analysts weighting of private and public information using both a linear regression method and a probability based method we find that on average analysts place larger than efficient weights on i e they overweight their private information when they forecast corporate earnings we also find that analysts overweight more when issuing forecasts more favorable than the consensus and overweight less and may even underweight private information when issuing forecasts less favorable than the consensus further the deviation from efficient weighting increases when the benefits from doing so are high or when the costs of doing so are low these results suggest that analysts incentives play a larger role in misweighting than their behavioral biases copyright 2006 oxford university press

what will consumers pay for social product features the importance of ethical consumerism to many companies worldwide has increased dramatically in recent years ethical consumerism encompasses the importance of non traditional and social components of a company s products and business process to strategic success such as environmental protectionism child labor practices and so on the present paper utilizes a random utility theoretic experimental design to provide estimates of the relative value selected consumers place on the social features of products

entrepreneurs perceived chances for success abstract entrepreneurs involved in planning or starting firms must engage in a continuing process of appraising prospects for success these assessments presumably bear upon the preparations they make as well as at some later point whether they decide to make major changes or even to discontinue the business in this study data from 2994 entrepreneurs who had recently become business owners were analyzed to determine their perceived changes of success although previous evidence on business survival led to the hypothesis that the entrepreneurs would only be cautiously optimistic this was not the case they perceived their prospects as very favorable with 81 seeing odds of 7 out of 10 or better and a remarkable 33 seeing odds of success of 10 out of 10 in considering the prospects for other businesses like their own they perceived odds which were significantly lower but still moderately favorable based upon previous research on factors associated with new business success it was hypothesized that those who were more likely to succeed based upon their personal backgrounds and the nature of their new firms would be more optimistic however this was not the case those who were poorly prepared were just as optimistic as those who were well prepared at this point shortly after having become business owners the assessment by entrepreneurs of their own likelihood of success was dramatically detached from past macro statistics from perceived prospects for peer businesses and from characteristics typically associated with higher performing new firms the psychological literature on post decisional bolstering suggests that decision makers in many settings tend to bolster or exaggerate the attractiveness of an option after it has been chosen this coupled with the tendency of entrepreneurs to believe that they can control their own destinies implies that the extreme optimism observed here is probably a typical occurrence for entrepreneurs the findings suggest that it is probably natural to experience feelings of entrepreneurial euphoria when first becoming a business owner with the available evidence it is difficult to judge whether this leads to inadequate preparations or an inability to diagnose problems and make adjustments after the business is started this extreme optimism probably does contribute to the heavy personal commitments observed here in which the median entrepreneur devoted more than 60 hours per week to the business the entrepreneur would seem well advised to form relationships with outsiders such as board members and professional advisors who can be objective and detached in diagnosing problems and assessing objectively the prospects for the business in its current form

the impact of cross national carriers of business ethics on attitudes about questionable practices and form of moral reasoning the study explores the impact of cross national carriers of ethics on attitudes about questionable business practices and form of moral reasoning across mexican spanish and u s mbas results show substantial agreement across cultures on twelve personally most objectionable practices while form of moral reasoning varied significantly social cognitive theory is used to address the theoretical and practical implications

institutional pressures and ethical reckoning by business corporations prior studies have provided explanations for the presence use and dissemination of codes of corporate ethics or codes of corporate conduct of business corporations most such explanations are functional in nature and are descriptive as they are derived from the codes and their associated documents we search for more underlying explanations using two complementary theories first social contract theories explaining the exogenous and endogenous reasons of organizational behavior and then institutional theory explaining why organizations take similar measures in response to institutional pressures based on our explanations we contend that the codes and their use and dissemination are arising from underlying social and institutional pressures for firms to continuously validate their existence in the face of increasing changes and recurrent uncertainties

predicting the next step of a random walk experimental evidence of regime shifting beliefs barberis et al j financial econ 49 1998 307 construct a model in which investors use the prevalence of past trend reversals as an indicator of the likelihood of future reversals while such regime shifting beliefs are consistent with a variety of psychological theories other contrary predictions are consistent with the same theories we report two experiments with mba student participants that strongly support the existence of regime shifting beliefs we conclude that regime shifting models can provide a useful framework for understanding market anomalies including underreactions to earnings changes and overreactions to longterm earnings trends r 2002 published by elsevier science b v

