Empowering leadership and meaningful work: the mediating role of learning goal orientation

Drawing on positive psychology and self‐determination theories, this study investigates the direct and indirect effects of empowering leadership on meaningful work of employees, particularly through the mediation of learning goal orientation. Longitudinal survey data of 388 employees in medical institutions were used to test the hypotheses. The results support the direct positive relationship between empowering leadership and meaningful work, but also emphasize the mediating effect of learning goal orientation within this relationship. This study is among the first to examine the effect of mediation by learning goal orientation upon the relationship between empowering leadership and meaningful work.     

Can specific policy indicators identify reform priorities?

Several detailed cross-country datasets measuring specific policy indicators relevant to business regulation and government integrity have been developed in recent years. The promise of these indicators is that they can be used to identify specific reforms that policymakers and aid donors can target in their efforts to improve the regulatory and institutional environment. Doing so, however, requires evidence on the partial effects of the many specific policy choices reflected in such datasets. In this paper we use Bayesian model averaging (BMA) to document the cross-country partial correlations between detailed policy indicators and several measures of regulatory and institutional outcomes. We find major instability in the set of policy indicators identified by BMA as important partial correlates of similar outcomes: specific policy indicators that matter for one outcome are, on average, not important correlates of other closely-related outcomes. This finding illustrates the difficulties in using highly-specific policy indicators to identify reform priorities using cross-country data.     

Peliosis of the spleen with intraperitoneal hemorrhage

We encountered a patient with steroidrelated peliosis of the spleen, a rare disease characterized by multiple blood-filled cavities in the splenic parenchyma, with spontaneous intraperitoneal hemorrhage. The ultrasonographic, computed tomographic, and angiographic images were compared with pathologic findings of the material obtained surgically.     

Conservation Auctions and Compliance: Theory and Evidence from Laboratory Experiments

Many agri-environmental conservation programs are faced with the problem of imperfect monitoring. This provides farmers with an incentive for noncompliance, because they can receive subsidies without implementing the conservation scheme. In this paper, bidding behavior and auction performance are compared for discriminatory-price and uniform-price auctions in an imperfect monitoring environment. Our theoretical analysis suggests that auction performances are equalized between the discriminatory-price and uniform-price auctions. However, laboratory experiments reveal that, although the discriminatory-price auction has an advantage in terms of reducing policy costs, it is more likely to cause adverse selection. As a result, the uniform-price auction tends to have higher efficiency and cost-effectiveness when compliance behavior is taken into account.     

On the Effect of Bank of Japan’s Outright Purchase on the JGB Yield Curve

This paper examines an impact of Bank of Japan (BOJ)’s outright purchase on the Japanese government bond (JGB) yield curve. Particularly, we develop a simple state space model, which incorporates new factors regarding the BOJ’s announcement for its outright purchase and the current market outstanding with standard level and spread factors. Based on the model with a filtering method, we also implement an empirical analysis with time series of the BOJ’s announcement records during 2014/10/22–2017/8/3 in the quantitative–qualitative easing period to estimate the sensitivities of interest rates against the changes in the market expectation for the net supply with each sector of JGB. We expect the current work provides a basis for considering quantitative effects on the term structure by BOJ’s policy changes such as termination or significant reduction of the BOJ’s outright purchase. For instance, our scenario analysis shows substantial increase in the 30 year yield with widening of 20–30 year spread.     

Pigou on business cycles and unemployment: an anti-gold-standard view

Abstract

This note examines A. C. Pigou's views on the practical issue of high unemployment in the 1920s. In his Industrial Fluctuations, Pigou emphasized that the monetary aspect of business cycles was much more important to fluctuations in unemployment than wage adjustment. In a journal article, however, he stated that major part of the high unemployment should be attributed to the failure of money wage adjustment. I argue that, on balance, Pigou attached greater importance to monetary problems than to the wage rigidity.