The Role of Pluralistic Ignorance in the Perception of Unethical Behavior

Is there really an ethical crisis? We propose that the situation is not as bad as many would have us believe. We have attempted to present an alternative explanation for some earlier reports of an ethical crisis. This has resulted in a number of research propositions. We are optimistic that there are, in spite of reports to the contrary, an overwhelming majority of ethical people populating our business community.     

Experience,Tenure, and the Perceptions of Employers

This paper examines how group-based assessments concerning employee ability impact employee compensation. The employer learns about worker ability through Bayesian updating, creating an additional channel for wage growth that is not available to those workers with only general labor market experience. Consistent with the model's predictions, results from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) indicate that black workers fare much better relative to white workers in returns to tenure than in returns to experience. Finally, parameter estimates in the structural model suggest that employers initially undervalue black males but that their wages rise with learning by employers over time.     

Potential cost synergies from banks acquiring real estate brokerage services

National banks and Financial Holding Companies (FHC) solicited permission from the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department to add real estate brokerage and management services to list of permissible business activities under the 1999 Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLB). To date, permission has been denied due to the Community Choice in Real Estate Act, HR 111 and S 98.     

道德是非问题

本文列举了一系列棘手的道德困境,考验你在此情景之下如何做出抉择     

The Role of Ethnic Nepotism vs. Economic Pragmatism in Inter-group Conflict: Data on the Yugoslavian Civil War*

Neo-Darwinian concepts such as van den Berghe's ethnic nepotism infer that the origin of inter-group conflict resides primarily in ethnocentrism, defined as the extension of inclusive fitness to extra-familial interactions. Silverman, however, has proposed an alternative view, based on the presumption that natural selection favors pragmatism and plasticity in the formation of group alliances. Silverman's theory holds that the motives for inter-group oppression and warfare, including so-called ethnic cleansing movements, are economic, whereby out-group prejudices represent rationalizations rather than root causes. The present paper reviews Silverman's and Silverman and Case's evidence for this theory and provides further supporting data in terms of relationships between changes in economic conditions and ethnocentric attitudes during the years immediately preceding the recent Yugoslavian hostilities. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

China's macroeconomic volatility — How important is the business cycle?

The existing literature that discusses China's macroeconomic volatility during the reform period does so with overwhelming reference to the business cycle. However, the business cycle is only a subset of macroeconomic volatility that occurs within a particular frequency band. In this paper we decompose various macroeconomic series by frequency and find that much volatility occurs at lower than business cycle frequencies. This suggests that it is necessary to look beyond the construct of the business cycle in order to understand the nature of China's macroeconomic volatility, and beyond the usual demand side explanations in the discussion of causes.     

The Normative Foundations of Unethical Supervision in Organizations

As research in the areas of unethical and ethical leadership grows, we note the need for more consideration of the normative assumptions in the development of constructs. Here, we focus on a subset of this literature, the “dark side” of supervisory behavior. We assert that, in the absence of a normative grounding, scholars have implicitly adopted different intuitive ethical criteria, which has contributed to confusion regarding unethical and ethical supervisory behaviors as well as the proliferation of overlapping terms and fragmentation of research. Accordingly, we offer a definition of unethical supervision grounded in the normative theories and develop a framework of unethical supervision by analyzing the constructs associated with unethical supervision from a normative perspective. Our analysis suggests a heavy emphasis on violations of the right to dignity. We also note that utilitarianism and certain forms of rights as well as justice have been largely overlooked in the unethical supervision literature. We conclude by considering the implications of our conceptualization for theory on the antecedents and consequences of unethical supervision and by explaining how our approach extends to the larger literature on unethical and ethical leadership.     

Is UK economics teaching changing? Evaluating the new subject benchmark statement

This paper evaluates the recent reform to the curricular governance framework for UK Economics teaching: the revised Subject Benchmark Statement document for Economics (SBSE). The crisis of confidence in economics which was amplified by the global financial crisis presented an opportunity for fundamental change in economics teaching. The paper asks whether the new SBSE represents change. We ask whether the new SBSE is pluralist with regard to economic theory and method; how it treats the economy and its wider socio-political dimension; what are its educational goals and approach; and overall, how much change has it brought? The paper concludes that the new SBSE does not constitute change: it still exhibits limited pluralism, ignores ethics, power and politics and ignores key educational goals.     

Production Efficiency in the Austrian Insurance Industry: A Bayesian Examination

This paper examines the developments in the production efficiency of the Austrian insurance market for the period 1994‐1999 using firm‐specific data on life/health and non‐life insurers obtained from the Austrian insurance regulatory authority. The article uses a Bayesian stochastic frontier to obtain aggregate and firm‐specific estimates of production efficiency across insurer types and time. The study provides strong evidence that the process of deregulation had positive effects on the production efficiency of Austrian insurers. The life/health and non‐life firms showed similar patterns of development in that they were less efficient during the years 1994‐1996 and significantly more efficient in 1997‐1999. If the Austrian experience is representative, similar benefits from deregulation may be expected for the Central and Eastern European countries that prepare for the accession to the European Union.