Research Published by Australian Economics and Econometrics Departments: 1988-93*

This paper measures an important component of the research output of economics and econometrics teaching departments, namely, the number of pages published during the period 1988-93, in journals listed by the Journal of Economic Literature. Based on page counts it is found that department rankings are similar over a broad range of journal groupings. It is also found that the median numbers of pages published by each of the groups of senior lecturers, associate professors and professors are quite small, indicating that within these groups research output is highly concentrated among a few active publishers.     

Factors Related to Employees’ Desire to Join and Leave Unions

Regression analyses based on a sample of 3372 nonunionized and unionized employees showed that, while the desire to join a union is associated with a wide range of work attitudes, perceived company performance, and facets of satisfaction, one's desire to leave one's union is associated with a narrow range of economic concerns. Implications of the findings are discussed in light of the declining unionization rate in the United States.     

Management Buyouts and Industrial Relations

Acquisition by managers of the control of firms in difficulty is taming the unions. Norman Tebbit should devise means of inducing the large public sector unions to buy the nationalised industries.     

Changes in Task Uncertainty Induced by Zero-Base Budgeting: Using the Thompson and Hirst Models to Predict Dysfunctional Behaviour

Generic budgeting systems such as PPBS and Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB) are criticized by academics for failing to give consideration to some of the key variables affecting behaviour in budgeting endeavours. Despite this criticism, the literature has devoted little attention to modifications that can be made to make the systems more responsive to different configurations of organizational variables. This paper addresses this oversight in regard to ZBB. In particular the paper discusses ZBB within the context of two variables: (a) the degree of task uncertainty engendered by the system and (b) the character of performance measures used to evaluate units that employ ZBB. The paper argues that ZBB materially increases the degree of task uncertainty. Configured with the type of performance measures used to evaluate departments employing ZBB, the paper maintains that the increase in task uncertainty creates incentives to engage in dysfunctional behaviour, largely in the form of invalid data reporting. It is hypothesized that this problem may be responsible for the general failure of ZBB to lead to large budget re-allocations.     

Comparaison empirique des méthodes d'inférence de probabilités subjectives*

Résumé. Les méthodes d'inférence de probabilités subjectives que sont l'amplitude directe et la bissection ont été comparées par l'auteur en ce qui a trait à l'exactitude, telle que déterminée par l'environnement (fréquence relative), des probabilités résultant de l'application de ces méthodes et à l'acceptabilité des méthodes d'inférence. Chaque participant à l'expérience a utilisé les deux méthodes et attribué à chacune d'elles une cote d'acceptabilité. L'auteur a mis à la disposition des sujets un logiciel d'inférence interactive, comprenant l'affichage graphique sous forme d'histogramme des probabilités selon les deux méthodes d'inférence, afin de les aider et d'assurer une comparaison plus raffinée des méthodes. Des étudiants de deuxième cycle diplômés en gestion, bien renseignés tant sur le contexte de la tâche que sur les probabilités subjectives, se sont prêtés à l'expérience. L'inférence directe a donné des probabilités subjectives beaucoup plus exactes que la bissection et s'est révélée beaucoup plus acceptable aux yeux des participants.     

A Model of Money and Credit, with Application to the Credit Card Debt Puzzle

Many individuals simultaneously have significant credit card debt and money in the bank. The credit card debt puzzle is as follows: given high interest rates on credit cards and low rates on bank accounts, why not pay down debt? While some economists go to elaborate lengths to explain this, we argue it is a special case of the rate of return dominance puzzle from monetary economics. We extend standard monetary theory to incorporate consumer debt, which is interesting in its own right since developing models where money and credit coexist is a long-standing challenge. Our model is quite tractable—for example, it readily yields nice existence and characterization results—and helps put into context recent discussions of consumer debt.     

Bargaining over Interconnection: The Clear-Telecom Dispute

We explore the problem of network interconnection in local telecommunications. We develop a model with a competitive business sector and a regulated residential sector. The model is used to analyze the celebrated New Zealand antitrust case between Clear and Telecom. We discuss implications of the model for the economics of antitrust, including issues of competition versus efficiency and the use of appropriate economic models. We also examine the implications of some proposed rules for interconnection. In particular, we examine reciprocity, 'bill and keep', and the rule that the courts ultimately endorsed, the Baumol-Willig rule.