rational household labor supply traditionally household behavior is derived from the maximization of a unique utility function in this paper we propose an alternative approach in which the household is modeled as a two member collectivity taking pareto efficient decisions the consequences of this assumption are analyzed in a three good model in which only total consumption and each member s labor supply are observable if the agents are assumed egoistic i e they are only concerned with their own leisure and consumption it is possible to derive falsifiable conditions upon household labor supplies from both a parametric and nonparametric viewpoint if alternatively agents are altruistic restrictions obtain in the nonparametric context useful interpretation stems from the comparison with the characterization of aggregate demand for a private good economy

an empirical test of a cross national model of corporate social responsibility most models of corporate social responsibility revolve around the controversy as to whether business is a single dimensional entity of profit maximization or a multi dimensional entity serving greater societal interests furthermore the models are mostly descriptive in nature and are based on the experiences of western countries there has been little attempt to develop a model that accounts for corporate social responsibility in diverse environments with differing socio cultural and market settings in this paper an attempt has been made to fill this gap by developing a two dimensional model of corporate social responsibility and empirically testing its validity in the context of two dissimilar cultures australia and bangladesh the two dimensions are the span of corporate responsibility narrow to wider perspective and the range of outcomes of social commitments of businesses cost to benefit driven perspective the test results confirm the validity of the two dimensional model in the two environments the factor analysis revealed two leading dimensions cluster analysis pointed to two distinctive clusters of managers in both australia and bangladesh one consisting of managers with a broad contemporary concept of social responsibility and the other with a limited narrow view the paper concludes that corporate social responsibility is two dimensional and universal in nature and that differing cultural and market settings in which managers operate may have little impact on the ethical perceptions of corporate managers

the analytics of the pricing of higher education and other services in which the customers are inputs many services provide outputs that depend partially on the customers as inputs the presence of other customers often contributes to the output experienced by each purchaser higher education is the premier example others are legion we provide a simple model that addresses the questions of competitive pricing and allocative efficiency for these types of services prices that charge customers for what they get on net output minus input from the firm both are competitive and support efficient allocations these prices internalize the apparent external effects of customers on each other few examples of such prices exist in the real world

erratum to how far the tbl concept of sustainable entrepreneurship extends beyond the various sustainability regulations can greek food manufacturing enterprises sustain their hybrid nature over time this study presents the design and selected results of a comprehensive research on measuring the concept of sustainable entrepreneurship we used the methodology of conjoint analysis and developed a hierarchical framework that lists all the multi attributes that exist in the triple bottom line concept in doing so we collected data from 150 greek food companies the multi attributes were categorized and ranked into the following four headings internal social values isv external social values esv environmental values env and economic values ecv specifically we found that the creation of values that improve the safety and hygiene issues of products to consumers is the most important attribute for the isv domain respectively the most important attribute for the esv domain is the creation of values that impact on the local economy accordingly the creation of values for minimizing environmental impacts was found as the most important attribute for the env domain and lastly the establishment of ecv that increase long run profitability was identified as the most important for the ecv dimension finally all the categorized values offer rich feedback for entrepreneurship scholars and parishioners and to that extent our findings are slightly different from those reported in previous researches to other contexts as we have managed to build an aggregated instrument that promotes the hybrid nature of food companies towards international development

responsible entrepreneurship in developing countries understanding the realities and complexities developing countries have recently experienced a burgeoning of small scale individual entrepreneurs sies who range from petty traders to personal service workers like small street vendors barbers and owners of small shops as a result of market based reforms rapid urbanisation unemployment landlessness and poverty while sies form a major part of the informal workforce in developing countries and contribute significantly to economic growth their potential is being undermined when they engage in irresponsible and deceptive business practices such as overpricing sale of underweight or substandard products or attempts to hoard goods to name a few despite the growing interest in corporate social responsibility csr initiatives of small businesses in developing countries the sies have received almost no attention to address this void in the literature we explore the reasons for the less than optimal level of social responsibility demonstrated by some sies in developing countries we do so by drawing upon the existing literature to develop a comprehensive framework of social responsibility of sies highlighting their unique characteristics and the different contextual factors that they encounter in developing countries based on this framework we then present a set of propositions specifying the influence of these contextual factors such as business environment cultural traditions socio economic conditions and both international and domestic pressures on the business practices of sies the framework offers an explanation for the lack of responsible entrepreneurship of sies and has important implications for promoting sustainable business practices in developing countries where businesses are striving hard to survive and compete

