THE FIRST ROUND OF THE KEYNESIAN REGIONAL INCOME MULTIPLIER

Previous studies utilising the Keynesian regional income multiplier have paid very limited attention to the estimation of the income generation which occurs during the first round of the multiplier process. However, since the first round of income generation is of greater magnitude than that of any other round, it is particularly important that the first round effects should be estimated correctly. This paper will attempt to analyse the way in which such estimation depends upon the types and values of the propensities to withdraw which are included in the first round. These are related, in turn, to the type of income which the multiplier methodology is attempting to measure, and to the form which the injection itself takes.     

THE TIMELINESS OF HALF YEARLY EARNINGS ANNOUNCEMENTS AND STOCK RETURNS

This paper examines the association between the timeliness of the half-yearly report for Australian firms and the abnormal stock price behaviour around the time of the announcement. The results support the overseas evidence that reports containing ‘good’ news are released earlier than reports containing ‘bad’ news. The abnormal returns are consistent with the direction and magnitude of the earnings and dividend information. We find no evidence to support the Kross and Schroeder [1984] conclusion that timeliness per se is associated with abnormal returns once appropriate control is made for earnings/dividend information.     

Direct democracy in Australia: Voter behavior in the choice between constitutional monarchy and a republic

Opinion polls conducted throughout the 1990s indicate most Australians favor a republic. A referendum making that constitutional change, however, was defeated. This paper investigates whether voters employ a loss-minimization rule, as opposed to a value-maximization rule, when making political decisions. Based on the predictions of each rule, political strategies are devised and compared to the official arguments employed by republicans and monarchists during the period preceding the vote. Empirical research relates voting outcomes at the individual voter level to influences that are likely to be correlated with political risk aversion. The results are consistent with the conclusion that voters do not employ value-maximization rules.     

Out of the Closet: When Moral Identity and Protestant Work Ethic Improve Attitudes toward Advertising Featuring Same-Sex Couples

This research examines how heterosexual consumers react to advertising featuring same-sex couples. Across three studies, we find that heterosexual consumers report higher levels of disgust in response to advertising featuring same-sex couples in comparison to mixed-sex couples, which results in more negative attitudes toward the advertisement and the advertised brand. We also find that moral-identity priming reduces disgust elicited by advertising featuring same-sex couples and improves attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand. However, we find that moral-identity priming is ineffective for consumers with high social dominance orientation. For these consumers, portraying same-sex couples as possessing Protestant work ethic traits decreases disgust and improves attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand.     

Financing Local Police Spending in England and Wales: Fiscal Federalism in Practice

Since 1995, police forces in England and Wales have been able to raise revenues locally to supplement grants from central government. We analyse the variation across police force areas in locally raised police revenues over the 2000s, and we find that three‐quarters of the temporal and spatial variation in local revenues per head can be explained by differences in incomes, prices and local preferences. A particularly robust parameter is the effective local community tax price associated with raising revenue. We discuss the police funding model in the wider context of fiscal federalism, and we point to alternative funding structures that could be adopted.     

The Social Costs of Innovation Policy

Innovation policy is designed to produce social benefits by solving a market failure problem associated with private investment in new knowledge. Yet the social costs of these policy interventions are routinely ignored. We use the Djankov et al. (2003) institutional possibility frontier model to analyse the trade‐offs between the social costs of disorder and those of dictatorship that particular innovation policies impose. We show how different innovation policies impose different types of social costs. We conclude that the case for public support for innovation policies is often both distorted and overstated because of failure to account for social costs.