bargaining in the shadow of the law divorce laws and family distress this paper exploits the variation occurring from the different timing of divorce law reforms across the united states to evaluate how unilateral divorce changed family violence and whether the option provided by unilateral divorce reduced suicide and spousal homicide unilateral divorce both potentially increases the likelihood that a domestic violence relationship ends and acts to transfer bargaining power toward the abused thereby potentially stopping the abuse in extant relationships in states that introduced unilateral divorce we find a 8 16 percent decline in female suicide roughly a 30 percent decline in domestic violence for both men and women and a 10 percent decline in females murdered by their partners

a synthetic stock flow consistent macroeconomic model of financialisation this article is centred around the notions of shareholder value orientation and financialisation shareholder value orientation is reflected by a high dividend payout ratio applied by firms and the reluctance of firms to finance physical investment via new equity issues financialisation is the more general development towards an increased importance of the financial sector of the economy relative to the non financial sector in this article a synthetic stock flow consistent model is developed that attempts to encompass some important recent works on the effects of financialisation this includes contributions from the fields of mainstream information economics and post keynesian economics we conduct simulations reflecting increased shareholder value orientation and show that the results are consistent with important stylised facts copyright the author 2008 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

a profit driven approach to building a people responsible supply chain abstract today an increasing number of companies have publicized policies to improve corporate social responsibility performance related to human resources in their supply chain management practices such as safer and healthier working conditions higher payment better benefits and fewer working hours however there are still concerns about the sincerity and effectiveness of such efforts this could be attributed to the fact that the economic benefit of those improvements is not clearly structured as an integral part in the companies decision making process in this paper we develop a stylized analytic framework that links a firm s supply chain social performance in people with its economic performance in profit specifically we examine how consumers responses to the outbreak of social misconduct in supply chains affect competing firms market segmentation and profit and subsequently provide economic incentive for proactive social responsibility investment closed form optimal solutions for proactive social responsibility strategy are found for our model setup numerical tests and sensitivity analyses have been conducted to study the effects of various factors on the firms supply chain social responsibility strategies factors such as consumers ethical disposition the social environment and consumers perception of a product s functional versus social value are a few among them the results of our analysis demonstrate that proactive investment in supply chain social responsibility can enhance a firm s competitive advantage and economic performance thereby suggesting a profit driven approach to achieving supply chain social responsibility and sustainability

semi autonomous household expenditures as the causa causans of postwar us business cycles the stability and instability of luxemburg type external markets similar patterns can be observed in post wwii us business cycles the initial upswings tend to be led by household investment and debt financed personal consumption expenditures which then wane in relative importance and lead downswings as those expenditures are financed in significant part by money creation they function as an external market driving accumulation by enabling monetary profit realisation in a way analogous to rosa luxemburg s treatment of the public and foreign sectors empirical studies on wage led profit led demand regimes typically exclude household investment or include it in with business investment this paper argues that it is vital to distinguish an independent role for semi autonomous household expenditures as a driver of effective demand and cyclical dynamics the failure to do so in empirical studies sustains misleading conclusions such as the perceived relevance of goodwin type profit squeeze cycles

business ethics index measuring consumer sentiments toward business ethical practices the present study describes the development of an ongoing and systematic index to measure consumers sentiments towards business ethical practices the business ethics index bei is based on the well established measurements of consumer sentiments namely the ics index of consumer sentiment and cbcci conference board consumer confidence index the bei is comprised of 4 measurements representing the dimensions of personal vicarious and past future data from 503 telephone interviews were used to calculate a bei of 107 this indicates an overall positive consumer sentiment towards the ethical behavior of business future calculations of the bei are planned which will allow for the estimation of the latent dynamics of trends in consumer sentiments toward american business ethics

