sources of intra industry wage dispersion how much do employers matter observed human capital explains less than half of wage variation in bls industry wage surveys establishment based wage differentials controlling for occupation account for 20 70 percent of intra industry wage variation this corresponds to a standard deviation in wages of 14 percent of the mean almost as large as interindustry wage variation investigation suggests that establishment wage differentials are not random variations or returns to usual measures of human capital

the effect of multiple extrinsic cues on quality perceptions a matter of consistency building on past research this article illustrates when a price quality relationship holds in the presence of multiple extrinsic cues when intrinsic information is scarce the relationship is more pronounced when a positive price cue is paired with a positive second cue e g strong warranty positive country of origin or strong brand when the two cues are inconsistent consumers find the negative cue more salient and overweight it in their evaluations this interaction is moderated by the presence of abundant levels of intrinsic attribute information our predictions are replicated across five studies and the underlying process is supported

the role of price in multi attribute product evaluations the potentially multifaceted role of price in product evaluations is investigated with an empirical analysis of surveyed beliefs attitudes and intentions regarding automobile brands it is found that price beliefs both influence and are influenced by beliefs about a brand s quality thereby contributing to the attribution definition process however price is not a significant determinant of overall attitude it is also found that price becomes a negative factor when behavioral intentions are involved lending support to an economic interpretation of price

the turnover of teachers a competing risks explanation in this paper we analyze the decision by teachers to leave the profession in a dependent competing risks framework the econometric model allows for a flexible semiparametric specification of the duration dependence structure and of the unobserved heterogeneity distribution in each exit specific hazard function our results obtained for a large sample of uk teachers affirm the importance of teacher salaries and opportunity wages in the turnover decision of teachers and illustrate the insight gained from differentiating between multiple destinations or exit types

what does tax aggressiveness signal evidence from stock price reactions to news about tax shelter involvement abstract we study the stock price reaction to news about corporate tax aggressiveness we find that on average a company s stock price declines when there is news about its involvement in tax shelters we find some limited evidence for cross sectional variation in the reaction for example the reaction is more negative for firms in the retail sector suggesting that part of the reaction may be a consumer taxpayer backlash in addition the reaction is less negative for firms that are viewed to be generally less tax aggressive as proxied by the firm s cash effective tax rate we interpret this as being consistent with the market reacting positively to evidence that a firm is trying to reduce taxes when their financial reports would lead one to believe the firm is not tax aggressive

the price elasticity of mass preferences i compare the price elasticity of economic and political preferences my central hypothesis is that willingness to pay whether expressed verbally or through cash transactions is more price elastic for economic consumption goods than for public goods i find that increases in price greatly diminish the proportion of people willing to pay for consumer goods such as housing or hardback books whereas the proportion willing to pay more in taxes to support a public good such as environmental protection or shelter for the homeless is much less responsive to changes in price i conclude by discussing the theoretical and political implications of willingness to pay for public and private goods

contextual influences on perceptions of merchant supplied reference prices two contextual variables that have theoretical roots in information processing attribution and social judgment theories were manipulated along with three levels of merchant supplied reference price in a 2 2 3 analysis of variance design results support the hypothesized effects of consistency and distinctiveness as contextual variables that influence internal price standards and purchase evaluations the three price levels resulted in a curvilinear pattern of results for the purchase evaluation and source credibility dependent variables as hypothesized however contrary to assimilation contrast theory the impact of the merchant supplied reference price on estimates of normal and fair prices was monotonic

the quality and distribution of teachers under the no child left behind act the heart of accountability under the no child left behind nclb act is an attempt to change the existing incentives in schools with the ultimate objective that all students meet a proficiency standard existing research indicates that nothing is more important to high achieve ment as having effective teachers implying that the impact of new incentives on teachers will be central to any consideration of the accountability statutes tracing the impacts of nclb on the stock and distribution of teachers is none theless a difficult and uncertain task the belief that the quality of teachers matters a great deal to the quality of education received by students has actually proven hard to substantiate and the reasons for this difficulty are key to assessing the impacts of no child left behind a substantial body of research going back to the coleman et al 1966 report has attempted to link commonly used measures of teacher quality such as experience degree level and state teacher certification to student outcomes surprisingly except for perhaps the first few years of classroom experience no robust connection has appeared for example hanushek and rivkin 2006 review various studies attempting to identify characteristics of effective teachers one

