is the secularization hypothesis valid a panel data assessment for taiwan the secularization thesis is based on the idea that a country becomes more secular as it becomes richer and more industrialized in order to investigate whether this hypothesis is valid we examine the relationship between religion in taiwan and economic development across 23 counties by adopting the panel data approach for the period 1998 to 2003 we select six religious activity proxy variables and five economic development variables in a cross county panel data framework the evidence indicates that the ratio of females to males has a significantly positive effect and that the literacy rate and population density each have a significantly negative effect on the religious variables finally except for the christian culture the unemployment rate has a positive effect on the religious variables our findings thus support the view that the religious secularization hypothesis is valid in taiwan

are church and state substitutes evidence from the 1996 welfare reform abstract churches provide community services similar to those provided by the government but there has been no convincing analysis of the extent to which church activity can substitute for government activity to address this important issue this paper uses a new panel data set of presbyterian church usa congregations to regress both church member donations and a church s community spending on a number of variables including government welfare expenditures a provision of the 1996 welfare law that decreased the availability and use of welfare services by non citizens serves as an instrument to identify the causal effect of government spending on church activity the results show that church activities substitute for government activities extrapolating the findings to all denominations the estimated crowd out effect lies between 20 and 38 cents on the dollar the results are subjected to a number of robustness tests

examining generic competitive strategy types in u s and european markets identification of generic competitive strategy types has recently attracted considerable attention most of this research has however focused on competitive strategy of u s businesses in their domestic market the present study extends these findings to markets outside the united states and more specifically europe based on a sample of industrial businesses drawn from the pims database similar dimensions underlying competitive strategy and similar generic types are found among business in the u s and in europe some differences in the performance and business characteristics of certain strategy types were however observed between u s and european markets rate of market growth also appeared to have more significant relation to performance of businesses in europe than in the u s

sacrifice and stigma reducing free riding in cults communes and other collectives this paper presents an economic analysis of religious behavior that accounts for the continuing success of groups with strange requirements and seemingly inefficient prohibitions the analysis does not presuppose any special motives for religious activity rather religion is modeled as a club good that displays positive returns to participatory crowding the analysis demonstrates that efficient religions with perfectly rational members may benefit from stigma self sacrifice and bizarre behavioral restrictions the model also addresses sacrifice in nonreligious social clubs fraternities communes political parties work groups and families

ceo characteristics and firm r d spending over the past fifteen years a number of studies have examined the determinants of firm r d spending these studies however almost invariably focus on the role of firm or external ownership characteristics in predicting r d spending while overlooking the attributes of the top managers involved in allocating corporate resources in this study we change that focus by empirically examining how r d spending as compared to industry competitors varies at firms based on the characteristics of their ceos using a sample of publicly traded firms we find that ceo characteristics explain a significant proportion of the sample variance in firm r d spending even when corporate strategy ownership structure and other firm level attributes are controlled in terms of individual ceo characteristics we find that r d spending is greater at firms where ceos are younger have greater wealth invested in firm stock and signifacant career experience in marketing and or engineering r d in contrast to existing theory we find that the amount of a ceo s formal education had no significant association with r d spending once a ceo has attained a college degree however significant r d spending increases are found at firms where ceos have advanced science related degrees from subgroup analyses we further find that ceo effects on relative r d spending increase with longer ceo tenure implying that ceos over time may mold r d spending to suit their own preferences from these results we make implications for both research on determinants of r d spending and managerial practice

environmental values and the frame of reference abstract wants may be distinguished by the extent to which they are positional positional wants are determined by one s frame of reference defined by comparison with peer group consumption and by one s own previous consumption the growth in positional wants is not uniquely related to environmental resource depletion but the two do strongly overlap several implications follow first social reductions in positional consumption may yield environmental benefits at little cost to consumers the costs are however spread over time and depend on the rate of adaptation the strength of the social reference effect determines whether individuals are subject to an isolation or an assurance problem and hence the degree to which cuts need to be centrally imposed if they are to succeed it is suggested that the negative consequences of international positioning could be ameliorated by the replacement of conventional income accounts by a welfare index that more fully incorporates environmental costs secondly the neoclassical utility function can be regarded as a special case of the reference based welfare function provided that it is restricted to positive explanations of how momentary choices are made reference based preferences have more in common with the findings of psychologists and hence open a way to consilience between economics and natural science finally the frame of reference also allows a dynamic perspective to the debate on the commensurability of wants

the endogenous relationship between innovation and diversification and the impact of technological resources on the form of diversification abstract this research has endeavoured to build on earlier research on the relationship between a firm s technological resources and the direction of its diversification by trying to confirm the endogeneity of this relationship and by addressing the influence of innovation on the choice of the mode of diversification based on a sample of spanish firms our results suggest that innovation drives diversification but not the reverse the second important finding of this research is the empirical confirmation that knowledge assets are not related to the diversification mode

impact of information technology capital on firm scope and performance the role of asset characteristics this research draws on transaction cost and resource based theory to examine how information technology it capital moderates the relationship between different types of assets and firm scope both vertical integration and diversification the analysis suggests that it capital enables firms with narrowly valuable assets to be less vertically integrated and less diversified and enables firms with broadly valuable assets to be more vertically integrated and more diversified the moderating influence of it capital on the relationship between different types of assets and firms vertical and product market scope is consistent with transaction cost as well as resource based traditions abstract from author

corporate governance and innovation a survey abstract the traditional economics of innovation inspired by schumpeter and more recent advances on his work seem unable to explain why firms with similar external conditions may show greatly different performance in innovation contrastingly the literature on corporate governance provides some useful insights for understanding corporate innovation activity to the extent that such literature examines the economic effects of different modes of coordination between firm members the process through which individuals integrate their human and physical resources within the firm is central to the dynamics of corporate innovation this paper provides the first survey of the literature on this issue we start by discussing how various theoretical approaches to the analysis of the firm deal with technological innovation we then describe three main channels corporate ownership corporate finance and labour through which a system of corporate governance shapes a firm s innovation activity finally we examine the relationship between country level institutional settings national patterns of corporate governance and the aggregate innovation activity of corporations we conclude by suggesting that future research should focus more deeply on the interrelation between the various dimensions of corporate governance and on their joint effect on firm innovation

