The influence of organizational justice on accountant whistleblowing

In this research study, we apply the theory of organizational justice to the design of whistleblowing policies and procedures. As a pro-social behavior, we posit that employee whistleblowing is likely to increase when organizational whistleblowing procedures, outcomes, and related exchanges with superiors are perceived as fair. We test our hypotheses with an experiment involving 447 internal auditors and management accountants. Our results indicate that whistleblowing policies and mechanisms incorporating higher levels of procedural justice, distributive justice, and interactional justice were perceived to increase the likelihood that an organizational accountant would internally report financial statement fraud.     

Population Growth and Economic Growth: Long-Run Evidence from Latin America

Unit root tests, the Johansen maximal likelihood methodology, and Granger causality tests in the context of a one-step error correction model are used to examine the long-run relation between population and per capita GDP in seven Latin American countries over most of the 20th century. The results suggest that no long-run relation has existed and, hence, population growth neither causes per capita GDP growth nor is caused by it.     

College students’ and Mechanical Turk workers’ environmental factors while completing online surveys

Few studies have investigated the environmental factors of participants completing online self-report surveys, such as the presence of others and engagement in multitasking. The current study examined the environmental factors of 1023 participants drawn from two popular convenience populations—college students (n?=?512) and Mechanical Turk workers (n?=?511). All participants completed online measures of computer self-efficacy, the five-factor model of personality, and social desirability, as well as a questionnaire about their environment and activities when completing the measures. The two samples differed in terms of environmental factors, with college students significantly more likely to report: (1) being in a location other than their place of residence, (2) interacting with others, (3) being interrupted, (4) engaging in multitasking, (5) being under the influence of alcohol or other substances, and (6) completing the study using a laptop computer. The presence of others interacted with sample to predict personality and social desirability scores. Additionally, both presence of others and engaging in multitasking predicted longer completion time.

     

Resolving the unbiasedness and forward premium puzzles

There are two unresolved puzzles in the foreign exchange literature. The unbiasedness puzzle – the finding of a marked difference in the conclusion about the forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis depending on whether the hypothesis is tested using the forward rate equation or forward premium equation, and the forward premium puzzle – the fact that more often than not the forward premium incorrectly predicts the direction of the subsequent change in the spot rate. This paper resolves both puzzles.     

CORRUPTION AND THE COMPOSITION OF TAX REVENUE IN MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICAN ECONOMIES1

Regression results from a panel of 53 Middle East and African economies suggest that corruption has a quite large negative and statistically significant impact on tax revenues, mainly reflecting the impact of corruption on tax collections from social security, and taxes on domestic goods and services and international trade transactions. Policy changes to boost tax revenues might usefully focus on changes in direct taxes and efforts to combat corruption in tax collections should focus on indirect taxes.     

Does fiscal redistribution discourage local public investment?

This paper studies the determinants of regional (oblast‐level) public investment in transitional Russia, focusing on the effects of federal fiscal redistribution. A model of local government expenditure in the presence of regional asymmetries shows that revenue redistribution from wealthy to poor regions discourages local public investment. Random‐ and fixed‐effects estimation of regional panel data for 1994–97 supports the existence of a disincentive effect from fiscal redistribution on regional public investment, which varies according to a region's federal status and wealth: non‐republics have a lower propensity to invest out of transfers than out of own income, as do regions with above‐median per capita income. Republics reduce public investment more than current spending in response to higher federal taxation. Russia's ‘asymmetrical federalism’ thus creates different fiscal incentives for different types of regions.     

On the maximizing behavior of a monopoly planner

Conclusions The model developed here leads to some useful conclusions. If we consider an economy without trade where the supply of inputs varies in response to the level of current real consumption paid to inputs, then the relevant social input constraint for the planners is not a single production possibilities locus, but the planners feasibility constraint developed here. This constraint traces the locus of points on a family of production possibility surfaces that would be generated by each alternative quantity of inputs. The rate of product transformation along the planners' feasibility function will differ from the rate of product transformation along the production possibilities locus by an amount that reflects the marginal input supply. In such an economy, whenever the arguments of the planners' welfare function are not identical with the arguments of the input supply function, the necessary conditions for the planners' optimum will be non-optimal with reference to usual market socialist welfare criteria. At equilibrium, the marginal rate of product substitution in the planners' welfare function will not equal the marginal rate of product transformation on the production possibilities function. In addition, when the tastes of planners and of consumers diverge, the necessary conditions for the planners' optimum imply the exercise of some monopoly power by the planners. For given input supply conditions and given production functions, the magnitude of the monopoly effect increases to a limiting value as the diverge of tastes between planners and consumers increases.     

Advertising to the beat: An analysis of brand placements in hip-hop music videos

Hip-hop is a multi-billion-dollar industry influencing everything from fashion to advertising. The current study documents the overwhelming presence of brands in hip-hop music videos. Through the use of content analysis, we capture not only the branded products and their associated categories, but also the execution and connotation of those placements. Findings indicate that over 93% of all hip-hop videos contained some reference to branded products varying in prominence, prestige and consumption. Further, brand managers have many opportunities available with respect to brand placement in hip-hop – several of those opportunities are highlighted herein.