Perception of What the Ethical Climate is and What it Should be: The Role of Gender, Academic Status, and Ethical Education

This study examined ethical attitudes and perceptions of 691 undergraduate seniors and freshmen in a college of business. Gender was found to be correlated to perceptions of "what the ethical climate should be" with female subjects showing significantly more favorable attitude towards ethical behaviors than males. Further, Seniors had a more cynical view of the current ethical climate than freshmen. Freshmen were significantly more likely than seniors to believe that good business ethics is positively related to successful business outcomes. Ethical education was significantly correlated to both perceptions of "current ethical climate" as well as "what the ethical climate should be". Students who had been exposed to ethical issues in a course were more likely to believe both, that ethical behavior is, and should be, positively associated with successful business outcomes.     

Managerial Stock Ownership and Debt Diversification

In this study, we examine the impact of managerial behavior on the debt diversification decisions of firms using the agency cost of debt framework. We hypothesize that managers with higher equity ownership should favor debt diversification to avoid efficient monitoring by debt holders and thus, be able to engage in risk‐shifting behavior. Our empirical results provide strong evidence for a positive association between managerial ownership and debt diversification. This relationship is observed to be stronger for smaller firms, which are traditionally more susceptible to the moral hazard problem. Our results remain robust for an alternate measure of debt diversification.     

The Determination of Agricultural Wage Rates in Bangladesh

The impact of the ‘green revolution’ on wages has been a contentious issue. This paper uses the cointegration and error correction approach to identify long and short-run relationships between prices, agricultural production and wages of agricultural labourers in Bangladesh, test for homogeneity, test for weak exogeneity with the Johansen-Juselius methodology, test for a structural break, and estimate the long and short-run elasticities of nominal wages with respect to rice prices. We find that agricultural wages have strong positive long run relationships with rice prices, manufacturing wages and agricultural productivity. The short run response of wages, estimated consistently with these longer run relationships, to rice prices is small, highlighting the vulnerability of the rural poor to sudden rises in rice prices, even though in the longer run nominal wages respond sufficiently to rice prices. Policy can promote growth of agriculture and manufacturing but should also mitigate the short run food insecurity of agricultural labourers.     

Tests of real interest parity in international currency markets

The purpose of this paper is to examine the behavior of real bilateral exchange rates for major currencies and test the hypothesis of real uncovered interest parity with risk premia, and forward looking expectations. It is plausible that the hypothesis of rational expectations cannot be rejected given the unit root nonstationarity of real exchange rates but it is not unlikely that unit root nonstationarity may be due to rational expectations in foreign exchange markets.     

Establishing a Framework for an Information System

Many decision errors arise out of a failure to understand the nature and structure of the information system that supports policy decisions, public or private. For a information system to be reliable and accurate three subsystems, data collection, inquiry (or analysis) and policy decision, must share the same base of concepts, measurable proxies porn the real world to represent those concepts, and compatible measurement techniques and processing designs in the data used. All information systems must be closely adapted to the specific context of the decisions they are intended to support.
Rapid globalization of markets and the parallel revolution in information technologies and supporting information infrastructure, institutions and human capital are transforming the agri-food sector. The food system is moving away from mass markets driven by the production of standardized commodities toward many smaller, diverse, and customized niche markets driven by consumer preferences for specific food characteristics. Concentration, vertical coordination and integration are growing, particularly in the livestock sector, and especially hogs. Information technologies now permit firms to discover and track consumer preferences while the new biotechnologies make it possible to create the characteristics in products that consumers desire in niche markets. Information has itself become an important commodity.     

An econometric study on the relationship between unemployment and vacancies in the United Kingdom

Zusammenfassung Eine ?konometrische Studie über die Beziehung zwischen Arbeitslosigkeit und offenen Stellen im Vereinigten K?nigreich. — Dieser Aufsatz soll zeigen, da\ die stabile Beziehung zwischen echter Arbeitslosigkeit und echten offenen Stellen seit 1966 unterbrochen ist. Au\erdem sollen die Faktoren untersucht werden, die die Beziehung zwischen echter Arbeitslosigkeit und echten offenen Stellen bestimmen, wobei einerseits ein ?konometrisches Modell, das auf nichtbeobachtbare Variable besonders eingeht, und andererseits eine neoklassische Theorie der überschu\nachfrage herangezogen wird. Die allgemeine Hypothese in diesem Artikel lautet, da\ sowohl die echte als auch die registrierte oder gemessene H?he der Arbeitslosigkeit infolge verschiedener Gesetze und/oder des Rückgangs der wirtschaftlichen Aktivit?t angestiegen ist. Anschlie\end werden zwei weitere Modelle konstruiert, um die Rolle der Nachfrage- und Angebotsfaktoren zu analysieren.

