The Benefits of Diverse Preferences in Library Consortia

We study the case in which a library consortium increases the aggregate payoff of the member libraries. We find that libraries with similar preferences are likely to lose from building a consortium and that those with diverse preferences are likely to gain by doing so. Combining libraries with diverse preferences implies that their valuation for different publishers' journals is more symmetric, which intensifies competition among publishers for scarce combined budgets. A tension between short term and long term considerations might generate a ‘library consortium trap.’ Our insight can be applied to other buyer groups as long as competition is generated by buyers' budget constraints.     

The Effect of Personnel Characteristics in the Internal Accounting Control System on Discretionary Tax Accruals: Evidence from Korea

This study examines whether the characteristics of personnel in a firm's internal accounting control system (IACS) and auditor characteristics control managers’ discretionary behaviour for tax planning. The study uses a sample of 4210 firm‐year observations from 2006 to 2014. The results show that managers’ discretionary tax planning cannot be controlled when the personnel in charge of internal accounting control are at an optimum level or higher. On the other hand, when a CPA is included among the personnel, the manager's discretionary behaviour is somewhat controlled. Moreover, the results show that firms audited by a large accounting firm also control the manager's discretionary tax planning to some extent. Unlike previous studies that examine the effects of IACS on discretionary accruals mostly in terms of book income, this study's contribution is an examination of the effects of the characteristics of personnel in IACS on the relationship between discretionary book‐tax conformity accruals and discretionary book‐only accruals that can be used when the manager establishes a tax plan. Additionally, this study also provides indirect evidence that the characteristics of auditors and personnel in charge of internal accounting perform a monitoring role that controls the manager's opportunistic behaviour.     

The effect of the servicescape on customers’ behavioral intentions in an international airport service environment

This study was conducted to identify the constructs of an international airport servicescape and to assess the relationships among the servicescape of an international airport, emotional states, and behavioral intentions. The constructs of an international airport servicescape are identified as the ambient factor, functional factor, esthetic factor, safety factor, and social factor. The results of this study showed that functional factor, esthetic factor, safety factor, and social factor influence customers?? positive emotions, whereas the ambient factor and social factor affect customers?? negative emotions. Positive emotions, but not negative emotions, were shown to have a significant impact on behavioral intentions. Limitations and suggestions for future studies were addressed.     

Effects of career barriers on career self-efficacy and career preparation behavior among undergraduates majoring in aviation tourism

Service Business - The purpose of this study was to investigate the causal relationships among career barriers, career self-efficacy, and career preparation behavior in South Korea. To conduct this...     

When is the optimal lending contract in microfinance state non-contingent?

Whether a microfinance institution should use a state-contingent repayment or not is very important since a state-contingent loan can provide insurance for borrowers. However, the classic Grameen bank used state non-contingent repayment, which is puzzling since it forces poor borrowers to make their payments even under hard circumstances. This paper provides an explanation to this puzzle. We consider two modes of lending, group and individual lending, and for each mode we characterize the optimal lending and supervisory contracts when a staff member (a supervisor) can embezzle borrowers’ repayments by misrepresenting realized returns. We identify the main trade-off between the insurance gain and the cost of controlling the supervisor's misbehavior. We also find that group lending dominates individual lending either by providing more insurance or by saving audit costs.     

A retail benchmarking approach to efficient two‐way access pricing: no termination‐based price discrimination†

We study access pricing rules that determine the access prices between two networks as a linear function of marginal costs and (average) retail prices set by both networks. When firms compete in linear prices, there is a unique linear rule that implements the Ramsey outcome as the unique equilibrium, independently of underlying demand conditions. When firms compete in two‐part tariffs, there exists a class of rules under which firms choose the variable price equal to the marginal cost. Therefore, the regulator can choose among these rules to pursue additional objectives such as increasing consumer surplus or promoting socially optimal investment.     

Residents' Perception of the 2008 Beijing Olympics: Comparison of Pre‐ and Post‐Impacts

The purpose of this study is to explore any significant differences in residents' perception of the impacts before and after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The findings of this study revealed that residents' perception of the positive impacts (community investment and improvement of city infrastructure) varied over two points in time, while two negative factors (inflation and tax increase) demonstrated little perceptual change. Residents had high expectations of the benefits that the Olympics would bring to the community, yet those expectations were not met. In fact, the problems caused by the Olympics were neither greater nor lesser than they expected. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reward for being an immigrant: Earnings gap between immigrant and native-born West Indians

Motivated by recent findings of a diminishing earnings gap between the West Indians and other black workers, this study examines the earnings processes of immigrant and native-born West Indians in an effort to find the role of culture traits in their earnings. The decomposition of the earnings difference between immigrant and native-born West Indians indicates that a significant amount of the gap is unexplained by the observable labor market characteristics. Most of the observable human capital endowments of the immigrants are treated unfavorably by the market compared to those of the native-born West Indians. The earnings advantage of immigrants attributable to unobserved factors, however, turns out to be more than sufficient to overcome their market treatment adversity.     

Competition in banking and the lending channel: Evidence from bank-level data in Asia and Latin America

This paper examines how banking competition affects the transmission of monetary policy through the bank lending channel. We apply a two-step estimation procedure using bank-level panel data for commercial banks in 10 Asian and 10 Latin American countries during the period from 1996 to 2006. In the first step we measure the degree of banking competition by applying the methodology proposed by Panzar and Rosse (1987). In the second step we estimate a loan growth equation where the explanatory variables include the Panzar–Rosse measure of banking competition. The estimation results provide consistent evidence that increased competition in the banking sector weakens the transmission of monetary policy through the bank lending channel. This is especially true for banks in Latin American countries and banks of small size, low liquidity, and low capitalization. We also discuss the policy implications of the main findings of this paper.