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The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between beliefs and economic policy in the context of gasoline prices following Hurricane Katrina.

The paper applies three contributions – by North, Caplan and Higgs – to the question of gasoline pricing policy; and surveys public opinion regarding interference with prices.

The paper identifies evidence of “anti‐market bias” in polling data, press releases, and legislation, and argues that the uncertainty emanating from statutes restricting “price gouging” may reduce investment in the provision of “necessary goods and services” after natural disasters.

The paper is of value in offering evidence of anti‐market and anti‐foreign bias among what might be called political first responders to Hurricane Katrina, and posits the view that interference with prices compounded the shortages facing the Gulf coast or any other disaster‐stricken area.

The case delves into supply, demand, price gouging, hoarding and capabilities of the firm. The theories/concepts and a short overview are covered below. These theories and concepts are then referenced as appropriate in the “Answers to Discussion Questions” section as follows: Supply Demand Theory; Price Gouging, Speculation and Hoarding; Resources, Capabilities and Activities; Friedman’s and Porter’s view of goals of a firm; Corporate Social Responsibility.

The case was motivated after a discussion with Mr Matthew Roberts, who is the Chief Operating Officer of SPR Industries. Several subsequent interviews were conducted with Matt. Matt also became the chief protagonist of the case. Matt provided multiple quotes and anecdotes. The protagonist Matt and the focal organization (SPR Industries) are disguised. The financial figures have also been disguised using a multiplier. However, the material facts of the case are authentic.

This case sheds light on the impact of the COVID pandemic on a small business in the personal protective equipment industry. The students will get an understanding of the supply and demand forces in a market. Furthermore, the case bears out how unpredictable situations such as the pandemic lead to speculation and price gouging opportunities but not in all products affected by it. The case explores the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of firms regarding price gouging in their products. Students will also get an appreciation of how an industry and its participants change in response to such black swan events as the COVID pandemic. Finally, the case presents a small enterprise’s decision choices â?? Should they maintain the status quo, become a sub-broker or become a wholesaler.

This case is designed to target undergraduate students of strategic management or entrepreneurship. It could be appropriate for upper level courses such as Strategic Management, Small Business Management and maybe even Family Business Management. It could be taught in the latter half of the course after the basic concepts have been covered. This case could bring together many of the concepts into a real-life setting.

This case was created based on secondary sources available in the public domain (i.e. news articles). This case has been taught in an undergraduate course of principles of management under the chapter on ethics.

When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, people panicked and rushed to purchase essential products such as hand sanitizers, antibacterial soaps, disinfectant wipes and face masks. The images of a panicked public inspired the brothers Matt and Noah Colvin who amassed and hoarded stockpiles of these essential products to make immense profit. They claimed that their trade approach was legitimate. Yet by an ironic twist of fate, their unorthodox acts were revealed in the media and consequences came in threes: the public vilified the hoarders, the online marketplaces kicked them out and the authorities opened an investigation about alleged price-gouging practices.

This case study may be used in classroom discussions on the concepts of hoarding and price gouging in the following academic programs: bachelor’s in business administration, master of science in business administration and MBA programs. This case study may be used in the following academic courses: ethics in business, responsible management, fundamental of management and organizational behavior.

Purpose – This study explores legal justifications for applying an enhanced criminal sanction to wrongs committed before, during, and after disasters.

Design/methodology/approach – This study uses recent social science evidence to evaluate the need for criminal statutes covering looting, price gouging, and other disaster-related offenses. Further, this study considers a broader historical context, identifying intersections of disaster crime and the common law's treatment of riots and public disorder.

Findings – Although individual disaster victims and communities are vulnerable to criminal harm, and this vulnerability often appears to motivate the punishment of disaster-related crimes, it is not the only or even the strongest justification available. As an alternative approach, one could focus on the public dimension of the harm – disaster-related crimes are particularly pernicious because they threaten to undermine the legitimate governing authority of the state.

