THE 2008 SHIPPING LAW: DEREGULATION OR RE-REGULATION?

The restoration of democracy since 1998 has been accompanied by a revival of economic nationalism in Indonesia. This can be seen clearly in the field of shipping and ports. In the 1980s the government deregulated the highly protected and inefficient shipping industry to facilitate a non-oil export drive. Since 1999 a rising tide of economic nationalism has seen a gradual process of re-regulation that has restored some of the old protectionist devices. This new protectionism is likely to frustrate government policies to improve logistics and facilitate trade. At the same time, there has been a mild liberalisation of state control over the ports sector. This paper addresses the key economic regulations embodied in the new Law 17/2008 on Shipping and assesses their potential impact. It highlights an ongoing confl ict in government between protectionism/rent-seeking and development.     

Two Independent Value Orientations: Ideal and Counter-Ideal Leader Values and Their Impact on Followers’ Respect for and Identification with Their Leaders

Traditionally, conceptualizations of human values are based on the assumption that individuals possess a single integrated value system comprising those values that people are attracted by and strive for. Recently, however, van Quaquebeke et al. (in J Bus Ethics 93:293–305, 2010) proposed that a value system might consist of two largely independent value orientations—an orientation of ideal values and an orientation of counter-ideal values (values that individuals are repelled by), and that both orientations exhibit antithetic effects on people’s responses to the social world. Following a call for further research on this distinction, we conducted two studies to assess the independent effects of ideal and counter-ideal values in leadership settings. Study 1 (N = 131) finds both value orientations to explain unique variance in followers’ vertical respect for their leaders. Study 2 (N = 136) confirms these results and additionally shows an analogous effect for followers’ identification with their leaders. Most importantly, we find that both value orientations exhibit their effects only independently when the content of the two orientations pertain to different value types in Schwartz’s (in J Soc Issues 50:19–46, 1994) circumplex model. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Can financial derivatives inform HRM? Lessons from Moneyball

A comment on Richard Wolfe, Patrick M. Wright and Dennis L. Smart, Radical HRM Innovation and Competitive Advantage: The Moneyball Story. Human Resource Management, Spring 2006, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 111–145     

Range and Number-of-Levels Effects in Derived and Stated Measures of Attribute Importance

We study how the range of variation and the number of attribute levels affect five measures of attribute importance: full profile conjoint estimates, ranges in attribute level attractiveness ratings, regression coefficients, graded paired comparisons, and self-reported ratings. We find that all importance measures are affected by the range manipulation. The number of attribute levels affects only two measures. The results allow us to benchmark the magnitude of the number-of-levels effect against the range effect: conjoint importance estimates were approximately equally affected by a threefold increase in the range of attribute variation and by the insertion of two intermediate attribute levels. Our findings show that the number-of-levels effect is most likely due to respondents' tendencies to distribute their mental stimulus representations and their responses uniformly over the corresponding continua.     

Measuring and predicting heterogeneous recessions

This paper examines the usefulness of a more refined business cycle classification for monthly industrial production (IP), beyond the usual distinction between expansions and contractions. Univariate Markov-switching models show that a three regime model is more appropriate than a model with only two regimes. Interestingly, the third regime captures ‘severe recessions’, contrasting the conventional view that the additional third regime represents a ‘recovery’ phase. This is confirmed by means of Markov-switching vector autoregressive models that allow for phase shifts between the cyclical regimes of IP and the Conference Board's Leading Economic Index (LEI). The timing of the severe recession regime mostly corresponds with periods of substantial financial market distress and severe credit squeezes, providing empirical evidence for the ‘financial accelerator’ theory.     

A nearly perfect market?

Internet shopbots allow consumers to almost instantly compare prices and other characteristics from dozens of sellers via a single website. We estimate the magnitude of consumer search costs and benefits using data from a major shopbot for books. For the median consumer, the estimated benefit from simply scrolling down to search lower screens is $6.55. This amounts to about 60% of the observed price dispersion and suggests that consumers face significant search costs, even in this “nearly-perfect” market. Price elasticities are relatively high compared to offline markets (−7 to −10 in our base model). Furthermore, contrary to the common assumption, search intensity is not correlated with greater price sensitivity. Instead, consumers who search multiple screens put relatively more weight on non-price factors like brand.