do the russians really save that much alternate estimates from the russian longitudinal monitoring survey we use a new independent survey of 4000 russian households the russian longitudinal monitoring survey or rlms to study their saving behavior the rlms household saving rate 12 is less than half the official figure 29 despite the massive changes of the transition the russian household saving rate of 1994 cannot be shown to be different from that of 1976 the patterns of russian household saving differ from international experience its paradoxical u shaped saving age relationship may be explained by the dramatic deterioration of life expectancies of middle aged russians

a nonparametric cost approach to scale efficiency starting with farrell fieldhouse 1962 a host of notiparametric models have been developed for calculation of scale efficiency a common property of these models is that they are specified in terms of input output data duality theory has taught us that technological characteristics may be analyzed from either the primal or the dual cost side the purpose of this paper is to introduce a nonparametric dual method of calculating scale efficiency

weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis reply to fare and grosskopf fare and grosskopf this issue claim that a single abatement factor suffices for modeling weak disposability in nonparametric production models and that the kuosmanen 2005 technology that uses multiple abatement factors is larger than necessary this article demonstrates by a numerical example that a single abatement factor does not suffice to capture all feasible production plans and that its use leads to the violation of convexity one of the maintained assumptions of the model we also prove that the kuosmanen technology is the correct minimum extrapolation technology under the stated axioms

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

saving puzzles and saving policies in the united states in the past two decades the widely reported personal saving rate in the united states has dropped from double digits to below zero first we attempt to account for the decline in the national income and product accounts nipa saving rate the macroeconomic literature suggests that 40 50 per cent of the drop since 1988 can be attributed to households spending stock market capital gains another 30 per cent is accounting transfers from personal saving into government and corporate saving because of the way pensions and capital gains taxes are treated in the nipa second while nipa saving measures are well suited to measuring the supply of new funds for investment and capital accumulation it is not clear that they should be the target of government saving policies finally we emphasize that the nipa saving rate is not useful in judging whether households are preparing for retirement or other contingencies many households have accumulated significant wealth primarily through retirement saving vehicles and capital gains even as the saving rate slid there remains a segment of the population who save little and whose behaviour appears untouched either by the stock market boom or the slide in personal saving we explore reasons and policy options for their puzzling low saving rate copyright 2001 oxford university press

nonparametric production technologies with weakly disposable inputs abstract in models of production theory and efficiency analysis the inputs and outputs are assumed to satisfy some form of disposability in this paper we consider the assumption of weak input disposability it states that any activity remains feasible if its inputs are simultaneously scaled up in the same proportion as suggested in the literature the shephard technology incorporating weak input disposability could be used to evaluate the effect of input congestion we show that the shephard technology is not convex and therefore introduces bias in evaluation of congestion to address this we develop an alternative convex technology whose use in the evaluation of congestion removes the noted bias we undertake a further axiomatic investigation and obtain a range of production technologies all of which exhibit weak input disposability but are based on different progressively relaxed convexity assumptions apart from the evaluation of input congestion such technologies should also be useful in applications in which some inputs are closely related or are overlapping and therefore satisfy only the weak input disposability assumption incorporated in the new models

one sided elasticities and technical efficiency in multi output production a theoretical framework one of the concepts that have sparked considerable interest in the theory of production and efficiency is that of returns to scale rts economics researchers typically define rts using the notion of elasticity considerable research activity on rts has also been observed by management science researchers who utilize the methodology of data envelopment analysis dea to gain insights on rts in this paper we present a theoretical framework that integrates existing economics and management science literature on rts and provides a solid foundation for research work in this area our framework defines discusses and proposes an approach to measure input and output oriented elasticities and one sided rts we demonstrate how the work done in dea is a special case of our framework and discuss the conditions under which the resulting two left hand and the two right hand elasticities can be equal future research directions are also discussed

the assessment household saving issues in theory and policy in this assessment we discuss the issues raised by the papers in this issue of the oxford review of economic policy in the context of economic models of household consumption and saving we also provide a discussion of what we consider to be some important areas in the current debate surrounding theories and evidence regarding saving behaviour we highlight the differences that arise from considering partial as opposed to general equilibrium models and in looking at developed as opposed to developing countries we also discuss current policy issues relating both to the adequacy of household saving and to the distribution of saving across households or across asset types as well as the need for more microdata on saving and asset holding

measurement of returns to scale using non radial dea models abstract there are some specific features of the non radial data envelopment analysis dea models which cause some problems for the returns to scale measurement in the scientific literature on dea some methods were suggested to deal with the returns to scale measurement in the non radial dea models these methods are based on using strong complementary slackness conditions from optimization theory however our investigation and computational experiments show that such methods increase computational complexity significantly and may generate as optimal solutions contradicting optimization theory in this paper we propose and substantiate a direct method for the returns to scale measurement in the non radial dea models our computational experiments documented that the proposed method works reliably and efficiently on the real life data sets

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

disentangling the theories of firm boundaries a path model and empirical test theories on the motivation underlying firm boundaries have recently sparked renewed debate what best explains whether a firm relies on market control or hierarchical control to secure required resources how do the characteristics of the resources come into play in this study we consider a comprehensive path model of the governance mode decision for sourcing technological know how by integrating different perspectives on firm boundaries including transaction cost economics a resource based view and an options perspective we link characteristics of the technology i e uniqueness barriers to imitation commercial uncertainty technological dynamism to the perceived threat of opportunism the potential for sustainable advantage and the pursuit of a licensing agreement vis a vis the outright acquisition of the firm that possesses the desired know how we use structural equation modeling to analyze 127 sourcing arrangements our results show that technological dynamism and barriers to imitation indirectly influence the governance mode decision by increasing the perceived threat of opportunism commercial uncertainty directly influences the governance mode and decreases the likelihood of an acquisition vis a vis a licensing agreement although uniqueness and barriers to imitation are also positively associated with the perceived potential for sustainable advantage the potential for sustainable advantage had no direct effect on governance mode implications and suggestions for further research are offered

compensatory inter vivos gifts parents transfer motives are important for understanding e g macroeconomics income re distribution savings and public finance using data from six biennial waves of the health and retirement study 1992 2002 we estimate censored regression models with nested multilevel error components first we interpret our findings that inter vivos transfers from parents to children are gifts rather than temporary help to overcome liquidity constraints second inter vivos gifts are compensatory in the sense that lifetime poorer children will receive higher transfers than their lifetime richer siblings third inter vivos gifts do not however make up the entire difference in lifetime incomes copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

