Social cognitive career theory and the goal of becoming a certified public accountant

A primary goal for professors in academia is to facilitate the career success of their students by providing them with the necessary subject knowledge, skills, experience, and confidence. In this paper, we propose the Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) model as a useful tool to explain how accounting students’ career interests, goals, and intentions are related to their self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations. Results showed that the goal to become a certified public accountant (CPA) was significantly and positively correlated with the independent variables of self-efficacy and outcome expectations. These findings are further interpreted and pedagogical recommendations are provided for educators to utilize in their curriculum to enhance students’ accounting self-efficacy and outcome expectations. These recommendations may be used to help boost students’ interests and intentions to major in accounting and pursue a career as a CPA.     

Stabilising the international wheat market with a US buffer stock

An aggregate simulation model of the wheat market is presented and the simulator is used to analayse (a) a free or non-buffered wheat market, (b) a market buffered by a US wheat reserve, and (c) a free market with fewer trade restrictions. The authors conclude that a US-owned buffer stock of 15M tonnes could greatly reduce US and world wheat price variability at an average annual cost a little under $300 million.     

Do People with Specific Skills Want More Social Insurance? Not in the United States

Skill specificity is thought to increase preferences for social insurance (Iversen and Soskice, 2001, American Political Science Review 95,875), especially where employment protections are low, notably the United States (Gingrich and Ansell, 2012, Comparative Political Studies 45, 1624). The compensating differentials literature, by contrast, suggests that neither skill specificity, nor labor market protections affect preferences when wages adjust for differences in risks and investment costs. We examine these competing predictions using U.S. data on general and specific skills. Absolute and relative skill specificity have a robust positive correlation with income, but are negatively correlated with preferences for social protection. Our results strongly support the compensating differentials approach.