economics coursework and long term behavior and experiences of college graduates in labor markets and personal finance i introduction if economics is a unique way of thinking as many economists like to claim some level of coursework in economics may provide enough specific knowledge and skills to lead students to make different choices in their adult roles as consumers workers and voters citizens of course the same could be claimed for training in business and other areas even though or perhaps because it could be argued that most content and training in business courses is more applied and pragmatic than what is presented in economics courses some empirical evidence though not really a great deal suggests that training in economics and business is associated with different adult behaviors and outcomes for example golec 1996 finds that mutual funds perform better if mutual fund managers have an mba and chevalier and ellison 1999 also report a positive correlation between mutual fund performance and the educational background of mutual fund managers black sanders and taylor 2003 found that economics majors earn almost 20 more than graduates in other social science majors and about 10 more than those who major in business administration in fields with large numbers of graduates they find that only engineering majors earn more than economics majors similarly hecker 1995 reported that males majoring in economics had median earnings 3 higher than all majors for the age cohort of 25 34 and 53 more than average for the cohort aged 35 44 craft and baker 2003 find that lawyers with an undergraduate major in economics earn 13 more than otherwise comparable lawyers with other undergraduate majors and economics is the only major with a statistically significant effect on earnings 1 hamermesh and donald 2008 however find that higher earnings by economics majors are partly due to economics majors working more hours than others the relationship between financial literacy knowledge and adult behavior and outcomes in financial markets has been addressed in several recent studies many sponsored by federal reserve banks hilgert hogarth and beverly 2003 and braunstein and welch 2002 find that knowledge about credit saving and investment is significantly related to recommended financial practices in cash flow management credit management saving and investment unfortunately there is also evidence of widespread financial illiteracy in u s households and particularly among elderly women see lusardi and mitchell 2007 2008 employee education programs have been found to affect workers savings retirement and investment behaviors bayer bernheim and scholz 2009 bernheim and garret 2003 state mandates for precollege education in personal finance appear to succeed in at least exposing students to more information and sources on financial education and students from states with such mandates report higher levels of savings and net worth as adults bernheim garrett and maki 2001 tennyson and nguyen 2001 much less research exists linking college coursework or majoring in economics to personal finance outcomes 2 but christiansen joensen and rangvid 2008 find that those trained in economics in college courses or employee education programs are more likely to invest in stocks than those who receive training in other areas guiso and jappelli 2005 report that among college graduates having a degree in economics is positively associated with knowledge about financial assets chert and volpe 1998 107 concluded that business majors had better knowledge about personal financial literacy than other students but that in general college students were not knowledgeable about personal finance 3 in this paper we use a large and unique data set to investigate the relationships between taking college coursework in economics or majoring in economics with long term labor market and personal finance behaviors and outcomes our information on long term behaviors and outcomes is drawn from a detailed questionnaire we mailed in january 2003 to over 25 000 graduates who attended four public universities in 1976 1986 or 1996

efficiency in the use of technology in economic education some preliminary results this paper reports preliminary results of a project funded by the andrew f mellon foundation that is intended to ascertain whether technology enhanced introductory economics courses are more effective and also more efficient than traditionally taught courses blecha s 2000 survey of faculty at different types of institutions of higher education documents that economics instructors now use a continuum of technological enhancements ranging from e mail web sites presentation software computerized games and spreadsheets to computerized instruction and distance learning while several studies investigate the consequences of using technology on student performance there has been little attempt to compare the efficacy and efficiency of the various types of available technologies

corporate social responsibility and family business in spain despite the economic relevance and distinctiveness of family firms little attention has been devoted to researching their nature and functioning traditionally family firms have been associated both to positive and negative features in their relationships with the stakeholders this can be linked to different orientations toward corporate social responsibility thus this research aims to identify the approaches that spanish family firms maintain about social responsibility based on the model developed by quazi and o brien journal of business ethics 25 33 51 2000 an empirical study carried out for 112 spanish family firms gives support to our initial assumption about these organizations not being a homogeneous group in terms of their orientation towards corporate social responsibility the differences in perceptions do not seem to be associated to biographical characteristics these results lead to some relevant academic and practical implications that suggest interesting lines for future research

institutions of higher education as multi product firms economies of scale and scope a multiple output cost function is estimated for institutions of higher education in the united states employing data for 1981 82 the authors flexible fixed cost quadratic function includes three outputs undergraduate teaching graduate teaching and research grants and one input price average faculty salaries results indicate the existence of scope economies at least up to a point for both public and private institutions of higher education ray economies of scale are more pronounced in the private sector and product specific economies of scale are observed only in the public sector for research and graduate teaching copyright 1989 by mit press