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

household saving micro theories and micro facts in this survey we review the recent theoretical and empirical literature on household saving and consumption the discussion is structured around a list of motives for saving and how well the standard theory captures these motives we show that almost all of the motives for saving that have been suggested in the informal saving literature can be captured in the standard optimizing model particular attention is given to recent work on the precautionary motive and its implications for saving and consumption behavior we also discuss the behavioral or psychological approach that eschews the use of standard optimization techniques and focuses instead on direct consideration on saving we provide a section on facts who save and how much we then discuss informally the recent decline in the u s saving rate and whether the theory is of much use in understanding this and other changes in aggregate saving rates over time we do not find any convincing explanation for the change in saving rates we also discuss some analyses of saving behavior over the life cycle addressing such questions as whether households save enough for retirement and whether the consumption patterns of older households can be rationalized within a simple life cycle model we also review a great number of studies of the consumption euler equations based on our analysis of the studies cited we conclude that there is still mixed evidence that consumption is excessively sensitive to income we also examine in depth the recent empirical literature on the precautionary motive we conclude that although some households do seem to have a significant precautionary motive at some points in their life cycle this motive is not so strong empirically as some investigators suggest

decomposing technical efficiency and scale elasticity in two stage network dea abstract the constant returns to scale assumption maintained by neoclassical theorists for justifying the black box structure of production technology in long run does not necessarily allow one to infer that there are no scale benefits available in its sub technologies most of real life production technologies are multi stage in nature and the sources of increasing returns lie in the sub technologies it is therefore imperative to estimate the scale economies of a firm not only for the network technology but also for the sub technologies to accomplish this two approaches are suggested in this contribution based on the premise concerning whether a network technology construct considers allocative inefficiency the first approach which is ours makes use of a single network technology for two interdependent sub technologies the second approach which is due to kao and hwang 2011 however assumes complete allocative efficiency by considering two independent sub technology frontiers one for each sub technology the distinction between these two approaches is important from a policy point of view since the network efficiencies revealed from these two approaches have distinctive causative factors that do not permit them to be used interchangeably

stakeholders perceptions and future scenarios to improve corporate social responsibility in hong kong and mainland china globalisation has accelerated economic development in emerging economies through the outsourcing of their supply chains and at the same time has accelerated the degradation of environmental and social conditions society expects corporations to play an essential role in creating economic environmental and social prosperity beyond their country of origin in order to regulate outsourcing activities in the supply chain many multinationals are constantly searching for ways to manage their indirect environmental and social impacts accordingly as well as to meet their stakeholder expectations because expectations of stakeholders vary widely across different regions this study intends by engaging with major stakeholders to identify what are the local and regional supply chain stakeholders perceptions and expectations the findings would help in building consensus strengthening the implementation and establishing the future corporate social responsibility csr framework this study collects and analyses data from 21 major stakeholders in hong kong and mainland china the results indicate that local and regional stakeholders perceive that csr is fairly significant to largely export oriented businesses but it is lagging behind the west due to the fact that most local regional companies only become involved in csr when this is a client requirement they see responsible corporations as meeting the local legislative requirement going beyond this requirement is unnecessary a voluntary approach favours multi party partnership initiatives with pilot trust programmes aimed at managers and workers capacity building most stakeholders favour the proposed regional partnership initiative supply chain task forces aimed at bringing together relevant organisations and people with different sets of skills distinct roles of different organisations are identified to assist suppliers to understand csr and only this will bring about long term sustainable change

returns to scale and scale elasticity in data envelopment analysis abstract the purpose of this paper is to provide mathematical characterizations of the data envelopment analysis dea based scale elasticity that is computable for both frontier and nonfrontier units in order to accomplish this we first review existing frontier results extend them formally to the nonfrontier case and then analyze how the scale elasticity behaves we also study how shadow pricing can be done as an application of the scale elasticity and show how upper and lower scale elasticity bounds can be obtained finally we provide an illustrative example for the clarification and verification of our results

a long run perspective on saving historical estimates of long run gross savings rates are provided for 11 countries which represent about 48 per cent of world product in real terms and close to half of world savings even though savings rates declined over the past decade in nine of the 11 countries present rates are usually well above their prewar levels factors which influence savings rates are also examined

marginal values and returns to scale for nonparametric production frontiers we present a unifying linear programming approach to the calculation of various directional derivatives for a very large class of production frontiers of data envelopment analysis dea special cases of this include different marginal rates the scale elasticity and a spectrum of partial and mixed elasticity measures our development applies to any polyhedral production technology including to name a few the conventional variable and constant returns to scale dea technologies their extensions with weight restrictions technologies with weakly disposable undesirable outputs and network dea models furthermore our development provides a general method for characterization of returns to scale rts in any polyhedral technology the new approach effectively removes the need to develop bespoke models for the rts characterization and calculation of marginal rates and elasticity measures for each particular technology

shareholder value stakeholder management and social issues what s the bottom line we test the relationship between shareholder value stakeholder management and social issue participation building better relations with primary stakeholders like employees customers suppliers and communities could lead to increased shareholder wealth by helping firms develop intangible valuable assets which can be sources of competitive advantage on the other hand using corporate resources for social issues not related to primary stakeholders may not create value for shareholders we test these propositions with data from s p 500 firms and find evidence that stakeholder management leads to improved shareholder value while social issue participation is negatively associated with shareholder value copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

moral degradation business ethics and corporate social responsibility in a transitional economy this article theoretically proposes and empirically verifies an understudied issue in the business ethics be and corporate social responsibility csr literature how moral degradation md in a society influences the relationship between be or csr and firm performance i e corporate legitimacy and competitive advantage building on strategic choice theory we propose that both be and csr become more important in enhancing business success when the perceived md is heightened our analysis of 300 firms operating in china statistically confirms our hypotheses first under high md firms engagement in csr results in higher corporate legitimacy and competitive advantage and second their adherence to ethical business codes leads to higher corporate legitimacy we conclude the article by outlining the implications for both theory and practice

understanding the mechanisms of economic development in this paper i advocate the investigation testing and modification of mechanisms as a progressive empirical research strategy for the field of economic development and other areas of applied economics i discuss three lines of work that have elucidated mechanisms that are relevant for development 1 connections between saving and growth 2 the determinants of commodity prices which are a key source of income for many developing countries and 3 some unexpected puzzles that arise in considering the linkages between income and food consumption in each case my discussion illustrates the positivist approach to the hypotheticodeductive method in this approach mechanisms are proposed key predictions derived and tested and if falsified the mechanisms are rejected or modified if the predictions of a mechanism are confirmed if they are sufficiently specific and if they are hard to explain in other ways we attach additional credence to the mechanism albeit provisionally since later evidence may undermine it sometimes the falsifications can be repaired by changing supplementary assumptions and sometimes they involve long steps backwards where the model is abandoned and often there is disagreement about which is the correct response but the end result is an accumulation of useful knowledge and understanding

household debt and social interactions can concern with relative standing which has been shown to influence consumption and labor supply also increase borrowing and the likelihood of financial distress we find that perceived peer income contributes to debt and the likelihood of financial distress among those who consider themselves poorer than their peers we use unique responses describing perceived peer characteristics from a dutch population wide survey to handle two major challenges of uncovering social interaction effects on borrowing 1 debts unlike conspicuous consumption are often hidden from peers and 1 location is missing in anonymized data we employ several approaches to uncover exogenous rather than correlated effects

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

see what we want to see the effects of managerial experience on corporate green investments how impartial are managerial decisions this question is particularly concerning when it comes to making green investment decisions in the face of stakeholder pressures when managers respond to stakeholder pressures their personal cognition judgment and past experiences play a role in determining their responses the salience of particular stakeholder claims may be determined by deeply rooted individual preferences this research investigates how a manager s past experiences can influence green investments data are gathered from 247 managers about their past experience and their employer s performance data these data are combined with managerial responses to a vignette based experiment which required managers to make green investments based on a decision scenario where they are exposed to different types and strength of stakeholder pressure from consumers and the community results suggest that managers years of experience their employers financial performance and their employers market performance influence investment decisions even when making decisions under new and different set of circumstances while the employers financial performance influences managers to invest more the employers market performance only influences managers investment in the presence of either high consumer or high community pressure compared to less experienced managers experienced managers invest more in response to consumer pressure but less in response to community pressure practical and theoretical implications of these findings in green management are explored

what do we learn from recall consumption data in this paper we use two complementary italian data sources the 1995 istat and bank of italy household surveys to generate householdspecific nondurable expenditure in the bank of italy sample that contains relatively high quality income data we show that food expenditure data are of comparable quality and informational content across the two surveys once we properly account for heaping rounding and time averaging we therefore depart from standard practice and rely on the estimation of an inverse engel curve on istat data to impute nondurable expenditure to bank of italy observations and show how we can use these estimates to analyze consumption age profiles conditional on demographics our key result is that predictions based on a standard set of demographic and socioeconomic indicators are quite different from predictions that also condition on simulated food consumption in the sense that their age profile is less in line with the implications of the standard consumer intertemporal optimization problem

saving and growth evidence from micro data abstract this paper examines whether the observed cross country correlation between aggregate saving rates and economic growth can be explained by models in which higher growth increases saving rates rather than the other way around there are two explanations why higher growth might increase saving first life cycle theory implies that higher growth will increase the life time wealth of younger savers relative to older dissavers thereby increasing the aggregate saving rate second models of consumption with habit formation imply that consumption responds slowly to unexpected income growth so unanticipated growth can produce a higher saving rate at least in the short run i assess these explanations using time series of cross sections of household surveys from four countries the us britain taiwan and thailand i find evidence that higher growth will produce only small increases in aggregate saving rates

decomposition of new venture growth into firm age survey period and vintage effects firm data are accumulated on a yearly basis in view of the linear relationship of firm age foundation year survey year the fluctuations of firm data classified by age and period cannot be decomposed into age period and cohort foundation year effects three decomposition methods are briefly reviewed and applied to japanese data on new ventures founded since 1995 regarding sales and employment growth the age effect is the largest with a downward trend and the cohort effect is negligible regarding labour productivity the age effect indicates upward movements and the cohort effect is negligible the reason of the negligible cohort effect is discussed

wealth accumulation and distribution in urban china abstract under socialism it was neither possible nor necessary to accumulate significant levels of personal wealth the acceleration of economic reform in the last decade however has brought dramatic increases in income and investment opportunities reform has also reduced social protections provided by the state welfare system in response to these changes between 1995 and 2002 urban average real household net total wealth increased by 24 per annum there is a concern however that those accumulating wealth are the economic and political elites while those unable to accumulate wealth are the most vulnerable workers who are losing social protection using chinese urban survey data of 1995 1999 and 2002 this article investigates this issue it is found that households with above average income have accumulated more wealth than their poorer counterparts in addition a large proportion of this wealth accumulation may be from nonearned sources such as buying larger and better housing at highly su

