The unequal distribution of economic education: A report on the race,ethnicity, and gender of economics majors at U.S. colleges and universities

Economic education is distributed unequally. Among U.S. undergraduates, women and underrepresented minority students collectively major in economics at 0.36 the rate that white, non-Hispanic men do. The authors establish a definition of full inclusion in economic education and use that definition to evaluate the status quo and to compare institutions. A companion resource, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, provides interactive access to the data to attract and inform the attention of economists, university administrators, and others. The authors explain why the need to improve the distribution of economic education is urgent, including the imperative to support economic policymaking. Lastly, they point the way forward, identifying currently available resources and reasonable next steps for all involved parties to take.     

The effects of tourism development on rural livelihoods in the Okavango Delta,Botswana

The Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program in Botswana aims to achieve biodiversity conservation and rural development in rich biodiversity areas like the Okavango Delta. CBNRM assumes that if rural communities derive benefits from natural resources, they will be obliged to use such resources sustainably. Using the sustainable livelihoods framework, this study analyzes the effects of tourism development through CBNRM on rural livelihoods at Khwai, Sankoyo and Mababe in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, using primary and secondary data sources. Results of long-term surveys and in-depth interviews indicate that the three communities have forgone traditional livelihood activities such as hunting and gathering, livestock and crop farming to participate in tourism through CBNRM. Livelihoods in these villages have been improved as a result. Basic needs such as shelter, employment and income and social services like water supply systems, transportation, scholarships and payment of funeral expenses are now provided to community members and funded with income from CBNRM. Social capital has been built up in order to agree, manage and develop the CBNRM process. These results show that tourism development in these villages is achieving its goal of improved livelihoods, contradicting claims that community development projects are failing to achieve rural development.     

Closing the Learning Loop: A Review of Assignments in International Business Education

The continuing rapid globalization has significantly changed the nature of business and management, leading to increased pressure from a wide range of stakeholders to globalize business schools and to internationalize business curricula. This comes with a corresponding imperative to rigorously evaluate the impact of an international business education at institutional, program, and course levels. This study focuses on the types of assignments employed and approaches to assignment design in international business courses. A total of 92 studies in the scholarly literature on international business and international management are reviewed from 1970 to 2014. The study finds significant opportunities to expand and enrich research on assignment design, so as to better equip international business educators to validly and reliably measure learning outcomes.     

Measuring the impact of international reporting standards on market performance of publicly traded companies

The decision whether to require publicly traded companies to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) remains in flux. In 2008, the US Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a roadmap leading to complete acceptance of IFRS in the US. With the potential replacement of US GAAP with IFRS in the near future, understanding the impact of IFRS on corporate financial reporting is more important than ever. This study examines two factors which are critical considerations in the decision to accept or not to accept IFRS in the US: How different is financial statement information derived under IFRS from information derived under US generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP); and how much incremental information value, if any, is provided by IFRS over US GAAP? The present study extends prior research by examining concurrently both differences and their impact on market performance. Findings of this study support the view that differences on financial statement results between IFRS and US GAAP are not significant, thus, supporting proponents of adoption of IFRS in the US, after which all US publicly traded companies would use IFRS and not US GAAP.     

The Impact of Housing Vouchers on Mobility and Neighborhood Attributes

This article examines the effect of receiving a housing voucher on the mobility and neighborhood attributes of low‐income households. Housing policy has shifted toward vouchers in lieu of public housing projects to allow households to move away from high‐poverty areas. We use administrative records collected from an experiment to examine this issue. We find that households moved immediately after receiving the subsidy but did not relocate to lower poverty neighborhoods until several quarters later. Our findings suggest that recipients initially lease in nearby units to secure the subsidy, while continuing to search for housing in lower poverty neighborhoods.     

Ethics and HRM: Theoretical and Conceptual Analysis

Despite the ongoing consideration of the ethical nature of human resource management (HRM), little research has been conducted on how morality and ethics are represented in the discourse, activities and lived experiences of human resource (HR) professionals. In this paper, we connect the thinking and lived experiences of HR professionals to an alternative ethics, rooted in the work of Bauman (Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1989; Theory, Culture and Society 7:5?C38, 1990; Postmodern Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991; Approaches to Social Enquiry, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1993; Life in Fragments, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995) and Levinas (Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 1998). We argue that the study of HRM and ethics should be contextualized within the discourses used, the practices and activities of HR professionals. Through the analysis of interview data from 40 predominantly Canadian HR practitioners and managers we experiment with Bauman??s notion of ??moral impulse?? to help us understand how HRM is both a product and perpetuator of moral neutralization in organizations. We suggest that HRM as it is practiced is concerned with distancing, depersonalizing, and dissembling, and acts in support of the ??moral?? requirements of business, not of people. However, we also recognize that HR practitioners and managers are often confronted with and conflicted by actions and decisions that they are required to take, therefore opening possibilities and hope for an alternative ethical HRM.     

Place and certification cue usage with Canadian forest products

Place-based promotion is used in many industries, including food and wine products, to create a competitive advantage. This study focused on consumer behaviours related to cue usage of origin (i.e. local and imported) and certification (i.e. sustainable products) with the goal of understanding the importance of these two cues used together or separately in the context of Canadian forest products. The study asked consumers in a small Canadian city about their quality beliefs, value assessments and purchase intentions for local and/or certified products. Using a quasi-experimental design, the manipulations include location (local vs. imported), certification (certified vs. uncertified) and product type (commodity vs. value-added). A repeated measures ANOVA found that both cues of origin and certification were important as respondents perceived local products as better quality and higher value, and respondents were more likely to purchase them over most other types. A regression analysis indicated that in most cases quality and value were predictors, but value was the most important indicator of the likeliness to purchase specific forest products. This study has the potential to aid marketers because certification cue usage does not appear to have been examined in conjunction with a product’s local vs. foreign origin.     

High‐Growth Women’s Entrepreneurship: Fueling Social and Economic Development

High‐growth firms, often referred to as “gazelles,” are equated with entrepreneurial success and celebrated as the key to growing economies, and women’s entrepreneurship is a vehicle of economic and social development. This special issue publishes papers that address the general lack of research on high‐growth women’s entrepreneurship. In this introduction paper, we offer an adapted framework for the factors driving high growth across multiple levels: individual (entrepreneur and entrepreneurial team characteristics), venture (strategy, organizational structures, and systems), resources, location, and environment. We also introduce the papers in this special issue and present an overview of the contributions to this issue.