debt cycles instability and fiscal rules a godley minsky synthesis wynne godley and hyman minsky were two macroeconomists who saw the crisis coming this paper develops a simple macrodynamic model that synthesises some key perspectives of their analytical frameworks the model incorporates godley s financial balances approach and postulates that private sector s propensity to spend is driven by a stock flow norm the target net private debt to income ratio that changes endogenously via a minsky mechanism it also includes two fiscal rules a maastricht type fiscal rule according to which the fiscal authorities adjust the government expenditures based on a target net government debt ratio and a godley minsky fiscal rule which links government expenditures with private indebtedness following a counter cyclical logic the analysis shows that i the interaction between the propensity to spend and net private indebtedness can generate cycles and instability ii instability is more likely when the propensity to spend responds strongly to deviations from the stock flow norm and when the expectations that determine the stock flow norm are highly sensitive to the economic cycle iii the maastricht type fiscal rule is destabilising while the godley minsky fiscal rule is stabilising iv the paradox of debt can apply both to the private sector and the government sector

desperate housewives communication difficulties and the dynamics of marital un happiness this paper develops a model of marital dissolution based on communication difficulties the quality of a marriage depends on the proximity of an action to a target the target is unknown and must be learned over time each individual receives private signals about the target and can communicate them only imperfectly to his or her spouse because of imperfect communication spouses may hold different beliefs about the optimal action the action actually chosen is a compromise of the spouses distinct beliefs if a couple s beliefs diverge too widely one or both of them may prefer to dissolve the marriage the paper explores how poor communication contributes to marital unhappiness as well as its implications for the dynamics of divorce risk the welfare properties of divorce decisions and the role of counseling when the distribution of decision making power in the household favors men wives but not husbands can find themselves trapped for prolonged periods in a marriage that leaves them as unhappy as it is possible to be without seeking relief through divorce

margin call using film to explore behavioural aspects of the financial crisis the aim of this article is to show how the critically acclaimed and award winning film margin call may be used in business ethics teaching set in a fictional investment bank at the dawn of the financial crisis the film zooms in on the motivations and decision making of people who had much to lose from the crash of the hitherto very profitable mortgage backed securities market the film offers rich material for analysis of behaviours that contributed to the crisis the article will set out topics for classroom discussion including the impact of incentives and power structures contextual factors that distance people from the consequences of their actions and considerations of how the banking industry may be transformed

match quality new information and marital dissolution this article investigates the role of surprises in marital dissolution surprises consists of changes in the predicted earning capacity of either spouse data from the national longitudinal study of the high school class of 1972 is used we find that an unexpected increase in the husband s earning capacity reduces the divorce hazard while an unexpected increase in the wife s earning capacity raises the divorce hazard couples sort into marriage according to characteristics that are likely to enhance the stability of the marriage the divorce hazard is initially increasing with the duration of marriage and the presence of children and high levels of property stabilizes the marriage

the economics of the profit rate competition crises and historical tendencies in capitalism part 1 the profit rate the economics of the profit rate a summary definitions and measures of the profit rate part 2 competition and prices of production prices of production long term equilibrium in classical and walrasian models the classical analysis of competition convergence part 3 general disequilibrium a general disequilibrium model development of the basic model proportions and dimension in the short and long terms out of the mainstream part 4 stability and business fluctuations the real and monetary determinants of macro in stability the impact of the profit rate on the macroeconomy business fluctuations in other paradigms part 5 technology and distribution a historical perspective the historical profile of the profit rate historical tendencies accumulation and growth profitability trends part 6 history profitability and management a chronological overview the historical dynamics of capitalism

macroeconomic implications of financialisation a growing literature suggests that financialisation may weaken the performance of non financial corporations and constrain the growth of aggregate demand this paper uses two alternative approaches one derived from skott and one from lavoie and godley and two different settings a labour constrained setting and a dual economy setting to evaluate some of the claims that have been made our analysis which pays explicit attention to financial stock flow relations suggests that the qualitative effects of financialisation are insensitive to the precise specification of household saving behaviour but depend critically on the labour market assumptions labour constrained versus dual and the specification of the investment function harrodian versus kaleckian

