Using the findings of a five-year ethnographic study, this thesis examines the contractual relationships that prevail in low-technology moderately competitive industries characteristic of the contemporary Ukrainian economy. The research reports on how contracts are enforced and how the stability of business relationships is ensured in Ukraine. The established view of many scholars that business efficiency is held back in most post-Soviet economies by frequent contractual violations and dysfunctional courts is not entirely supported by the research underpinning this thesis: in Ukraine, contract enforcement is generally effective enough to allow stability in day-to-day transactions, and the commercial courts do provide adequate backing. Although the mechanisms used to enforce contracts in Ukraine are generally similar to those found in developed countries, there are distinctive features within the overall pattern. In particular, firms rely extensively on repeated interactions and self-enforcing devices while signing short-term formal contracts and avoiding interdependency between trading partners. They do not rely on their reputation or business association memberships and they make no use of private arbitration. Instead, a few legal institutions dating back to the Soviet period proved adaptable and viable in a market economy. When transactions involve either state-owned companies or the exercise of administrative resources, contract enforcement becomes problematic. Illegal kickbacks from suppliers and the coercive use of state machinery come into play, and asking a court to enforce a contract is more costly and less effective than in other cases. However, the author shows that in the typical everyday transactions of Ukrainian private firms, the state and its administrative resources are involved in the minority of cases, and that they do not undermine the dominant pattern of orderly contractual dealings. The thesis concludes that the contractual pattern prevalent in Ukraine effectively serves straightforward traditional buyer-seller transactions but it is ill-suited to meet the requirements of globalized trade, production diversification and technological progress. Adaptations of the existing system to meet these requirements are likely to depend upon changes in the wider business environment, namely upon institutions constraining the coercive power of the state.

The starting point for a consideration of law in former colonies is often a law/custom binary whereby law is the formal legal system imposed during the colonial occupation and retained at independence, and custom the local law disrupted by colonialism. In most South Pacific small island countries, this dichotomy of law and custom has been formalized by the protection of custom by constitutional or statutory provisions. The protection of custom was carried out as a celebration of local culture at Independence, but the effect has been to stymie the development of local custom and to reinforce custom’s post-colonial subsidiary position relative to the formalized legal system. The Kingdom of Tonga avoided the indirect rule of late colonialism and as a result Tonga’s legal system was never dichotomized into law and custom. There was no constitutional protection of custom because custom was never characterized as something other than law. Although it is undeniable that the direction of the development of law in Tonga was impacted by the presence of the Imperial project in the region, the legal change that occurred was led by Tongans. The starting point for legal change in Tonga was, and continues to be Tongan legal traditions even though local custom has not been formally protected. This project considers the two human concepts of apology and the protection of reputation. In Tonga’s hierarchical society both concepts already represented important legal traditions when the formal British-style legal system was adopted. However, these legal traditions were not relegated to something ‘other’ than law. The former continued as an informal legal tradition that addressed legal harms not recognized by adopted legal traditions, while the latter was incorporated into the adopted formal legal system with provisions that continued to reflect the distinctive Tongan society. Both legal traditions have faced challenges recently. Apology was no longer recognized as an efficacious remedy for women in the case of domestic abuse. The protection of the inviolable reputations of the monarch and nobility was limited by the exercise of the constitutional right of the freedom of the press. In both cases Tongans chose to exercise adopted constitutional rights in order to limit what was perceived to be an abuse of the exercise of power in the hierarchical society. Because local legal traditions had not been preserved as something apart from Tongan law, this development did not signal the end of Tongan legal traditions. Rather, it demonstrated the continuing development of Tongan law. / Graduate

This report has focused on how important a buyers eWOM is compared to his/her visual information when sellers decide if they can trust this buyer. A focus company was Airbnb, an online P2P platform where private individuals can rent out their living quarters to other private persons. The method involved sending out online web surveys to approximately 200 students in Högskolan Kristianstad. Results from these surveys suggests that a buyer’s eWOM and visual information had little or no impact upon if a seller decides to trust this buyer or not. The variable that had the most significant impact upon trust and thus the host’s intention to rent was the variable risk propensity.

Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) are a next generation network that is expected to solve the wireless spectrum shortage problem, which is the shrinking of available wireless spectrum resources needed to facilitate future wireless applications. The first CRN standard, the IEEE 802.22, addresses this particular problem by allowing CRNs to share geographically unused TV spectrum to mitigate the spectrum shortage. Equipped with reasoning and learning engines, cognitive radios operate autonomously to locate unused channels to maximize its own bandwidth and Quality-of-Service (QoS). However, their increased capabilities over traditional radios introduce a new dimension of security threats. In an NSF 2009 workshop, the FCC raised the question, “What authentication mechanisms are needed to support cooperative cognitive radio networks? Are reputation-based schemes useful supplements to conventional Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) authentication protocols?” Reputation-based schemes in cognitive radio networks are a popular technique for performing robust and accurate spectrum sensing without any inter-communication with licensed networks, but the question remains on how effective they are at satisfying the FCC security requirements. Our work demonstrates that trust-based Cooperative Spectrum Sensing (CSS) protocols are vulnerable to rogue signals, which creates the illusion of inside attackers and raises the concern that such schemes are overly sensitive Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS). The erosion of the sensor reputations in trust-based CSS protocols makes CRNs vulnerable to future attacks. To counter this new threat, we introduce community detection and cluster analytics to detect and negate the impact of rogue signals on sensor reputations.