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Résumé Une étude économétrique sur la relation entre le ch?mage et les vacances en Royaume-Uni. — Le but de cet article est de démontrer que la relation stable entre le vrai ch?mage et les vrais vacances a croulé depuis 1966 et d’analyser les facteurs qui déterminent les relations entre le vrai ch?mage et les vrais vacances en appliquant séparément des modèles économétriques avec des variables inobservables et une théorie néoclassique de la demande d’excès. Notre hypothèse générale est que le montant du vrai ch?mage et le montant du ch?mage régistré ou mesuré augmentaient comme conséquence de la législation gouvernementale et/ou de la baisse de l’activité économique. Finalement, l’auteur construit deux modèles de plus pour analyser le r?le des facteurs de demande et d’offre.

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Resumen Un estudio econométrico sobre la relación entre empleo y vacantes en el Reino Unido. — Los objetivos de este artículo son mostrar que la relación estable entre desempleo verdadero y vacantes verdaderas se ha quebrado a partir de 1966 y también analizar los factores subyacentes a las relaciones de desempleo verdadero y vacantes verdaderas separadamente, usando modelos econométricos con variables no observables y una teoría neoclásica de exceso de demanda. Nuestra hipótesis general es que tanto la cantidad verdadera de desempleo y el desempleo registrado o medido creció como consecuencia de la legislación gubernamental y/o la declinación en la actividad económica. Finalmente, formulamos dos modelos adicionales para analizar el rol de factores de demanda y oferta.

     

Estimation of a technology matrix from a domestic coefficients matrix and a row of intermediate imports in input-output analysis

This paper suggests several methods of estimating a technology matrix from a domestic transactions matrix, and a row vector of imports into each sector. The performance of the proposed techniques is assessed on the basis of tests using data on a large number of countries, for which both domestic and technology matrices exist. The best method is subsequently used to generate estimates of technology matrices for countries where such information has not previously been available, and as an illustration of a possible application of such estimates, a brief international comparison of production structures is attempted.     

MEASUREMENT OF TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY IN THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER PROVINCE OF PAKISTAN

The objective of this study is to measure technical efficiency, using a translog frontier production function on cross-sectional data from 397 farms in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan in 1988–89. The estimated farm level technical efficiency is found to be dependent upon levels of credit and education, farmers' ages and the extent of land fragmentation. Lack of education, restricted credit and fragmented holdings are found to be causes of inefficiency; hence policies which consolidate holdings, provide credit or educate farmers will tend to improve efficiency in agriculture.     

Decomposition of inequality measures and a comparative analysis

The main objectives of the paper are to decompose Atkinson's measure into within-group and between-group inequality and to compare it with decompositions of inequality measures, like the Gini coefficient, variance of logarithms, Theil's entropy index and the square of the coefficient of variation. Atkinson's inequality index is given an interpretation of mean order β and then it is decomposed for population subgroups. Various other measures are considered for decompositions and a variety of decomposition schemes for Gini coefficient and other measures in the literature is reviewed and commented upon. Empirical analysis using U.S.A. and U.K. data are performed on the basis of income distribution data classified by family size. For various decomposition schemes, contribution to between size-group and within size-group inequalities are compared in percentage terms. Comparisons are also made over time for the years 1964 and 1974 both for U.S.A. and U.K. and the result indicates that within size-group income inequality has declined while between size group and total income inequality shows an increase. Three important properties of Atkinson's inequality index are proved in the appendix.     

ESTIMATION ERROR IN SECTORAL EMPLOYMENT REQUIREMENTS IN THE ABSENCE OF A DOMESTIC COEFFICIENTS MATRIX IN THE INPUT-OUTPUT ANALYSIS

The objective of the paper is to develop various estimation methods for allocating imports according to their end-use and to make use of the derived domestic transactions for the estimation of gross domestic output and employment by sectors. The standard design in the construction of input-output tables is to provide imports of a sector in the form of a column. These imports are not allocated according to their final use and therefore, total intermediate inputs consist of both domestic and imported inputs. The input-output tables for 12 European countries distinguish three types of transactions: (a) domestically produced inputs; (b) imported inputs; and (c) total inputs. We have made use of these tables assuming that the information on import allocation by end-use and domestically produced and imported inputs separately are not available. The allocations of imports are made under various assumptions and a comparison is made of employment based on artificially generated domestic coefficients with employment based on actual coefficients. The sectors are ranked on the basis of both sets of results. In addition, the ratio of indirect to direct employment for the estimators and actual is derived. The sectors are ranked and the rank correlations between alternative estimators and actual are calculated. Although the ratios differ markedly from method to method, the ranks do not alter.