mr smith and the preachers the economics of religion in the wealth of nations the extension of economic analysis to problems beyond the domain of formal markets and explicit prices represents a major recent intellectual development but economic imperialism is not new and was not invented in chicago adam smith in his wealth of nations extended economic reasoning to a variety of nonmarket exchange problems one example is his analysis of religious behavior smith viewed participation in religion as a rational device by which individual enhanced the value of their human capital he also explained the behavior of the clergy and other suppliers of religious services from an economic perspective

a lorenz pareto measure of pure diversification several diversification and concentration measures have been proposed these measures play an important role in both research and practice in the fields of strategic management industrial economics antitrust regulation and organizational studies two problems with popular existing measures are their inappropriate performance on a benchmark example of the industrial organization literature and their lack of normalization into the unit interval this note proposes a measure that overcomes these deficiencies a distinction is drawn between two separate dimensions of diversification that we call scope and pure diversfication respectively we call attention to how such pure measures can be recombined with scope for the construction of special purpose multiattribute indices our proposed measure is simply related to the well known gini index but is entirely novel a convenient relationship to pareto s principle permits flexible description and interpretation

measuring permanent responses to capital gains tax changes in panel data the authors use panel data and information about differences in state tax rates to separate the effects of transitory and permanent tax rate changes on capital gains realizations behavior the estimated effect of permanent change is substantially smaller than the effect of transitory change the difference is even larger than differences between estimates from past micro data studies which have primarily measured the transitory effect and time series studies which have primarily measured the permanent effect the authors results resolve a long standing conflict between micro data and time series studies of how marginal tax rates affect capital gains realizations behavior copyright 1994 by american economic association

measurement of firm diversification is it robust this study investigated the convergent validity of rumelt s categorical classification of types of business diversification across different data sources and variations from rumelt s method the st

self serving bias and tax morale abstract in a real effort laboratory experiment we find that moral evaluation of tax evasion is subject to a self serving bias subjects with the opportunity to evade taxes judge tax evasion as less unethical as opposed to those who cannot evade

on the self interested use of equity in international climate negotiations abstract we discuss self interested uses of equity arguments in international climate negotiations using unique data from a world wide survey of agents involved in international climate policy we show that the perceived support of different equity rules by regions may be explained by the ranking of their economic costs despite being self interested equity arguments may be perceived as being used for different reasons for example out of fairness considerations or in order to facilitate negotiations consistent with experimental and behavioral studies on fairness perceptions we find that individuals are more likely to state reasons with positive attributes if they evaluate their own region or regions that support the individual s personally preferred equity rule negotiators perceive the use of equity by regions as less influenced by pressure from interest groups

tithing and religious charitable giving in america the concept of religious tithing giving 10 or more of one s income to religious organizations permeates ancient and contemporary religious literature yet the degree to which households apply this construct in their charitable giving practices remains unclear this study examines the practice of tithing using data from a national expenditures survey including 56 663 households despite the pervasiveness of the tithing concept religious donors did not appear to be targeting a specific 10 giving level this may have resulted from varied definitions of income for tithing purposes or the presence of small charitable gifts made without reference to income while the likelihood of religious giving increased with income the likelihood of tithing fell dramatically as a group tithers had less income but were wealthier more educated older and gave more to nonreligious charity than did other households religious tithers who also gave to nonreligious charities were wealthier older and more highly educ

entrepreneurship social mobility and income redistribution in south india development economists have been preoccupied with the problem of increasing the size of the gnp pie to the relative neglect of its distribution despite the recent disenchantment with the viewpoint that all classes share in the benefits of industrial growth empirical data on the distribution of income business opportunity and economic power are in short supply many of the studies on entrepreneurship and economic development when they are not apologetics for ruthless capitalist exploitation as paul baran suggests extol the achievements of the capitalist entrepreneur without examining class origins and monopoly advantage joseph schumpeter sees entrepreneurs irrespective of class origin as heroic figures with the dream and will to found a private kingdom to conquer adversity to achieve success for its own sake and to experience the joy of creation for gustav papanek 1967 the private entrepreneur who is frugal diligent far sighted remarkably able and willing to take political risks is in large part responsible for the success of pakistan in achieving rapid industrialization

measuring innovative performance is there an advantage in using multiple indicators abstract the innovative performance of companies has been studied quite extensively and for a long period of time however the results of many studies have not yet led to a generally accepted indicator of innovative performance or a common set of indicators so far the variety in terms of constructs measurements samples industries and countries has been substantial this paper studies the innovative performance of a large international sample of nearly 1200 companies in four high tech industries using a variety of indicators these indicators range from r d inputs patent counts and patent citations to new product announcements the study establishes that a composite construct based on these four indicators clearly catches a latent variable innovative performance however our findings also suggest that the statistical overlap between these indicators is that strong that future research might also consider using any of these indicators to measure the innovative performance of companies in high tech industries

influence of industry r d intensity on corporate product diversification interaction effect of free cash flow this study analyzes the effect of industry r d intensity on the degree of product diversification and examines the interaction effect of free cash flow on the previous relationship at the current time in large us firms using the s p 500 sample we found support for the hypothesis that industry r d intensity has a positive impact on the degree of product diversification on the contrary this study has found partial support for the hypothesis that free cash flow positively affects the previous relationship copyright 2006 oxford university press

r d intensity firm performance and the identification of the threshold fresh evidence from the panel threshold regression model this article tests whether there is an optimal level of research and development r d intensity at which point a firm is able to maximize its performance an advanced panel threshold regression model is employed to investigate the panel threshold effect of r d intensity on firm performance among publicly traded taiwan information technology and electronic firms the results confirm that a single threshold effect does exist and show an inverted u correlation between r d intensity and firm performance this article demonstrates that it is possible to identify the definitive level beyond which a further increase in r d expenditure does not yield proportional rewards some important policy implications emerge from the findings

