A difference which makes a difference

Many management researchers use difference scores to report results of empirical studies. Yet difference scores create known problems of reliability, spurious correlations, and variance restriction. Reframing a research model can substantially reduce the problems of difference scores. This note empirically demonstrates what can happen when difference scores are used as dependent variables in research and demonstrates an alternative method of data analysis.     

A contribution on the nature and treatment of missing data in large market surveys

Nonresponse (or missing data) is often encountered in large-scale surveys. To enable the behavioural analysis of these data sets, statistical treatments are commonly applied to complete or remove these data. However, the correctness of such procedures critically depends on the nature of the underlying missingness generation process. Clearly, the efficacy of applying either case deletion or imputation procedures rests on the unknown missingness generation mechanism. The contribution of this article is twofold. The study is the first to propose a simple sequential method to attempt to identify the form of missingness. Second, the effectiveness of the tests is assessed by generating (experimentally) nine missing data sets by imposed missing completely at random, missing at random and not missing at random processes, with data removed.     

Pragmatic financialisation: the role of the Japanese Post Office

The Japanese Post Office, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, was finally privatised in 2015, marking an appropriate time to examine financialisation in Japan. The literature on financialisation and changes in Japanese capitalism assumes convergence on Anglo-American capitalism with a diminishing of state power. The main argument of this paper is that financialisation is instead a more contingent process. This is put forth through an examination of how this process has been mediated by the Japanese state through the workings of the Japanese Post Office. The state has frequently shaped the direction of financialisation by intervening in the routing of household funds via the postal savings system in order to achieve its objectives in different circumstances, particularly evident in the protracted and contested nature of the post bank’s privatisation. Financialisation is thus not preordained; instead its path is hewn by crisis, catastrophe, demographics and the agency of domestic social actors.     

Order with Some Law: Complementarity versus Substitution of Formal and Informal Arrangements

While some argue that incomplete incentive contracts facilitatethe self-enforcement of informal dealings, other authors submitthat they substitute for or "crowd out" social norms supportinginformal arrangements. We use experimental evidence to testthese theories by manipulating the extent to which individualstransact repeatedly and the level of contract costs. We findthat, by enforcing contractible exchange dimensions, contractsfacilitate the self-enforcement of noncontractible dimensions.This complementarity effect is particularly important when repetitionis unlikely and thus self-enforcement is difficult. Althoughour data suggest the existence of reciprocity as an alternative,informal enforcement mechanism, we do not find evidence thatcontracts substitute for this social norm.     

A New Approach to Modelling Gnp Functions: an Application of Two-Stage Technologies and Modifying Function Framework

This paper first demonstrates that two-stage technologies together with Lewbel's modifying function framework can provide a general procedure for combining profit functions and nominal value-added functions to obtain new specifications of GNP functions suitable for empirical trade analysis. Next, it illustrates the usefulness of this procedure by proposing a new parametric form of a GNP function in which the derived import demand and output supply systems can be easily constrained to be regular, and the functional structure is parsimonious in the number of additional parameters. We also compare our estimates with those obtained using the familiar Translog flexible form. Results indicate that the proposed procedure is feasible and promising as a tool for generating regular and realistic import demand and output supply equations.     

Private banks in early Michigan, 1837–1884

Using a comprehensive new data set on private (noncorporate) banks, we examine the business and business environment of private banking and exchange brokering in the state of Michigan from 1837 to the 1880s. The Michigan experience provides an example of the effect of widespread exchange brokers in an economy. We use econometric models to explain the determinants of the numbers of private banks in the state. We find that private banks were substitutes for locally issued state bank currency and were complements with adjacent states’ bank currency. With the demise of heterogeneous currencies, private banks transitioned their core business from exchange brokering to general banking. In both the antebellum and postbellum eras, private banks tended to exist when and where larger incorporated banks did not. Following the collapse of free banking in Michigan in the antebellum years, this was virtually the entire state. During the 1860s and 1870s, corporate banks used private banks as a root source to build on.     

Driven to abstraction? Critical realism and the search for the 'inner connection' of social phenomena

This paper examines critically the method of abstraction offeredby critical realism. Our main argument is that critical realismfails to articulate the synthetic side to abstraction. For thisreason, the critical realist method is unable to capture the‘inner connection’ of social phenomena. We arguethat critical realism is prone to extend a method (partially)applicable to the local and specific level of analysis to thehistorical level. The paper develops a method of abstraction,‘systematic abstraction’, that is appropriate tothis historical level. We argue that systematic abstractionconstitutes a radical addition to critical realism, one whichchallenges the fundamental precepts of the critical realistapproach to abstraction.     

Internet Economics and Policy: An Australian Perspective

Publicly available information indicates that the demand and supply of Internet and Internet–related services are continuing to expand at a rapid pace. Since 1997 the number of Internet service providers (facilities–based and resellers) has increased by nearly 40 per cent; the number of points–of–presence per Internet service provider has increased by five times; the number of hosts connected to the Internet has more than quadrupled; and Internet traffic has increased from six to 10 times. The emergence of electronic commerce (e–commerce), driven by this rapid adoption of Internet services and continual technological innovation, is likely to have profound economic and social impacts on Australian society. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the impact of the Internet and e–commerce, ranging from the changes in the market structure of the telecommunications industry, its role in changing the organisation of traditional markets, the emergence of new markets, and the structural shifts to employment, productivity and trade. The paper also analyses contemporary Australian regulatory responses.     

Labour and capital saving technical change in telecommunications

The Australian telecommunications sector is being improved and extended through substantial recent investment in intelligent technology such as digital switching, fibre optics, satellite and cellular transmission, and the Internet. These technologies are being progressively integrated with technology from the broadcasting, computer and electronics industries, providing a unified information infrastructure for information transmission and processing. Technological progress embodied in new equipment has the effect of increasing the efficiency of the factors of production. Such efficiency increases can be biased towards a particular factor. For instance, the impact of labour-augmenting technical change is a decline in the cost of labour per unit of production. When such biases are apparent the relativity between the costs of labour and capital per unit of production is changed. In the longer term, technical change can impact on the rate of employment growth and also on the rate of capital accumulation. In this study the Australian telecommunications cost structure is examined for the period 1919 to 1988. To measure labour saving and capital saving technical change a translog cost model is estimated. Multiproduct telecommunications cost studies typically employ the translog cost model (Evans and Heckman, 1984; Roöller, 1990a; 1990b; Shin and Ying, 1992; McKenzie and Small, 1997). The translog model places no a priori restrictions on substitution possibilities among the factors of production, and allows scale economies to vary with the level of output.