The housing bubble in real-time: the end of innocence

Market agents suffering through unanticipated boom-bust cycles would find extremely useful analytical techniques capable of serving as an early warning system. Unobserved components models and cointegration analysis are valuable in this respect. The stylized facts from unobserved components models alone do not suffice, but coupled with results from the Johansen cointegration test provided early evidence of the housing bubble and of its denouement. The paper uses real-time data vintages and shows that by 1998 the relationship between the smoothed growth rates of house prices and of per capita income was in uncharted territory. Moreover, the actual growth rates are cointegrated. This is important, as it establishes that any disequilibrium between the two becomes less tenable as its magnitude increases. By 2003, the disequilibrium was spectacular, yet it grew for another 4 years. In effect, we did not have to wait until 2008; the gruesome ending was predictable ex ante. Ironically, the greatest financial delusion of all occurred in an age that revered rationality, market efficiency, and the financial enlightenment of the TBTF actors. The empirical findings of this paper are a major problem for the rational expectations hypothesis and the remnants of the EMH.     

Determinacy of equilibrium outcome distributions for zero sum and common utility games

We show the generic finiteness of probability distributions induced on outcomes by the Nash equilibria in two player zero sum and common interest outcome games.     

Business–Community Partnerships: The Case for Community Organization Capacity Building

Globalization processes have resulted in greater complexity, interdependence and limited resources. Consequently, no one sector can effectively respond to today's business or wider challenges and opportunities. Non-government organizations and corporations are increasingly engaging each other in recognition that shareholder and societal value are intrinsically linked. For both sectors, these partnerships can create an enabling environment to address social issues and can generate social capital. Located in the Australian context, this paper explores the dimensions of community organization capacity building as an aspect of business-community organization partnerships. An Australian case study is used to demonstrate the benefits to business, community organizations and ultimately the communities in which the corporation is embedded and which are serviced by the community organization.     

Legitimacy building strategies in conditions of discretionary legal enforcement: A logic of social action approach

The present study explores strategies used to legitimize the transfer of organizational practices in a situation of institutional upheaval. We apply the logic of social action (Risse, 2000) to analyze the effectiveness of consequence-based action and communication-based action, in terms of higher coordination, lower conflict, and overall higher economic performance. Consequence-based legitimation is obtained by using a system of distributor incentives tied to performance of specific tasks, while communicative legitimation can be achieved by recommendations and warnings. Our setting is an export channel to European emerging economies. Our results indicate that in the absence of legitimacy, as manifested in discretionary legal enforcement, consequence-based legitimation is more effective than communicative legitimation in reducing conflict, increasing coordination, and ultimately in improving the performance of the export dyad.     

Does female representation in top management improve firm performance? A panel data investigation

We argue that female representation in top management brings informational and social diversity benefits to the top management team, enriches the behaviors exhibited by managers throughout the firm, and motivates women in middle management. The result should be improved managerial task performance and thus better firm performance. We test our theory using 15 years of panel data on the top management teams of the S&P 1,500 firms. We find that female representation in top management improves firm performance but only to the extent that a firm's strategy is focused on innovation, in which context the informational and social benefits of gender diversity and the behaviors associated with women in management are likely to be especially important for managerial task performance. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Income Tax Increase to Fund Higher Education: A CGE Analysis for Chile

An increase in income taxes to fund education was one of the demands made by the social movements that emerged in Chile in 2011. Currently, the Chilean Congress is enacting a tax reform to raise money for higher education. This study aims to show the dynamic effects on the general equilibrium of the Chilean economy under two alternative approaches: a subsidy to lower the price of higher education (public and private), and greater spending on public higher education to reduce household payments for education. The social accounting matrix (SAM) used to calibrate the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model has 38 economic sectors, including the production structure of private education and public education. The study mainly concludes that a subsidy policy has significant advantages over increasing higher public education spending, regarding its effects on variables such as GDP, investment, and household incomes, while both policies have a similar effect on poverty and income distribution.     

Short- and long-term relation between economic development and government spending: the role of quality of institutions

ABSTRACT

This paper tests the Wagner’s assumption of the one-sided directional flow moving from economic growth to public spending considering an international database over the 1996–2012 period. By using indicators on the level of country control of corruption, government effectiveness, political stability, rule of law, regulatory quality and voice and accountability, the paper analyses the economic performance-public spending nexus controlling for the quality of the institutions. The empirical evidence supports the existence of the Wagner’s law, showing that, in the short-run, public spending positively reacts to a positive shock in national income, with a lower magnitude for democratic countries. In the long run, the error-correction model shows the convergence between public spending and national output occurring less quickly for non-democratic, low-income and to a smaller extent for non-OECD countries. Institutional quality, such as effort in controlling corruption and the presence of regulations that permit and promote private sector development, may help reducing the amount of per capita public spending and making it more productive. Higher expenses in compositional amenities such as public services for the elderly may explain why public spending per capita will increase the most in economies with a higher share of the population that need healthcare facilities.     

Managerial Efficiency in Higher Education Using Individual Versus Aggregate Level Data. Does the choice of Decision Making Units Count?

This paper explores the use of a data envelopment analysis approach to decompose student's under‐attainment in a part attributable to the Faculties they are enrolled in and a part attributable to the students themselves. The mean measure of each Faculty's teaching efficiency is calculated using both individual and aggregate data. The results show that efficiency measures at aggregate level reflect both the student's effort and the characteristics of the institution to which they belong, suggesting that they might lead to ambiguous results. The estimates also reveal that Faculties need to stimulate their student's effort in order to perform better. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.