does ecological economics have a future contradiction and reinvention in the age of climate change abstract this paper addresses the role of neoclassical methodologies in ecological economics and the contradictions these methodologies pose to the field s critical founding principles we first consider robert costanza s treatment of nicholas stern s global deal and then survey climate change related articles published in this journal over the past five years this survey reveals how mainstream neoclassical methodologies dominate discourse and do so by marginalizing more critical political economy analyses this situation imperils the field s founding vision of a no growth steady state it also fails to address the related growth dynamics of capitalism without such a critical treatment the field s formal embrace of methodological pluralism actually entails an ideological empiricism that renders ecological economics theoretically incoherent this situation undermines the field s historical promise as an alternative economic paradigm ecological economics now faces a problematic future its survival in a form faithful to its founding vision will require an explicit choice to address its internal contradictions and reinvent itself in ways relevant to our contemporary context without such a choice ecological economics will likely succumb to an implicit acceptance of the hegemony of mainstream economic methodologies and their pro growth imperatives

risk rationality and religious portfolios i introduction this paper builds on two assumptions the first self evident the second more controversial together they yield a provocative theory of religious behavior and organization the first assumption is that religion involves a great deal of risk those who engage in religious acts cannot know that their efforts will have the desired effects religious acts thus have the character of risky investments exacting resource costs in return for uncertain rewards the second assumption is that people choose their religious behavior rationally weighing the costs and benefits of religious behavior and seeking to limit the risk associated with religious choices churches and other religious firms employ a variety of institutional arrangements that mitigate religious risk most arrangements follow one of two major risk management strategies which in turn give rise to two different styles of religion one centers on collective production the other on private production and diversified consumption collective religion is congregationally oriented and tends to employ exclusivity and costly prohibitions to limit free riding and maintain high levels of commitment private religion is less susceptible to free rider problems but also less capable of generating commitment private religion tends to center on client practitioner relationships or fee for service transactions and consumers tend not to form exclusive attachments to a single religious firm outright payments for goods and services overshadow costly demands for an austere deviant or sacrificial life style a large body of descriptive historic and anecdotal evidence confirms these predictions and illustrates their range of application the concluding sections of the paper apply the proposed theory to a series of contrasts asian versus western religion mainstream churches versus exclusive sects new age versus standard american religion and greco roman paganism versus judeo christian monotheism ii religious commodities and the problem of risk economic models of religious behavior typically begin by assuming that individuals allocate their time and money so as to maximize their utility from religious commodities r and all other secular commodities s the production of religious commodities depends on personal inputs of time and money but may also depend on past experience religious human capital styles of behavior such as diet dress and sexual practices and the time and money inputs of others such as fellow church members see azzi and ehrenberg 1975 sullivan 1985 and iannaccone 1992 for formal analyses and empirical tests with the exception of durkin and greeley 1991 and montgomery 1992 previous models take belief as given thereby sidestepping the issue of risk but religious commodities do involve risk sermons and scriptures do emphasize the need for faith and people do wrestle with and often yield to doubt insights from secular markets and the economics of uncertainty explain a broad range of behaviors and institutions that arise in response to religious risk in particular they highlight two different risk reducing strategies one of which centers on exclusivity and collective production the other centers on diversification and private production managing risk through collective action religious congregations the would be believer faces a situation not unlike the would be used car buyer used cars are classic experience goods nelson 1970 since potential buyers are hard pressed to determine car quality in advance of purchase sellers thus have an incentive to overstate the value of their merchandise and to disguise its true nature used car buyers in turn are aware of the sellers incentive to misrepresent their products and so will attempt to increase their stock of information and or reduce their risk in many ways they may demand guarantees seek information from third parties investigate the seller s reputation and so forth

diversification strategy and r d intensity in multiproduct firms this study provides empirical evidence that choice of diversification strategy systematically affects r d intensity in large multiproduct firms research and development intensity in dominant busin

agency models in different stages of ceo tenure the effects of stock options and board independence on r d investment this study examines how r d investment is shaped by governance devices combining the two agency models of limited competence and managerial opportunism it suggests that governance devices exert differing effects in early vs later stages of ceo tenure early in ceo tenure r d investment is reduced by stock options and board independence whereas in later stages these effects reverse r d investment is enhanced by stock options and board independence an empirical test on a sample of u s companies provides support for the hypothesized effects for policy makers this study implies that r d investment can be enhanced by setting rules and standards of good governance that take into account ceo time in office and firm context

an economic theory of church strictness this paper introduces spatial location models into the economics of religion we offer a new explanation for the observed tendency of state monopoly churches to locate toward the low tension end of the strictness continuum obtained through the conjunction of benevolent preferences denominations care about the aggregate utility of members and asymmetric costs of going to a more or less strict church than one prefers we derive implications regarding the relationship between religious strictness and membership religious market interactions and asymmetric costs of membership highlight new explanations for some well established stylised facts opening the way to new empirical comparisons with more traditional explanations

corporate governance effects on innovation when both agency costs and asset specificity matter this article explores the question whether the relationship between corporate governance and innovation is affected by the extent to which the firm is exposed to agency problems and asset specificity issues in particular we argue that different combinations of asset specificity and agency costs are associated to firm age and sector of activity and predict heterogenous effects of ownership concentration on innovation across different types of firms we use a unique data set of about 35 000 italian manufacturing corporations over the 2002 2007 period and run a hurdle model distinguishing four subgroups of firms on the basis of their age greater or lower than 15 years and of whether they belong to a high technology or low technology sector we find that the effects of ownership concentration on innovation are coherent with the predictions of so called shareholder theory when agency cost effects dominate over asset specificity effects and that they are coherent with the predictions of so called stakeholder theory when asset specificity effects dominate over agency cost effects these findings are robust to a number of identification issues including the possible endogeneity of corporate ownership structures our results may allow to make sense of the contradictory findings of the literature on corporate governance and innovation especially as regards the role played by ownership concentration and may help policymakers to define more effective type specific initiatives to stimulate firm innovation

