The Effect of Follow-up Mailings on The Response Rate and Response Quality in Mail Surveys

Numerous experts have demonstrated that the increase in the number of contacts produces a “lengthening” of the field work, although this lag in the analysis of the data is “compensated” by the increase in the response rate that is achieved through this second, third, and successive “contacts”. However, can it be said that these interviewees respond with the same dedication as those who responded from the initial contact? Or could it be that they will try to respond “hastily” so as not to be “harassed” further? The aim of this study is to try to find some answers to these questions by giving the results of the first ever research carried out in Spain using the TDM of Dillman in mail surveys.     

Pervasive myths in leadership development: Unpacking constraints on leadership learning

Forty years ago, the questions most discussed among those who cared about leadership were “is leadership possible among those who don't have titles and positions?”; “what are the characteristics possessed by effective leaders?”; and “how do we find the people who are the best leaders and help them prepare for positions that will allow them to have an impact?” After many conversations, conferences, research studies, and books, the terrain has shifted among scholars. Now the conversations focus on questions such as “If leadership is a shared responsibility among members of groups, how can the full leadership potential of all be cultivated?”; “What role do collaborators play in empowering positive leadership and defending against those who misuse it?”; and “How can organizations cultivate cultures that support and encourage visionary leadership dedicated to benefitting all?” The shift in the questions that leadership educators now explore, coupled with the breadth and variety of the initiatives dedicated to nurturing it, demonstrate that leadership can be taught. More importantly, the practice of leadership demonstrates that many can pursue leadership and that they must if the opportunities of the 21st century are to be fulfilled. The conversations and the needs for leadership have both shifted and it is now incumbent on those who value leadership most to agree to unifying perspectives that can draw us together in common purpose. From your vantage point, what are the crucial conversations, next steps, and/or thoughts for consideration as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?     

Leadership learning: Crucial conversations,next steps,and thoughts for consideration

Forty years ago, the questions most discussed among those who cared about leadership were “is leadership possible among those who don't have titles and positions?”; “what are the characteristics possessed by effective leaders?”; and “how do we find the people who are the best leaders and help them prepare for positions that will allow them to have an impact?” After many conversations, conferences, research studies, and books, the terrain has shifted among scholars. Now the conversations focus on questions such as “If leadership is a shared responsibility among members of groups, how can the full leadership potential of all be cultivated?”; “What role do collaborators play in empowering positive leadership and defending against those who misuse it?”; and “How can organizations cultivate cultures that support and encourage visionary leadership dedicated to benefitting all?” The shift in the questions that leadership educators now explore, coupled with the breadth and variety of the initiatives dedicated to nurturing it, demonstrate that leadership can be taught. More importantly, the practice of leadership demonstrates that many can pursue leadership and that they must if the opportunities of the 21st century are to be fulfilled. The conversations and the needs for leadership have both shifted and it is now incumbent on those who value leadership most to agree to unifying perspectives that can draw us together in common purpose. From your vantage point, what are the crucial conversations, next steps, and/or thoughts for consideration as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?     

Leadership: A journey of sustained performance

Forty years ago, the questions most discussed among those who cared about leadership were “is leadership possible among those who don't have titles and positions?”; “what are the characteristics possessed by effective leaders?”; and “how do we find the people who are the best leaders and help them prepare for positions that will allow them to have an impact?” After many conversations, conferences, research studies, and books, the terrain has shifted among scholars. Now the conversations focus on questions such as “If leadership is a shared responsibility among members of groups, how can the full leadership potential of all be cultivated?”; “What role do collaborators play in empowering positive leadership and defending against those who misuse it?”; and “How can organizations cultivate cultures that support and encourage visionary leadership dedicated to benefitting all?” The shift in the questions that leadership educators now explore, coupled with the breadth and variety of the initiatives dedicated to nurturing it, demonstrate that leadership can be taught. More importantly, the practice of leadership demonstrates that many can pursue leadership and that they must if the opportunities of the 21st century are to be fulfilled. The conversations and the needs for leadership have both shifted and it is now incumbent on those who value leadership most to agree to unifying perspectives that can draw us together in common purpose. From your vantage point, what are the crucial conversations, next steps, and/or thoughts for consideration as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?     