a test based on panel refreshments for panel conditioning in stated utility measures adapting a methodology proposed in das et al 2011 this paper uses panel refreshments as a natural experiment to determine whether trends in stated utility measures observed in panel data are genuine or rather caused by measurement issues

multiple bgps in a growth model with habit persistence this paper establishes multiple balanced growth paths in an otherwise standard competitive growth model without externality or distortions and with households preference dependent upon how his her consumption compares to a habit stock formed by his her own past consumption the key feature in our model is that consumption forms habits in combination with existing habits this model establishes multiple equilibria because habit persistence induces an internal intertemporal complementarity effect among consumption flows with current consumption reinforcing future consumption as a result there exist two balanced growth paths with one path exhibiting low consumption and habits and high economic growth and the other path exhibiting high consumption and habits and low growth that is not necessarily a development trap both steady states are saddles but global indeterminacy arises where a high balanced growth path co exists with a low balanced growth path where the two equilibrium paths cannot be pareto ranked and history need not matter for the selection of the equilibrium path

saving and liquidity constraints this paper is concerned with the theory of saving when consumers are not permitted to borrow and with the ability of such a theory to account for some of the stylized facts of saving behavior the models presented in the paper seem to account for important aspects of reality that are not explained by traditional life cycle models copyright 1991 by the econometric society

estimating most productive scale size using data envelopment analysis abstract the relation between the most productive scale size mpss for paparticular input and output mixes and returns to scale for multiple inputs multiple outputs situations is explicitly developed this relation is then employed to extend the applications of data envelopment analysis dea introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes ccr to the estimation of most productive scale sizes for convex production possibility sets it is then shown that in addition to productive inefficiencies at the actual scale size the ccr efficiency measure also reflects any inefficiencies due to divergence from the most productive scale size two illustrations of the practical applications of these results to the estimation of most productive scale sizes and returns to scale for hospitals and stem electric generation plants are also provided emphasize the advantage of this method in examining specific segments of the efficient production surface

public insurance and private savings who is affected and by how much this paper employs a recently developed instrumental quantile regression method to investigate the effect of medicaid on household savings across different wealth groups it finds that the disincentive effect of medicaid on household savings is heavily concentrated in the middle net worth households in contrast the effects on the bottom and top net worth households are quite small and insignificant these heterogeneous incentive effects are partly explained by medicaid asset tests our findings hold regardless of whether affluence is measured in terms of wealth or income they suggest that despite generating substantial crowd out for the mean household medicaid expansions are unlikely to discourage the savings of the poorest households copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

differential mortality and wealth accumulation the issue of asset accumulation and decumulation is central to the life cycle theory of consumer behavior and to many policy questions one of the main implications of the life cycle model is that assets are decumulated in the last part of life most empirical studies in this area use cross sectional data of estimate mean or median wealth age profiles the use of cross sections to estimate the age profile of assets is full of pitfalls for example if wealth and mortality are related in that poorer individuals die younger one overestimates the last part of the wealth age profile when using cross sectional data because means or other measures of location are taken over a population which becomes richer as it ages this paper examines the effect of differential mortality on cross sectional estimates of wealth age profiles our approach is to quantify the dependence of mortality rates on wealth and use these estimates to correct wealth age profiles for sample selection due to differential mortality we estimate mortality rates as a function of wealth and age for a sample of married couples drawn from the survey of income and program participation sipp our results show that accounting for differential mortality produces wealth profiles with significantly more dissaving among the elderly

life cycle individual thrift and the wealth of nations this paper provides a review of the theory of the determinants of individual and national thrift that has come to be known as the life cycle hypothesis lch of saving applications to some current policy issues are also discussed part i deals with the state of the art on the eve of the formulation of the lch some 30 years ago part ii sets forth the theoretical foundations of the model in its original formulation and later amendment calling attention to various implications distinctive to it and sometimes counter intuitive it also includes a review of a number of crucial empirical tests both at the individual and the aggregate level part iii reviews some applications of lch to current policy issues though only in sketchy fashion as space constraints prevent fuller discussion this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the link between social movements and corporate social initiatives toward a multi level theory this article offers a first step toward a multi level theory linking social movements to corporate social initiatives in particular building on the premise that social movements reflect ideologies that direct behavior inside and outside organizations this essay identifies mechanisms by which social movements induce firms to engage with social issues first social movements are able to influence the expectations that key stakeholders have about firms social responsibility making corporate social initiatives more attractive second through conflict or collaboration they shape firms reputation and legitimacy and third social movements ideologies manifest inside the corporations by triggering organizational members values and affecting managerial cognition the essay contributes to the literatures on social movements and csr extends the understanding of how ideologies are manifested in movement business interactions and generates rich opportunities for future research

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

aggregate consumption and saving in the postwar united states two commonly used sources of aggregate expenditure data are personal consumption expenditures in the national income and product accounts and the consumer expenditure surveys administered by the bureau of labor statistics we adjust both data sources to incorporate the service flows from owner occupied housing and other consumer durables a comparison of the two estimates of aggregate expenditure reveals that the differences between the two data sets have been growing over time by 1989 the level of aggregate expenditure in the national accounts exceeds that reported in the consumer expenditure surveys by 1224 billions less than half of this difference can be attributed to definitional differences in the two data sources

the missing link between corporate social responsibility and consumer trust the case of fair trade products this paper investigates the link between the consumer perception that a company is socially oriented and the consumer intention to buy products marketed by that company we suggest that this link exists when at least two conditions prevail 1 the products sold by that company comply with ethical and social requirements 2 the company has an acknowledged commitment to protect consumer rights and interests to test these hypotheses we conducted a survey among the clients of retail chains offering fair trade products the results show that socially oriented companies can successfully leverage their reputation to market products with high symbolic values

explaining the wealth holdings of different cohorts productivity growth and social security in this paper we explore the reasons why different generations accumulate different amounts of wealth we use basic economic theory to propose two indicators of the economic conditions under which households accumulate wealth the first one represents productivity differences across cohorts the aggregate level of gross national product per capita around the time the head of the household entered the labor market the second measure summarizes the changes in social security during the head of household s working life using panel data from the dutch socio economic panel we show that productivity growth can explain all the cohort effects present in income data while productivity growth and the generosity of social security can explain all the cohort effects present in household net worth we also find a limited offset of social security on wealth holdings

impacts of corporate code of conduct on labor standards a case study of reebok s athletic footwear supplier factory in china this study examines the social impacts of labor related corporate social responsibility csr policies or corporate codes of conduct on upholding labor standards through a case study of csr discourses and codes implementation of reebok a leading branded company enjoying a high profiled image for its human rights achievement in a large taiwanese invested athletic footwear factory located in south china i find although implementation of reebok labor related codes has resulted in a race to ethical and legal minimum labor standards when notoriously inhumane and seriously illegal labor rights abuses were curbed chinese workers were forced to work harder and faster but earned less payment and the employee elected trade union installed through codes implementation operated more like a company union rather than an autonomous workers organization representing worker interests in order to explain the paradoxical effects of reebok labor related codes on labor standards i argue the result is determined by both structural forces and agency related factors embedded in industrial national and local contexts to put it shortly i find the effectiveness of reebok labor related codes is constrained not only by unsolved tension between reebok s impetus for profit maximization and commitment to workers human rights but also by hard nosed competition realities at marketplace and chinese government s insufficient protection of labor rights despite drawing merely from a single case study these findings illuminate key determinants inhibiting the effectiveness of labor related csr policies or codes in upholding labor standards and hence two possible way outs of the deadlock 1 sharing cost for improving labor standards among key players in global supply chain and 2 combining regulatory power of voluntary codes and compulsory state legislations

measuring and understanding behavior welfare and poverty angus deaton delivered his prize lecture on tuesday 8 december 2015 at the aula magna stockholm university these are the lecture slides this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

growth and saving among individuals and households the lifecycle theory of saving and consumption predicts that changes in an economy s rate of economic growth will affect its aggregate saving rate by changing the lifetime resources of younger people relative to older people however studies that track the saving behavior of cohorts of household heads over time as they age have yielded estimates of age saving profiles that are too flat for growth to have much effect on the aggregate saving rate one problem with the cohort approach is that multigenerational households are common in many counties and the age saving profiles of households may be quite different from the age saving profiles of individuals that make up households in this paper we propose a method for estimating individual age saving profiles using household data this method is applied to data from taiwan and thailand we find that the individual method yields results that are more favorable to the lifecycle model these results imply that changes in the rate of economic growth may in som

do consumers respond to future income shocks evidence from social security reform in taiwan abstract a prediction of the basic permanent income hypothesis life cycle model is that an unexpected increase in future income produces an immediate increase in current consumption this paper tests that prediction using data from taiwan the 1985 labor standards law granted all employees in covered industries a windfall retirement severance benefit my results indicate that consumption did not increase immediately for those who were granted the windfall relative to those who received no windfall moreover consumption for those receiving a greater windfall did not increase relative to those who were granted less

role of multiple stakeholders and the critical success factor theory for the sustainable supplier selection process abstract the concept of sustainability has become an essential theme for many industries and organisations due to a heightened sensitivity towards environmental protection and social responsibility at the same time firms still need to achieve economic viability and retain their competitive advantage because suppliers are the first entity and the initial source of any supply chain organisations should select their suppliers by a careful evaluation of their critical success factors csf achieving a successful sustainable supply chain management sscm strategy requires a firm to consider its stakeholders views based on the csf theory and by considering the multi stakeholders view in a sustainability perspective this work provides a decision support system for the sustainable supplier selection sss problem in a real world textile industry located in the emerging economy of india through a three phase methodology this study examines indian suppliers by considering the sustainability views of various stakeholders including employees customers researchers shareholders and a government environmental officer the csf priorities show that the first four influential csfs are categorized as social concerns i e maintaining long term relationships and alliances stakeholder empowerment equity labour sources and individual human rights the fifth factor is an environmental issue i e production of polluting agents among the five suppliers being evaluated in this work supplier 4 receives the top ranking specifically the results show that the supplier rankings are highly influenced by csf s social dimensions hence to validate the influence of csf s social dimensions in relation to the sss process a sensitivity analysis has been done by varying the respective weights the study concludes with the relevant managerial implications and limitations

health and consumption preferences estimating the health state dependence of utility using equivalence scales abstract this paper estimates health state dependence of utility in europe for identification we introduce a new method using insights from the research domain of living standards we estimate how much extra or less income is needed to maintain the same level of material wellbeing after a health shock and we derive a simple relation between this estimate and the health state dependence parameter the results show positive health state dependence this is not driven by medical expenditures and is robust across alternative specifications and health measures interestingly for cognitive limitations we find negative health state dependence presumably resulting from a decreased ability to plan

social sustainability in selecting emerging economy suppliers despite the growing public awareness of social sustainability issues little is known about what drives firms to emphasize social criteria in their supplier management practices and what the precise benefits of such efforts are this is especially true for relationships with international suppliers from the world s emerging economies in asia latin america and eastern europe building on stakeholder theory we address the issue by examining how pressures from customers the government and employees as primary constituencies of the firm determine the extent to which firms consider social aspects in the selection of emerging economy suppliers further we analyze how such socially sustainable supplier selection relates to the capabilities of the firm s suppliers its market reputation and the learning in its supply management organization we test the developed research framework empirically using data from 244 u s and german corporations our findings consistent with our hypothesized model suggest that middle level supply managers as internal stakeholders play a major driving role for firms socially sustainable supplier selection and that strong positive links exist between that selection and the investigated outcomes