Originality/value of paper – The public-order thesis yokes current legal doctrine to longstanding common law themes and, in so doing, departs from conventional justifications for the enhanced punishment of disaster-related crime. The critical perspective offered here could be extended to criminal penalty enhancements more generally. Moreover, because the rationale for identifying and punishing wrongful conduct is the fundamental question of criminal law, even a modest reassessment has potentially far-reaching implications.

The drilling and preparation of a hole in FR‐4 laminate prior to the deposition of electroless copper is considered in relation to the quality of soldering achieved on the finished printed circuit board. Data pertaining to the drill speed, drill feed, and stack position are presented and the effect of drilling temperature is demonstrated. The variability of laminate is discussed in relation to outgassing during soldering. Finally the importance of the post‐drilling treatment of the hole‐wall is shown. The relative effects of baking after drilling, ultrasonic cleaning and chemical treatments such as alkaline potassium permanganate are illustrated.

THE general aspect of seaplanes covers a very wide field, including as it does single and twin float seaplanes and also flying boats of many different types, and with the increase of knowledge in the science of aeronautics the subject is becoming one of very great importance.

This paper analyzes the ways in which accounting enables operations managers to enter and perform multiple roles in their interplay with organizational groups on the shop floor and in management, and the associated negotiations that operations managers have with “the self.”

Using field-based studies in a mining organization, the study draws on Goffman’s backstage–frontstage metaphor to analyze how operations managers enter and perform several roles with the aid of accounting.

The findings show that accounting legitimizes operations managers when they cross organizational boundaries, as accounting gives them an “entry ticket” that legitimizes their presence with the group. Accounting further allows operations managers to embrace more than one role by “putting on a mask” to become an outsider or insider in relation to a group. In performing their roles, operations managers exhibit varying attributes and knowledge. Accounting can thereby be withheld from, or shared with, organizational groups. The illusion of accounting as deterministic presented frontstage is not necessarily negotiated that way backstage. Rather, alternatives discussed backstage often become silenced in the frontstage performance. The study concludes that operations managers cross boundaries, embrace roles and exert agency as they navigate with accounting, enrolling it into their performance simultaneously as they backstage reflect upon accounting and its role for their everyday work.

This study relies on the frontstage/backstage metaphor to visualize the discrepancies in how accounting is enrolled into role performances and how seemingly categorical fronts do not necessarily share that dominant position backstage.

ROLLS‐ROYCE AND HIDUMINIUM High Duty Alloys, Ltd., are responsible for a considerable portion of the material in Aluminium alloy used in the Rolls‐Royce Kestrel and Buzzard engines. They produce the Y‐alloy for the forgings from which the pistons are made, and also the material for castings for the cylinder blocks, of the production of which Mr. Handasyde speaks in such high terms of praise. This is an alloy known as Hiduminium R.R.

At the outbreak of the War only England, France and the U.S.A. had properly‐organised teaching and research establishments for the science of aeronautics. During the war, the programme of these and other hastily‐prepared laboratories was directed to the immediate military needs, and it was not till the great strides in the development of civil aviation of ten years ago commenced that state‐aided research laboratories and professorships in aeronautics were created in a number of continental countries. Italy, energised by her new risorgimento, was one of the first to recognise the importance of setting up “schools” of research in aeronautics, and of these the Royal School of Aeronautical Engineering at Rome, with General Crocco at its head, is one of the most important. The present volume, dated rather grandiloquently from Rome “at Easter in the year VIII,” would not be called in England an “elementary” treatise. Rather, it is a complete textbook of applied aero‐dynamics which must surely cover the greater part of the syllabus “professed” at the School. Not the least important part are the hundreds (literally) of polar and drag curves of various sections, alone and incorporated in complete machines, including data with regard to slotted wings and fuselages. The majority of these emanate from the A.R.C., N.A.C.A., Göttingen and Moscow, but some are data obtained in the new laboratories at Rome itself.