Misplaced Boldness: The Avoidance of Substance in the International Court of Justice’s Kosovo Opinion

The International Court of Justice\u27s Kosovo Advisory Opinion is a masterpiece of avoidance. The Court has lived to run another day, and one can only admire the judges\u27 skill in arriving at the vacant place between difficult and clashing conclusions of substance. Still, in the wake of the Opinion, questions inevitably arise: Of what use is this document? Has it advanced a project of justice, or of law? The Opinion has done something, though not, perhaps, what it purports to do. To understand it, we must engage this cautious, crimped document in its full context—or rather, we must understand the ways in which the Opinion itself comprehensively avoids any engagement with context. Its caution and its crimped nature are themselves features illuminating the self-image, role, and limited value of the Court. This Article argues that in the Kosovo Opinion, the International Court of Justice assiduously asserted its own jurisdictional, interpretative, and institutional prerogatives, at the cost of avoiding the momentous questions about secession and self-determination with which the Court was so clearly confronted. These two outcomes are related: The avoidance of substance and the assertion of prerogative were achieved by the selfsame maneuvers of definition and interpretation. Faced with a choice between emphasizing its own authority and actually engaging the question, the Court chose to invest in itself—but it did not, in turn, use that investment to any substantive end. The Opinion exhibits a misplaced boldness, advancing its procedural agenda but saying—almost literally—nothing in the process. This Article also considers what a bolder Opinion might have looked like, by comparing the Opinion to the Canadian Supreme Court\u27s seminal Reference re Secession of Quebec. This comparative exercise helps us to understand why questions of self-determination are easier to avoid than to decide—why it is hard even to talk about them in coherent and productive terms, and thus why one must feel sympathy for the seemingly impossible task facing the ICJ—but also to see that another, bolder language is in fact possible

Managerial Competitor Identification: Integrating the Categorization, Economic and Organizational Identity Perspectives

This dissertation integrates three perspectives capable of explaining how top managers identify their organization's competitors: categorization, economic and organizational identity. In order to explore these perspectives a qualitative theory elaboration methodology is employed. Accordingly, a model of managerial competitor identification is developed. In addition, the three perspectives are integrated into this model to produce a robust theoretical framework

Armenian Neighbours (600-1045)

Publisher PD

Minorities and Venture Capital: A New Wave in American Business

Based on a survey and analysis of minority-oriented venture capital funds, assesses minority-owned businesses' access to venture capital, rates of return, the investment mix among industries, sources of funds, and outlook for minority-oriented investment

Venture Capital Funds Investing in Minority-Owned Businesses: Evaluating Performance and Strategy

Based on a survey of minority-oriented private equity funds, analyzes their performance between 2000 and 2006 compared to those of major stock indices. Looks at trends among minority-oriented funds and their investment strategies in economic downturns

Security Incident Response Criteria: A Practitioner's Perspective

Industrial reports indicate that security incidents continue to inflict large financial losses on organizations. Researchers and industrial analysts contend that there are fundamental problems with existing security incident response process solutions. This paper presents the Security Incident Response Criteria (SIRC) which can be applied to a variety of security incident response approaches. The criteria are derived from empirical data based on in-depth interviews conducted within a Global Fortune 500 organization and supporting literature. The research contribution of this paper is twofold. First, the criteria presented in this paper can be used to evaluate existing security incident response solutions and second, as a guide, to support future security incident response improvement initiatives

Market Power in the Carbonated Soft Drink Industry

We investigate the strategic pricing for leading brands sold in the carbonated soft drink (CSD) market in the context of a flexible demand specification (i.e. random parameter nested logit) and a structural pricing equation. Our approach does not rely upon the often used ad hoc linear approximations to demand and profit-maximizing first-order conditions. We estimate the structural pricing equation using four different estimators (i.e. OLS, LIML, 2SLS, and GMM) and compare the implied deviation from Bertrand-Nash competition. Our results suggest that retailers, on average, price CSD brands below their cost, likely a result of the competitive retailing environment. We also find CSD wholesalers price their brands significantly more cooperatively than Bertrand-Nash would suggest, thus inflating profits.Market Power, Carbonated Soft Drinks, Econometrics, LIML, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Demand and Price Analysis, Industrial Organization,

Consumer Impact of Animal Welfare Regulation in the California Poultry Industry

This study examines the consumer welfare impact of animal welfare legislation mandating cage-free egg production in California. We estimate California egg consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for cage-free eggs using household-level purchase data and compare the implied premium to higher production costs when calculating the potential change in consumer surplus. Our findings suggest that larger households and/or households with limited means are most likely to be affected. Furthermore, the implied welfare loss for consumers is approximately $106 million. Although consumers value cage-free eggs, higher production costs result in a net welfare loss to consumers. One implication of this finding is that a clear labeling practice may be a more efficient way to motivate animal welfare and non-cage systems.animal welfare regulation, California poultry, egg prices, egg supply, hen housing, mixed logit, willingness to pay, Livestock Production/Industries,

Measures of Brand Loyalty

Though brand loyalty has been studied extensively in the marketing literature, the relationship between brand loyalty and equilibrium pricing strategies is not well understood. Designing sales pricing strategies involves two key decisions: the percentage reduction in price from the existing price point, and the number or frequency of promotions within a category or for a specific product. These decisions, in turn, are critically dependent upon how many consumers can be convinced to switch to a brand by temporarily reducing its price, and how many are instead brand loyal. Theoretical models of how the size and strength of brand loyalty influence optimal promotion strategies have been developed, but there are no rigorous tests of their hypotheses. We test how brand loyalty impacts promotion strategies for a frequently purchased consumer package good category. Our results largely confirm that retailers often promote many brands simultaneously and that depth and breadth can be complementary.Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing,