organizations, we attempt to show theo retically that the Golden Rule passes critical tests of justice, as outlined in the work of John Rawls, and can also serve as a universally relevant hypernorm which have been argued to ground all social contracts. We introduce some important contextual findings from the entrepreneurship literature in order to ground our discussion and create realistic scenari os for entrepreneurs and their stakeholders. In so doing, we present an important potential limitation of the Golden Rule in practice and sug gest how entrepreneurs might reconcile it. Ultimately, we believe that if entrepreneurs were to reflect upon their particular situation, they would have good reasons to choose to employ the Golden Rule as a part of their overall strategy for moral and economic success.

US ‘Fair Contract’ Based Performance Management Models in a Danish Environment

US ‘Fair Contract’ Based Performance Management Models in a Danish Environment

HOSTILE TAKEOVER: ANTIUNIONISM AND THE NEOLIBERAL POLITICS OF URBAN SCHOOL REFORM IN NEW YORK

Much of the current discourse on public educational reform in the U.S. collapses into concerns over testing and/or school governance. Yet there are neoliberal policies being promoted in the guise of educational reform initiatives that are eroding teacher union gains, particularly in urban centers. This article focuses on a recent conflict between the United Federation of Teachers and Mayor Michael Bloomberg over a fair labor contract in New York City as an illustrative example of the antiteacher union trend taking place in urban education reform efforts in the U.S. The author calls for greater teacher union–community solidarity to recapture public education.

Publishers and Copyright: Rights Without Duties?

What does the public want of publishers? As book buyers, they want ready access to cheap and varied books in their language of choice. They don't want to be told a book is out of stock or in some language they can't read, and that they have to trudge round to some public library or antiquarian bookstore, or do their own surreptitious translation. As writers and users, they want fair access to the world's literature to have and to hold, to enjoy, to make fun of if they want, to build on it, and also to benefit and let others benefit from their endeavours. As authors, they want fair contract terms and a fair cut of the profits; for with no book, there is no profit. Publishers are in business to make money and nobody begrudges them a decent living. People do begrudge them an indecent living: i.e., if they use their power to keep prices high, and make access and reuse of books difficult. Copyright law should be a means (1) to encourage authors to produce and benefit, (2) to encourage publishers to publish and keep publishing and profiting, and (3) to give the public cheap prices and easy access. It does (1) - helping authors - modestly well; it does (2) - helping publishers - pretty well; whether or not it does (3) - giving the public what it wants - is more debatable. 1½ or 2 out of 3 is not good enough, especially since there's no point in helping authors and publishers if the public does not get what it needs and wants. We need to rethink copyright law. Copyright should not just be about copyright owners' rights; it should also be about their duties. Historically, it used to be so: copyright owners used to owe duties to the public. Over time copyright law has been whittled down until it reads as if owners have just rights and no duties. They may have come to believe that; but the public hasn't.

Lines of Credit and Consumption Smoothing

Lines of credit (LOCs) are widely used by consumers. Here, we try to understand the major motives of such prevalent use. We model LOCs as instruments of consumption smoothing across states and time periods. A fundamental feature of insurance contracts is that insurance premiums are payable at the beginning of every period and in all the states of the world. We find that consumers who are impatient can use LOCs as substitutes for full and fair insurance contracts. This provides an explanation for endogenously incomplete insurance markets. Even when consumers perfectly smooth out their consumption every period across all the states of the world with insurance contracts alone, LOCs may be useful for smoothing out consumption across time periods and for pure transactions purposes. Our model can also explain an apparently puzzling consumer behavior of simultaneously saving and carrying over LOC debt, because the observed LOC debt here could be due to the realization of the wealth risks for which consumers optimally hold less than fully covering insurance contracts.

Guarantees in With‐Profit and Unitized With‐Profit Life Insurance Contracts: Fair Valuation Problem in Presence of the Default Option

AbstractThe purpose of the article is to apply contingent claim theory to the valuation of the type of participating life insurance policies commonly sold in the UK. The article extends the techniques developed by Haberman, Ballotta, and Wang (2003) to allow for the default option. The default option is a feature of the design of these policies, which recognizes that the insurance company's liability is limited by the market value of the reference portfolio of assets underlying the policies that have been sold. The valuation approach is based on the classical contingent claim pricing “machinery,” underpinned by Monte Carlo techniques for the computation of fair values. The article addresses in particular the issue of a fair contract design for a complex type of participating policy and analyzes in detail the feasible set of policy design parameters that would lead to a fair contract and the trade‐offs between these parameters.

