The National Collegiate Athletic Association Cartel: Why it Exists,How it Works,and What it Does

In this essay we consider why American colleges and universities participate in big-time commercialized intercollegiate sports, and how sports came to play such a prominent role on American college and university campuses. We also review how the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) developed as a body to regulate player safety and transformed itself into an economic regulator, the means by which the NCAA attempts to maintain its control, increase revenues, and reduce costs for college sports programs. We also examine how the organization succeeds in the face of institutional characteristics that imply that its cartel activities would be doomed. Finally, we speculate on what changes might be on the horizon for the NCAA and college athletics.     

The role of leadership in salespeople’s price negotiation behavior

Salespeople assume a key role in defending firms’ price levels in price negotiations with customers. The degree to which salespeople defend prices should critically depend upon their leaders’ influence. However, the influence of leadership on salespeople’s price defense behavior is barely understood, conceptually or empirically. Therefore, building on social learning theory, the authors propose that salespeople might adopt their leaders’ price defense behavior given a transformational leadership style. Furthermore, drawing on the contingency leadership perspective, the authors argue that this adoption fundamentally depends on three variables deduced from the motivation–ability–opportunity (MAO) framework, that is, salespeople’s learning motivation, negotiation efficacy, and perceived customer lenience. Results of a multi-level model using data from 92 salespeople and 264 salesperson–customer interactions confirm these predictions. The first to explore contingencies of salespeople’s adoption of their transformational leaders’ price negotiation behaviors, this study extends marketing theory and provides actionable guidance to practitioners.     

The importance of career goal in relation to academic performance: a case study of hospitality management students

ABSTRACT

Hospitality management programs have commonly offered exclusive learning opportunities to talented students in order to keep “brains” in the industry. While academic performance indices are often used to identify “brains” in the education sector, scant research has empirically examined whether “brains” are intended to stay in the industry. This study surveyed 304 hospitality management students and examined the relationships between their career-goal related factors and academic performance. Findings indicate that career goal and positive job valence toward the hospitality industry are significantly related to academic performance. The results of this study contribute to the limited literature on the relationship between career goal and academic performance.     

Internalization of externalities and local government consolidation: empirical evidence from Japan

The fact that jurisdictional consolidation overcomes externality problems in the provision of local public goods is one of the best-known benefits of consolidation in the theoretical literature. Nevertheless, previous studies provide little evidence of how public service spillover effects influence consolidation decisions. This study empirically tests the hypothesis that spillovers induce consolidation, using voting data on the consolidation of Japanese municipalities. The extent of spillovers is measured by estimating the demand function for public goods with externalities. It is found that residents of the municipalities that can internalize a large amount of public goods spillovers through municipal consolidation tend to favor consolidation. This result supports the theoretical inference that spillovers in local public goods affect utility gains from jurisdiction integration, thus serving as one of the key impetuses for boundary reform. Moreover, after controlling for the spillover effects, economies of scale, population share, differences in median income, and unconditional grants can help explain consolidation preference.     

A model of growth with inherited tastes

This research aims at studying a general equilibrium closed economy with overlapping generations and inherited tastes (aspirations), as in de la Croix (Econ Lett 53(1):89–96, 1996). It shows that the interaction between the intensity of aspirations and the elasticity of substitution of effective consumption affects the qualitative and quantitative long-term dynamics from both local and global perspectives. The related literature is extended by showing that (1) the Neimark–Sacker bifurcation found by de la Croix (1996) does not necessarily give rise to fluctuations and (2) endogenous (long-lasting) fluctuations occur through the emergence of period-doubling bifurcations.     

Some reflections on past and future of nonlinear dynamics in economics and finance

This paper offers an overview of the literature on the economic and financial applications of theory of nonlinear dynamics, especially bifurcation theory. After a short introductory discussion of the first nonlinear dynamic models in social sciences and the economic relevance of the zoo of bifurcations and complicated dynamics that such models can generate, we present an overview of the literature on nonlinear dynamic models in the areas of underdevelopment, environmental poverty traps, the management of common goods, industrial organization and financial markets. The review of the literature is enriched by reflections and ideas for future research.