household optimism and overborrowing we use finnish household level data from 1994 to 2013 to measure how often and what kind of forecast errors households make and how the errors are linked to the households borrowing behavior and overindebtedness we find that those households that make the largest optimistic forecast errors have greater debt to income ratios they also are more likely to report that they suffer from excessive debt loads and have problems in coping with their bills there are no such systematic effects for the households that make pessimistic forecast errors

a quantitative assessment of the decline in the u s current account low frequency changes in the u s current account can be understood in terms of the influence of differences in productivity growth rates across time and across countries using standard growth theory in particular the secular decline is primarily driven by the increase in the u s tfp growth rate relative to its trading partners differences in population growth rates or fiscal policy have no significant effects on the low frequency changes in the u s current account

optimal weights in dea models with weight restrictions abstract according to a conventional interpretation of a multiplier dea model its optimal weights show the decision making unit under the assessment denoted dmu o in the best light in comparison to all observed dmus for multiplier models with additional weight restrictions such an interpretation is known to be generally incorrect specifically if weight restrictions are linked or nonhomogeneous and the meaning of optimal weights in such models has remained unclear in this paper we prove that for any weight restrictions the optimal weights of the multiplier model show dmu o in the best light in comparison to the entire technology expanded by the weight restrictions this result is consistent with the fact that the dual envelopment dea model benchmarks dmu o against all dmus in the technology and not only against the observed dmus our development overcomes previous concerns about the use of weight restrictions of certain types in dea models and provides their rigorous and meaningful interpretation

piecewise loglinear estimation of efficient production surfaces linear programming formulations for piecewise loglinear estimation of efficient production surfaces are derived from a set of basic properties postulated for the underlying production possibility sets unlike the piecewise linear model of banker charnes and cooper banker r d a charnes w w cooper 1984 models for the estimation of technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis management sci 30 september 1078 1092 this approach permits the identification of increasing marginal products and estimation of the classical s shaped production functions methods are also provided for estimating technical inefficiencies and other production characteristics such as rates of substitution and transformation marginal products returns to scale and most productive scale sizes on the basis of observed production data the results of a simulation study are reported to illustrate the usefulness of this estimation method in empirical applications when there are a priori reasons to expect increasing marginal products in some regions of the production function a modified model is provided to extend this analysis to the situation of non competing outputs addressed by the bi extremal model of banker charnes cooper and schinnar banker r d a charnes w w cooper a schinnar 1981 a bi extremal principle for frontier estimation and efficiency evaluation management sci 27 december 1370 1382

a scale elasticity measure for directional distance function and its dual theory and dea estimation abstract in this paper we focus on scale elasticity measure based on directional distance function for multi output multi input technologies explore its fundamental properties and show its equivalence with the input oriented and output oriented scale elasticity measures we also establish duality relationship between the scale elasticity measure based on the directional distance function with scale elasticity measure based on the profit function finally we discuss the estimation issues of the scale elasticity based on the directional distance function via the dea estimator

older or wealthier the impact of age adjustment on wealth inequality differences in individual wealth holdings are widely viewed as a driving force of economic inequality however as this finding relies on cross sectional data a concern is that older is confused with wealthier we propose a new method to adjust for age effects in cross sections which eliminates wealth inequality due to age yet preserves inequality arising from other factors using a new cross country comparable database we examine the impact of age adjustments on wealth inequality across countries and over time we find that the most widely used method yields a substantially different picture of age adjusted wealth inequality than our method 2011 the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

returns to scale in convex production technologies the notion of returns to scale rts is well established in data envelopment analysis dea in the variable returns to scale production technology the rts characterization is closely related to other scale characteristics such as the scale elasticity most productive scale size mpss and global rts types indicative of the direction to mpss in recent years a number of alternative production technologies have been developed in the dea literature most of these technologies are polyhedral and hence are closed and convex sets examples include technologies with weakly disposable undesirable outputs models with weight restrictions and production trade offs technologies that include several component production processes and network dea models for most of these technologies the relationship between rts and other scale characteristics has remained unexplored the theoretical results obtained in this paper establish such relationships for a very large class of closed convex technologies of which polyhedral technologies are an important example

ratio based rts determination in weight restricted dea models abstract this paper provides computationally efficient approaches for determining to which returns to scale rts class a unit belongs in weight restricted data envelopment analysis dea models a non traditional computational algorithm is introduced the suggested approach is based on the calculation of certain ratios within the data set and offers obvious computational advantages over the traditional approaches involving the solution of standard dea models some theorems and algorithms are given computational advantages of the provided results are discussed and one of the algorithms is illustrated using real world data

lifestyle conformity and lifecycle saving a veblenian perspective since the 1950s the lifecycle hypothesis has been the dominant explanation for the inverse u in household wealth accumulation this paper advances an alternative explanation rooted in the ideas of veblen that emphasises the role of lifestyle conformity because people tend to adopt lifestyles common to their social group and modify them in standard ways as they age lifecycle norms impart a certain order to the accumulation of assets and liabilities which enables people to do lifecycle saving via habitual thinking after laying out the argument conceptually the paper provides empirical evidence on the role of conformity in lifecycle saving and discusses its contribution to the current low saving rate in the usa copyright the author 2008 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