Entrepreneurship education as a new model for leadership education

Forty years ago, the questions most discussed among those who cared about leadership were “is leadership possible among those who don't have titles and positions?”; “what are the characteristics possessed by effective leaders?”; and “how do we find the people who are the best leaders and help them prepare for positions that will allow them to have an impact?” After many conversations, conferences, research studies, and books, the terrain has shifted among scholars. Now the conversations focus on questions such as “If leadership is a shared responsibility among members of groups, how can the full leadership potential of all be cultivated?”; “What role do collaborators play in empowering positive leadership and defending against those who misuse it?”; and “How can organizations cultivate cultures that support and encourage visionary leadership dedicated to benefitting all?” The shift in the questions that leadership educators now explore, coupled with the breadth and variety of the initiatives dedicated to nurturing it, demonstrate that leadership can be taught. More importantly, the practice of leadership demonstrates that many can pursue leadership and that they must if the opportunities of the 21st century are to be fulfilled. The conversations and the needs for leadership have both shifted and it is now incumbent on those who value leadership most to agree to unifying perspectives that can draw us together in common purpose. From your vantage point, what are the crucial conversations, next steps, and/or thoughts for consideration as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?     

The leadership labyrinth

Forty years ago, the questions most discussed among those who cared about leadership were “is leadership possible among those who don't have titles and positions?”; “what are the characteristics possessed by effective leaders?”; and “how do we find the people who are the best leaders and help them prepare for positions that will allow them to have an impact?” After many conversations, conferences, research studies, and books, the terrain has shifted among scholars. Now the conversations focus on questions such as “If leadership is a shared responsibility among members of groups, how can the full leadership potential of all be cultivated?”; “What role do collaborators play in empowering positive leadership and defending against those who misuse it?”; and “How can organizations cultivate cultures that support and encourage visionary leadership dedicated to benefitting all?” The shift in the questions that leadership educators now explore, coupled with the breadth and variety of the initiatives dedicated to nurturing it, demonstrate that leadership can be taught. More importantly, the practice of leadership demonstrates that many can pursue leadership and that they must if the opportunities of the 21st century are to be fulfilled. The conversations and the needs for leadership have both shifted and it is now incumbent on those who value leadership most to agree to unifying perspectives that can draw us together in common purpose. From your vantage point, what are the crucial conversations, next steps, and/or thoughts for consideration as we enter the second decade of the 21st century?     

Bayesian approach to LR assessment in case of rare type match

The likelihood ratio (LR) is largely used to evaluate the relative weight of forensic data regarding two hypotheses, and for its assessment, Bayesian methods are widespread in the forensic field. However, the Bayesian ‘recipe’ for the LR presented in most of the literature consists of plugging‐in Bayesian estimates of the involved nuisance parameters into a frequentist‐defined LR: frequentist and Bayesian methods are thus mixed, giving rise to solutions obtained by hybrid reasoning. This paper provides the derivation of a proper Bayesian approach to assess LRs for the ‘rare type match problem’, the situation in which the expert wants to evaluate a match between the DNA profile of a suspect and that of a trace from the crime scene, and this profile has never been observed before in the database of reference. LR assessment using the two most popular Bayesian models (beta‐binomial and Dirichlet‐multinomial) is discussed and compared with corresponding plug‐in versions.     

Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime: Old Economics in New Bottles

This article explores the work of Steven Levitt on abortion and crime as representative of a new wave of economists that are redefining the mainstream of the discipline. Levitt has moved away from formalized modeling of narrow self‐interested maximization that was a hallmark of the “old” mainstream. However, he retains the “old” mainstream linchpins of a focus on the individual by abstracting from the social context, and an emphasis on the ability of econometric testing to reveal the truth. These crucial elements that Levitt retains from the “old” mainstream create some problems of both emphasis and analysis for his explanation for the drop in crime in the United States.     

A nexus analytic approach

While a great deal of the literature has been dedicated to statistical modeling to use illustrate conceptual models, one simple but important area, not adequately covered, is the exploration of the “causal nexus”. This is that usually unexplored area between a predictor variable and the criterion variable which may beg the question, “Why?”. That is, why is that indicator or predictor variable related to the criterion? Or, just how are they related? To explore the nexus a series of progressively more accurate hypotheses should be tested. This process is termed a “nexus analytic approach”. In this research note the process, the logic, and a form for its presentation is presented.     

The Difference Between Short and Long Run Effects of Police Outlays on Crime: Policing Deters Criminals Initially, But Later They May 'Learn by Doing'

Abstract . In the long run a positive relationship of police expenditurescrime is derived in models which explain criminal behavior In the short run, however, the statistical results point to the possible deterring effect of police expenditures. A theoretical model is constructed to explain the statistical difference of the short and long run effect of police outlays on crime. As police expenditures increase, crime level diminishes. As time elapses, criminals may adjust to the new level of police effort, improve their performance and at the same level of outlays, increase their criminal activities. This phenomenon could be termed “Criminals’Learning by Doing”. It could explain why, over the long run, the level of crime is positively associated with police expenditures. The empirical analysis examines pooled cross sectional time series of 47 states over the period 1970 to 1980—a total of 517 cases.     