Practical Implementations of a Non-disclosure Fair Contract Signing Protocol

Contract signing is a practical application of the fair exchange of digital signatures. This application used to be realized by directly adopting the results of the fair exchange of signatures, which do not completely meet the requirements of the signing of a secret contract. The assistance of a trusted third party (TTP) and some cryptographic technology are required to allow two parties to exchange their signatures through the network in a fair manner because these two parties potentially may be dishonest or mistrust each other. This paper presents a subtle method of preventing the off-line TTP from gaining the exchanged signature and the corresponding message when a dispute occurs between the two parties wherein the TTP is required to take part in the exchange procedure. An advanced concept, the non-disclosure property, is proposed in order to prevent a party from misusing evidence left during the exchange process. Two approaches, namely the secret divide method and the convertible signature are demonstrated. To satisfy the properties of the traditional paper-based contract signing, the technique of multi-signature scheme is used in the proposed protocols.

Contradictions in portfolio careers: work design and client relations

PurposeThe paper aims to explore “Portfolio work”, an emerging form of flexible self‐employment, which has been identified as significant but under‐researched. This paper also seeks to explore the challenges and benefits of portfolio work from the perspective of individuals' experiences.Design/methodology/approachThe argument draws from a qualitative study involving 31 individuals practising portfolio work in two different occupational groups: nurses and adult educators. Participants were interviewed in semi‐structured in‐depth conversational interviews to explore their everyday experience and work history in portfolio work.FindingsTwo dimensions of portfolio work, work design and client‐relations, are found to generate experiences of both deep satisfaction and deep anxiety and stress. The paper argues that portfolio careers simultaneously embed both liberating and exploitative at dimensions for workers, which are at least partly related to their own conflicting desires for both contingency and stability. Further, portfolio work embeds labour that often remains unrecognized, even by the self‐employed individuals assuming responsibility for it.Practical implicationsPortfolio workers need to recognise and document their unpaid but necessary labour in work design and client relations that sustains their careers; portfolio workers may need to educate clients about the nature of portfolio work; and employers who contract to portfolio workers must take more responsibility for negotiating fair contracts that are sensitive to overwork and unfair time pressures, and that anticipate and compensate contractors.Originality/valueThese findings challenge existing conceptions of portfolio work aseitherexploitativeorliberating, and expose contradictions embedded in both the conditions of the work and individuals' expectations and attitudes towards it.

Modelling and Valuation of Guarantees in With-Profit and Unitised With Profit Life Insurance Contracts

The purpose of this paper is to develop suitable valuation techniques for the broad category of participating life insurance policies. The nature of the liability implied by these contracts allows treating them as options written on the reference portfolio backing the policy. Consequently, our valuation approach is based on the classical contingent claim theory; in particular, Monte Carlo techniques are used to compute the values of the so called 'policy reserve', that is the guaranteed payoff and the reversionary bonus, and the terminal bonus. The numerical results obtained are used to investigate the sensitivity of the policy reserve and the terminal bonus to changes in the model parameters. The paper also addresses the issue of a fair contract design for with-profit life insurance policies. Bearing in mind that the parameters characterizing the financial market are in general not under the control of the life insurance offce, the implemented valuation procedure is used to determine the feasible set of design parameters that would lead to a fair contract.

Principles of Early Stopping of Randomized Trials for Efficacy: A Critique of Equipoise and an Alternative Nonexploitation Ethical Framework

Recent controversial decisions to terminate several large clinical trials have called attention to the need for developing a sound ethical framework to determine when trials should be stopped in light of emerging efficacy data. Currently, the fundamental rationale for stopping trials early is based on the principle that equipoise has been disturbed. We present an analysis of the ethical and practical problems with the "equipoise disturbed" position and describe an alternative ethical framework based on the principle of nonexploitation. This framework acknowledges the need for balancing the dual ethical obligations of clinical research, the protection of human subjects and the generation of new medical knowledge. Based on this framework, we put forward a proposal to make early stopping guidelines more stringent under specified conditions. The temporary withholding of apparent benefits in certain circumstances is justified by achieving a fair contract with the research participants, one that protects them from undue harm and exploitation while reducing the many uncertainties surrounding new investigational treatments that arise when trials are stopped prematurely.