the productivity slowdown and the savings shortfall a challenge to the permanent income hypothesis i introduction the permanent income hypothesis has been extensively tested over the years most of these tests reject the permanent income hypothesis at conventional significance levels but the implied deviations are small in economic terms in this paper i argue that the savings shortfall that followed the post 1973 productivity slowdown constitutes a large deviation from the permanent income hypothesis according to the permanent income hypothesis current consumption depends upon preferences interest rates and expected future income in the united states the productivity growth rate sharply declined after 1973 and economic agents forecasted that the lower growth rate would persist the permanent income hypothesis generally predicts that a productivity slowdown by lowering future expected income will stimulate saving the slower growth rate reduces the ratio of permanent income to current income and thereby reduces the ratio of consumption to current income unless the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is high however the u s national saving rate instead fell to a postwar low after the productivity slowdown the permanent income hypothesis therefore appears to be inconsistent with recent economic experience carroll and summers 1991 327 328 briefly noted that these events pose a challenge to the permanent income hypothesis in this paper i extend their analysis along four dimensions first i calculate the savings response predicted by the permanent income hypothesis in an economy with declining returns to capital abandoning their assumption of a fixed rate of return second i consider the case in which consumers only gradually recognize the extent and duration of the slowdown third i examine published forecasts to demonstrate that the slowdown caused a fall in expected not merely realized growth rates which is necessary for the predicted savings increase fourth i consider the effects of other variables on saving during this period the paper is organized as follows in section ii i examine the permanent income hypothesis s prediction of the savings response to a productivity slowdown by solving a linearized infinite horizon specification of the permanent income hypothesis in a closed economy with concave production technology unless the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is high the permanent income hypothesis predicts rapid capital accumulation in response to the slowdown in section iii i document the post 1973 decline in productivity growth the downward revision in economic forecasts and the decline in national saving and capital accumulation i argue that other recent economic events cannot explain the saving decline and discuss the implications of these events for the permanent income hypothesis i briefly conclude in section iv ii effects of a productivity slowdown under the permanent income hypothesis in this section i show that the permanent income hypothesis predicts that a productivity slowdown increases saving unless the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is high specification of the permanent income hypothesis i use the model of ramsey 1928 and blanchard and fischer 1989 38 47 there is one good which can be consumed or costlessly transformed into capital labor supply is exogenous and factors are paid their marginal products the economy is closed relaxing this assumption increases the predicted savings effects of a slowdown the production function for gross output y is cobb douglas mathematical expression omitted where k is the capital stock z is the level of productivity l is labor supply and alpha is a constant between zero and one i refer to lz as the amount of effective labor gross output grows at rate 2 d y sub t dt y sub t alpha g sub t alpha n sub t 1 alpha d k sub t dt k sub t where g

implementing supplier codes of conduct in global supply chains process explanations from theoretic and empirical perspectives western buying companies impose supplier codes of conduct scc on their suppliers in developing countries however many suppliers cannot fully comply with scc and some of them even cheat in scc in this research we link contract characteristics price pressure production complexity contract duration to the likelihood of supplier s commitment to scc through a mediating process how the buying companies govern their suppliers our structural equation model analysis shows that the hierarchy relational norms governance is a perfect mediator of contract characteristics effects on the likelihood of supplier s commitment the market governance an insignificant one the managerial implications are provided for successfully implementing scc in global supply chains

pensions and retirement evidence from union army veterans i investigate the factors that fostered rising retirement rates prior to social security and most private sector pensions by estimating the income effect of the first major pension program in the united sates that covering union army veterans the elasticity of nonparticipation with respect to union army pension income was 0 73 the findings suggest that secularly rising income explains a substantial part of increased retirement rates comparisons with elasticities of nonparticipation with respect to social security income suggest that the elasticity of labor force nonparticipation may have decreased with time perhaps because of the increasing attractiveness of leisure

mixed partial elasticities in constant returns to scale production technologies abstract recently podinovski and forsund 2010 developed a linear programming approach to the analysis and calculation of a class of mixed partial elasticity measures in variable returns to scale vrs production technologies in the current paper we extend their approach to the constant returns to scale crs technologies and formulate linear programs required for the computation of elasticity measures among other results obtained in this paper we prove a new result valid in both vrs and crs technologies that allows us to identify the reason why the corresponding elasticity measure is undefined at the unit this removes the need for a preliminary sorting of the units into those units where the elasticity measure applies and those where it does not

a cohort analysis of saving behavior by u s households the aim of this paper is to shed some light in the decline in personal saving rates in the united states in the 1980s for a such a purpose the paper analyses the only u s data set containing information on consumption and income at the household level the consumer expenditure surveys cex from 1980 to 1991 because the cex is not a panel most of the analysis is conducted using average cohort techniques the paper identifies a typical age profile for saving rates such a profile is hump shaped and peaks around age 57 the paper also argues that such a profile was shifted down for the cohorts born between 1920 and 1939 relative to the younger and older cohorts considered these cohorts are the parents of the baby boom generation the paper also argues that these cohort effects can account for a non neglible proportion of the decline in aggregate saving because these cohorts were during the 1980s in the ages when saving rates are typically highest the result is robust to the consideration of several controls and holds for several definitions of consumption the only exception is when durable expenditure is considered as saving rather than consumption

reversal of fortunes the rise and fall of lifetime earnings of iranian men abstractthe islamic revolution of 1979 the 8 year war with iraq 1980 88 and the collapse of oil prices in 1986 dealt huge blows to iran s economy in this article we use a pseudopanel constructed from annual multiple surveys during 1984 2004 to analyze changes in cohort earnings and consumption through these tumultuous times using well known techniques we decompose the changes in median cohort earnings of men into cohort age and year effects our results show that cohorts born before 1950 who were well into their careers at the time of the revolution enjoyed a steady increase in lifetime earnings however those born after the mid 1960s who started their careers during the revolution and the war with iraq experienced losses relative to previous cohorts in contrast to earnings per capita expenditures do not indicate a declining cohort trend for younger cohorts when we restrict the year effects to cyclical variation only the cohort effects show a rising trend we interpret the difference in