club goods and group identity evidence from islamic resurgence during the indonesian financial crisis this paper tests a model in which group identity in the form of religious intensity functions as ex post insurance i exploit relative price shocks induced by the indonesian financial crisis to demonstrate a causal relationship between economic distress and religious intensity koran study and islamic school attendance that is weaker for other forms of group identity consistent with ex post insurance credit availability reduces the effect of economic distress on religious intensity religious intensity alleviates credit constraints and religious institutions smooth consumption shocks across households and within households particularly for those who were less religious before the crisis

the influence of voluntarily disclosed qualitative information we examine the voluntary disclosure of qualitative information about actions involving governmental agencies and managerial intentions or beliefs in r d project announcements in the wall street journal our analysis indicates that information regarding government approval and managerial intentions beliefs voluntarily disclosed in r d project announcements interacts with industry firm variables to provide significant incremental explanatory power in both the innovation and commercialization stages of r d projects our data also indicate that the biggest impact is from managerial intentions especially an intent to increase market share when coupled with being a larger firm copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

related diversification and r d intensity dynamics abstract using longitudinal data of spanish manufacturing companies we study the dynamic bidirectional relationship between firm research and development r d intensity and corporate diversification in an organic growth setting our empirical approach accounts for the different sources of endogeneity although we find a positive linear effect of r d intensity on related diversification the effect of related diversification on r d intensity assumes the form of an inverted u thus the effect of related diversification on r d intensity is positive but marginally decreases for moderate levels of related diversification such an effect can become negative however for high levels of related diversification additionally as a consequence of dynamics the effects after one year are substantially lower than the overall effects that occur over several years

the 10 flat tax tithing and the definition of income developing a fair and widely accepted income definition presents one of the greatest challenges to tax reform to arrive at a definition separate from the federal tax code we surveyed 1200 latter day saints about their practice of tithing tithing is similar to a flat tax with no deductions where individuals voluntarily contribute 10 of self defined income to the church the results of our survey indicate that most respondents operate on a cash realization basis which excludes savings and does not allow any deductions respondents income concepts generally do not coincide with current tax laws or economists views of comprehensive income jel h24 z12 michael r ransom we recommend the passage of the income tax in the confident belief that it will meet with as much general satisfaction as any tax law all good citizens it is therefore believed will willingly and cheerfully support and sustain this the fairest and cheapest of all taxes committee report on the act authorizing the income tax u s house of representatives october 3 1913 i introduction much of the discussion on individual income taxation in the united states attacks the exceptions preferences loopholes and complexity of the internal revenue code would be reformers stress the inequities and economic defects that arise due to the current fragmented tax base and argue for a comprehensive tax on income this approach implies that an income concept exists that is generally agreed on as fair and that can meaningfully be applied to individual taxation but do ordinary people agree on what constitutes a fair definition of income and if so does the income concept match up with either the current tax code or economists views of comprehensive income how individuals believe income should be defined matters for any major reform of the u s tax code first the electorate s perceptions of what items belong in the income base may well determine what changes are politically feasible second in interpreting the sixteenth amendment the courts have historically relied on an income definition imputed to ordinary citizens in the landmark case of eisner v macomber 1920 the supreme court effectively ratified the common man s notion of income for tax purposes on the theory that the people wrote and adopted the constitution justice pitney reasoned that we require only a clear definition of the term income as used in common speech in order to determine its meaning in the amendment finally the importance of the income definition extends beyond political and statutory considerations because research suggests that the perceived fairness of the tax code also affects the degree of voluntary compliance e g roth et al 1989 slemrod 1992 and tyler 19 90 eliciting individuals beliefs about what belongs in an income base presents many challenges for example if directly asked about what is fair for tax purposes people may respond that no form of income should be taxed or may simply repeat the internal revenue code as they understand it to arrive at a self determined income definition free of such biases we administered a survey to 1200 members of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints lds church members provide unique insights into income definitions because of their practice of tithing where individuals voluntarily contribute one tenth of their income to the church because the lds church collects tithes centrally and disperses funds locally based only on average attendance at sunday services tithes do not represent entrance fees or payment for local public goods though the rate of 10 is fixed and not subject to personal interpretation the definition of which potential income sources to tithe is left to individual conscience hence aski ng questions about what items respondents think should and should not be included in tithable income provides an interesting measure of what people regard as income

pay or pray the impact of charitable subsidies on religious attendance abstract the economic argument for subsidizing charitable giving relies on the positive externalities of charitable activities particularly from the religious institutions that are the largest recipients of giving but the net external effects of subsidies to religious giving will also depend on a potentially important indirect effect as well impacts on religious participation religious participation can be either a complement to or a substitute with the level of charitable giving understanding these spillover effects of charitable giving may be quite important given the existing observational literature that suggests that religiosity is a major determinant of well being among americans in this paper i investigate the impact of charitable subsidies on a measure of religious participation attendance at religious services i do so by using data over three decades from the general social survey as well as confirming the impact of such subsidies on religious giving using the consumer expenditure survey i find strong evidence that religious giving and religious attendance are substitutes larger subsidies to charitable giving lead to more religious giving but less religious attendance with an implied elasticity of attendance with respect to religious giving of as much as 1 1 these results have important implications for the debate over charitable subsidies they also serve to validate economic models of religious participation

the church versus the mall what happens when religion faces increased secular competition recently economists have begun to consider the causes and consequences of religious participation an unanswered question in this literature is the effect upon individuals of changes in the opportunity cost of religious participation in this paper we identify a policy driven change in the opportunity cost of religious participation based on state laws that prohibit retail activity on sunday known as blue laws many states have repealed these laws in recent years raising the opportunity cost of religious participation we use a variety of data sets to show that when a state repeals its blue laws religious attendance falls and that church donations and spending fall as well these results do not seem to be driven by declines in religiosity prior to the law change nor do we see comparable declines in membership in or giving to nonreligious organizations after a state repeals its laws we then assess the effects of changes in these laws on drinking and drug use behavior in the nlsy we find that repealing blue laws leads to an increase in drinking and drug use and that this increase is found only among the initially religious individuals who were affected by the blue laws the effect is economically significant for example the gap in heavy drinking between religious and nonreligious individuals falls by about half after the laws are repealed