Syfte: Syftet med vår studie är att få en ökad förståelse för hur ett varumärkes rykte och image kan påverka en arbetstagare vid valet av arbetsgivare i små företag inom tjänstesektorn. Metod: Då syftet med studien är att få ökad förståelse för hur image och rykte påverkar en arbetstagare i valet av arbetsgivare, har således studien genomförts med en kvalitativ forskningsansats. Semistrukturerade intervjuer har genomförts med 12 deltagare som är nyanställda inom respektive företag. Materialet har därefter analyserats manuellt med hjälp av ett datanalysprogram. Resultat & slutsats: Resultatet styrker och ger tidigare forskning en ökad förståelse om hur image och rykte påverkar valet av arbetsgivare inom små tjänsteföretag. Resultatet visar att det finns andra faktorer som påverkar en arbetstagare vid valet av arbetsgivare inom denna forskning. Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Vi ser möjligheter till vidare forskning att applicera studien med en kvantitativ metod för att se om bidraget går att styrka i ett större sammanhang. Ytterligare förslag till framtida forskning skulle vara att applicera studien på en annan bransch inom små tjänsteföretag. Uppsatsens bidrag: Studien bidrar teoretiskt på så vis att den bekräftar tidigare forskning vad gäller image och ryktets påverkan vid valet av arbetsgivare. Studien bidrar även till en ytterligare faktor som påverkar en arbetstagare vid valet. Vidare finns även praktiskt bidrag i form av vikten av att företag arbetar internt för att behålla samt attrahera potentiella nya arbetstagare. / Aim: The purpose of this study is togain an increased understanding of how a brand's reputation and image can affect an employee in the selection of employers in small businesses in the service sector. Result & Conclusions: The study strengthens and gives earlier research an increased understanding of how image and reputation affect the choice of employers in small service companies. The results show, in particular, that there are other factors that affect an employee in the choice of employers in this research. Suggestions for future research is to apply the study with a quantitative method to see if the contribution can be strengthened in a broader context. Further suggestions for future research would be to apply the study to another industry within small service companies. Contribution of the thesis: The study theoretically contributes to confirming previous research into the influence of image and reputation in the choice of employers. The study also contributes to an additional factor that affects an employee in the choice of employer. Furthermore, there is a practical contribution in terms of the importance of companies working internally to retain and attract potential new employees.

Information asymmetries, proprietary knowledge that one party in a trade holds over another party, in electronic markets might cause a loss in market efficiency and market failure. Reputation mechanisms may provide a means to reduce the effects of information asymmetry and prevent possible market failure. Feedback rating systems are among potential mechanisms to develop reputations. They are often used in naturalistic environment electronic market studies. Reputation mechanisms are difficult to assess, however, in naturalistic research settings since the researcher cannot control the many variables of interest. To control the variables, this study used an experimental research setting. The setting enabled buyer and seller values to be controlled to study the impact of reputation mechanisms on market efficiency and price premiums. A theory from economics, the induced value theory, was used to modify subject preferences through the use of a reward medium. The experimental market was implemented in a classroom environment patterned on Holt's (1999) design. University students accessed a Website that enabled a fictitious market in which the students acted as buyers and sellers of a fictitious product. The product is valued with a fictitious currency which has no real-world value. This allows for values to be induced. Two market control conditions were established, a full information near 100% efficient condition, which is the `ceiling' expectation, and a fairly low efficient condition in which no seller or product grade information was available to buyers, is the `floor' or "Lemons" condition. Two treatments, `cheaptalk', where sellers can make unverifiable product claims, and `feedback', where seller identity and historical ratings are available to buyers, were tested. The impact of asymmetric information on market efficiency was evaluated, as was the impact of a feedback rating mechanism on enhancing market efficiency. Analysis of the experiment results indicate that the treatments can be ordered as: Full Information-Feedback-Cheaptalk-Lemons, with regard to the affect of information on market efficiency.

<p>This paper explores the effect of credit rating agency’s (CRA) reputation on the discretionary disclosures of corporate bond issuers. Academics, practitioners, and regulators disagree on the informational role played by major CRAs and the usefulness of credit ratings in influencing investors’ perception of the credit risk of bond issuers. Using management earnings forecasts as a measure of discretionary disclosure, I find that investors demand more (less) disclosure from bond issuers when the ratings become less (more) credible. In addition, using content analytics, I find that bond issuers disclose more qualitative information during periods of low CRA reputation to aid investors better assess credit risk. That the corporate managers alter their voluntary disclosure in response to CRA reputation shocks is consistent with credit ratings providing incremental information to investors and reducing adverse selection in lending markets. Overall, my findings suggest that managers rely on voluntary disclosure as a credible mechanism to reduce information asymmetry in bond markets.</p> / Dissertation