semiparametric estimation of selection models some empirical results among the central theoretical developments in the econometric analysis of nonexperimental microeconomic data has been the analysis of selectivity bias following the work of james heckman 1974 statistical techniques were developed in the 1970s to consistently estimate the parameters of these models one potential drawback to the application of these techniques is their sensitivity to the assumed parametric distribution of the unobservable error terms in the model in recent years a number of estimation methods for selection models have been developed which do not impose parametric forms on error distributions these methods are termed semiparametric since only part of the model of interest the regression function is parametrically specified while the statistical theory of these semiparametric estimators has received much attention practical applications of the methods are lacking an exception being the paper by joel horowitz and george neumann 1987 in this paper we use semiparametric methods to reanalyze data on the labor supply of married women first studied by thomas mroz 1987 using parametric methods the object of this reanalysis is to determine whether mroz s results are sensitive to his parametric assumptions

sustainable entrepreneurship is entrepreneurial will enough a north south comparison based on an analysis of 44 cases in canada tunisia and cameroon this research attempts to determine the fundaments of sustainable entrepreneurship se in an international perspective and to shed the light on the potential impact of economic institutional and cultural dimensions upon diverse levels of sustainability in small and medium size firms smes neo institutional and entrepreneurship theories were combined in an integrative conceptual model to fully embrace the meanings and practices of se and to question the culture free argument of some prescriptions as well as some international programs the analysis of the rationale behind entrepreneurs committed to sustainability in the three countries compared to less engaged firms shows that entrepreneurs individual values are crucial in all cases socio cultural specificities and institutional realities can however be more or less inductive to the adoption of sustainable practices in smes this study also demonstrates that external stimuli are needed in tunisia and cameroon to reach the same environmental involvement as found in canada moreover support programs to assist smes with the adoption of sustainable practices and communication about the issue have to be tailored to the entrepreneur s motives the firms levels of openness to sustainability the socio cultural practices already embedded and the countries priorities implications for policy management and research are also discussed

the micro economics of group behavior general characterization abstract we study the demand function of a group of s members facing a global budget constraint any vector belonging to the budget set can be consumed within the group with no restriction on the form of individual preferences the nature of individual consumptions or the form of the decision process beyond efficiency moreover only the group aggregate behavior summarized by its demand function is observable we provide necessary and locally sufficient restrictions that fully characterize the group s demand function with and without distribution factors we show that the private or public nature of consumption within the group is not testable from aggregate data on group behavior

the microeconomics of efficient group behavior identification1 consider a group consisting of s members facing a common budget constraint p 1 any demand vector belonging to the budget set can be privately or publicly consumed by the members although the intragroup decision process is not known it is assumed to generate pareto efficient outcomes neither individual consumptions nor intragroup transfers are observable the paper analyzes when to what extent and under which conditions it is possible to recover the underlying structure individual preferences and the decision process from the group s aggregate behavior we show that the general version of the model is not identified however a simple exclusion assumption whereby each member does not consume at least one good is sufficient to guarantee generic identifiability of the welfare relevant structural concepts

the economic reward for studying economics undergraduate advisors in economics departments suggest that the study of economics is good preparation for a variety of careers including economics consulting analysis and administration and they argue that economics is a solid prelaw or pre mba major in this article we provide some empirical evidence about each of these contentions we find that among college graduates who do not earn advanced degrees economics majors generally earn more than similar individuals with other majors we show also that among individuals who pursue graduate degree programs in business and law economics majors earn more than undergraduate majors in most other academic disciplines jel j31

the lake wobegon effect in student self reported data for over a decade garrison keillor assured listeners of american public radio s a prairie home companion that in lake wobegon all the women are strong all the men are good looking and all the children are above average judith yaross lee 1991 although we can offer no explanation for the women s strength and men s appearance we may be able to shed light on the reports of exceptional achievement of lake wobegon s children our research indicates that students tend to overstate their academic accomplishments and that belowaverage students are less likely to report their achievements at all this produces a lake wobegon effect in student selfreported data overstated achievement may produce biased estimates of the relationship between achievement and educational inputs if overstatement is correlated with achievement in economic education the use of student self reported data for empirical analysis is not uncommon both the national assessment of economic education data base and the third edition of the test of understanding in college economic data base use some self reported data in addition some economic education researchers develop their own data sets that include student self reported data systematic reporting biases in data collection also create problems for empirical analysis nonrandom reporting has been documented as a potential problem in economic education students are more likely to report grading errors on examinations when the correction of these errors results in raising their grades dale 0 cloninger and robert hodgin 1986 sample selection bias resulting from using an unrepresentative sample has been shown to result from data lost between pretests and posttests william e becker and william b walstad 1990 students failure to take standardized tests claude montmarquette and rachel houle 1986 and selection procedures used to place students in experimental and control groups john j siegfried and george h sweeney 1980

