An algebraic theory of multi-product decisions

Summary. We exploit the existence of matrix group symmetries on a production possibility set to identify group symmetries on the profit function. The groups are isomorphic, and provide a pre-ordering on firm preferences over prices. Together with additional structure on the technology, symmetries generate comparative statics on price responses. Linear and other invariances place bounds on firm choice vectors. Reflection group asymmetries on the feasible choice set also support welfare rankings over prices. The methods are adapted to study consumer decisions.Received: 12 August 2002, Revised: 30 January 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D11, D21, C60, L23. Correspondence to: David A. Hennessy     

Feminist Ecological Economics and Sustainability

Synopsis New developments in feminist ecological economics and ecofeminist economics are contributing to the search for theories and policy approaches to move economies toward sustainability. This paper summarizes work by ecofeminists and feminist ecological economists which is relevant to the sustainability challenge and its implications for the discipline of economics. Both democracy and lower material throughputs are generally seen as basic principles of economic sustainability. Feminist theorists and feminist ecological economists offer many important insights into the conundrum of how to make a democratic and equity-enhancing transition to an economy based on less material throughput. These flow from feminist research on unpaid work and caring labor, provisioning, development, valuation, social reproduction, non-monetized exchange relationships, local economies, redistribution, citizenship, equity-enhancing political institutions, and labor time, as well as creative modeling approaches and activism-based theorizing.      

The effects of supportive management and job quality on the turnover intentions and health of military personnel

To be competitive in today's increasingly complex and rapidly changing envi‐ronment, organizations must retain personnel and promote the well‐being of employees. We examine the relationship of both support provided to person‐nel and job quality with employee health and turnover intentions among a sample of 450 military personnel. Factors involving the supportive manage‐ment of personnel (i.e., supervisory support, organizational support, and work‐life balance) and factors pertaining to job quality (i.e., work stimulation and job clarity) were indirectly related to health and to turnover intentions through the mediating influence of job satisfaction. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Promise and peril in implementing pay‐for‐performance

Why would managers abandon pay‐for‐performance plans they initiated with great hopes? Why would employees celebrate this decision? This article explores why managers made their decisions in 12 of 13 pay‐for‐performance “experiments” at Hewlett‐Packard in the mid‐1990s. We find that managers thought the costs of these programs to be higher than the benefits. Alternative managerial practices such as effective leadership, clear objectives, coaching, or training were thought a better investment. Despite the undisputed instrumentality of pay‐for‐performance to motivate, little attention has been given to whether the benefits outweigh the costs or the “fit” of these programs with high‐commitment cultures like Hewlett‐Packard was at the time. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A Stochastic Frontier Production Function with Flexible Risk Properties

This paper considers a stochastic frontier production function which has additive, heteroscedastic error structure. The model allows for negative or positive marginal production risks of inputs, as originally proposed by Just and Pope (1978). The technical efficiencies of individual firms in the sample are a function of the levels of the input variables in the stochastic frontier, in addition to the technical inefficiency effects. These are two features of the model which are not exhibited by the commonly used stochastic frontiers with multiplicative error structures.An empirical application is presented using cross-sectional data on Ethiopian peasant farmers. The null hypothesis of no technical inefficiencies of production among these farmers is accepted. Further, the flexible risk models do not fit the data on peasant farmers as well as the traditional stochastic frontier model with multiplicative error structure.     

Eurosystem monetary targeting: Lessons from U.S. data

Using a small empirical model of inflation, output, and money estimated on U.S. data, we compare the relative performance of monetary targeting and inflation targeting. The results show monetary targeting to be quite inefficient, yielding both higher inflation and output variability. This is true even with a nonstochastic money demand formulation. Our results are also robust to using a P∗ model of inflation. Therefore, in these popular frameworks, there is no support for the prominent role given to money growth in the Eurosystem's monetary policy strategy.     

企业家不是天生的(2)——从梦想开始

200位老板的成功秘密除非先拥有一个梦想,否则将一事无成。——卡尔·桑德伯格翻开世界历史,最引人注目的事件都是由梦想引发的。希伯来的奴隶们之所以能够从埃及大批成功逃离是因为摩西《(圣经》故事中古犹太人的领袖)受到神灵的感召,梦想他的人民会获得自由。美国革命的发生,也正是由于人们梦想着自由、民主和正义。马丁·路德·金曾用他的演讲“我有一个梦想”来激励他的人民。     

Are serial Condorcet rules strategy-proof?

Abstract. This paper explores the extent to which majority rule is invulnerable to manipulation by individuals and coalitions, even when majority rule is used to select more than one alternative. The resulting rule may or may not be strategy-proof, depending on the size of the coalitions that can form, and on the nature of the individual preferences over sets of alternatives. No individual can manipulate with respect to a wide family of preferences over sets. The only restriction on the domain of true and revealed individual preferences is that the selection rule is always well defined. Received: 1 November 1999 / Accepted: 7 May 2001 We thank two anonymous referees for suggestions that have significantly improved the paper. We are also grateful to l'Université de Caen for sponsoring a Workshop on Social Choice Theory, where a first draft of this paper was presented in May, 1999, and to the workshop participants for helpful observations. Work on the final version of the paper was done while one of the authors was a guest of the Project on Intergenerational Equity supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology of Japan. We are grateful to the Ministry and to the project leader, Professor Kotaro Suzumura, for their support.     

Revisiting managerial perspectives on dividend policy

We survey managers of Nasdaq firms that consistently pay cash dividends to determine their views about dividend policy, the relationship between dividend policy and value, and four common explanations for paying dividends. The evidence shows that managers stress the importance of maintaining dividend continuity and widely agree that changes in dividends affect firm value. Managers give the strongest support to a signaling explanation for paying dividends, weak to little support for the tax-preference and agency cost explanations, and no support to the bird-in-the-hand explanation. The study provides new evidence about how managers view dividend life cycles and residual dividend policy. The authors would like to thank two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions, and Maheshan Fernando and Sumeet Chawla for providing research assistance.     

Learning-by-doing and the sources of productivity growth: A dynamic model with application to U.S. agriculture

The significance of learning to productivity growth is formulated within a dynamic adjustment-cost framework. Explicitly treating the acquisition of knowledge as a firm-specific capital good entering the production function along with other conventional inputs, the dynamic optimization model integrates the learning-by-doing hypothesis with technical change, scale, and disequilibrium input use effects in the aggregate productivity analysis. The theoretical framework is applied to examining the dynamic components accounting for the growth of U.S. production agriculture over the 1950–82 period. The results imply a less important role for technical change and assign a substantial role to the previously unmeasured contribution of learning-by-doing to the growth of aggregate agriculture industry.The editor for this paper was Melvyn Fuss.