<div>The first chapter quantitatively examines the impact of exporting countries' reputations for product quality on aggregate trade flows. I introduce a novel data set in which recall incidences retrieved from the Consumer Product Safety Commission are matched to U.S. import data from 1990-2009. Using a model of learning I construct a measure for exporter reputation where consumers internalize product recalls as bad signals. Structural estimation of the model finds that reputation is important and especially impactful for products used by children. The market share elasticity of exporter's reputation is around 1.49 across products, similar in magnitude to the average price elasticity, which is around 1.51. Improving reputation can increase export value, but reputation is sluggish: increasing reputation by 10\% can take decades for most exporters. Counterfactual exercises confirm that quality inspection institutions are welfare improving, and quality inspection is especially important for consumers of toys. </div><div> </div><div> The second chapter summarizes the correlation between export decisions of Chinese firms and product recalls for Chinese products. I use a new data set where I link recall data scraped from CPSC to monthly Chinese Customs Data. I found that recalls from previous months correlates negatively with the decision of export participation, but not with export value. </div><div> </div><div><br></div><div> The third chapter, coauthored with Kendall Kennedy and Xuan Jiang, analyzes how China's industrialization and the immediate export growth due to the Open Door Policy change Chinese teenagers' education decisions, which explains the education decline. We find that, middle school completion rates increased and high school completion rates decreased in response to export growth. This suggests a tradeoff between education and labor market opportunities in China. These education effects are more prominent for cohorts who were younger when China's Open Door Policy began, even though these teenagers also faced a stronger education system compared to the earlier cohorts. </div>

1 The crime of defamation under Art. 184 Criminal Code Abstract This thesis deals with the wording and the role of the crime of defamation in criminal law. Since it is a minor offense due to the objective aspect of a criminal offense and the type of object it protects, and it has repeatedly been considered for removal from the Criminal Code for the last 15 years, the author posits whether the existing factual basis of defamation in criminal law is dispensable. The first chapter of this thesis deals with the fundamental right of preservation of human dignity, personal honor, and good reputation. The introduction and differentiation of the enumerated institutes are followed by a summary of the historical development of penal regulation regarding preservation of honor. It aims to record how the definition of the crime of defamation developed starting from the beginning of the First Republic to the present day, and at the same time to explore the most important reasons that led the legislators to retain the crime of defamation in the Criminal Code after the Velvet Revolution. In the central part of the thesis are following two chapters where the author deals with the current wording of the preservation of dignity and reputation in the Czech legal order and detailed characteristics of the factual basis of the...

Notre étude essaye de décrire comment les interactions entre la RSE et la performance financière sont influencées en se basant sur la théorie du management par les ressources et la vision instrumentale de la théorie des parties prenantes tout en considérant la RSE comme un bien public qui s’inscrit dans le prolongement des logiques d’intérêt général et qui contribue à la maximisation du bien-être collectif. Nous testons le rôle de la réputation de l’entreprise dans la relation de la performance sociétale vers la performance financière. Empiriquement, nous utilisons des données de panel de 7 ans (2006-2012) pour 324 entreprises états-uniennes. La performance sociétale est mesurée selon des critères de performance ESG (environnementale, sociale et de gouvernance) par l’agence de notation extra-financière MSCI. En ce qui concerne la performance financière, nous utilisons une mesure boursière (le Q de Tobin) et une mesure comptable (ROE). Les résultats montrent l’existence d’une relation qui a la forme d’un cercle vertueux entre la performance sociétale et la performance financière avec la mesure boursière de la performance financière. Quant à la réputation, l’étude montre qu’elle a un impact significatif sur la relation de la performance sociétale vers la performance financière. Les résultats soulignent aussi que la relation positive significative de la performance sociétale vers la performance financière se retrouve notamment au niveau de la performance sociale et de la performance de gouvernance de la performance sociétale de l’entreprise. Notre étude désigne la performance de gouvernance et la performance environnementale comme des performances qui peuvent influencer la réputation de l’entreprise. / Our study seeks to describe how the interactions between CSR and financial performance are affected based on the theory of resource-based view (RBV) and the instrumental view of stakeholder theory while considering CSR as a public good which constitutes a coherent extension of the general interest and which contributes to the maximization of social well-being. We are testing the role of corporate reputation concerning the relationship of CSR to financial performance. Empirically, we use panel data of 7 years (2006-2012) for 324 US companies. CSR is measured according to ESG performance criteria (environmental, social and governance) by the MSCI Extra-Financial Rating Agency. Regarding the financial performance, we use a market measure (Tobin's Q) and an accounting measure (ROE). The results emphasize the existence of a relation that has the shape of a virtuous circle between CSR and financial performance with the market measure of financial performance. As for reputation, the present study shows that it has a significant impact on the relation of CSR to financial performance. The results also emphasize that the significant positive relationship of CSR to financial performance can be found particularly in social performance and governance performance. Our study indicates the governance and environmental performances likewise the performance which can influence the reputation of the company.