a resource based perspective on corporate environmental performance and profitability drawing on the resource based view of the firm we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship with the returns to environmental performance higher in high growth industries we tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 finns over two years using independently developed environmental ratings results indicate that it pays to be green and that this relationship strengthens with industry growth we conclude by highlighting the study s academic and managerial implications making special reference to the social issues in management literature

the emergence of corporate social responsibility in chile the importance of authenticity and social networks little is known about how and why corporate social responsibility csr emerged in lesser developed countries in order to address this knowledge gap we used chile as a test case and conducted a series of in depth interviews with leaders of csr initiatives we also did an internet and literature search to help provide support for the findings that emerged from our data we discovered that while there are similarities in the drivers of csr in developed countries there are distinct differences as well in particular we found that different sectors drive csr in chile in contrast to other geographies where consumer demand and government regulation provided the impetus for csr efforts multinational companies mncs and non governmental organizations ngos are key actors in chile mncs imported their csr beliefs skills and processes into chile their efforts resulted in a virtuous cycle once large domestic firms felt pressured by their mnc rivals they too adopted csr initiatives the ability to manage relationships with multiple stakeholders and perceptions of authenticity were also critical to the success of csr in chile using network theory as a lens we suggest that network density and centrality largely determine whether csr efforts will be authentic based on these contentions we suggest avenues for future research

education and saving the long term effects of high school financial curriculum mandates abstract over the last 40 years a majority of states have adopted consumer education policies and a sizable minority have mandated that high school students receive instruction on topics related to household financial decision making in this paper we attempt to determine whether these mandates have had any effect on subsequent decisions we exploit the variation in requirements both across states and over time to identify the effects of interest the evidence indicates that mandates have raised both exposure to financial curricula and subsequent asset accumulation once exposed students reached adulthood the estimated effects are gradual probably due to implementation lags

corporate environmental citizenship variation in developing countries an institutional framework this study focuses on why some companies in developing countries go beyond environmental regulations when implementing their corporate environmental social responsibilities or citizenship behavior drawing mainly upon the new institutional theory this study develops a conceptual framework to explain three institutional factors companies market orientations industrial characteristics and corporate identities accordingly we suggest that companies from developing countries that are oriented to markets in developed countries operate in highly concentrated industries and have missionary identities adopt corporate environmental citizenship behavior by going beyond environmental regulations the study also discusses the theoretical policy and managerial implications of the conceptual framework

household consumption when the marriage is stable we develop a novel framework to analyze the structural implications of the marriage market for household consumption we de ne a revealed preference characterization of e cient household consumption when the marriage is stable stability means that the marriage matching is individually rational and has no blocking pairs we characterize stable marriage with intrahousehold consumption transfers but without assuming transferable utility we show that our revealed preference characterization generates testable conditions even with a single consumption observation per household and heterogeneous individual preferences across households the characterization also allows for identifying the intrahousehold decision structure including the sharing rule under the same minimalistic assumptions an application to dutch household data demonstrates the usefulness of our theoretical results we nd that the female gets a higher income share when her relative wage increases which we can give a structural interpretation in terms of outside options from marriage that vary with individual wages

planning and financial literacy how do women fare many older us households have done little or no planning for retirement and there is a substantial population that seems to undersave for retirement of particular concern is the relative position of older women who are more vulnerable to old age poverty due to their longer longevity this paper uses data from a special module we devised on planning and financial literacy in the 2004 health and retirement study it shows that women display much lower levels of financial literacy than the older population as a whole in addition women who are less financially literate are also less likely to plan for retirement and be successful planners these findings have important implications for policy and for programs aimed at fostering financial security at older ages

testable implications of transferable utility although the transferable utility tu assumption is widely used in micro theory little is known about its testable consequences and in particular how one can from the observation of a group s demand test whether the tu assumption is satisfied within this group we derive a set of necessary and sufficient conditions on demand that characterize the tu context the conditions are of two types first tu requires the group to behave as a single decision maker secondly within the unitary setting the representative utility generated by a tu framework must be of the generalized quasi linear gql form we derive testable properties of the demand function that fully characterize gql utilities these additional restrictions only involve specifi cp rices namely those of the goods that are publicly consumed within the household