demographic change and the uk savings rate microeconomic data are used to explore the effects of a changing age structure on the uk s aggregate personal savings rate the findings suggest that changes to the population s age structure have had detectable sustained but relative to the yearly changes observed in the savings rate over the previous century modest effects on aggregate personal sector savings it is estimated that the projected changes to the uk s age structure over the next 40 years are likely to raise the uk s savings rate but by no more than two percentage points no basis is found for the view that the aggregate savings rate will decline as a result of the anticipated ageing of the uk population

asset market participation and portfolio choice over the life cycle using error free data on life cycle portfolio allocations of a large sample of norwegian households we document a double adjustment as households age a rebalancing of the portfolio composition away from stocks as they approach retirement and stock market exit after retirement when structurally estimating an extended life cycle model the parameter combination that best fits the data is one with a relatively large risk aversion a small per period participation cost and a yearly probability of a large stock market loss in line with the frequency of stock market crashes in norway

a simple derivation of scale elasticity in data envelopment analysis in this paper we suggest a simple derivation of the formulae for the scale elasticity in the variable returns to scale technology as used in data envelopment analysis our development is consistent with the existing literature but the proof is much shorter and applies to the general case without any simplifying conditions

weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis with undesirable outputs environmental economics and natural resources group at wageningen university in the netherlands weak disposability of outputs means that firms can abate harmful emissions by decreasing the activity level modeling weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis has caused some confusion this article identifies a dilemma in these approaches conventional formulations implicitly and unintentionally assume all firms apply uniform abatement factors however it is usually cost effective to abate emissions in those firms where the marginal abatement costs are lowest this article presents a simple formulation of weak disposability that allows for non uniform abatement factors and preserves the linear structure of the model

age period cohort decomposition of aggregate data an application to us and japanese household saving rates this paper compares two methods of analyzing aggregate data that is classified by period and age because there is a linear relationship among age period and cohort it is not possible to distinguish the separate effects without employing an identifying assumption the first method which is applied in the economics literature assumes that period effects are orthogonal to a linear time trend the second method which is applied in the statistics literature assumes that the effect parameters change gradually simulation results suggest that the performances of both methods are comparable the results of applying the second method to household saving rates suggest that period effects had a negligible influence in the united states but considerable influence in japan copyright 2006 john wiley sons ltd

ethical sourcing codes of large uk based corporations prevalence content limitations codes of conduct have become the perhaps most often used tool to manage corporate social responsibility csr researchers have primarily analysed such documents at company wide or trans company levels whereas there is a dearth of studies into the use of codes for particular corporate functions hence this article will examine one particular group of sub company level codes namely codes of conduct that stipulate csr criteria for suppliers examining such ethical sourcing policies adopted by the ftse100 corporations the article draws out what environmental social and economic issues large corporations perceive to be important in the management of their supply chains at an aggregate level the coverage of csr issues is rather extensive yet at the level of the individual corporation a degree of selectivity in the issues that are addressed becomes noticeable the code content analysis furthermore confirms the business case and public pressure to be the most important drivers of csr finally the study highlights the role of isomorphic processes in the adoption of csr tools

from chain liability to chain responsibility this article examines whether the involvement of stakeholders in the design of corporate codes of conduct leads to a higher implementation likelihood of the code the empirical focus is on occupational safety and health osh the article compares the inclusion of osh issues in the codes of conduct of 30 companies involved in international framework agreements ifas agreed upon by trade unions and multinational enterprises with those of a benchmark sample of 38 leading multinational enterprises in comparable industries it is found that codes of the ifa group have a higher implementation likelihood in osh than the codes of the benchmark group further european firms culturally more used to stakeholder involvement score higher than their us and japanese competitors and hence are more capable of addressing the safety and health issues in international supply chains the implementation likelihood of codes seems closely related to the type of corporate csr approach

socially and environmentally responsible purchasing comparing the impacts on buying firm s financial performance competitiveness and risk abstract the paper presents a study that aims to compare the contribution of social and environmental practices along the purchasing process to economic performance competitiveness and risk mitigation of the buying firm the number of studies dealing with the topic has significantly increased in the last few years the majority of the extant research is focused on the environmental dimension whereas fewer studies have explored the social dimension or the combination of both factors the results are mixed with some scholars supporting the existence of a positive relationship between socially and environmentally oriented purchasing management and financial performance competitiveness and risk mitigation and others being more cautious relying on suggestions from earlier literature the study presents an analysis of a database made up of 189 international buying companies operating in italy and the results have provoked two main observations data were collected through a closed question questionnaire to purchasing managers which was defined from items and variables identified in the previous literature on the one hand the results corroborated the hypotheses of the study confirming that both dimensions contribute to firm performance on the other hand the findings showed that differences do exist and that the positive relationship between social and environmental dimensions and firm performance depends upon the stage into which those criteria are integrated the integration of social criteria has proven to impact only risk mitigation throughout the purchasing process whereas the environmental dimension contributes to risk mitigation and competitiveness when included in the supplier selection phase and to economic performance when considered in supplier relationship management

pension wealth and household savings in europe evidence from sharelife we use recently collected retrospective survey data to estimate the displacement effect of pension wealth on household savings the third wave of the survey of health ageing and retirement in europe sharelife collects information on the entire job history of the respondent a feature missing in most previous studies we show that addressing measurement error problems is crucial to estimate the displacement effect when using survey data we find that each euro of pension wealth is associated with a 47 61 cent decline in non pension wealth using robust median regression in the presence of biases from measurement errors and omitted unobserved variables we estimate a lower bound to the true offset between 17 and 30 significantly different from zero instrumental variables regression estimates although less precise suggest full displacement