Maximizing benefits in project selection: a hybrid approach

Charitable foundations and government programmes should endeavour to allocate their limited resources to best serve their constituents. Yet, mathematical programming techniques are rarely used despite overwhelming evidence of their superiority in selecting projects that yield higher levels of total benefits. We present a novel ‘hybrid selection model’ that combines binary linear programming and heuristic rank-based models applied to two case studies. The first case focuses on providing services to women and shows a hybrid model would have selected the top three ‘signature’ projects and maintained an above-average overall project benefit while securing a 180% improvement in the number of projects funded, a 66% improvement in the number of women served and a 132% improvement in the total benefit achieved. In the second case, we apply the hybrid approach to data from the US government’s largest forest preservation programme and demonstrate that the hybrid approach could allow the programme to select up to 11 top-scoring projects while still achieving a 97% gain in the total overall benefit compared to their traditional method. These case studies show that the hybrid approach has the potential to be applied in a variety of settings and improve how foundations and programmes achieve their goals.     

Behavioral spillovers and cognitive load in multiple games: An experimental study

We present evidence from laboratory experiments of behavioral spillovers and cognitive load that spread across strategic contexts. In the experiments, subjects play two distinct games simultaneously with different opponents. We find that the strategies chosen and the efficiency of outcomes in one game depends on the other game that the subject plays, and that play is altered in predictable directions. We develop a measure of behavioral variation in a normal form game, outcome entropy, and find that prevalent strategies in games with low outcome entropy are more likely to be used in the games with high outcome entropy, but not vice versa. Taken together, these findings suggest that people do not treat strategic situations in isolation, but may instead develop heuristics that they apply across games.     

Luxury hotels mushrooming and extravagant governments

This paper empirically examines the effect of nontax revenue on demands for luxury hotels in China where the strict public financial supervision is not well-established. Results indicate the nontax revenue significantly influences luxury hotel demands across the country and that government demands have crowding out effect on private demands for luxury hotels, all of which appear more salient in Chinese underdeveloped areas with more severely deficient public financial supervision.     

Audit Education for Future Professionals: Perceptions of New Zealand Auditors

Audit professionals are charged with gathering evidence and expressing their opinions on the financial claims made by others. In New Zealand, as elsewhere, these opinions are relied upon for a myriad of decisions as to the economic position and operations of an organisation. The educational experience that future professionals receive in their tertiary study is important because it lays the pedagogical foundation for this role. The aim of this study is to evaluate those teaching practices, subjects and techniques that might be of value to future audit professionals. The analysis is uniquely from the perspective of the professional members who are most likely to benefit from students' experiences. The literature is used to identify relevant questions, and a survey of 360 professional auditors in New Zealand yielded a 36.4% response rate. A triangulated analysis of comments and scaled questions reveals that these professionals are concerned with communication, small business engagements and the relationships between, for example, risk and planning and independence and ethics. Findings also confirm the value of experiential and practice-informed learning and direct us to a few topics that may accommodate non-traditional teaching methods. Conclusions consider implications for teaching and future research.     

Dietary intake and the contribution of snacks among adolescents during the summer months

Abstract Adolescent diets are often cited as nutritionally inadequate, possibly because of their reported snacking habits. This study examined 48 adolescent diets using a 24-h diet recall and a 2-day food record during summer months. Total intake and snacks identified by the subjects were analysed for energy and nutrient content. Male and female subjects reported similar intakes of fat, cholesterol and sugar. Ninety-eight per cent of subjects reported at least one snack daily. Snacks contributed 25% to the total energy, vitamin C, calcium and magnesium intakes. Although these subjects were not adhering to national recommendations for fat and sugar, the snacks they consumed contributed positively to the nutrient content of adolescent diets.     

On the existence of equilibria in economies with infinitely many commodities and without ordered preferences

The present paper deals with the existence of equilibria in economies whose commodity space is L_∞(M, M, μ) and where the agents' preferences need not be complete or transitive. Applying a fixed point theorem of Browder, an equilibrium existence theorem for abstract economies (generalized qualitative games) is proven where each agent's choice set is contained in an arbitrary topological vector space. With the help of this theorem the existence of Walrasian general equilibrium for a suitably specified economic model is obtained. The final result is a generalization of T. F. Bewley's (J. Econ. Theory4 (1972), 514–540) equilibrium existence theorem to the case of non-ordered preferences.     

Do Boards Take Environmental,Social, and Governance Issues Seriously? Evidence from Media Coverage and CEO Dismissals

Journal of Business Ethics - This study empirically investigates the dismissal of U.S. CEOs following negative media coverage of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices. Extending...