technological effects of m as in spanish manufacturing this article explores whether mergers and acquisitions m as generate differentiated impacts on the acquiring firms r d expenditures patents granted and product innovations considering m as as a way of foreign expansion we examine whether the technological effects differ between domestic and foreign owned acquirers assuming that the effects on the technological efforts and performance may differ across industries the availability of statistical information for a stable sample of manufacturing companies in spain during the 1990s allows us to follow a dynamic approach to the issue our findings confirm the existence of differentiated effects on technological inputs and outputs across industries as well as diversity between domestic and foreign owned firms involved in m as copyright 2009 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

action characteristics as predictors of competitive responses a central question in competitive dynamics is whether a competitive response can be predicted this study links various characteristics of actions with the total number and the time lag of competitors responses the hypothesized relationships were tested with a sample of competitive moves among u s airlines the results suggested that responses are influenced by the characteristics of the actions that evoked them specifically the total number of competitors affected by an action and the importance to these competitors of the markets under attack by the action increase the number of competitive responses strategic as opposed to tactical actions or actions which require substantial implementation efforts reduce the number and delay the timing of rivals counteractions finally contrary to prediction competitors who have a high stake in the markets under attack by a competitive move react slowly

the private provision of public goods altruism and voluntary giving abstract a unique data set on exact giving by individual households for the support of a rural health care facility is used to examine the determinants of charitable giving including the role of altruism we examine whether a household s decision to give or not give and the amount it gives are influenced in the same or different ways by the household s characteristics and economic circumstances we also examine whether a household s altruistic history affects its current giving decisions

competitiveness of nations a knowledge discovery examination this paper presents the insights gained from the use of data mining and multivariate statistical techniques to identify important factors associated with a country s competitiveness and the development of knowledge discovery in databases kdd models to predict it in addition to stepwise regression and weighted non linear programming techniques intelligent learning techniques artificial neural networks and inferential techniques classification and regression trees were applied to a dataset of 43 countries from the world competitiveness yearbook wcy the dataset included 55 variables on economic internationalization governmental financial infrastructure management science and technology as well as demographic and cultural characteristics exploratory data analysis and parameter calibration of the intelligent method architectures preceded the development and evaluation of reasonably accurate models mean absolute error 5 5 and subsequent out of sample validations the strengths and weaknesses of each of the kdd techniques were assessed along with their relative performance and the primary input variables influencing a country s competitiveness our analysis reveals that the primary drivers of competitiveness are lower country risk rating and higher computer usage in entrepreneurial urbanized societies with less male dominance and basic infrastructure with higher gross domestic investment savings and private consumption more imports of goods and services than exports increased purchase power parity gdp larger and more productive but not less expensive labor force and higher r d expenditures without diminishing the role and importance of wcy reports our approach can be useful to estimate the competitiveness of many countries not included in wcy while our findings may benefit policy makers and international agencies to expand their own abilities insights and establish priorities for improving country competitiveness

the invisible hand plays dice multiple equilibria in sects markets religious participation is much more widespread in the united states than in europe while europeans tend to view sects more suspiciously than americans we propose an explanation for these patterns without assuming differences in preferences or market fundamentals we study a religious market where both demand and supply of spiritual services are endogenous such markets may have multiple equilibria further equilibria with more sects result in higher welfare and lower membership costs as secular societies tend to host on average more demanding sects

looking through the dataquadrate characterizing the human environment relationship through economic hedonic ecological and demographic measures abstract this paper introduces the concept of plotting four dimensional data in two dimensions without loss of information namely the dataquadrate concept here objects are represented as quadrates instead of points in a practical 4 axis cartesian coordinate system this procedure helps us imagine and analyze complex relations where four different non negative variables influence processes this tool is of high utility for analyzing specific human environment issues here we analyze a monetary measure gross domestic product gdp a hedonic measure subjective wellbeing a limiting measure ecological footprint and a demographic measure human population our system adds new insights to the de growth debate discussed in a journal of cleaner production special issue vol 18 2010 and systematically illuminates lots of confusing paradoxes such as the downward sloping part of the environmental kuznets curve the jevons paradox and the easterlin paradox in this paper all these phenomena are analyzed for the usa and for china in 1990 and in 2007 by utilizing such methodology when mitigating environmental problems we are not limited to negative restrictive messages but are enabled to create new strategic ways of problem solving about how to optimize the human celestial footprint the ratio of human wellbeing to human environmental load

the critical choice between the concentration ratio and the h index in assessing industry performance the paper shows that in addition to the theoretical relevance of choosing between the hirschman herfindahl index and the concentration ratio both measures may provide empirically very different information to assess industry performance it is shown that the correspondence between the two measures can be represented by a horn shaped figure the implications of this horn shaped relationship are investigated in the context of specifying empirical profitability concentration models among different specification effects tested it is shown that the neglect of the hornrelationship may bias the results towards the identification of a critical concentration ratio

an accurate measurement of the crowd out effect income effect and price effect for charitable contributions in the past empirical research on charitable contributions has focused on two issues estimating the income and price elasticities of contributions and estimating the extent to which government funding crowded out private contributions the two fundamental problems in all these studies are the differences in the underlying conceptual models and the use of imperfect data for empirical analysis this paper addresses both of these problems

diversification and the risk return trade off the article presents information on a study which investigated the risk return trade off at the level of individual firms with both accounting and market based measures of risk the author describe

systematically biased beliefs about economics robust evidence of judgemental anomalies from the survey of americans and economists on the economy differences between the general public s positive economic views and economists resemble other judgemental anomalies laypeople and experts systematically disagree i analyse this puzzle using data from the survey of americans and economists on the economy the paper first tests and decisively rejects the hypothesis that the differences solely reflect economists self serving bias then it examines whether economists political ideology and party loyalties explain the disagreement if anything this slightly increases their magnitude the effect of economic training clearly falls but remains large after adding education to the set of control variables apparent biases robustness suggests that the anomaly is real

