Hunting the Whale: More Evidence on State Government Leviathans

Caplan holds that governments are Leviathans, seeking to extend their power by increasing government expenditures beyond the level preferred by voters. We extend Caplan's model by examining the real (percentage) growth rates of government. We also examine whether government size increases at an increasing rate as the minority party weakens. We find evidence that supports and fails to support the original Leviathan hypothesis. We also fail to support our extensions of Caplan's hypothesis. Furthermore, our significant and contrary results have intuitively appealing interpretations. From these results, we conclude that the impact of political party power on government spending is ambiguous.     

Toward a sustainable conceptualization of dependent variables in entrepreneurship research

Entrepreneurship researchers have yet to explore the full range variance that occurs in entrepreneurial value creation because we have focused almost exclusively on financial performance as the dependent variable in our research. However, such arbitrary narrowness is not supported by research, which shows entrepreneurs to not focus exclusively on income maximization. Consistent with calls for an expanded view of the consequences of entrepreneurship, we develop a typology of entrepreneurship dependent variables that supports broadening the scope of entrepreneurship research to include economic, environmental and social value. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Implications of a negatively sloped LM curve

Conclusion This paper has shown that the LM curve could be downward sloped if the rate of interest on money (specifically liquid deposits) is sufficiently flexible. If so, the momentary equilibrium could be unstable, especially if the LM curve is far from the vertical (i.e., if the interest rate on money is very flexible). Prospects for instability are enhanced if output adjusts slowly or if the central bank varies the money supply strongly over time in response to the general interest rate. If stability obtains with a downward sloped LM curve, fiscal policy has an unconventional direction of effect on income. Three policy implications follow directly. (1) The rate of interest on deposits which are part of the money supply used as the central bank control tool, should not be allowed to be too flexible (to avoid instability). (2) If the monetary deposit rate is quite flexible, the central bank should not have the money supply react too strongly to the general interest rate—i.e., should not come too close to a pure interest rate policy (again, to avoid instability). (3) If the monetary deposit rate is very flexible, fiscal policy should be used with caution (due to the unconventional direction of effect in the event LM is downward sloped).     

Develop and nurture an international alliance capability

Firms increasingly enter into alliances when expanding into international markets and market segments. Unfortunately, many of these alliances fail because managers are overconfident and unprepared for the diverse and complex contingencies they encounter. Growing research suggests that developing an alliance capability function improves alliance performance. We first identify common types of problems and opportunities that arise from alliance design to alliance dissolution. With this understanding, we then specify the alliance capabilities that must be developed to deal with these contingencies. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The systems analysis of conflict

This article is the outcome of a continuing programme of research involving systems engineers and political scientists. The ultimate aim is to explore the relevance of some of the methodologies of systems engineering to problems in the social sciences, especially the dynamics of domestic and international conflict. An initial exercise in modelling domestic conflict in terms of state equations (system dynamics) is described, although the study reflects the authors' interest in several approaches by the broadly based survey of past work and proposed diversification of their research.     

Modeling Ethical Business Culture: Development of the Ethical Business Culture Survey and Its Use to Validate the CEBC Model of Ethical Business Culture

This article reports the results of research to develop a survey instrument and its use to validate an ethical business culture construct (CEBC Model). The reported three-stage quantitative study builds on our previous qualitative work, aimed at identifying dimensions of ethical business cultures. The research resulted in a parsimonious construct, covering five dimensions of ethical business cultures, and a ten-question instrument, measuring this construct. In this article, we report results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and convergent construct validity testing, discuss the potential applications of the construct and instrument in assessment and development of ethical business cultures, and provide recommendations for industry practitioners and for further research.