market structure in the production of economics ph d s a century ago economics began to develop as a separate and significant part of the curriculum in american colleges and universities along with increased popularity and enrollment came the need for faculty specifically trained in economics a number of american scholars turned to europe germany in particular for their training and brought the german ph d back as a model for graduate education the first economics ph d s earned in this country were awarded by harvard 1875 yale 1877 and johns hopkins 1878 1 these first ph d s were two year degrees by 1900 economists had generally upgraded the ph d to three years beyond the baccalaureate degree consisting of two years of course work and another year for the dissertation graduate classes were taught in seminar format with considerable interaction between professors and students as the production process matured dissertations became longer more sophisticated and more specialized i e they were no longer the mark of a cultured gentleman but the demonstration of a professional skill 15 11 the newly formed american economic association began to keep track of doctoral candidates in economics in 1904 6 in 1904 there were 8 institutions which reported having men working on ph d s and by 1928 that number had increased to 27 2 while the american economic association did not tabulate the output of completed ph d s the national research council has compiled a database containing the number of ph d s by institution by year since 1920 their survey of earned doctorates indicates that 22 ph d s were awarded in economics by 6 different universities in 1920 by 1992 that number had grown to 910 ph d s from 123 different institutions

environmental respect ethics or simply business a study in the small and medium enterprise sme context in recent years there have been ever growing concerns regarding environmental decline causing some companies to focus on the implementation of environmentally friendly supply production and distribution systems such concern may stem either from the set of beliefs and values of the company s management or from certain pressure exerted by the market consumers and institutions in the belief that an environmentally respectful management policy will contribute to the transmission of a positive image of the company and its products sometimes however ethics and market rules are not enough to deal with this situation and specific laws must be considered this is the case when companies base their activity on the ethics of self interest concentrating their efforts on projecting an adequate image e g environmental respect rather than fundamentally behaving in environmentally respectful ways this article taking as reference the sme context discusses the reasons for implementing environmentally friendly systems both ethics and business seem to be relevant and therefore a certain balance between market and interventionism seems to be necessary

the effects of financial education in the workplace evidence from a survey of households abstract we use a novel household survey to investigate the effects of employer based financial education on personal saving we explore cross sectional relations between the availability of employer based financial education and various measures of asset accumulation and we interpret these patterns in light of various potentially confounding factors our findings favor the hypothesis that employer based financial education stimulates saving both in general and for retirement

the corporate social performance financial performance link strategic managers are consistently faced with the decision of how to allocate scarce corporate resources in an environment that is placing more and more pressures on them recent scholarship in strategic management suggests that many of these pressures come directly from sources associated with social issues in management rather than traditional arenas of strategic management using a greatly improved source of data on corporate social performance this paper reports the results of a rigorous study of the empirical linkages between financial and social performance corporate social performance csp is found to be positively associated with prior financial performance supporting the theory that slack resource availability and csp are positively related csp is also found to be positively associated with future financial performance supporting the theory that good management and csp are positively related 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

the contribution of environmental and social standards towards ensuring legitimacy in supply chain governance increasingly companies implement social and environmental standards as instruments towards corporate social responsibility csr in supply chains this is based on the assumption that such standards increase legitimacy among stakeholders yet a wide variety of standards with different requirement levels exist and companies might tend to introduce the ones with low exigencies using them as a legitimacy front this strategy jeopardizes the reputation of social and environmental standards among stakeholders and their long term trust in these instruments of csr meaning that all expenses for their implementation are of no avail for the companies therefore this paper highlights which criteria are important for the selection implementation and improvement in order to achieve a company s aim but also to strengthen the legitimacy of social and environmental standards this research is based on conceptual thought and some existing empirical research comparing four different social and environmental standards revealing weaknesses and strengths it exposes the basic conditions for the success of such standards among stakeholders and identifies the need for more empirical data

some lasting effects of undergraduate economics on retirement planning this study investigated the likely effects of undergraduate economics on whether a college graduate has opened a retirement account four years after graduation economic education is measured by the number of economics credit hours or whether a college graduate had majored in economics additional control variables for the logit analyses include occupation differences employment record and some demographics completing an undergraduate course in economics is significantly associated with having a retirement account and economics majors are more likely than some other majors to have a retirement account the analysis uses college transcript data from the baccalaureate and beyond study nces ed gov surveys b b

who marries whom and why this paper proposes and estimates a static transferable utility model of the marriage market the model generates a nonparametric marriage matching function with spillover effects it rationalizes the standard interpretation of marriage rate regressions and points out its limitations the model was used to estimate u s marital behavior in 1971 72 and 1981 82 the marriage matching function estimates show that the gains to marriage for young adults fell substantially over the decade unlike contradictory marriage rate regression results the marriage matching function estimates showed that the legalization of abortion had a significant quantitative impact on the fall in the gains to marriage for young men and women

the awarding of phds in the united states and canada war the draft and other economic determinants this article is concerned with the awarding of phds in the usa and canada in the post ww ii period overall by gender and major academic discipline the effects of the explanatory variables lagged by 6 years to allow for time to degree completion are consistent with the model military conscription with educational exemptions and the vietnam war increased male phds in the usa but as expected had no effect for us females or in canada this suggests that the war and draft effect for us males were not reflecting other unmeasured north american effects government expenditures on research and development enhanced the phd production especially for males and in the physical sciences the cyclical indicator the adult male unemployment rate has a weak positive effect for males in both the usa and canada suggesting that during the post ww ii period the positive effect on graduate level education of the reduced opportunity cost of time due to a recession was stronger than the negative wealth effect of th