dynamic income progressive taxes and the timing of charitable contributions using an econometric model of charitable giving and a 10 year panel of tax return data i find that previous studies have underestimated the effects of permanent income and overestimated the effects of permanent changes in tax prices the significant statutory tax changes that occurred during the 1980s especially in 1986 serve to identify the key model parameters my results imply that people smooth their giving when transitory income changes but also time their giving to exploit transitory changes in tax prices the results also raise questions about how effectively the tax incentives permanently influence the level rather than just the timing of charitable giving by individuals

identifying the causal effect of income on religiosity using the earned income tax credit abstract how do economic conditions income and the generosity of social insurance affect religious behavior this paper provides novel evidence for the united states using variation in earned income tax credit benefits across states over time and by number of children in the raw data income and religiosity have a trivial relationship in contrast the instrumental variables strategy shows that increases in income from the eitc are found to sizably reduce religious attendance among low income individuals among individuals who attend the results indicate that an additional 1000 in annual income is associated with a decrease of roughly 1 service per year as compared to an average of 16 services per year the effect arises mainly along the intensive margin decreasing devout behavior and increasing more marginal attendance but having little impact on whether an individual participates at all or on beliefs there are also minimal effects on the occurrence and amount of contributions to religious organizations the results extend our understanding of the determinants of religiosity the relationship between governmental income support and religious behavior and the social effects of the earned income tax credit

performance feedback and firm risk taking the moderating effects of ceo and outside director stock options we contribute to the behavioral theory of the firm and the behavioral agency model by developing a theoretical framework that predicts the differential interaction effects of performance feedback and values of stock option grants of multiple agents on firm risk taking we explain how chief executive officers ceos versus outside directors awarded with stock option grants perceive negative or positive deviations from prior performance we argue that in a negative attainment discrepancy context high values of option grants will increase the risk aversion of ceos who already bear excessive employment and compensation risks resulting in less risk taking however it will enhance the risk taking propensity of influential outside directors who increase monitoring and support for risky projects because their risk preferences are better aligned with those of shareholders in a positive attainment discrepancy context high values of option grants will amplify risk aversion in both ceos and outside directors who

more giving or more givers the effects of tax incentives on charitable donations in the uk abstract this paper estimates the effects of tax incentives on charitable contributions in the uk using the universe of self assessment income tax returns between 2005 and 2013 we exploit variation from a large reform in 2010 to estimate intensive and extensive margin tax price elasticities of giving using a predicted tax rate instrument for the price of giving relative to consumption we find an intensive margin elasticity of about 0 2 and an extensive margin elasticity of 0 1 yielding a total elasticity of about 0 3 to further explore the extensive margin response we propose a model with a fixed cost of declaring donations and obtain a structural estimate of that cost of around 47 we also study the welfare effects of tax incentives extending the theoretical literature to allow for extensive margin giving and for a fixed cost of declaring donations taking into account these factors there is a case for increasing the subsidy on charitable giving in the uk

do tax incentives affect charitable contributions evidence from public charities reported revenues this paper estimates the effect of the charitable contribution tax deduction on charities donation revenue from charities tax filings a one percent increase in the tax cost of giving causes charitable receipts to fall by about four percent an effect three times larger the consensus in the literature further analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity in the tax response by subsector health care and home care are more tax sensitive than other charities while higher education and arts are less tax sensitive the results are consistent with substantial tax response heterogeneity within the sample and between sampled and unsampled charities implying that the mean tax elasticity of charitable contributions is a poor predictor of tax incentive effects for individual charities

beyond homo economicus evidence from experimental economics environmental policies are generally based on a model of the human actor taken from neoclassical economic theory this paper reports on laboratory experiments suggesting weaknesses in this model and describes alternative models correcting these weaknesses one finding is that economic actors tend to be hyperbolic as opposed to exponential discounters who discount the immediate future at a higher rate than the more distant future another finding is that economic actors are not self regarding but rather in many circumstances are strong reciprocators who come to strategic interactions with a propensity to cooperate respond to cooperative behavior by maintaining or increasing cooperation and respond to free riders by retaliating against the offenders even at a personal cost and even when there is no reasonable expectation that future personal gains will flow from such retaliation we discuss some implications for policy analysis 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the economics of regional variation in religious attendance developments in modelling the demand for religion have identified both religious human capital and religious market structure as fundamental determinants of levels of formal religious practice in this paper these theories are confronted with survey data drawn from 163 regions across 16 countries although there are clearly political historical and other country specific factors that affect levels of participation in organized religion estimates from modified logit regression equations demonstrate the empirical significance at the regional level of variables suggested by recent innovations in the economics of religious behaviour

deregulating religion the economics of church and state traditional religious research fails to recognize religion as a market phenomenon it especially overlooks supply side factors that shape the incentives and opportunities of religious firms emphasizing instead demand side shifts in the perceptions tastes and needs of consumers this paper reviews the effects of government actions that alter religious supply a longer version appears in economic inquiry 40 2 april 1997

introduction to the economics of religion after a very long hiatus economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion this article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity the characteristics of religious groups and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets

