Labor market adjustment under transition in Laos

Laos has engaged in an ambitious program of economic reforms, the New Economic Mechanism. Yet little attention has been devoted to the impact of the reform process on the functioning of the labour market and to the role of the labour market in mobilizing human resources. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of reform policy on the labor market and to show how a better adjustment of the labor market can facilitate the success of the New Economic Mechanism. The purpose of the paper is also to show how a better use of the information generated in the labor market can contribute to transforming the reform process into a process of sustained economic growth in Laos.     

On the role of the organization in auditors’ client-acceptance decisions

The objective of this research is to better understand the role that the accounting firm organization plays when auditors make difficult client-acceptance decisions in the midst of conflicting influences—specifically between the professional and commercial “logics of action”. The investigation was conducted via a field study at three Big Six firms located in Canada. The main argument that is developed in the paper is that the firm sets the stage for auditors’ decision-making by making its formal organizational components (e.g., the firm's partner-compensation scheme and decision-making policies) more reflective of one of the two logics, thereby establishing and helping reproduce certain patterns of order and consistency within the firm. However, the firm's organizational components are also to some extent reflective of the other logic, thereby providing decision-makers with a legitimizing space to influence the decision process differently. I present fieldwork data that is consistent with the paper's argument.     

Emigrants' remittances and Dutch Disease in Cape Verde

Abstract

Emigrants' remittances have increased rapidly over the past two decades. While earlier studies have focused on their microeconomic effect on incomes and poverty in recipient countries, the present study concentrates on the macroeconomic impact of remittances on the real exchange rate in Cape Verde. A main conclusion is that remittances give rise to a sort of Dutch Disease effect and thereby have an adverse effect on the competitiveness of the tradable sector. The magnitude of this effect in Cape Verde is not that large, however. The changing orientation of official aid to more growth-oriented aid, combined with a more export-oriented domestic policy, has contributed to limiting the adverse impact of emigrants' remittances on the competitiveness of the Cape Verdean economy.     

IFRS: On the Docility of Sophisticated Users in Preserving the Ideal of Comparability

This paper questions the ideal of comparability, which is often mobilized by standard setters when justifying new – or ‘improvement’ to existing – accounting standards. The target of our analysis is constituted by the thoughts of sophisticated users of financial statements when reflecting about International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) implementation in Europe. Drawing on the work of Mary Douglas on purity and Michel Foucault on docility, it is argued and shown that sophisticated users tend to interpret aberrations – that is to say indications of incomparability which confront users in the flow of their professional lives – in ways that allow the ideal of comparability to be preserved. Important consequences ensuing from the docility of users in purifying aberrations are discussed.     

Constituting the Academic Performer: The Spectre of Superficiality and Stagnation in Academia

Abstract

Journal rankings and performance measurement schemes tend to become increasingly influential within many fields of research, thereby consolidating the prevalence of performativity on the life and research endeavours of many academics. The latter are nowadays often pressured to publish in ‘top’ journals to ensure they have a displayable level of performance. Drawing from literature on identity, this paper introduces and details the construction of the academic performer – a representation of identity which is increasingly typical of what it means today to be an actor in academia, in terms of attitudes and behaviour. Fundamentally speaking, this paper constitutes a critique of a detrimental tendency in academia, that is to say the excessive spread of performance measurement practices and the flow of superficiality and conformity they consolidate.     

Queueing models for full-flexible multi-class call centers with real-time anticipated delays

In this paper, we consider two basic multi-class call center models, with and without reneging. Customer classes have different priorities. The content of different types of calls is assumed to be similar allowing their service times to be identical. We study the problem of announcing delays to customers upon their arrival. For the simplest model without reneging, we give a method to estimate virtual delays that is used within the announcement step. For the second model, we first build the call center model incorporating reneging. The model takes into account the change in customer behavior that may occur when delay information is communicated to them. In particular, it is assumed that customer reneging is replaced by balking that depends on the state of the system in this case. We develop a method based on Markov chains in order to estimate virtual delays of new arrivals for this model. Finally, some practical issues concerning delay announcement are discussed.     

Determinants of demand for green products: An application to eco-label demand for fish in Europe

In this paper, we confront the theoretical motivations of the consumption of eco-friendly products and the factors influencing the European perceptions regarding the fact that “fish caught using an environmentally friendly technique may carry a special label”. We take advantage of the recent integration of non-economic elements in the microeconomic analysis of consumers' behavior in order to highlight the factors leading to their demand for green products. Thanks to an original European survey on seafood product carried out on more than 5000 consumers, we test the influence of intrinsic motivation, information, localization and socio-economic factors on the demand for an eco-label for fish.Our results show a significant connection between the desire for eco-labeling and seafood features, especially the freshness of the fish, the geographical origin of the fish and the wild vs farmed origin of the fish. Moreover, we prove the major role played by the fish price. We also demonstrate that the ecological issue regarding fisheries is highly connected to consumer information, intrinsic motivation and socio-economic status: the typical “green fish consumer” is a young woman, well educated, well informed on the state of marine resources and not very trusting of the regulation of the fisheries. Consumers who are aware of the importance of marine resource preservation have the same profile.     

Business ethics research at the world's leading universities and business schools

This paper explores the role of the leading universities and best-ranked business schools in the evolution of the academic field of business ethics. An advanced bibliometric methodology is applied to publications in business ethics from the major universities of the Shanghai ARWU ranking and from the FT-ranked business schools. The comprehensive bibliometric study encompasses multiple indicators and examines the evolution of business ethics publications over time. Business ethics research is built on two complementary interdisciplinary streams of research, philosophy, and management. The study indicates that it were not the top universities that contributed most to research advancements in the field of business ethics but second and third tier universities. This finding suggests that academic research in new subfields constitutes a niche strategy for universities and business schools to differentiate themselves. The study furthermore highlights the prominent role of the product champion or ‘idea champion’ in management research at universities. The diffusion of business ethics research illustrates the possibilities for lower ranked business schools with lower budget to excel in specialised subfields and interdisciplinary subthemes.     

The Fast Decay Process in Outdoor Recreational Activities and the Use of Alternative Count Data Models

Despite a number of significant advances in count data modeling during the last two decades and the growing popularity of these models in recreation demand analysis, standard count data models are inadequate to address the fast decay process of the dependent variable and the associated long tail. This article demonstrates how one and two-parameter alternative count data models can be used to properly model the fast decay process and the associated long tail commonly observed in recreation demand analysis. Econometric results from an illustrative application suggest satisfactory performance of four of the eight alternative count data models proposed in this article.     

Equilibrium analysis and envelope theory

Qualitative comparative statics amounts to a study of the qualitative properties of the Debreu mapping, i.e., the restriction of the projection (p,ω)?ω to the equilibrium manifold. We show that a natural framework for such a study is Thom's envelope theory which generalizes the theory of planar curve envelopes.