The Teacher Labour Market and Teacher Quality

A growing body of empirical evidence shows teacher quality tobe the most important schooling factor predicting students'learning gains. Unfortunately, US public schools face difficultiesattracting the best and brightest college graduates. Over thelast several decades there has been a notable shift in the occupationalchoices of prospective teachers. The most academically proficientcollege graduates were, in the 1960s, as likely to enter teachingas any other occupation. Today, however, teachers are disproportionatelydrawn from the lower end of the academic proficiency distribution.We explore these trends and speculate on the reasons for them.In particular, we focus on the roles of compensation structuresand changes in the labour market in explaining the occupationaldecisions made by existing college graduates and what theseforeshadow for the teacher work-force in the future.     

The Changing Relationship Between CAMEL Ratings and Bank Soundness during the Indonesian Banking Crisis

During the recent Southeast Asian financial crisis, numerous banks failed quickly and unexpectedly. This study uses a unique data set provided by Bank Indonesia to examine the changing financial soundness of Indonesian banks during this crisis. Bank Indonesia's non-public CAMEL ratings data allow the use of a continuous bank soundness measure rather than ordinal measures. In addition, panel data regression procedures that allow for the identification of the appropriate statistical model are used.We argue the nature of the risks facing the Indonesian banking community calls for the addition of a systemic risk component to the Indonesian ranking system. The empirical results show that during Indonesia's stable economic periods, four of the five traditional CAMEL components provide insights into the financial soundness of Indonesian banks. However, during Indonesia's crisis period, the relationships between financial characteristics and CAMEL ratings deteriorate and only one of the traditional CAMEL components—earnings—objectively discriminates among the ratings. The panel data results indicate systemic economy-wide forces must be explicitly considered by the rating system.     

The Empirics of Foreign Reserves

In this article, we study the determinants of cross-country variation in the level of international reserves over the period 1981–1995. Confirming intuition, trade openness is easily the most important variable. There is also some evidence that financial deepening is associated with an increase in the reserves ratio. Smaller and more volatile industrial countries hold larger reserves than their larger, less volatile counterparts. In addition, more indebted developing countries tend to have smaller reserve ratios. We view these results as establishing some interesting stylized facts that may be helpful in informing future theoretical modeling of reserves behavior.     

Predicting consumers’ trial/adoption of new technology: revisiting the behavioral expectations – behavioral intentions debate

Behavioral intentions (BI) are considered the key to understanding and predicting the trial/adoption of new technology. When choices of new technology adoption increases (and time compresses), it becomes correspondingly more difficult to predict consumers’ trial/adoption. Due to its greater temporal stability and potentially superior predictive ability, this article encourages researchers to consider behavioral expectations (BE) ahead of BI. However, this ultimately depends on the antecedents germane to the particular new technology adoption process under examination. Thus, researchers are encouraged to consider the key determinants of BE: experience, perceived behavioral control, facilitating conditions, self-efficacy, attitudes, subjective norms, and availability of information.     

Do your commitments match your convictions?

How many of us keep pace day to day, up-holding our obligations to our bosses, families, and the community, even as our overall satisfaction with work and quality of life decline? And yet, our common response to the situation is: "I'm too busy to do anything about it now." Unfortunately, unless a personal or professional crisis strikes, very few of us step back, take stock of our day-to-day actions, and make a change. In this article, London Business School strategy professors Donald Sull and Dominic Houlder examine the reasons why a gap often exists between the things we value most and the ways we actually spend our time, money, and attention. They also suggest a practical approach to managing the gap. The framework they propose is based on their study of organizational commitments--the investments, promises, and contracts made today that bind companies to a future course of action. Such commitments can prevent organizations from responding effectively to change. A similar logic applies to personal commitments--the day-to-day decisions we make about how we allocate our precious resources. These decisions are individually small and, therefore, easy to lose sight of. When we do, a gap can develop between our commitments and our convictions. Sull and Houlder make no value judgments about the content of personal commitments; they've devised a somewhat dispassionate tool to help you take a thorough inventory of what matters to you most. It involves listing your most important values and assigning to each a percentage of your annual salary, the hours out of your week, and the amount of energy you devote. Using this exercise, you should be able to identify big gaps--stated values that receive little or none of your scarce resources or a single value that sucks a disproportionate share of resources--and change your allocations accordingly.     

Contents Volume 21 2002

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 21 2002     

Persuasion,binary choice,and the costs of dishonesty

We study the strategic interaction between a decision maker who needs to take a binary decision but is uncertain about relevant facts and an informed expert who can send a message to the decision maker but has a preference over the decision. We show that the probability that the expert can persuade the decision maker to take the expert’s preferred decision is a hump-shaped function of his costs of sending dishonest messages.     

Marketplace icons: shopping malls

ABSTRACT

This article considers shopping malls as marketplace icons. We suggest that shopping malls can be regarded as a significant symbol of consumption in an age of late modernity, and highlight key aspects of their development. The role of the shopping mall as an agent of creative destruction, influencing the nature of the retail landscape (especially with regard to the implications of – stereotypically suburban – malls for traditional urban retail provision), is discussed. We also consider the implications for notions of “place” (in terms of authenticity and meaning, etc.) arising from the fundamental characteristics of shopping malls, and end by suggesting that the shopping mall, as a marketplace icon, continues to dynamically and iteratively define and refine the ongoing interactions between consumers, the act of consumption, and place and space     

Equilibria on a circular market when consumers do not always buy from the closest firm

Review of Economic Design - We study spatial competition by firms which is often studied in the context of linear markets where customers always shop at the nearest firm. Here, customer behavior is...