the marketing challenge towards being profitable and socially responsible this article reviews the history of marketing thought in relation to social responsibility and business ethics the main objective of the article is to show that business can be profitable and socially responsible at the same time by practising the societal marketing concept more specifically it presents the development of a marketing philosophy discusses the influence of consumerism on the marketing concept and deals with ethics and social responsibility in marketing it is argued that organisations who adopt the societal marketing concept will be the ones most likely to make long run profits as well as be beneficial to society as a whole

stressed out on four continents time crunch or yuppie kvetch social commentators have pointed to the problems of citizens of industrialized countries especially working women who face time stress an absence of sufficient time to accomplish all their tasks an economic theory views time stress as an increasing function of the shadow price of time and suggests it will be more prevalent in households with higher incomes and whose members work longer in the market or on required homework evidence from microeconomic data sets for australia germany korea and the united states corroborates this view adults in higher income households perceive more time stress in the united states a move from the 25 th to the 75 th percentile of the income distribution raises time stress by half as much as an interquartile change in weekly market work the relative effects of increased income compared to increased market work are larger in germany smaller in australia and roughly the same in korea time stress is part time crunch but much is also part yuppie kvetch

investment in schooling and the marriage market we present a model in which investment in schooling generates two kinds of returns the labor market return resulting from higher wages and a marriagemarket return defined as the impact of schooling on the marital surplus share one can extract men and women may have different incentives to invest in schooling because of different market wages or household roles this asymmetry can yield a mixed equilibrium with some educated individuals marrying uneducated spouses when the labor market returns to schooling rises home production demands less time and the traditional spousal labor division norms weaken more women may invest in schooling than men

individual account investment options and portfolio choice behavioral lessons from 401 k plans abstract this paper examines how the menu of investment options made available to workers in defined contribution plans influences portfolio choice using unique panel data of 401 k plans in the u s we present three principle findings first we show that the share of investment options in a particular asset class i e company stock equities fixed income and balanced funds has a significant effect on aggregate participant portfolio allocations across these asset classes second we document that the vast majority of the new funds added to 401 k plans are high cost actively managed equity funds as opposed to lower cost equity index funds third because the average share of assets invested in low cost equity index funds declines with an increase in the number of options average portfolio expenses increase and average portfolio performance is thus depressed all of these findings are obtained from a panel data set enabling us to control for heterogeneity in the investment preferences of workers across firms and across time

how can responsible family ownership be sustained across generations a family social capital approach responsible family ownership rfo is a combination of the family s commitment to the family firm s ff s stakeholders in the long term and the explicit behaviour of the family members associated with the firm however families are not individuals but rather a system of relationships among family members in such a context misunderstandings in communication anachronistic mentalities and different value systems can block the intergenerational transmission of rfo consequently the responsibility of the family towards the ff s stakeholders may be damaged and the firm s socially responsible behaviour hindered this paper aims to identify how rfo is transferred across generations and to ascertain the role that family social capital fsc plays in preserving the transmission of rfo from generation to generation our research is based on three in depth case studies of mexican family owned small and medium sized enterprises first the paper identifies and contrasts a set of fsc specific factors and problems which play a relevant role in the transmission of rfo while recognizing the influence of the mutually reinforcing dynamics of fsc dimensions secondly the family s honourableness a lander in j bus ethics 116 4 751 767 2013 is identified as a key driver for sustaining the transmission of rfo finally the paper identifies rfo institutionalization required to face the intrinsic problems of transmitting rfo in growing families

collective labor supply and welfare the paper develops a general collective model of household labor supply in which agents are characterized by their own possibly altruistic preferences and household decisions are only assumed to be pareto efficient an alternative interpretation is that there are two stages in the internal decision process agents first share nonlabor income according to some given sharing rule then each one optimally chooses his or her own labor supply and consumption this setting is shown to generate testable restrictions on labor supplies moreover the observation of labor supply behavior is sufficient for recovering individual preferences and the sharing rule up to a constant finally the traditional tools of welfare analysis can be adapted to the new setting

a fresh look at the rotten kid theorem and other household mysteries gary becker s rotten kid theorem asserts that if all family members receive gifts of money income from a benevolent household member then even if the household head does not precommit to an incentive plan for family members it will be in the interest of selfish family members to maximize total family income i show by examples that the rotten kid theorem is not true without assuming transferable utility i find a simple condition on utility functions that is necessary and sufficient for there to be the kind of transferable utility needed for a rotten kid theorem while restrictive these conditions still allow one to apply the strong conclusions of the rotten kid theorem in an interesting class of examples