bargaining unit composition and the returns to education and tenure using data on collectively bargained outcomes in pennsylvania schools in 1983 89 the authors find a strong relationship between the returns to education and tenure and the distribution of those attributes in the bargaining unit for instance the higher the median level of teacher tenure in a district the greater was the pay gap between teachers with low and high tenure this relationship was very strong in districts with vigorous community support for union activities and weak or nonexistent in districts with low union support the authors argue that consistent with the median voter model the unions in this study pushed hardest to advance the interests of their typical members and that they were most effective in doing so where the community was generally supportive of unions

corporate social responsibility theories mapping the territory the corporate social responsibility csr field presents not only a landscape of theories but also a proliferation of approaches which are controversial complex and unclear this article tries to clarify the sit uation mapping the territory by classifying the main csr theories and related approaches in four groups 1 instrumental theories in which the corporation is seen as only an instrument for wealth creation and its social activities are only a means to achieve economic results 2 political theories which concern themselves with the power of corporations in society and a responsible use of this power in the political arena 3 integrative theories in which the corporation is focused on the satisfaction of social demands and 4 ethical theories based on ethical responsibilities of corporations to society in practice each csr theory presents four dimensions related to profits political performance social demands and ethical values the findings suggest the necessity to develop a new theory on the business and society relationship which should integrate these four dimensions

corporate tax avoidance and firm value abstract do corporate tax avoidance activities advance shareholder interests this paper tests alternative theories of corporate tax avoidance using unexplained differences between income reported to capital markets and to tax authorities ols estimates indicate that the effect of tax avoidance on firm value is a function of firm governance as predicted by an agency perspective on corporate tax avoidance instrumental variables estimates based on exogenous changes in tax regulations yield larger overall effects and reinforce the basic result as do several robustness checks the results suggest that the simple view of corporate tax avoidance as a transfer of resources from the state to shareholders is incomplete given the agency problems characterizing shareholder manager relations

wage tenure and wage growth variation within and across establishments we estimate employer specific wage tenure and wage growth differentials using a unique bureau of labor statistics establishment survey of full time white collar workers employer wage and tenure differentials conditional on worker characteristics are substantial in these data education potential experience and tenure are highly correlated within an establishment high wage establishments generally employ higher quality workers and the most skilled men and professionals typically work with the most skilled women and nonprofessionals there is significant variation in wage growth rates across employers and high wage growth establishments tend to have longer tenure all else equal

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

the failure of input based schooling policies in an effort to improve the quality of schools governments around the world have dramatically increased the resources devoted to them by concentrating on inputs and ignoring the incentives within schools the resources have yielded little in the way of general improvement in student achievement this paper provides a review of the us and international evidence on the effectiveness of such input policies it then contrasts the impact of resources with that of variations in teacher quality that are not systematically related to school resources finally alternative performance incentive policies are described

do alternative opportunities matter the role of female labor markets in the decline of teacher quality abstract this paper documents the widely perceived but little investigated notion that teachers today are less qualified than they once were evidence of a marked decline in the quality of young women going into teaching between 1960 and 1990 is presented using standardized test scores undergraduate institution selectivity and positive assortative mating characteristics as indicators of quality in contrast the quality of young women becoming professionals increased the roy model of self selection highlights how occupational differences in the returns to skill determine teacher quality estimates suggest the significance of increasing professional opportunities for women in affecting the decline in teacher quality

has job stability declined yet new evidence for the 1990 s we update the evidence on changes in job stability through the mid 1990s using recently released current population survey data for 1995 that parallel earlier job tenure supplements in the aggregate job stability declined modestly in the first half of the 1990s moreover the relatively small aggregate changes mask rather sharp declines in stability for workers with more than a few years of tenure nonetheless the data available to this point do not support the conclusion that the downward shift in job stability for more tenured workers and the more modest decline in aggregate job stability reflect long term trends

