Comparative evidence about the verbal and analytical aptitude of accounting students

Concern over the declining quality of accounting students has led to widespread changes in accounting education. Yet, surprisingly little evidence exists to indicate that we can draw better students by changing curricula and teaching methodologies. This study adds to the rather small sampling of work on the relative quality of accounting majors. It focuses on the retention and attraction of high quality students with both analytical and verbal skills. The results show that the accounting major attracted and retained top students from the University. Students who chose an accounting major, however, tended to be stronger in analytical than verbal skills and this gap widened with attrition. Analytical skills related more strongly than verbal to performance in the introductory accounting course, although verbal skills became more important in more advanced coursework.     

Auctions with shill bidding

Summary. Shill bidding has increased substantially in recent years since the technology employed to conduct on-line auctions enables many sellers to disguise their identities and bid. Although their intent is to gain by misleading the bidders on the value of the object, we show that in a common value auction sellers are worse off shill bidding. In fact, any out-of-auction mechanism that makes it difficult for them to shill bid increases their revenues. In addition, shill bidding reduces the surplus of the bidders and the surplus from trade. It is only the auctioneer who could gain from this activity and in that sense he may not have an incentive from within the auction to discourage shill bidding.Received: 1 February 2002, Revised: 12 August 2003JEL Classification Numbers: D44.Correspondence to: Georgia KosmopoulouWe thank Timothy Dunne, Kevin Grier and the anonymous referees of this journal for helpful comments.     

Entry and Bidding in Common and Private Value Auctions with an Unknown Number of Rivals

In many procurement auctions bidders do not know how many rivals they face at the time that they incur the cost of preparing their bids. We show in a theoretical model that regardless of whether the procurement is characterized by private or by common values an increase in the potential number of bidders may lead to higher procurement costs. This raises potential policy questions of whether and how entry should be encouraged or limited in public procurement auctions. We use evidence from auctions of construction contracts to estimate the effect of an increase in the pool of potential bidders on entry and auction prices when entry and bidding decisions are made sequentially with no knowledge of the number or identity of the actual competitors.     

Estimating diffusion and price elasticity with application to telecommunications

This paper aims to propose a new framework for estimating and forecasting diffusion of high technology products, along with the construction of a price index. Into that context, the “diffusion–price” model is presented, as an innovative concept providing a long term estimation of both price and diffusion elasticity. This corresponds to the bidirectional estimation of the mutual influence of the product’s price over its expected diffusion and vice versa. The discrete parts of the methodology are the use of a diffusion model for the initial estimation of diffusion, the construction of a price index function for estimating the pricing mechanism and, finally, the construction of the “diffusion–price” model for estimating and adjusting the diffusion level and price quantities. The case studies examined, whose solution was based on genetic algorithms, revealed remarkable results which can be used for business strategies development, as the pricing policy is able to make diffusion diverge substantially from the initial estimates. The case studies considered correspond to the ADSL technology diffusion in the wider European area.     

Evaluation of technological and socio-economic issues affecting the deployment of home networks: evidence from the ICT-OMEGA project

Home networks (HNs) are rapidly becoming the next battlefield for various telecom carriers and companies. The European project ICT-OMEGA seeks to enable the convergence of the diverse wireless and wireline technologies at the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer. In such a world of converging, heterogeneous HN technologies, system designers needs to take into account several technical, economic and social aspects that will effect the development and the rate of adoption of HNs by the general public. Careful roadmapping is required to ensure a smooth transition from existing to the next generation HN systems. The objective of this paper is to provide an evaluation of the key technological and socio-economic issues, which may affect the deployment of HNs. Within the OMEGA project, such issues are addressed using surveys conducted by the project experts, designed based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). In this paper, the results of the surveys, conducted using pairwise comparison (which is an important ingredient of AHP) are presented. Several critical aspects are identified and their importance is weighted. The conclusions drawn are important for the overall roadmapping effort of future HN technologies.     

The role of organizational cultures in information‐systems security management: A goal‐setting perspective

The aim of this research is to investigate the role of strong organizational cultures in setting information‐systems security goals. In doing so, we explore and discuss the concept of culture within three financial organizations with different social and organizational structures, and seek to demonstrate the importance of having a cohesive culture in efficiently setting information‐security goals. The relationship between goal setting, culture strength, and performance is also discussed, as there have been studies that indirectly indicate that such a relationship may exist. The contribution of this work to interpretive information‐systems research consists of its study of culture and goal setting in a security‐management context, and its grounding within an interpretive epistemology. In addition, this research promotes an interdisciplinary and interorganizational theory to foster dialogue that transcends industry‐specific contexts and explores different organizational practices that can improve leadership's role in human life.     

日-美跨文化谈判研究及其对中国商务谈判的启发

经济全球化使得跨文化商务谈判在学术和实践领域都受到广泛关注。中国作为最大的发展中国家,跨文化谈判随着国际商务合作的增多而越来越频繁。由于中日文化存在很大的相似性,而东西方跨文化谈判研究主要以日美谈判居多,本文从谈判前准备、信息沟通方式和谈判过程的节奏三个角度回顾和总结了日美谈判的研究成果,归纳出文化差异下东西方谈判风格的区别,进而为中国跨文化谈判研究以及谈判实践提供借鉴和启示。     

Technoeconomic analysis of a VDSL2/G.fast vectoring network: a case study from Greece

NETNOMICS: Economic Research and Electronic Networking - Following the increasing need for higher broadband speeds, the European Commission (EC) has set specific goals to all member states...     

Horizontal Inequity and Vertical Redistribution with Indirect Taxes: The Greek Case*

Non‐uniform indirect taxes treat equals and those unequal differently (horizontal inequity and vertical redistribution). Horizontal inequity is caused by taste differences among similar households, but some excises are designed to reflect social, not revealed, preferences. We apply two methodologies for decomposing the overall redistributive effect of the present and three alternative indirect tax structures into vertical and horizontal effects for Greece, using the 1998–99 Household Expenditure Survey micro‐database. In all cases, the taste component is considerable, even when we allow for social preferences, while improvements in vertical redistribution can be achieved, albeit at the cost of increased horizontal inequity.     

A Classroom Exercise: Voting by Ballots and Feet

This classroom experiment illustrates the efficiency-enhancing property of a Tiebout system in which local public goods decisions are determined by a political process. Students are given playing cards that induce diverse preferences for expenditures on alternative public goods and are initially assigned to specific communities. Then those in each community vote on the type and level of public goods provision, which determine the tax cost. After the provision and tax results are announced, students are free to move to a location where the prior results are more consistent with their preferences. This process continues for several rounds, with a new vote taken at each location after moves have been made. The exercise demonstrates that the combination of voting with feet and ballots tends to increase the total net benefit for all communities. The voting on provision levels is structured to facilitate a discussion of the median voter theorem.