can web courses replace the classroom in principles of microeconomics the proliferation of economics courses offered partly or completely online arnold katz and william e becker 1999 raises important questions about the effects of the new technologies on student learning do students enrolled in online courses learn more or less than students taught face to face can we identify any student characteristics such as gender race act scores or grade averages that are associated with better outcomes in one technology or another how would the online or face to face students fare if they had taken the course using the alternative technology this paper addresses these questions using student data from our principles of microeconomics courses at michigan state university

measuring corporate social responsibility for competitive success at a regional level abstract the relevance of corporate social responsibility in the business world is enhanced by its linkage with other variables of strategic nature in the firm s activity for this purpose the objective of the paper is to define an overall scale to cover their different dimensions social economic and environmental by analyzing the cause effect relations with performance and competitive success this under researched topic has been studied in a sample of 67 medium and big firms within a specific regional context a pioneer region in europe which is starting to promote responsible business behaviour by the regional government for that structural equation methodology based on partial least squares path modelling has been applied the results show the positive direct and significant effect of social responsibility orientation of firms to competitive success and the mediating effect of performance the established set of indicators that define corporate social responsibility provides a simple and useful guidance for responsible actions implementation to upgrade regional competitive success

independence of allocative efficiency from distribution in the theory of public goods when is the pareto optimal amount of public goods independent of income distribution subject to some regularity conditions the answer is when preferences of every individual i can be represented by a utility function of the form u x i y a y x i b i y where x i is i s consumption of private goods and y is the amount of public goods

start up sustainability an insurmountable cost or a life giving investment abstract an outstanding question in the entrepreneurship literature reigns given recent emphases on sustainable business practices and corporate social responsibility if small start ups are generally stretched for time and resources does it enhance their chances for survival and success to be sustainable and socially responsible new firms can aid in rectifying pressing environmental and social issues by being more sustainable while many entrepreneurs like a sustainable business model and or mission investment may not follow so willingly this paper examines a sample of 300 start ups across thirty cities around the world to consider whether sustainability is rewarded by investors investors signal confidence in start ups when they infuse life extending investments into them this analysis also considers whether a more sustainable national context affects investor confidence and whether a sustainable firm within a sustainable national context gains more investor attention and investment results show that investors avoid sustainable firms particularly those that are environmentally sustainable moreover investors enjoy national contexts that are socially responsible but pay no attention to those that are environmentally conscious in addition firms that are sustainable in a sustainable national context are not better off for attracting investment insights for policy are that mainstream investors are attracted by national social policies but these investors are unlikely to be the main force behind sustainable venture growth under today s conditions

what students remember and say about college economics years later in his presidential address to the american economic association george stigler 1963 offered the provocative hypothesis that students would retain very little knowledge from principles courses in economics five years or more after taking the courses the few empirical studies that have been published on this topic generally found no or small lasting effects at least for those who took fewer than four courses see e g g l bach and phillip saunders 1965 gerald j lynch 1990 that raises even broader questions about the long term effects of studying economics in college in terms of individuals behavior as consumers workers and voters which we are now beginning to investigate using both survey and transcript data we have two major goals in this study first we want to learn how students perceive their classroom experience in economics courses years after leaving school both in absolute terms and compared to other courses they took we drew samples of economics business and other majors who attended our four universities in 1976 1986 and 1996 and asked which topics regularly covered in economics courses they now viewed as being most and least important we asked whether they now viewed the economics courses they took as interesting important too difficult or too abstract we also compared their perceptions of teaching methods and grading rigor in economics courses to those developed in other courses our second major goal represents an empirical test of the common claim that economics is a unique way of thinking if it is we might reasonably expect people with more training in economics to have different views on policy issues and to make different decisions as consumers workers savers investors and voters we collected survey data on many of these choices and by matching those responses with transcript data we plan to investigate whether there are observable behavioral responses associated with being an economics major or simply taking some minimum number of economics courses compared to students who took fewer courses or none at all there are other uses for these data they can likely be used to study choice of major and course taking behavior as well as common laboreconomics issues such as human capital versus screening in the labor market certainly the data can provide insight into curriculum development for economics departments and business schools as well there is obviously the potential for response biases in the analysis of these data but we expect that having transcript data for respondents and nonrespondents will allow us to deal with these issues econometrically this first brief report from this ongoing project addresses only the first goal of the project specifically how our former students evaluate their experience with economics courses and instructors what economic courses and concepts do they now believe are most important do they wish they had taken more or less coursework in economics what do they think now about various economic issues and allgood department of economics university of nebraska lincoln ne 68588 e mail sallgood unlnotes unl edu bosshardt department of economics florida atlantic university boca raton fl 33431 e mail wbosshar fau edu van der klaauw department of economics university of north carolina chapel hill nc 27599 e mail vanderkl email unc edu watts department of economics purdue university west lafayette in 47907 and while this paper was written the german international school of management and administration hanover germany e mail mwatts mgmt purdue edu we thank the board of the calvin k kazanjian economics foundation for the grant that made this work possible and the aea committee for economic education for bringing us together to write the proposal as described in michael salemi et al 2002 mike salemi provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper april fidler provided major assistance in project coordination administration and data entry georg schaur worked extensively with data organization and preliminary tabulations