Forecasting football results and exploiting betting markets: The case of “both teams to score”

The continuous growth of available football data presents unprecedented research opportunities for a better understanding of football dynamics. While many research works focus on predicting which team will win a match, other interesting questions, such as whether both teams will score in a game, are still unexplored and have gained momentum with the rise of betting markets. With this in mind, we investigate the following research questions in this paper: “How difficult is the ‘both teams to score’ (BTTS) prediction problem?”, “Are machine learning classifiers capable of predicting BTTS better than bookmakers?”, and “Are machine learning classifiers useful for devising profitable betting strategies in the BTTS market?”. We collected historical football data, extracted groups of features to represent the teams’ strengths, and fed these to state-of-the-art classification models. We performed a comprehensive set of experiments and showed that, although hard to predict, in some scenarios it is possible to outperform bookmakers, which are robust baselines per se. More importantly, in some cases it is possible to beat the market and devise profitable strategies based on machine learning algorithms. The results are encouraging and, besides shedding light on the problem, may provide novel insights for all kinds of football stakeholders.     

How effective is monetary transmission in low-income countries? A survey of the empirical evidence

This paper surveys the evidence on the effectiveness of monetary transmission in low-income countries. It is hard to come away from this review with much confidence in the strength of monetary transmission in such countries. We distinguish between the “facts on the ground” and “methodological deficiencies” interpretations of the absence of evidence for strong monetary transmission. We suspect that “facts on the ground” are an important part of the story. If this conjecture is correct, the stabilization challenge in developing countries is acute indeed, and identifying the means of enhancing the effectiveness of monetary policy in such countries is an important challenge.     

Managers and Wage Policies

Do individual top managers matter for wages and wage policies? Are there general differences in “style” among managers with respect to worker compensation? To shed light on these questions, we exploit a large panel dataset from Portugal that allows us to match workers, firms, and managers, and follow the movements of the latter across different firms over time. While accounting for the effect of worker and firm heterogeneity, we estimate the role of top manager fixed effects in determining wages and wage policies. The estimates suggest that (i) top managers have a significant influence on wages and wage policies; (ii) there exists different managerial “styles”; and (iii) managers’ (observable) attributes matter for worker compensation.     

Studying organizations as temporary

This article reflects upon the methodological pessimism that sometimes plagues students of organizations. In particular pessimism seems to strike us when we try to get to grips with the incessant transformations of organizations—transformations that seem to occur at such great speed. Our immediate reaction to Heraclitus’ statement that: “You cannot step twice into the same river” is that it has considerable methodological relevance. However, we contend that his metaphor in its orthodox version leads to too narrow a view. An elaboration of the metaphor could perhaps reduce the pessimism regarding organizational studies by promoting a focus on contextual aspects. Moreover, changes and transformations in themselves do not necessarily represent a stumbling block for the researcher. Rather studying crucial projects provides a means for studying the mechanisms at work in the host organization. The resulting approach—contextualization in a broad sense—relieves researchers of some of their pessimism, maybe even inspires optimism, by raising new questions: not only “what can be said?” (about the organization), but also “in what contexts?” and “about what manifestations in those contexts?” The article concludes with some remarks on the scarcity of the contextualization approach for studying organizations as temporary phenomena.     

Item comparability in cross-national surveys: results from asking probing questions in cross-national web surveys about attitudes towards civil disobedience

This article focuses on assessing item comparability in cross-national surveys by asking probing questions in Web surveys. The “civil disobedience” item from the “rights in a democracy” scale of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) serves as a substantive case study. Identical Web surveys were fielded in Canada (English-speaking), Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Spain, and the U.S. A category-selection and a comprehension probe, respectively, were incorporated into the Web surveys after the closed-ended “civil disobedience” item. Responses to the category selection-probe reveal that notably in Germany, Hungary, and Spain the detachment of politicians from the people and their lack of responsiveness is deplored. Responses to the comprehension probe show that mainly in the U.S. and Canada violence and/or destruction are associated with civil disobedience. These results suggest reasons for the peculiar statistical results found for the “civil disobedience” item in the ISSP study. On the whole, Web probing proves to be a valuable tool for identifying interpretation differences and potential bias in cross-national survey research.     

