Assessment Adrift: Review of the Current State of Assessment of Academically Based Leadership Education Programs

Assessment is a growing priority among the academy and also appears to be of increasing interest among academic‐based leadership education programs. This article offers a brief history of assessment within higher education as well as an overview of the current state of assessment in the context of academic‐based leadership education programs. While there are numerous studies reporting on assignment‐ and course‐level assessment activities, comparatively limited literature addresses program‐level assessment. It is the author's assertion that we must raise the level of conversation within our emerging discipline to identify effective best practices.     

Global economic effects of the EU Common Agricultural Policy

Among distortions in international agricultural trade, those imposed by the European Union (EU) are the most disruptive. Under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the EU has switched from being a large net importer of agricultural products to a large exporter. This has greatly altered world agricultural markets, imposing substantial costs on the EU itself and efficient agricultural exporters in the rest of the world. We show how the CAP has affected world agricultural markets and present estimates of the associated costs. First we assess the aggregate costs broken down by various product categories. Next we provide a specific example of one product, sugar.     

Top‐Down Versus Bottom‐Up Demand Forecasts: The Value of Shared Point‐of‐Sale Data in the Retail Supply Chain

Accurate demand forecasts are critical to maintaining customer service levels and minimizing total costs, yet increasingly difficult to achieve. Using weekly point‐of‐sale (POS) and order data for 10 ready‐to‐eat cereal stock‐keeping units from 18 regional U.S. grocery distribution centers, this research empirically investigates two demand forecasting issues: (1) the accuracy of top‐down versus bottom‐up demand forecasts; and (2) whether shared POS data improve demand forecast accuracy. The results reveal a previously unexplored relationship between demand forecast methodology and the use of shared POS data. We find that the superiority of the top‐down or bottom‐up forecasting as the more accurate demand forecast method depends on whether shared POS data are used.     

Inferring disability status from corrupt data

In light of widespread concerns about the reliability of self‐reported disability, we investigate what can be learned about the prevalence of work disability under various assumptions on the reporting error process. Developing a nonparametric bounding framework, we provide tight inferences under our strongest assumptions but then find that identification deteriorates rapidly as the assumptions are relaxed. For example, we find that inferences are highly sensitive to how one models potential inconsistencies between subjective self‐assessments of work limitation and more objective measures of functional limitation. These two indicators appear to measure markedly different aspects of health status. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Financial Transfers from Living Parents to Adult Children: Who Is Helped and Why?

Abstract . To what extent can young adult children rely on their parents for financial support? This question will take on added importance if the commitments of the Social Security system put greater strain on the children of retirees. Despite the critical role that parents have in supporting their children, why they help some and not others remains unclear. Findings using two waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study that control for the needs of children and the resources of parents suggest that parents give more inter vivos financial assistance to their disadvantaged children rather than focusing on children most able to give financial help in return. Other measures of child well‐being besides income, including home ownership, education, parental status, and marital status, also suggest that parents help needier children more. Children who live nearby also receive more, a finding consistent with exchange motives or simply the ability of these children to more stridently demand support. Neither altruism nor exchange theories explain why stepchildren receive substantially less support than naturally born or adopted children. The diversity of effects suggests that giving is based on heterogeneous motives—parents may temper their altruism for children by the degree to which they feel responsible and by the stridency of some children in seeking support. Findings are robust upon allowing for unobserved differences across families by estimating fixed effect models.     

Pricing effects in Fannie Mae agency bonds

As a government-sponsored enterprise, Fannie Mae enjoys certain advantages over other firms. The extent of these advantages, while widely discussed, have not yet been fully quantified. This paper empirically examines the returns to Fannie Mae general obligation bonds under the assumptions of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory. The model provides an explicit method for estimating the risk premium on Fannie Mae bonds. The results indicate that liquidity and tax effects are important in explaining the returns to Fannie Mae bonds. The results also indicate that the market does not incorporate changes in the riskiness of the mortgage market into the returns on Fannie Mae bonds. The results provide support for the contention that Fannie Mae, as a government sponsored enterprise, enjoys a significant advantage over other firms in the capital market.