the long and short of it why are stocks with shorter runs preferred this article examines how consumers process graphical financial information to estimate risk we propose that consumers sample the local maxima and minima of a graph to infer the variation around a trend line which is used to estimate risk the local maxima and minima are more extreme the higher the run length of the stocks the consecutive number of upward or downward movements of a price series with identical mean variance skewness and kurtosis three experiments show that this leads to stocks with higher run lengths being perceived as riskier the run length effect importantly the run length effect is greater for investors who are more educated are employed full time trade more frequently have had longer experience trading and trade a wider range of financial instruments implications for the communication of financial products public policy and consumer welfare are discussed as are theoretical implications for the processing of visual and financial information and behavioral finance

the role of power in financial statement fraud schemes in this paper we investigate a large scale financial statement fraud to better understand the process by which individuals are recruited to participate in financial statement fraud schemes the case reveals that perpetrators often use power to recruit others to participate in fraudulent acts to illustrate how power is used we propose a model based upon the classical french and raven taxonomy of power that explains how one individual influences another individual to participate in financial statement fraud we also provide propositions for future research

the international business ethics index asian emerging economies the systematic measurement of consumers sentiments toward business ethical practices is expanded to two emerging economies in asia china and india the chinese were very optimistic about the future ethical behavior of businesses while the indians recorded the lowest bei scores yet chinese consumers were very concerned with product issues while indians were concerned equally about low quality products and excessive prices

the impact of natural culture and economic ideology on managerial work values a study of the united states russia japan and china this study assesses the impact of economic ideology and national culture on the individual work values of managers in the united states russia japan and china the convergence divergence crossvergence cdc framework was used as theoretical framework for the study while the schwartz value survey svs was used to operationalize over investigation of managerial work values across these four countries the findings largely support the crossvergence prospective while also confirming the role of national culture implications from the findings are drawn for the convergence divergence crossvergence of values as well as for the feasibility of multidomestic or global strategies for a corporate culture

the international business ethics index european union the present study expands the systematic measurement of consumers sentiments towards business ethical practices to the international arena data for the business ethics index bei were gathered in three countries of the european union uk germany spain the germans were the most pessimistic while the british were the most optimistic about the future ethical behaviour of businesses

tackling the instability of growth a kaleckian harrodian model with an autonomous expenditure component this article presents a basic kaleckian model enriched by the simultaneous addition of an harrodian investment function and an autonomous expenditure component that grows at an exogenous rate the model shows that the usual short run properties wage led growth are only transient since the long run growth rate converges towards that of autonomous expenditures however the impact on the level of variables output capital stock labour etc is permanent the model also provides a conditional solution to the second harrod knife edge problem the destabilising behaviour of firms as they adjust their investment decisions to the discrepancy between the actual and the normal rates of capacity utilisation is now required to achieve the normal rate of capacity utilisation

information cascades in the laboratory when a series of individuals with private information announce public predictions initial conformity can create an information cascade in which later predictions match the early announcements this paper reports an experiment in which private signals are draws from an unobserved urn subjects make predictions in sequence and are paid if they correctly guess which of two urns was used for the draws if initial decisions coincide then it is rational for subsequent decisionmakers to follow the established pattern regardless of their private information rational cascades formed in most periods in which such an imbalance occurred copyright 1997 by american economic association

the role of ethical leadership versus institutional constraints a simulation study of financial misreporting by ceos this article examines the proposition that a major cause of the major financial accounting scandals that received much publicity around the world was unethical leadership in the companies and compares the role of unethical leaders in a variety of scenarios through the use of computer simulation models it shows how a combination of ceo s narcissism financial incentive shareholders expectations and subordinate silence as well as ceo s dishonesty can do much to explain some of the findings highlighted in recent high profile financial accounting scandals furthermore it shows that the nature and impact of ethical leadership depends greatly on the institutional setting and can be expected to vary greatly by country and culture in certain circumstances ethical leadership can have either a negligible or even opposite effect to that expected