Contributions of the Science of Chaos to Evolution of Law

In this issue, there are an assortment of articles for our readership—a book review, two forum articles, and two scholarly papers. Hazel Beh reviews one of the classic books of our time— Legal aspects of law in architecture, engineering, and construction by Justin Sweet and Marc Schneier, now in its 7th edition. Hazel brings out that this book is not only a “national book” and textbook as the authors humbly mention but a permanent, longterm reference book “that will become a trusted, well-worn and dog-eared companion in the library of lawyers, architects, engineers and contractors long after graduation.” The text is found to be impressive in its thoroughness and comprehensiveness. In my opinion, this book is a historical contribution to construction law. We then have a forum article by none other than Justin Sweet himself, who gives advice on how engineers should approach and manage matters of law. Sweet asserts that postcompletion claims are a common feature of the contracting landscape these days, and the engineer in a design team who does not take time to familiarize himself with legal matters may find himself swept off his feet. Given that the legal training of engineers is extremely limited, if not deficient, engineers have a lot to learn about the proper applications of law. Sweet’s article is followed by Evan Caplicki’s, who shows how design/builders may not make unilateral changes to contract agreements. While we generally appreciate that owners carry responsibility for changing designs after construction has started, so it is with contractors and design/builders, as well. The law applies equally in a fair and equitable contract to both parties. Unilateral changes to contracts create disorder and disturbance. Again, it is evident that our engineers and builders fail to recognize apparently simple tenets and principles of law. In some way, Evan’s article brings order and discipline to the issue and helps to spread the understanding of common contracting law. This brings me to an important issue facing judges, lawyers, and engineers—that of order versus disorder. Inasmuch as scientists seek to fathom chaos and disorder in the universe, lawyers and judges seek to bring order to a society, in contrast to letting it seep into uncontrolled disorder. A civilization needs some semblance of order to survive. There is no doubt, as we look around ourselves, that the implementation of law has been widespread and precise over the decades. To think that women did not have franchise in the United States till the 20th century, and women in Kuwait earned their franchise only this year and it was only through the application of law and brave sheriffs that the wild West was tamed in the 19th century. These are examples in a mountain of evidence that legal applications in this world seek more and more to be fair to people in a nondiscriminatory way. Having said that, we also realize that law is not perfect by any means, which is strikingly similar to the fact that no known natu-

Seeking a Single Policy for Contractual Fairness to Consumers: A Comparison of U.S. and E.U. and E.U. Efforts

The United States and the European Union both have made substantial progress toward harmonizing contractual unfairness law for consumers within their borders. To a large degree, the policies of these two largest consumer markets in the world are similar, but consumers should beware that some significant differences remain. Furthermore, differences in interpretation among member states could lead to differences within the E.U.

Annual meeting keynote address: Animal agriculture and emerging social ethics for animals.

Businesses and professions must stay in accord with social ethics, or risk losing their autonomy. A major social ethical issue that has emerged in the past three decades is the treatment of animals in various areas of human use. This point can be illustrated with numerous examples across all areas of animal use. These examples reflect society's moral concern having outgrown the traditional ethic of animal cruelty that began in biblical times and is encoded in the laws of all civilized societies. There are five major reasons for this new social concern, most importantly, the replacement of husbandry-based agriculture with industrial agriculture. This loss of husbandry to industry has threatened the traditional fair contract between humans and animals, and resulted in significant amounts of animal suffering arising on four different fronts. Because such suffering is not occasioned by cruelty, a new ethic for animals was required to express social concerns. Since ethics proceed from preexisting ethics rather than ex nihilo, society has looked to its ethic for humans, appropriately modified, to find moral categories applicable to animals. This concept of legally encoded rights for animals has emerged as a plausible vehicle for reform. The meaning of this ethical movement for animal agriculture is examined. Animal agriculture should explore ways to replace the animal husbandry lost to industrialization.

Report on the Symposium ‘Information Rights and Obligations – The Impact on Party Autonomy and Contractual Fairness’, University of Münster, 21-22 November 2003.

Report on the Symposium ‘Information Rights and Obligations – The Impact on Party Autonomy and Contractual Fairness’, University of Münster, 21-22 November 2003.