Decision analysis of auto emission control

In response to public pressure to reduce air pollution, governments are forced to consider alternate means to limit auto emissions. This paper addresses the problem of evaluating these regulatory policies and choosing the one that is best for society.Economic tradeoffs play an important role in the analysis of emission control policies. Cleaner air comes only at a price, and the judgments as to “How clean?” At what price?” and “At who's expense?” are crucial. Once these value issues are resolved, questions of implementation remain. “How do regulatory policies such as mandatory emission standards for cars compare with a system of emission taxes?” “Are there ways to collect a fee from drivers to compensate those who breathe their pollution, without taxing emissions directly?”Our approach is first to describe a decision-focused analytical procedure for evaluating various policy alternatives. This procedure is then demonstrated with a preliminary analysis of representative emission control plans for the Los Angeles air basin. Both emission standards and market or “pricing” alternatives are considered. These plans include: present (1975) emission standards; an emission tax; an increase in the gasoline tax; a policy of no government control.The preliminary analysis shows market mechanisms to be superior to present emission standards. Many significant advantages of market mechanisms are discussed, though this conclusion is due primarily to—in our opinion—inappropriate value judgments that are implicit in the present standards.The analytical framework is very general, and it can be applied to a wide variety of social decisions involving externalities. The quantitative models developed, though preliminary, can be used by organizations such as regional planning agencies or pollution control boards. However, these models must not be viewed as formulas for answers to social problems. Rather, they are intended as aids for the policy maker that will help him or her balance the many factors that influence the decision and provide insight to the wisest social course of action.     

Information shocks and the empirical evaluation of training programs during unemployment spells

We study the role of notifications in the evaluation of training programs for unemployed workers. Using a unique administrative data set containing the dates when information is exchanged between job seekers and caseworkers, we address three questions: Do information shocks, such as notification of future training, have an effect on unemployment duration? What is the joint effect of notification and training programs on unemployment? Can ignoring information shocks lead to a large bias in the estimation of the effect of training programs? We discuss these issues through the lens of a job search model and then conduct an empirical analysis following a “random effects” approach to deal with selectivity. We find that notification has a strong positive effect on the training probability but a negative one on the probability of leaving unemployment. This “attraction” effect highlights the importance of accounting for notifications in the evaluation of active labor market policies.     

The Effectiveness and Targeting of Television Advertising

Television networks spend about 16% of their revenues on tune-ins, which are previews or advertisements for their own shows. In this paper, we examine two questions. First, what is the informational content in advertising? Second, is this level of expenditures consistent with profit maximization? To answer these questions, we use a new and unique micro-level panel dataset on the television viewing decisions of a large sample of individuals, matched with data on show tune-in advertisements. The difference in effectiveness of advertisements between “regular” shows (about which viewers are assumed to have substantial information a priori) and “specials” (about which they have very little) reveals the value of information in advertisements and the different roles that information can play. The number of exposures for each individual is likely to be correlated with their preferences, since networks target their audiences. We address this endogeneity problem by controlling for observed, and integrating the unobserved, characteristics of individuals, and find that the estimated effects of tune-ins are still large. Finally, we find that actual expenditures on tune-ins closely match the predicted optimal levels of spending.     

LAND MARKETS AND THE EFFECT OF REGULATION ON FORMAL-SECTOR DEVELOPMENT IN URBAN INDONESIA

Until recently, urban land and housing markets in Indonesia seemed to function well. Informal-sector development provided low-income housing affordably. Through government programs, formal-sector developers could build housing for all but the poor. Since 1989, however, daily conversation pictures land speculation as rampant and formal-sector housing as rising beyond the means of the middle class. Newspapers carry stories of conflicts between small landowners and large developers with government officials in between. This article investigates this situation by addressing two related questions: are urban land prices rising “too fast?”; how do land regulations and development practices affect costs, and who pays these costs? The article includes quantitative estimates of urban land prices, changes in urban land supply, movement of land through the permitting process, and the effect of development regulations on costs. Data come from a literature survey and interviews of some of the largest formal-sector developers in Indonesia. A principal finding concerns a development regulation called a “location permit” and the “social function” of land in Indonesian law. Although helpful as a means of assembling land in Indonesia's highly fragmented land markets, location permits allow formal-sector developers to hold land off the market and pay low prices to small landowners. Ultimately, the “social function” of land under Indonesian law holds down the price formal-sector developers pay for land, but not at the price at which they sell their product. The article concludes by proposing reforms to the regulatory process.