moral choice and the declining influence of traditional value orientations within the financial sector of a rapidly developing region of the people s republic of china this paper describes the results of a field experiment involving 400 employees from ten financial institutions operating within the shenzhen special economic zone of the people s republic of china it was found that when faced with an agency based problem employees indicated they would be less inclined to advise management of the existence of unethical work practices younger employees without supervisory experience displayed significant risk aversion traditional chinese values associated with confucian work dynamism were shown to be poor predictors of moral choice response a parsimonious regression model was developed that provides evidence that the universal trait masculinity femininity human heartedness acted to offset the negative influence of the agency problem on the other hand an operative s level of education attainment exerted a negative influence on moral response scores

taking stock of stockbrokers exploring momentum versus contrarian investor strategies and profiles two studies were conducted among professional security analysts to explore their patterns of decision making while managing investment portfolios in study 1 a computer based simulation the analysts styles differed markedly with most exhibiting either a momentum or contrarian approach as indicated by responses to portfolio stock price changes study 2 used a verbal protocol procedure and semistructured depth interviews to probe the analysts thought processes momentum and contrarian investors were found to differ on a number of dimensions including price expectations age experience raw performance risk propensity cognitive style knowledge calibration and strategy adaptivity implications and limitations are discussed

waiting for mr right rising inequality and declining marriage rates abstract this paper demonstrates that women search longer for their first or second husband in cities with higher male wage inequality and examines several alternative explanations a causal link is established by controlling for city fixed effects and city specific time trends and by using inequality in the woman s state of birth as a proxy for local male inequality increasing inequality explains about 25 of the marriage rate decline over the last few decades and this is not due to the endogenous moving or labor force decisions of women nor to the marital decisions of men in reaction to changes in their own wages

measuring unethical consumer behavior across four countries the huge amounts spent on store security and crime prevention worldwide not only costs international businesses but also amounts to a hidden tax on those law binding consumers who bear higher prices most previous research has focused on shoplifting and ignored many other ways in which consumers cheat businesses using a hybrid of both qualitative research and survey approaches in four countries an index of 37 activities was developed to examine consumers unethical activities across uk us france and austria the findings indicate that around three quarters of consumers in all four countries can be classified as heavy offenders for these minor cheats the paper argues that government agencies marketers and retailers should adopt more pro active preventative approaches rather than reactive loss limitation measures to combat unethical behavior

the business ethics index as a leading economic indicator theoretical justification for the business ethics index bei from the emerging economics of trust literature is discussed the bei results for 2007 2008 and 2009 are presented while the personal past bei component shows no significant difference from the previous years the vicarious past component shows a dramatic drop to levels previously never recorded however when it came to the perception of the future business ethical behavior respondents were signifi cantly more optimistic than in previous measurements this finding was more than a little surprising given the depth of the economic crisis a possible explanation is that consumers hopefully perceived the economic crisis as already abating and or that at least the worst was over

hot hands in mutual funds short run persistence of relative performance 1974 1988 the relative performance of no load growth oriented mutual funds persists in the near term with the strongest evidence for a one year evaluation horizon portfolios of recent poor performers do significantly worse than standard benchmarks those of recent top performers do better though not significantly so the difference in risk adjusted performance between the top and bottom octile portfolios is six to eight percent per year these results are not attributable to known anomalies or survivorship bias investigations with a different previously used data set and with some post 1988 data confirm the finding of persistence

self interest and business ethics some lessons of the recent corporate scandals the recent accounting scandals at enron worldcom and other corporations have helped to fuel a massive loss of confidence in the integrity of american business and have contributed to a very sharp decline in the u s stock market inasmuch as these events have brought ethical questions about business to the forefront in the media and public consciousness as never before they are of signal importance for the field of business ethics i offer some observations and conjectures about the bearing of the recent scandals on the literature on business ethics i defend the following contentions 1 recent events reveal serious weaknesses of the stakeholder theory about the social responsibilities of business which lacks prohibitions against fraud and deception this is a glaring deficiency of standard versions of the stakeholder theory but it is easily remedied by adding explicit prohibitions against fraud and deception in addition recent events highlight the stakeholder theory s very naive and unrealistic hopes and expectations for business executives as moral arbiters and agents of social improvement 2 recent events do not constitute an objection to the shareholder theory about the social responsibilities of business however these events make evident the implausibility of strong versions of the invisible hand theory 3 schemes of payment and reward often create perverse incentives for individuals to engage in unethical conduct 4 both the shareholder theory and the stakeholder theory need to add a constraint that requires executives to respect the professional obligations of employees