do wages rise with job seniority many previous studies have found a strong positive effect of job seniority tenure on wages this paper re examines the evidence using a simple instrumental variables scheme to deal with the fact that tenure is likely to be related to unobserved individual and job characteristics that affect the wage we use the variation of tenure over a given job match as the principal instrumental variable for tenure the variation in tenure over the job is uncorrelated by construction with the fixed individual and job match specific components of the error term of the wage equation our main finding is that the partial effect of tenure on wages is small and that general labour market experience and job shopping account for most wage growth over a career the strong cross section relationship between tenure and wages is due primarily to heterogeneity bias prior researchers see mincer and jovanovic 1981 bartel and borjas 1981 borjas 1981 cline 1979 and mellow 1981 and many others have established that job seniority has a strong positive relationship with wage rates in a cross section or a cross section time series of individuals in this paper we re evaluate the evidence concerning the partial effects on wages of job seniority tenure and total labour market experience the extent to which wages rise with tenure is important for several reasons first and foremost the wage tenure profile is a fundamental question about the structure of earnings over careers second the wage tenure profile is a key determinant of the extent to which the earnings power of individuals is tied to specific jobs and it is important for assessment of the losses suffered by displaced workers hamermesh 1984 third evidence that wages rise with job tenure has been used to explain the decline in quits with tenure since the wage growth on the current job lowers the probability that the worker will locate a superior alternative a growing theoretical literature surveyed in parsons 1984 has taken the evidence of a strong wage tenure profile at face value and sought to provide an explanation for the relationship the most prominent explanation is the theory of specific human capital oi 1962 becker 1962 mincer 1974 parsons 1972 kuratani 1973 and hashimoto 1980 in which the growth of wages with tenure holding experience constant is attributed to the worker s share of investments in firm specific skills more recently lazear 1981 has presented a supervision model of wage growth in which firms defer compensation as a means of inducing workers not to shirk freeman 1977 and harris and holmstrom 1982 provide an explanation for wage growth based on an insurance motive salop and salop 1976 nickell 1976 and guasch and weiss 1982 present adverse selection models of wage growth in which firms use a wage tenure profile as a

returns to seniority among public school teachers returns to seniority account for a substantial share of public k 12 expenditures over the first ten to 15 years of a career public school teachers enjoy average wage growth at least equivalent to that of other white collar workers explanations for this structure in terms of human capital or costly monitoring lack theoretical and empirical support a steeper wage tenure profile reduces turnover but it is doubtful that the costs of turnover are high enough to make this an optimal use of school resources we conclude that the structure of teacher pay in public education is more consistent with rent seeking than efficient contracting

consumer reactions to corporate tax strategies effects on corporate reputation and purchasing behavior on the basis of an interdisciplinary approach linking taxation marketing and corporate social responsibility the present research investigates the effects of media reports on aggressive and responsible corporate tax strategies ctss on corporate success with consumers by means of two laboratory experiments n 150 360 we analyze the effects of the ctss on corporate reputation consumer purchase intention and the consumer s willingness to pay our results suggest that aggressive ctss diminish corporate success with consumers whereas responsible ctss enhance it nevertheless consumers are not willing to pay a price premium for products sold by responsible tax planning companies but rather punish aggressive tax planning companies through a slightly lower willingness to pay finally consumers tax morale and their attitude toward tax avoidance are important moderating variables given the growing level of media interest in taxation our findings are crucial for assessing consumer related non tax costs and the benefits of different ctss

a dynamic model of teacher labor supply the labor supply decisions of certified elementary and high school teachers are examined using data from a general longitudinal survey a significant decrease in the teaching participation rate tak

teacher mobility and merit pay evidence from a voluntary public award program abstract this paper analyzes the effect on teacher mobility of a program that rewards excellence in teaching practices in chile successful applicants receive a 6 annual wage increase for up to 10 years and an award that publicly recognizes their excellence the paper uses a regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effect of the public merit award the program does not alter transitions out of teaching however it increases the mobility of awardees within the school system this is consistent with the program providing a credible public signal of teacher quality