changes in college skills and the rise in the college wage premium the college wage premium for new labor market entrants rose sharply during the 1980s we ask how much of this change arose from changes in the skill level of the typical college graduate we find that skills attained prior to college as measured by standardized test scores and high school grades had no effect on the change in the college wage premium for men in contrast the returns to math ability rose considerably for women failing to account for math skills thus substantially overstates the growth in the female college wage premium skills acquired in college as reflected in the distribution of students across majors had important effects on the relative wages of men the trend away from low skill subjects such as education and toward high skill subjects such as engineering accounts for one fourth of the rise in the male college wage premium

the empirical content of cournot competition we consider the testable implications of the cournot model of market competition our approach is nonparametric in the sense that we abstain from imposing any functional specification on market demand and firm cost functions we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for reduced form equilibrium market price and quantity functions to be consistent with the cournot model in addition we present identification results for the corresponding inverse market demand function and the firm cost functions finally we use our approach to derive testable restrictions for the models of perfect competition collusion and conjectural variations this identifies the conditions under which these different models are empirically distinguishable from the cournot model we also investigate empirical issues measurement error and omitted variables related to bringing our testable restrictions to data

research in economic education five new initiatives research is essential for improvement in teaching and learning economics william e becker et al 1991 called for new research on the relative merits of multiple choice and essay tests on the lasting effects of course work in economics and on the effects of instructors instructional techniques and new technologies on student learning to respond to the call the committee on economic education cee of the american economic association recruited robin bartlett william becker w lee hansen peter kennedy and the authors to organize a conference that would jump start new research projects the organizers chose three conference goals identifying research priorities recruiting new economists to economic education research and building teams to undertake identified priorities they recruited 21 economists to participate 1 provided them with a list of potential research questions and asked them which questions were most important and which they were willing to work on with survey results in hand the organizers divided participants into five teams corresponding to the following five topics teaching methods and incentives for collegelevel economics instruction ph d education in economics in the united states improving the assessment of student learning in college economics courses long term effects of learning economics and efficiency in the use of technology in economic education at the conference participants discussed briefing papers prepared for each topic worked on project design and funding issues and began writing proposals herein we describe our research priorities and our progress in developing research plans and securing financial support

survive then thrive determinants of success in the economics ph d program this study investigates the completion of the ph d in economics we use ex ante information based upon reviewing individual applications from former doctoral students students need different skills to succeed at each distinct stage of the doctoral program significant determinants for passing the comprehensive exams include graduate record exam gre verbal and quantitative scores a masters degree and prior focus on economics by contrast research motivation and math preparation play significant roles in completing the dissertation gre scores become insignificant for completion in the generalized ordered logit estimates which emphasize the sequential nature of the economics ph d program jel i210 i introduction every spring admission committees review a pile of applications to select candidates for their ph d programs beyond normal attrition economics departments clearly have a stake in seeing a significant proportion of students finish the program aside from whatever resources may accrue todepartmentswith high completion rates they receive prestige from the placement and success of their completed ph d students in academic institutions or private sector jobs obtaining a ph d in economics requires clearing a series of distinct hurdles and constitutes a riskier venture than attending medical school an mba program

the effects of financial education in the workplace evidence from a survey of employers we examine the effects of education on financial decision making skills by identifying an interesting source of variation in pertinent training during the 1990s an increasing number of individuals were exposed to programs of financial education provided by their employers if as some have argued low saving frequently results from a failure to appreciate economic vulnerabilities then education of this form could prove to have a powerful effect on behavior the current paper undertakes an analysis of these programs using a previously unexploited survey of employers we find that both participation in and contributions to voluntary savings plans are significantly higher when employers offer retirement seminars the effect is typically much stronger for non highly compensated employees than for highly compensated employees the frequency of seminars emerges as a particularly important correlate of behavior we are unable to detect any effects of written materials such as newsletters and summary plan descriptions regardless of frequency we also present evidence on other determinants of plan activity