long term partnership formation marriage and employment of course marriage and employment are different nevertheless a worker looking for a job a rm looking for worker or a single person looking for a marriage partner face similar problems as all are seeking a long term partner indeed forming long term partnerships is a common occurrence in life there are many other examples business people search for other business people to form a pro table relationship bridge players seek to nd a suitable partners students search for a good university we would all like to nd a good friend etc the problem becomes signi cant if there are substantial differences in the return obtained from forming a partnership with different partners for example employers differ in the wages they offer or in the work environment they provide in such a situation a worker may reject some job offers similarly as many have learned to their cost some make better marriage partners than others the problem is two sided while a worker is evaluating a potential employer the employer is also evaluating the worker it is this two sided aspect of the problem that generates a signi cant interest a worker s willingness to accept employment at a rm depends not only on the characteristics of the rm but also the other possible options open to the worker the better an individual s opportunities elsewhere the more selective he or she will be in evaluating a potential partnership an academic who believes harvard may make an offer in the near future will be more selective in evaluating offers from lesser universities in this way expectations play a role if a single man believes that few if any women will nd him an acceptable marriage partner then he may accept the rst opportunity that presents itself partnership formation typically does not comply with a classic market situation where all participants know everything and all trades take place at zero cost finding a job nding a husband or wife or nding a business partner is a time consuming activity where opportunities typically arrive over time at uncertain intervals of time of course we can act in ways that in uence the arrival rate of potential partner workers go to employment agencies or read help wanted advertisements in newspapers singles of a certain age go to discos or join tennis clubs the literature on search and matching sm see mortensen 1982 and pissarides 1990 for early examples 1 provides an excellent framework for the economic journal 109 june f307 f334 royal economic society 1999 published by blackwell publishers 108 cowley road oxford ox4 1jf uk and 350 main street malden ma 02148 usa

a reply to amitava dutt the role of aggregate demand in the long run in an article in this journal amitava dutt comments on our 1999 paper being keynesian in the short term and classical in the long term the traverse to classical long term equilibrium contending that aggregate demand may affect the long term equilibrium we agree to some extent but contend that these mechanisms do not question the fundamental difference between the classical marxian perspective in which u gravitates in the long term around u u and the post keynesian perspective in which the long term equilibrium position of u depends on the level of aggregate demand the basic controversy harks back to harrod s investment function in which the only long term equilibrium is u u u we solve the problem of harrodian instability in reference to the action of monetary authorities and governments dutt s defence of the post keynesian investment function is unconvincing

do traditional chinese cultural values nourish a market for pirated cds on one hand chinese consumers are well known for conspicuous consumption and the adoption of luxury products and named brands on the other hand they also have a bad reputation for buying counterfeit products their simultaneous preferences for two contrasting types of product present a paradox that has not been addressed in the literature this study attempts to present an explanation of this paradox by examining the effects of traditional chinese cultural values and consumer values on consumers deontological judgment of pirated cds and the amount of social benefits they perceive they gain from them we interviewed 300 hong kong chinese consumers and found that face consciousness increased materialism and risk aversion thereby producing a favorable deontological judgment of pirated cds face consciousness also has a direct effect on the amount of social benefits perceived in pirated cds both favorable deontological judgment and perceived social benefits contributed to a strong intention to buy pirated cds the results are discussed in a cultural perspective