The New Economy and the Ethics of Economic Interactions

The author demonstrates that the rules of economic interactions in the global network economy undergo a transformation but its direction does not follow the course of concluding fair, cooperative and consensual agreements or trust-based relationship between the parties as the contractarian or the communitarian advocates of the new economy imagined. He argues that the new rules of economic interactions in the global network economy are neither based on communitarian virtue of trust, nor on the fair contracts between the equal, self-interested and informed parties. The new rules of economic interactions represent some kind of a “private legislation” by the corporations which usually interfere with the interests and general welfare of their clients, customers or consumers.

What Is the Use of Job Descriptions?

The political and functional utility of job descriptions for delimiting and controlling the labor process, rather than detailing the work people do, obscures the structural causes of poor work conditions. This essay focuses attention on job descriptions as the basis for fair contracts and equitable work relations in the healthcare industry. To understand the work process, more attention must be given to the structural conditions in the workplace that legitimize unequal power relations through job descriptions.

Life Insurance Liabilities at Market Value: An Analysis of Insolvency Risk, Bonus Policy, and Regulatory Intervention Rules in a Barrier Option Framework

AbstractThis article takes a contingent claim approach to the market valuation of equity and liabilities in life insurance companies. A model is presented that explicitly takes into account the following: (i) the holders of life insurance contracts (LICs) have the first claim on the company's assets, whereas equity holders have limited liability; (ii) interest rate guarantees are common elements of LICs; and (iii) LICs according to the so‐called contribution principle are entitled to receive a fair share of any investment surplus. Furthermore, a regulatory mechanism in the form of an intervention rule is built into the model. This mechanism is shown to significantly reduce the insolvency risk of the issued contracts, and it implies that the various claims on the company's assets become more exotic and obtain barrier option properties. Closed valuation formulas are nevertheless derived. Finally, some representative numerical examples illustrate how the model can be used to establish the set of initially fair contracts and to determine the market values of contracts after their inception.

Minimum Rate of Return Guarantees: The Danish Case

We analyze minimum rate of return guarantees for life-insurance (investment) contracts and pension plans with a smooth surplus distribution mechanism. We specifically model the smoothing mechanism used by most Danish life-insurance companies and pension funds. The annual distribution of bonus will be based on this smoothing mechanism after taking the minimum rate of return guarantee into account. In addition, based on the contribution method the customer will receive a final (non-negative) undistributed surplus when the contract matures. We consider two different methods that the company can use to collect payment for issuing these minimum rate of return guarantee contracts: the direct method where the company gets a fixed (percentage) fee of the customer's savings each year, e.g. 0.5% in Denmark, and the indirect method where the company gets a share of the distributed surplus. In both cases we analyze how to set the terms of the contract in order to have a fair contract between an individual customer and the company. Having analyzed the one-customer case, we turn to analyzing the case with two customers. We consider the consequences of pooling the undistributed surplus over two inhomogeneous customers. This implies setting up different mechanisms for distributing final bonus (undistributed surplus) between the customers.

Fair Pricing of Life Insurance Participating Policies with a Minimum Interest Rate Guaranteed

AbstractIn this paper we analyse, in a contingent-claims framework, one of the most common life insurance policies sold in Italy during the last two decades. The policy, of the endowment type, is initially priced as a standard one, given a mortality table and a technical interest rate. Subsequently, at the end of each policy year, the insurance company grants a bonus, which is credited to the mathematical reserve and depends on the performance of a special investment portfolio. More precisely, this bonus is determined in such a way that the total interest rate credited to the insured equals a given percentage (participation level) of the annual return on the reference portfolio and anyway does not fall below the technical rate (minimum interest rate guaranteed, henceforth). Moreover, if the contract is paid by periodical premiums, it is usually stated that the annual premium is adjusted at the same rate of the bonus, and thus the benefit is also adjusted in the same measure. In such policy the variables controlled by the insurance company (control-variables, henceforth) are the technical rate, the participation level and, in some sense, the riskiness of the reference portfolio measured by its volatility. However, as it is intuitive, not all sets of values for these variables give rise to a fair contract, i.e. to a contract priced consistently with the usual assumptions on financial markets and, in particular, with no-arbitrage. We derive then necessary and sufficient conditions under which each control-variable is determined by a fair pricing of the contract, given the remaining two ones.

