Welfare Measurement and Measurement Error

The approximate effects of measurement error on a variety of measures of inequality and poverty are derived. They are shown to depend on the measurement error variance and functionals of the error–contaminated income distribution, but not on the form of the measurement error distribution, and to be accurate within a rich class of error–free income distributions and measurement error distributions. The functionals of the error–contaminated income distribution that approximate the measurement error induced distortions can be estimated. So it is possible to investigate the sensitivity of welfare measures to alternative amounts of measurement error and, when an estimate of the measurement error variance is available, to calculate corrected welfare measures. The methods are illustrated in an application using Indonesian household expenditure data.     

The Development of Corporate Charitable Contributions in the UK: A Stakeholder Analysis

This paper investigates the determinants of corporate charitable donations within a comparative study of corporate behaviour in two time periods, 1989–90 and 1998–99. The analysis is based on a longitudinal data set that includes over 400 UK listed companies. The determinants of corporate charitable donations are explored within a stakeholder model and the relationship between corporate charitable donations and a set of firm and industry variables is estimated using OLS. Particular emphasis is placed on industry effects and the impact of social and environmental stakeholders. The results highlight a significant change in behaviour between 1989–90 and 1998–99 that may reflect a strategic response by corporate decision‐makers to external concerns over corporate social responsibility. In the early period corporate charitable donations were substantially determined by profits. However, this relationship has weakened during the 1990s as firms have become increasingly responsive to stakeholder influences. The results for the later period emphasize the increasing importance of corporate visibility, and the development of social and environmental influences on corporate charitable contributions.     

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.     

LIBERAL ECONOMICS AND THE RISE OF LAISSEZ‐FAIRE ECOLOGY

The shift in thinking about how to manage national economies and economic systems in the 1980s was part of a broader revolution in intellectual thought. This is seen in ecology, where a shift in thinking about how to manage environments took place at the same time. Traditionally, the environment was viewed in determinist (structuralist) terms, as a system which was susceptible to management and manipulation. Ecosystems were thought to evolve through predictable stages, reaching a climax state. From the late 1980s, ecologists became increasingly convinced that ecosystems, like economic systems, are complex. They argued that while human intervention is often necessary, wherever possible it should be replaced with more natural controls, which can often fulfil policy aims as well if not better than deliberate intervention. Like economies, the best ecosystems are those which largely manage themselves.     

How well do urban growth boundaries contain development? Results for Oregon using a difference-in-difference estimator

Urban containment policies, including urban growth boundaries (UGBs), are a common tool used by city planners to promote compact development. We analyze how well UGBs do in containing development using fine-scale GIS data on cities in Oregon. Earlier studies on UGBs yield mixed results, with some authors finding no effects of UGBs on housing market variables and urbanization rates and others finding significant effects. A challenge in measuring these effects is that the location of the UGB is unlikely to be an exogenous determinant of a land parcel's value for development. The panel structure of our dataset allows us to estimate the UGB's effect on the probability of development using a difference-in-difference estimator applied to a narrow band of plots along each city's UGB. This estimator controls for time-invariant unobservable variables and common temporal effects among plots, thereby mitigating the potential for biased estimates due to the endogeneity of the UGB's location. We also pursue a novel approach to controlling for time-varying factors that exploits our fine-scale data. We find that UGBs contain development in many of the Oregon cities we examine, although there are some cities in which development rates are the same inside and outside of the UGB. Our results reveal that, in most cities, the effect of the UGB is small relative to pre-existing differences in development probabilities. This suggests that it may be difficult to identify UGB effects with cross-sectional data, the approach commonly taken in previous studies.     

When Less is More: Distinguishing Between Entrepreneurial Choice and Performance

This paper uses NCDS data on individual characteristics to distinguish determinants of entrepreneurial choice, income and job generation. A new model of utility from self-employment shows that relaxing liquidity constraints could inhibit performance. Empirically, we find that a range of inheritance enhances the performance of the self-employed and increases self-employment; while higher education also increases self-employment income and job creation, but reduces the probability of self-employment. Combining these choice and performance effects, we find that education has a positive net effect on job creation, as does inheritance up to a certain threshold.