The impact of economic factors and acquisition reforms on the cost of defense weapon systems

This paper evaluates how defense budget instability, consolidation of the defense industry, acquisition reform, war, and cost estimating error are related to cost overruns in major Department of Defense Acquisition projects from 1979 to 2002. Employing a panel model of service specific cost overruns, with fixed effects, we find that funding instability in O&M and R&D budgets had large impacts on procurement costs overruns. We further found that unexpected inflation and armed conflict led to higher levels of Procurement cost overruns. Finally we found that the acquisition reforms of the Nunn-McCurdy Act of 1982, the Packard Commission Recommendations of 1986 and the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA) of 1994 resulted in significant reductions in procurement cost overruns.     

Spatial regulations and endogenous consideration sets in fisheries

The implementation of spatial regulations has become a mainstay in fisheries management. These regulations have generated a sizable economics literature focused on the spatial behavior of fishermen. Fundamental to these studies is the consideration set (spatial alternatives) assumed by the researcher to be possessed by the decision agent. Often times this consideration set is assumed to be the entire spatial extent of the fishery. This research proposes the use of finite mixture modeling to endogenously estimate the formation of consideration sets and the method is applied to a unique spatial decision environment, the Atka mackerel fishery in the Aleutian Islands. Consideration sets are modeled using different macro-definitions of spatial regions to focus the micro-level spatial decision making within the fishery and to investigate the sensitivity of the results to alternative macro-level spatial definitions. Results illustrate the biases associated with traditional consideration set assumptions by estimating fishermen's valuations for different high-value sites within the Aleutian Islands under alternative consideration set assumptions. Furthermore, our results demonstrate how a model that assumes some structure on potential consideration sets reduces the dimensionality problems associated with other endogenous approaches to choice set definition.     

The currency of talent management—A reply to “talent management and the relevance of context: Towards a pluralistic approach”

In this paper we provide a commentary on the article in this Special Issue by Thunnissen, Boselie, and Fruytier on the relevance of context to the field of talent management. We concur that a more critical, pluralist approach to talent management scholarship is needed, that talent management should go beyond a mere economic exchange between talent and their employer, and that further research is needed to explore the link between macro, meso and micro level considerations. Thunnissen, Boselie, and Fruytier pose insightful questions about the contribution of talent management to the social and moral development of society and legitimating talent management at meso level. For us, these questions raise issues about the extent to which individual agency in ethical issues is possible in environments designed to regulate and control talent. We suggest that underexplored notions of strategic exchange and individual identity provide a richer picture of the talent employment relationship and raise a number of possible directions for future talent management research.     

Economic Versus Accounting Income: The Impact of Education on Students' Concepts

A study of differences in approach to value and income concepts by students with and without formal accounting education is presented by Kida and Hicks. They found that students without accounting training tend to regard income as a change in value and well-being; those with accounting tend to view the income concept from an accounting procedural approach. The question is raised whether accounting majors might not benefit from additional training in economic theory beyond a basic principles course to broaden their approach to “theoretical value-based concepts.”     

No Small Hope: The Basic Goods Imperative

The continuing gender and race/ethnic pay gaps continue to be a matter of considerable concern. Using detailed NLSY data we examine the effects of a number of variables often thought to explain a large part of these gaps. Because the new variables explain some of the differentials our results provide no justification for ascribing all the remaining differentials to discrimination. On the other hand, they explain very little and therefore give no support to those who would discount the possibility of discrimination.     

Domestic fire risk: a narrative review of social science literature and implications for further research

In this paper, we make the case for more social science research into fire incidents and fire-related risk behaviour. Unlike other vulnerabilities, such as crime, illness or risk-associated activities such as smoking, or accident avoidance, remarkably little research has focused on this area. This is perhaps surprising given the propensity for fire, its emotional, social and economic impacts, and evidence that fires and fire victims are not equally distributed across socio-demographic or geographical domains. In making our case, we outline: recent numbers and trends in incidents in the UK, focusing on domestic incidents and recent policy developments affecting fire and rescue services. Next, we review the social-science based literature on fire incidents, suggesting that while this offers useful insight, much more needs to be done to develop a rigorous evidence base. While we would not want to dismiss or downplay existing social science contributions, our contention is that a considerable number of opportunities exist for further work in this area. Consequently, we propose a number of ways in which popular ideas about risk theory can be applied to a domestic fire context and raise a number of questions that social scientists are well positioned to contribute to an interdisciplinary understanding of domestic fire incidents and associated risks.     

Optimal payoffs under state-dependent preferences

Most decision theories, including expected utility theory, rank-dependent utility theory and cumulative prospect theory, assume that investors are only interested in the distribution of returns and not in the states of the economy in which income is received. Optimal payoffs have their lowest outcomes when the economy is in a downturn, and this feature is often at odds with the needs of many investors. We introduce a framework for portfolio selection within which state-dependent preferences can be accommodated. Specifically, we assume that investors care about the distribution of final wealth and its interaction with some benchmark. In this context, we are able to characterize optimal payoffs in explicit form. Furthermore, we extend the classical expected utility optimization problem of Merton to the state-dependent situation. Some applications in security design are discussed in detail and we also solve some stochastic extensions of the target probability optimization problem.     

Married womens' tastes and the decision to participate in the labour market: results from a fixed effects model

In the paper, we report estimates from two logit models of Women's labour force participation. A model with out fixed effects, estimated from cross-sectional data-indicates a significant postive relation between work experience and particiption. We ask whether the relation is due to a causal influence extered by the former variable on the latter or to a common underlying variable: taste for market attachement. To answer this question. we present results from a fixed effects model estimated from panel data. In this model, the estimated coefficients of experience are insignificant, suggestion that a taste for market attachement underlies both experience and participation is the presence of preschool children.