religious freedom and the unintended consequences of state religion 1 introduction a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion so wrote justice hugo black in the majority opinion in engel v vitale 1 a 1962 school prayer case decided by the united states supreme court today church state issues continue to rise to the forefront of american politics in recent years alone disputes have arisen over public school vouchers and prayers the phrase under god in the pledge of allegiance the display of the ten commandments in public meeting halls and courthouses and the proper scope of president bush s recent faith based and community initiative across the atlantic william carey the recently retired archbishop of canterbury argued in april 2002 that establishment strengthens the church of england by allowing it to build a comprehensive network of parishes throughout the entire country and he denied that establishment has constrained the prophetic voice of the church 2 in contrast carey s successor rowan williams who became archbishop of canterbury in july 2002 has in the past advocated the disestablishment of the church of england 3 in sweden where the church of sweden had been the state church since 1593 the parliament passed a statute providing for the formal disestablishment of the church on january 1 2000 4in the united states the strongest advocates for giving religion a more prominent role in governmental settings have often been religious conservatives whereas the strongest opponents are often political liberals for example in the recently decided cleveland school voucher case 5 christian organizations like focus on the family the christian legal society the ethics and religious liberty commission of the southern baptist convention the national association of evangelicals and the united states conference of catholic bishops filed briefs in support of the program which allowed public funds to pay tuition in private schools including religious schools among the organizations filing briefs in opposition to the program were the naacp and various public education lobbies whereas the american civil liberties union people for the american way and americans united for separation of church and state provided legal representation for some of the plaintiffs challenging the voucher program interestingly however several religious organizations also filed briefs in opposition to the voucher program including the american jewish committee the jewish council for public affairs the baptist joint committee on public affairs the national council of churches of christ in the usa ncc and two regional seventh day adventist organizations except for the ncc these organizations represent the interests of religious groups that are or in the case of the baptists once were distinctly in the religious minority a growing body of research suggests that any positive benefits to the church with direct support from the state are outweighed by indirect effects that undermine the church s autonomy and its authority with the general populace for an excellent introduction to this research see stark and finke 2000 chapter 9 if such research is correct then the advocates of governmental endorsement of religion may be undermining the very institutions they seek to support in this article we use cross country survey responses to assess the impact of religious freedom and the separation of church and state on the health of religion throughout the world using survey responses on the frequency of attendance at religious services we find that government establishment of state religion reduces religious attendance whereas enduring constitutional protection of religion increases religious attendance adam smith recognized that establishment could ultimately undermine the state religion in the wealth of nations smith discussed the impact of establishing a religion on the fervor and effectiveness of the clergy in that religion the teachers of religion in the same manner as other teachers may either depend altogether for their subsistence upon the voluntary contributions of their hearers or they may derive it from some other fund to which the law of their country may entitle them such as a landed estate a tythe or land tax an established salary or stipend

general managers control new and existing products differently abstract this article presents some initial findings from an ongoing research project on the way that divisional general managers of targe organizational units control new product innovations control in this instance refers to the set of procedures systems and actions that general managers use to monitor evaluate influence or define what subordinates are doing the research presented here focuses on three broad questions 1 1 do divisional general managers of large organizational units control their new product activities differently from their more established operations 2 2 is a new product s innovation strategy related to the nature and degree of divisional general manager control and if so in what way 3 3 is a divisional general manager s choice of control methods related to his her unit s new product output the results were based on in depth interviews with the general managers of 26 large canadian based divisions in 12 firms all the firms were significant competitors in the north american market and all were actively engaged in new product activities firm size ranged from 210 million to 5 billion in sales the following is a summary of the study s principal findings and conclusions 1 1 control varies among dimensions the study measured the degree of control exercised by divisional general managers over new and established products on 14 control variables it was found that none of the new products relative to established brands was controlled in the same fashion by the managers instead new products were always managed through a variety of loose and tight controls in so doing it appeared that the divisional general managers were trying to balance the control and freedom required by subordinates with new products 2 2 control varies with strategy both theory and empirical research generally support the notion of linkage between a unit s strategy and its organizational eg design reward placement information etc practices the results of this study strengthen this line of thinking the data show that both the nature and degree of divisional general manager control vary with three dimensions of product strategy i e familiarity uniqueness and advancement 3 3 control varies with output the analysis highlighted the pivotal relationship between divisional general manager control and new product output both the nature and degree of control were found to be associated with new product output in each strategic category although there does not appear to be one best way to control all types of new products some divisional general management approaches to control were more preferred than others 4 4 loose formal tight informal the general managers control patterns showed that formal control dimensions were usually managed more loosely than informal ones that tighter informal controls were used to off set or balance the more relaxed formal dimensions and that the observed reduction in formal control should not be interpreted to mean either the absence of bureaucracy or the absence of formal control indeed some formal bureaucratic control was always found in the high output strategic categories thus rather than being considered or labeled as typically bad bureaucracy may in fact be beautiful provided of course that it is appropriately used the article concludes by arguing that a divisional general manager s approach to controlling new products seems to make a difference in terms of performance as such the control approach chosen should not be made haphazardly or with abandon

the relationship between firm investments in technological innovation and political action economic theory recognizes the importance of investments in both technological innovation and political activity in firm behavior and extensive research exists which examines independently these expenditures however surprisingly little attention is devoted to analyzing technological innovation and political action expenditures jointly technological innovation and political action are two of the options firms face regarding how to achieve lower costs or market power the characteristics of these choices not only affect the degree to which each is used but also have widely divergent normative and policy implications for society furthermore many forms of technological innovation require regulatory approval so that firms may use the two forms of investment in conjunction with each other in addition to treating them as separate investment alternatives this paper investigates the relationships between firm investments in technological innovation and political activity both forms of investment seek to lower costs and or create market advantage but economists have long recognized the social importance of technological innovation to economic growth while treating most firm political activity as inefficient growing social concerns surrounding declining innovation productivity and growth and increasing firm political activity suggest that these are timely dimensions to explore jointly in the next section i discuss the relationship between firm investments in technological innovation and political action this discussion motivates the subsequent empirical modelling presented in section iii because of the possibility of simultaneity between firm spending in research and development rd these results hold true to various degrees over industries and industry groups section vi offers conclusions and suggestions for further research

proactive r d management and firm growth a punctuated equilibrium model the external environment is characterized by periods of relative stability interspersed with periods of extreme change implying that high performing firms must practice exploration and exploitation in order to survive and thrive in this paper we posit that r d expenditure volatility indicates the presence of proactive r d management and is evidence of a firm moving from exploitation to exploration over time this is consistent with a punctuated equilibrium model of r d investment where shocks are induced by reactions to external turbulence using an unbalanced panel of almost 11 000 firm years from 1997 to 2006 we show that greater fluctuations in the firm s r d expenditure over time are associated with higher firm growth developing a contextual view of the relationship between r d expenditure volatility and firm growth we find that this relationship is weaker among firms with higher levels of corporate diversification and negative among smaller firms and those in slow clockspeed industries

