Pollution, Capital Mobility and Tax Policies with Unemployment

In this paper we highlight aspects related to the links among unemployment, international capital mobility, and tax policies in a small open developing economy. Without international capital mobility, the joint optimal trade and environmental policies require a zero tariff and an emission tax lower than the Pigouvian tax. With international capital mobility and a capital tax (subsidy), the optimal emission tax rate is smaller (larger) compared to the rate when capital is untaxed. When both the emission tax and the capital tax/subsidy are jointly chosen optimally, then the optimal policy on capital is a lower subsidy, or even a tax, compared to the standard capital subsidy of the no pollution case.     

Mentoring received by protégés: its relation to personality and mental ability in the Anglo-Saxon organizational environment

Dispositional characteristics, including personality and mental ability, play a substantial role in interpersonal relationships. However, their connection with mentoring, which is a form of interpersonal relationship, has received limited attention. The study empirically investigated the association of mentoring received with the Big-Five of personality and general mental ability in the Anglo-Saxon organizational environment. Furthermore, it integrated the relationship between dispositional traits, mentoring received and career success in a causal path model. Analysis of data collected from 272 white-collar workers suggested no relationships of logarithmic form between mentoring received and personality traits or general mental ability. Hierarchical linear regression indicated that scores on openness and agreeableness made significant contributions to scores on mentoring received over and above the contributions of the demographics and human capital controls. Causal path modelling suggested that the total effects of openness and agreeableness on extrinsic career success were negative while the corresponding effects on intrinsic career success were positive; largely due to the fact that the benefits of mentoring received were stronger for intrinsic than for extrinsic career success. The results were discussed with respect to their contribution to our understanding of the development of mentoring relationships, and their implications for practice and research across national cultural contexts.     

Smoothing and Benchmarking for Small Area Estimation

Small area estimation is concerned with methodology for estimating population parameters associated with a geographic area defined by a cross-classification that may also include non-geographic dimensions. In this paper, we develop constrained estimation methods for small area problems: those requiring smoothness with respect to similarity across areas, such as geographic proximity or clustering by covariates, and benchmarking constraints, requiring weighted means of estimates to agree across levels of aggregation. We develop methods for constrained estimation decision theoretically and discuss their geometric interpretation. The constrained estimators are the solutions to tractable optimisation problems and have closed-form solutions. Mean squared errors of the constrained estimators are calculated via bootstrapping. Our approach assumes the Bayes estimator exists and is applicable to any proposed model. In addition, we give special cases of our techniques under certain distributional assumptions. We illustrate the proposed methodology using web-scraped data on Berlin rents aggregated over areas to ensure privacy.     

The Association between Board Composition and Corporate Pension Policies

This study examines the role of board composition in the determination of pension policies. The results suggest that the proportion of outside directors serving on the board is positively related with pension plan funding levels. In addition, the proportion of outside directors mitigates the relation between financial distress risk and plan underfunding. Last, as firms approach distress, boards with a greater proportion of outside directors tend to allocate a lower fraction of plan assets to riskier securities. Together, our findings suggest that outside directors are mindful of their obligations toward pension plan beneficiaries.     

Asymmetric Enforcement of Cooperation in a Social Dilemma

We use a public‐good experiment to analyze behavior in a decentralized asymmetric punishment institution. The institution is asymmetric in the sense that players differ in the effectiveness of their punishment. At the aggregate level, we observe remarkable similarities between outcomes in asymmetric and symmetric punishment institutions. Controlling for the average punishment effectiveness of the institutions, we find that asymmetric punishment institutions are as effective in fostering cooperation and are as efficient as symmetric institutions. At the individual level, we find that players with higher punishment effectiveness contribute similar amounts to the public account but have higher earnings and punish more than their weak counterparts.     

Adoption of Activity-Based Costing: A Survey of the Education Sector of Greece

The need to invest in education becomes evident during difficult economic periods. Nevertheless, the lack of sufficient financial resources leads educational institutes to form competitive cost strategies. Despite the increasing competition in the education sector, educational institutes usually refrain from using complex cost methods to improve their operations. In this study, we chose the activity-based costing (ABC) method to understand the reaction of educational institutes when they are confronted by the implementation of innovative cost methods. An institute willing to implement ABC should be capable of comprehending the associated operational adjustments. This study investigates the education sector’s potential in adapting to the ABC method to improve cost management. Additionally, factors that prevent educational institutes from making cost strategy reforms were also observed. Initially, we conducted semi-structured interviews of experts to develop our research instrument. The survey was then applied to 152 educational institutes located in the seven most populous regions of Greece. The findings of the hierarchical regression analysis indicate that educational institutes are not capable of accurately allocating costs and they lack specific data concerning overheads. However, the sector is more eager to implement sophisticated methods for increasing competitiveness than was anticipated.     

R&D and Tobin's q in an emerging financial market: the case of the Athens Stock Exchange

This paper aims at providing further evidence on the consequences of R&D investment on Tobin's q for firms publicly traded in an emerging financial market. Panel data methodology is applied using data for the manufacturing and computer firms listed in the Athens Stock Exchange, a market classified as emerging by the major securities analysts, for the period 1996–2004. The empirical findings show first, that the Greek firms' R&D investment effect on the market value of a firm is consistent with other US and European studies. Second, the impact of the R&D investment on the market value is higher for small firms. The findings of this paper may have significant industrial and technological policy implications for other emerging markets sharing similar characteristics to Greece. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.