What do interest rates reveal about the functioning of real business cycle models?

This paper begins by documenting the extent to which the predictions of standard Real Business Cycle (RBC) models are incompatible with observed movements in real interest rates. The main finding of the paper is that extending the baseline model to include habit persistence in consumption and adjustment costs to capital significantly improves the model's empirical performance. In our evaluation of the model's performance, we take special care of estimating and testing predictions of the model using both moments drawn directly from the data and moments calculated after identifying shocks to the stochastic trend.     

Profit inefficiency of Indian farms: A system approach

This article attempts to measure the level of profit inefficiency of Indian farms using a stochastic profit function. In the process, the degree of misallocation of inputs and nonoptimal supply of output is also estimated. Likelihood ratio tests allow division of total observations into two groups-large and small farms. Results indicate that both groups are profit-inefficient due to misallocation of inputs and undersupply of output. However, small farms are less profit inefficient than their larger counterparts. Within each group relatively larger farms are less inefficient.The editor for this paper was Lennart Hjalmarsson.     

A Model of Direct and Intermediated Sales

We examine a model in which an upstream firm can sell directly online and through heterogeneous intermediaries to heterogeneous consumers engaging in time-consuming search. Direct online sales may be more or less convenient and involve costly returns if the good fits consumers poorly. Direct selling appeals to higher-value consumers and increases the upstream firm's profits by allowing price discrimination. Competition and segmentation due to direct sales results in lower intermediary prices, making all consumers better off. Thus, entry by an upstream firm increases consumer surplus at the expense of intermediaries with the net result being an increase in social welfare.     

Re‐gendering consumer agency in mid‐nineteenth‐century America: A visual understanding

The re‐gendering of consumer agency in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, from being a male to an increasingly female prerogative and responsibility, marked an important milestone in the history of American consumer culture. Art from this period can provide a visual understanding of this ideological and social transformation. Accordingly, this paper examines the lives and selected works of two intriguing genre painters, Francis W. Edmonds (1806–1863) and Lilly Martin Spencer (1822–1902), using concepts and methods from art history, visual culture, and postmodern theory. Implications for household consumption history and theory are also discussed.     

Living next to godliness: Residential property values and churches

This article extends the analysis concerning the impact of neighborhood churches on residential property values by investigating nearly 5,000 residential property transactions in Henderson, Nevada, between January 1986 and December 1990. We find that real property values decrease, at a decreasing rate, as distance from a neighborhood church increases. This result is the opposite of that reported by Do, Wilbur, and Short in a previous edition of this journal. We bolster our findings by showing that distance from the site of a future church has little or no impact on residential property values, whereas distance from an existing church is associated with lower property values. Our evidence indicates that neighborhood churches are amenities that enhance the value of neighborhood residential property. Finally, we demonstrate that larger churches (as measured by square foot of lot size) tend to have a greaterpositive impact on residential property values.     

Non-Governmental Organizations, Shareholder Activism, and Socially Responsible Investments: Ethical, Strategic, and Governance Implications

In this article, we document the growing influence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the realm of socially responsible investing (SRI). Drawing from ethical and economic perspectives on stakeholder management and agency theory, we develop a framework to understand how and when NGOs will be most influential in shaping the ethical and social responsibility orientations of business using the emergence of SRI as the primary influencing vehicle. We find that NGOs have opportunities to influence corporate conduct via direct, indirect, and interactive influences on the investment community, and that the overall influence of NGOs as major actors in socially responsible investment is growing, with attendant consequences for corporate strategy, governance, and social performance.