the impact of charitable subsidies on religious giving and attendance evidence from panel data the literature documents that charitable giving is responsive to tax subsidies but often ignores the spillover effects of such policies this paper investigates the spillover effects of charitable subsidies on religious participation using individual level panel data the results show that religious giving and participation are complements the implied cross price elasticity of religious participation with respect to the after tax price of giving is 0 27 furthermore a 1 increase in the amount of religious contributions is associated with a 0 4 increase in religious attendance these results are robust under several different specifications and highlight the positive externalities created by charitable subsidies

simultaneous determination of church contributions and church attendance in a standard model of household allocation of time and income church attendance and church contributions are determined simultaneously there are life cycle aspects to both attendance and contributions as azzi and ehrenberg 1975 and ehrenberg 1977 have argued and contributions behavior is affected by tax treatment and by a potential free rider problem as well this paper motivates an econometric specification which recognizes these features and estimates the parameters with a data set of over 2000 protestant church members

managerial incentives and investment in r d in large multiproduct firms incentives for division managers in large firms affect their risk orientation and thus their decisions to invest in r d this paper reviews theory and hypothesizes that division managers incentive compensation that is based on financial performance is negatively related to risk taking as measured by r d intensity results of a study of 184 major u s firms suggest that incentives based on short term annual division financial performance are negatively related to total firm r d intensity after controlling for industry r d intensity firm diversification size and group structure furthermore the results suggest that an emphasis on long term financial incentives may mitigate the negative relationship between these incentives and r d intensity but does not promote risk taking the results suggest the importance of emphasizing strategic controls evaluating division managers based on operational understanding of strategies proposed strategic criteria as opposed to the use of financial controls evalua

church attendance in great britain an ordered logit approach the church attendance decision of individual economic agents is analysed within a becker style allocation of time framework using an ordered logit model with data derived from the british household panel study bhps separate attendance equations are estimated for males and females the empirical results in line with previous north american studies suggest that labour income variables do account for some of the variation in attendance in addition attendance is found to be correlated with factors such as denominational affiliation educational attainment and intensity of belief

does where you stand depend on where you sit tithing donations and self serving beliefs economists and psychologists argue that individuals skew personal beliefs to accord with their own interests to test for the presence of self serving beliefs we surveyed 1 200 members of the mormon church about tithing a tithe is a voluntary contribution equal to 10 percent of income since respondents must decide privately what income items to tithe we observe how the income definition depends on an individual s religious and financial incentives we find surprisingly little evidence that an individual s financial situation influences beliefs about what counts as income for the tithe however ambiguity increases the role for self serving biases jel a12 d63

the impacts of religion political ideology and social capital on religious and secular giving evidence from the 2006 social capital community survey using a double hurdle model and data from the 2006 social capital community survey sccs2006 we examine religious and secular giving focusing on the impacts of religion political ideology and social capital our main results indicate that greater participation in religious activities positively impacts religious and secular giving the intensity of religious belief increases religious giving at the expense of secular giving religious giving by very conservative individuals is higher than for other ideological groups and measures of social capital are very important in raising the level and likelihood of philanthropic giving

strategic implications of market share attraction models market share attraction models which specify that a firm s market share is equal to the ratio of its attraction to the total attraction for all firms have received increasing attention in recent years however there has been little research investigating the practical implications of such models this paper presents a game theoretic analysis of such a model and deduces the strategic implications of a nash equilibrium solution to the model it is shown that these implications are consistent with previous empirical research in marketing and business policy

a methodology for competitive advantage analysis and strategy formulation an example in a transitional economy industrial competitiveness has become the focal point of study in recent years as global competition has intensified although many studies are devoted to the topic they remain largely conceptual and descriptive and thus it is difficult to make them operational very recently several studies were conducted to model industrial competitiveness through quantitative analysis but few consider how to combine the degree and scope of determinant factors of competitive advantages dfcas and competitive strategic goals csgs to maximize a firm s competitiveness or how to analyze the main problems of creating competitive advantage the present study proposes a model based approach to competitive analysis and discusses its multi phased implementation in a large electronic plant in china the proposed model can provide a comprehensive analytical tool for industrial competitiveness and can yield useful insights for competitive strategy formulation

high profit strategies in mature capital goods industries a contingency approach high profit and low profit strategic gestalts in two different types of mature capital goods industries are examined multiple avenues to high profits are found within both types but they differ

climate change economics and buddhism part 2 new views and practices for sustainable world economies abstract the evidence of impending and serious climate and other consequences of an expanding world economy based on fossil carbon energy continues to accumulate this two part paper examines the potential contribution of the world view and insights of buddhism to this search it presents both a conceptual and practical case that buddhism can help shape and move towards an alternative and effective paradigmatic basis for sustainable economies one capable of bringing about and maintaining genuine high welfare levels across the world s societies the first paper outlined a comprehensive analytical framework to identify the fundamental nature of anthropogenic climate change based on the integration of two of the most influential environmental analysis tools of recent decades the dpsir model and ipat equation the framework was then broadened to facilitate ideas from the buddhist world view by injecting two key missing aspects the interrelated role of 1 beliefs and values on goals and behavior and 2 the nature of well being or human happiness finally the principal linkages between this climate change analysis framework and buddhism were explored in this concluding paper the systems framework is used to demonstrate how buddhist and related world views can feed into appropriate and effective responses to the impending challenges of climate change this is undertaken by systematically presenting a specific if indicative list of relevant strategies informed by the understanding of interconnectedness and other basic principles about the nature of reality and human well being as proposed in buddhism

deception the role of uncertain consequences abstract we study how decisions to lie extend to risky environments we provide experimental evidence from a sender receiver game where there is uncertainty over the amount by which a sender s lie reduces its receiver s payoff which is known only to potential liar even though all reduction amounts are equiprobable ex post beliefs elicited from senders suggest that unlike truth tellers most liars underestimate the extent of the actual reduction in the receiver s payoff and appear to exploit this self serving bias resulting in substantially more lying relative to a baseline treatment without the uncertainty subsequent treatments confirm the bias by either providing additional evidence or by removing possible confounds an intervention treatment nudging senders toward correcting the bias reduces lying