Strategic candidacy for multivalued voting procedures

Dutta et al. (Econometrica 69 (2001) 1013) (Dutta, Jackson, and Le Breton—DJLeB) initiate the study of manipulation of voting procedures by a candidate who withdraws from the election. A voting procedure is candidate stable if this is never possible. We extend the DJLeB framework by allowing: (a) the outcome of the procedure to be a set of candidates; (b) some or all of the voters to have weak preference orderings of the candidates. When there are at least three candidates, any strongly candidate stable voting selection satisfying a weak unanimity condition is characterized by a serial dictatorship. This result generalizes Theorem 4 of DJLeB.     

Taxation and household portfolio composition: US evidence from the 1980s and 1990s

This paper explores the relationship between household marginal income tax rates, the set of financial assets that households own, and the portfolio shares accounted for by each of these assets. It analyzes data from the 1983, 1989, 1992, 1995, and 1998 Surveys of Consumer Finances and develops a new algorithm for imputing federal marginal tax rates to households in these surveys. The empirical findings suggest that marginal tax rates have important effects on asset allocation decisions. The probability that a household owns tax-advantaged assets, such as tax-exempt bonds or assets held in tax-deferred accounts, is positively related to its tax rate on ordinary income. In addition, the portfolio share invested in corporate stock, which is taxed less heavily than interest bearing assets, is increasing in the household’s ordinary income tax rate. Holdings of heavily taxed assets, such as interest-bearing accounts, decline as a share of wealth as a household’s marginal tax rate increases.     

BANK INTEREST MARGINS AND BUSINESS START-UP COLLATERAL: TESTING FOR CONVEXITY

The paper investigates the relationship between bank interest rate margins and collateral for loans issued to new ventures. The analysis finds a convex U‐shaped relationship. The results indicate that while provision of collateral initially reduces bank exposure to risk (through security, more optimal levels of capital and lower moral hazard among entrepreneurs) that beyond a point, the positive risk‐wealth association gives rise to greater risk taking propensity among entrepreneurs and ultimately higher interest rates. This indicates that a lender's pricing policy may even somewhat help to level the competitive playing field between ventures launched by higher and moderately wealthy entrepreneurs.     

The effects of internal and external sources of justice on employee turnover intention and organizational citizenship behavior toward clients and workgroup members

Abstract

Organizational justice research tends to focus on the effects of fair treatment from organizations or supervisors on employee attitudes and behaviors. Thus, there is a dearth of research on the effects of fair treatment attributable to other parties that employees interact with at work such as coworkers and clients. Controlling for organization-focused and supervisor-focused justice, results from our field study of employees working in a healthcare organization demonstrate that perceptions of client-focused fairness uniquely predicts supervisor ratings of employees organizational citizenship behavior toward clients and that perceptions of workgroup-focused justice uniquely predicts organizational citizenship behavior toward workgroups. Further, we find that client-focused justice perceptions uniquely predict employee turnover intention.     

The Impact of Organizational Culture and Reshaping Capabilities on Change Implementation Success: The Mediating Role of Readiness for Change

abstract    It was hypothesized that employees' perceptions of an organizational culture strong in human relations values and open systems values would be associated with heightened levels of readiness for change which, in turn, would be predictive of change implementation success. Similarly, it was predicted that reshaping capabilities would lead to change implementation success, via its effects on employees' perceptions of readiness for change. Using a temporal research design, these propositions were tested for 67 employees working in a state government department who were about to undergo the implementation of a new end-user computing system in their workplace. Change implementation success was operationalized as user satisfaction and system usage. There was evidence to suggest that employees who perceived strong human relations values in their division at Time 1 reported higher levels of readiness for change at pre-implementation which, in turn, predicted system usage at Time 2. In addition, readiness for change mediated the relationship between reshaping capabilities and system usage. Analyses also revealed that pre-implementation levels of readiness for change exerted a positive main effect on employees' satisfaction with the system's accuracy, user friendliness, and formatting functions at post-implementation. These findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical contribution to the readiness for change literature, and in relation to the practical importance of developing positive change attitudes among employees if change initiatives are to be successful.     

Who Gains from the Demographic Dividend? Forecasting Income by Age

Changes in the population age structure are known to influence the total income per person, but little is known about whether the changes are equally shared across the population or are concentrated on particular age groups and/or birth cohorts. The answer to this question has potentially important implications for income inequality, human capital investment, and fertility decision-making. We propose a new model of intergenerational transfers which distinguishes between the effects of changes in population structure and the effects of changes in family age structure. Using age-specific data from annual income and expenditure surveys of Taiwan between 1978 and 1998, we show that changes in age structure have had a very favorable effect on Taiwan's income growth. The gains are not equally shared by all age groups, however. Children and young adults have benefited the most, while the elderly have benefited the least. The population and family age structures have independent effects on per capita income; the effect of the population age structure is most important. Generational differences in per capita income are closely related to intergenerational differences in earnings, suggesting only a weak form of altruism. Finally, we predict that, on average, population aging will adversely influence the per capita income growth in Taiwan in the coming decades.     

Does support from government help firms survive? Evidence on financial and political assistance in China, 1998–2007

ABSTRACT

Using the National Bureau of Statistics data set over the period 1998–2007, this article examines the dual roles of financial assistance and strong political links on firm survival in China by applying a semi-parametric duration model. We find that generally either financial assistance or strong political links had a positive effect on the likelihood of firm survival. Furthermore, if firms received both types of support from government, their survival rate was around two times as high compared to only receiving a single support. The likelihood of survival depended on the amount of assistance a firm received. We also find firm ownership impacts on its survival pattern. Lastly, China joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) coincided with (cet. par.) higher firm failure, especially with regard to state-owned firms; however, this period also saw the authorities targeting political and financial help on the ‘better’ firms (especially SOEs) with characteristics likely to increase their chance of survival.     

The effect of annual changes in automobile fuel economy standards

Since 1978 the Federal government has regulated the fuel economy of new cars sold in the United States. The purpose of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards is to lessen the national dependence on foreign oil. Through the use of theoretical and empirical models this paper examines the impact of CAFE standards on the automobile industry and on energy consumption. It is shown that CAFE standards may or may not save energy. If CAFE does save energy, it does so at a prohibitive cost to the economy. CAFE standards are also shown to have a number of perverse impacts on the automobile industry as well as consumers.