generalizations about using value added measures of teacher quality the extensive investigation of the contribution of teachers to student achievement produces two generally accepted results first there is sub stantial variation in teacher quality as measured by the value added to achievement or future aca demic attainment or earnings second variables often used to determine entry into the profession and salaries including post graduate schooling experience and licensing examination scores appear to explain little of the variation in teacher quality so measured with the exception of early experience together these findings underscore explicitly that observed teacher characteristics do not represent teacher quality

chapter 11 pricing models in marketing publisher summary this chapter brings together a set of diverse efforts in the recent literature on the modeling of price decisions and related questions in marketing there has been an impressive growth in the array of topics investigated in the literature various trends in the development of pricing models are evident from the foregoing review first one trend has been to develop theoretical models to describe observed pricing strategies in the marketplace and to derive conditions under which certain strategies are optimal this trend is clearly evident when one considers the area of dynamic pricing models another trend is an attempt to develop pricing models in which certain aspects of consumer behavior e g asymmetric response to price increases versus price decreases are incorporated this development is quite recent and does offer a large potential a third dominant direction is the use of game theoretic models for developing equilibrium pricing strategies

tax avoidance as a sustainability problem this manuscript proposes that tax avoidance can be better understood and mitigated as a sustainability problem tax avoidance is not just a financial problem for tax authorities but one that erodes critical common spaces necessary for the smooth functioning of regulatory compliance organizational integrity and society defining tax avoidance as a sustainability problem offers a broader and more holistic understanding of the organizational and societal consequences of tax avoidance behavior sustainability is also a mature and legitimized concept that can readily incorporate taxation a variety of established sustainability metrics have the capacity to incorporate anti tax avoidance measures or publicize firms that engage in fair tax practices this manuscript concludes that integrating sustainability principles in conjunction with important extant work on corporate social responsibility and taxation can advance the goals of decreasing the occurrence and acceptability of tax avoidance

aggressive tax avoidance by managers of multinational companies as a violation of their moral duty to obey the law a kantian rationale managers of multinational companies often favour an aggressive tax avoidance strategy that pushes the legal limits onto the advantage of shareholders and the disadvantage of the spirit of democratically legitimized tax laws the public and media debate whether such aggressive behaviour is immoral aggressive tax avoidance is a subset of the aggressive legal interpretations potentially observable in all fields which places little weight on the will of a democratically legitimized legislation a thorough ethical analysis based on the deontological approach of kant demonstrates that aggressive tax avoidance as a special case of operating on the edge of legal boundaries is potentially immoral applying the kantian contradiction of conception or will test shows that this maxim might not be conceived or willed as a general law of nature if all natural or legal persons aggressively interpret laws on all subjects and in every imaginable situation then central principles of the system of law we all rely upon would be severely compromised therefore aggressive tax avoidance by managers of multinational companies may violate the managers moral duty to obey not only the letter but also the intention or spirit of the law the validity of the argumentation depends critically on the formulation and interpretation of the respective maxims and on assumptions about the legal system preserving central elements of kantian philosophy the article demonstrates the complexity of a philosophical argumentation which tries to justify the moral intuitions that underpin the common negative evaluation of aggressive legal strategies in business

the trade off between child quantity and quality an empirical investigation of trade offs between number of children and their scholastic performance confirms that family size directly affects children s achievement though parents show no favori

effect of product line pricing characteristics on product evaluations examining the issue of product line pricing from a behavioral perspective this article reports an investigation of the relationship between the price structure of a product line and consumers evaluations of a product model within the line a 2 2 4 factorial design utilizing multiple dependent variables was conducted and replicated to test hypotheses derived from behavioral research results indicate that while the price characteristics of a product line influence consumer evaluations of a product model within the line the price characteristics do not operate independently rather they interact further the research suggests that several dependent variables that are usually considered separately in price research are actually dimensions of similar constructs