Environmental ethics today

Preface Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION What Is Environmental Ethics? Enviromental Ethics Under Attack Disturbing Trends in Human Health Future Generations World Trade Population Growth and Obligations to the World's Poor Obligations to Nonhumans Preview of Chapters PART I: ANTHROPOCENTRISM 1. OVERPOPULATION, MARKETS, AND HUMAN RIGHTS Overpopulation and Scarcity What Are Free Markets? Cornucopian Economics The Tragedy of the Commons Public Goods, Externalities, and Government Coercion Trading Pollution Permits A Market Approach to Overpopulation Lifeboat Ethics Psychological Egoism and the Possibility of Sharing Human Rights 2. ENERGY, ECONOMICS, AND FUTURE GENERATIONS Global Warming and Future Generations Human Rights and the Futurity Problem Fair Contracts and Future Generations Environmental Tradeoffs and Cost-Benefit Analysis CBA and Increasing Scarcity CBA and Political Equality CBA and Future Generations 3. COMPETING HUMAN-CENTERED VALUES Environmental Hazards in the Third World How Much Money Is a Human Life Worth? Should Prostitution Be Legalized? Non-economic vs. Economic Anthropocentrism Aesthetic Values National Heritage Transformative Values and Future Generations Moral Pluralism Moral Relativism PART II: NONANTHROPOCENTRISM 4. ANIMAL LIBERATION AND UTILITARIANISM Cruelty to Animals Utilitarianism Speciesism Animal Husbandry Vegetarianism Rodeos and Bullfights The Replacement Argument Against Hedonism Preference Utilitarianism 5. ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MEDICAL RESEARCH Introduction The Nature of Rights Immortal Souls and Rights Language, Abstract Thinking, and Rights Moral Personality and Rights Contracts and Rights An Animal's Right to Life The Benefits of Experiments on Animals Animal Rights vs. Animal Research Limited Animal Rights in Reflective Equilibrium Animal Research in Reflective Equilibrium 6. SPECIES DIVERSITY AND GAIA Massive Extinction of Species Causes of Extinction Why Do We Protect Endangered Species? Animal Rights vs. Species Preservation Species as Individual Living Things The Gaia Hypothesis From Science to Metaphor Metaphors and Moral Implications Mechanical and Organic Metaphors for Nature 7. THE LAND ETHIC Hunting Animals to Preserve Ecosystems The Nature of Ecosystems Does Hunting Help or Hurt Ecosystems? Why Value Ecosystems? Conflicting Moral Commitments Tigers and Elephants in the Third World PART III: ENVIRONMENTAL SYNERGISM 8. HUMAN RIGHTS, AGRICULTURE, AND BIODIVERSITY Poverty, Efficiency, and Human Rights Environmental Synergism The Benefits of High-tech Agriculture Specialization Leads to Preoccupation with Money Fouling Our Own Nest Sustainability Problems The Green Revolution Biodiversity and Human Welfare Anthropocentrism or Synergism? 9. ECOFEMINISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE From Feminism to Ecogeminism Women as Subordinate Indigenous People as Subordinate Nature as Subordinate Women and Nature Subordination of Minorities Encourages Pollution Subordination of Women, Environmental Degradation, and Overpopulation Subordination of Native Peoples Reduces Biodiversity 10. RELIGION AND NATURE Should People Play God? The Master Interpretation of Christianity Hermeneutics and the Constitution Hermeneutics and the Bible Narratives, Grand Narratives, and Worldviews Naess' Deep Ecology Native American Religions The Stewardship Interpretation of Christianity The Citizenship Interpretation of Christianity PART IV: APPLICATIONS 11. PERSONAL CHOICES, CONSUMERISM, AND HUMAN NATURE Consumerism vs. Synergism Justifications of Economic Growth High Consumption and Human Welfare Marketing Discontent Extrinsic Motivations and Their Limits Some Instrinsic Motivations Looking for Love Your Money or Your Life 12. PUBLIC POLICIES, EFFICIENCY, AND GLOBALIZATION The Need for Collective Action Subsidizing Inefficiency More Efficient Transportation Agricultural Politics Corporate Welfare and Campaign Finance Reform The Promise of Globalization Globalization and Human Misery The World Trade Organization, Environmental Protection, and Democracy Each chapter ends with a section on Judgment Calls FINAL REFLECTIONS-IS OPTIMISM JUSTIFIED? Conflicting Trends Fragmenting Societies We Are the World Value Nature and Limit Human Power GLOSSARY