trends in the well being of american women 1970 1995 this paper examines the trends in the well being of american women over the last 25 years a time of significant changes in the relative economic status of women and in the labor market as a whole a broad range of indicators are considered to capture changes in women s well being in the family as well as in the labor market for virtually all age and education groups substantial evidence is obtained of rising gender equality in labor market outcomes notably labor force participation wages and occupational distributions broad evidence is also found of greater gender parity within married couple families as the housework time of husbands increased relative to wives and the relative wages of wives rose compared to their husbands however parallel to the recent evidence of the declining labor market position of lower skilled men there has been a similar deterioration in the economic status of less educated women especially high school dropouts their labor force participation rates and wages have risen at a much slower pace than those of more highly educated women while their incidence of single headship has increased much more rapidly these findings for less educated women serve to underscore the widening gap between more and less skilled americans of both sexes as well as to emphasize its broad dimensions

labor supply and marital separation panel data are used to estimate the effect of marital separation on labor supply female labor supply increases substantially and male labor supply declines marginally lending support to the theory of specialization within the household the most interesting finding is that women began to increase their labor supply well before the actualsplit occurs suggesting either that shocks to labor supply change divorce probabilities or that women with a higher likelihood of divorcework more this argument is pursued by constructing and estimating a simultaneous model of labor supply and divorce risk copyright 1986 by american economic association

losers winners and biased trades when faced with sequential information consumers tend to fall prey to one of two well known heuristics the hot or cold hand and the gambler s fallacy the authors relate these two traditionally separate heuristics to differences in accepting buy versus rejecting sell decisions they identify trend length as a contextual moderating variable and show an asymmetry between buying and selling frames when applied to a stock market context a consistent finding is that consumers prefer to buy past winners and sell past losers even when neither should be preferred this behavior violates the normative rule of buy low and sell high

separate spheres bargaining and the marriage market this paper introduces the separate spheres bargaining model a new model of distribution within marriage it differs from divorce threat bargaining models e g manser brown mcelroy horney in that the threat point is not divorce but a noncooperative equilibrium within marriage this noncooperative equilibrium reflects traditional gender roles the predictions of our model thus differ from those of divorce threat bargaining models in the separate spheres model cash transfer payments to the mother and payments to the father can but need not imply different equilibrium distributions in existing marriages in the long run the distributional effects of transfer policies may be substantially altered by changes in the marriage market equilibrium

some instability puzzles in kaleckian models of growth and distribution a critical survey we tackle the issue of the possible instability of the kaleckian distribution and growth model distinguishing between keynesian and harrodian instability we review various mechanisms that have been proposed by critics of the kaleckian model to tame harrodian instability while bringing back the rate of utilisation to its normal rate we find that the mechanisms that have been suggested are far from convincing therefore we conclude that it may be premature for the critics of the kaleckian model to dismiss the endogeneity of the rate of capacity utilisation in long run growth equilibrium copyright the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

matching finding a partner for life or otherwise how do job worker and husband wife relationships form and why do some matched pairs subsequently separate economists and game theorists are in the process of developing and applying an equilibrium explanation of match formation and separation based on the principle of voluntary pairing under competitive conditions the purpose of this paper is to assess the current state of these developments the general existence of patnership structures with the property that no one has an incentive to separate has been established these equilibrium structures maximize aggregate value over the set of all feasible match structures in the transferable utility case according to this pure theory of matching competition for partners can be expected to yield equilibrium match structures that are both stable and socially efficient at least under conditions of frictionless certainty search theoretic models that take account of meeting costs and initial uncertainty about match values have been developed to explain sepa

a cross national study of managerial values this study investigated cross national differences in managerial values a total of 567 managers from twelve nations participated in the study managerial values were assessed by means of rokeach s value survey factor analysis of the eighteen instrumental values included in rokeach s value survey revealed four underlying value dimensions the value dimension that included the instrumental values broadminded capable and courageous was ranked as the most important value dimension by managers from all twelve nations national differences were found on three of the four value dimensions

consumer ethics an assessment of individual behavior in the market place a national sample of 362 respondents assessed the ethical predisposition of the american marketplace by calculating a consumer ethics index the results indicate that the population is quite intolerant of perceived ethical abuses the situations where consumers are ambivalent tend to be those where the seller suffers little or no economic harm from the consumer s action younger more educated and higher income consumers appear more accepting of these transgressions the results provided the basis for developing a four group taxonomy of consumers which retailers should find insightful in assessing potential consumer actions in a variety of situations