Can a workplace have an attitude problem? Workplace effects on employee attitudes and organizational performance

Using the employee opinion survey responses from several thousand employees working in 193 branches of a major U.S. bank, we consider whether there is a distinctive workplace component to employee attitudes despite the common set of corporate human resource management practices that cover all the branches. Several different empirical tests consistently point to the existence of a systematic branch-specific component to employee attitudes. “Branch effects” can also explain why a significant positive cross-sectional correlation between branch-level employee attitudes and branch sales performance is not observed in longitudinal fixed-effects sales models. The results of our empirical tests concerning the determinants of employee attitudes and the determinants of branch sales are consistent with an interpretation that workplace-specific factors lead to better outcomes for both employees and the bank, and that these factors are more likely to be some aspect of the branches' internal operations rather than some characteristic of the external market of the branch.     

Robust implementation in general mechanisms

A social choice function is robustly implemented if every equilibrium on every type space achieves outcomes consistent with it. We identify a robust monotonicity condition that is necessary and (with mild extra assumptions) sufficient for robust implementation.Robust monotonicity is strictly stronger than both Maskin monotonicity (necessary and almost sufficient for complete information implementation) and ex post monotonicity (necessary and almost sufficient for ex post implementation). It is equivalent to Bayesian monotonicity on all type spaces.     

Purification in the infinitely-repeated prisoners' dilemma

This paper investigates the Harsanyi [Harsanyi, J.C., 1973. Games with randomly disturbed payoffs: A new rationale for mixed-strategy equilibrium points. International Journal of Game Theory 2 (1), 1–23]-purifiability of mixed strategies in the repeated prisoners' dilemma with perfect monitoring. We perturb the game so that in each period, a player receives a private payoff shock which is independently and identically distributed across players and periods. We focus on the purifiability of one-period memory mixed strategy equilibria used by Ely and Välimäki [Ely, J.C., Välimäki, J., 2002. A robust folk theorem for the prisoner's dilemma. Journal of Economic Theory 102 (1), 84–105] in their study of the repeated prisoners' dilemma with private monitoring. We find that any such strategy profile is not the limit of one-period memory equilibrium strategy profiles of the perturbed game, for almost all noise distributions. However, if we allow infinite memory strategies in the perturbed game, then any completely-mixed equilibrium is purifiable.     

The Influence of U.S. GAAP on the Harmony of Accounting Measurement Policies of Large Companies in the U.K. and Australia

U.S. GAAP has increasingly become an influence on accounting practices in other countries, even aside from those traditionally considered under direct U.S. influence. The change arises from the large number of U.S. accounting standards, non-U.S. companies listing on U.S. stock exchanges, and the amount of U.S. direct investment abroad. As the impact of U.S. GAAP varies across countries, it may affect international accounting harmony. This idea is tested by examining the level of international harmony for eleven accounting measurement policies in matched pairs of large companies from Australia and the U.K., two countries with historically strong cultural and economic links. It is argued that, in recent decades, accounting practice in Australia, more so than in the U.K., has become increasingly U.S.-oriented. The concepts of harmony of Tay and Parker (1990) and Archer et al . (1996) are employed. International harmony is measured by the between-country C index and chi-square test; national harmony by van der Tas's (1988) H index. While considerable national harmony is found in the U.K. for seven and in Australia for five accounting policies, there is considerable or complete international harmony for only three policies. Evidence is presented of the influence of U.S. GAAP as one factor explaining the poor degree of U.K./Australia international harmony. Australian companies appear to follow U.S. GAAP to a greater extent than do U.K. companies. The state of partial harmony thus existing restricts international comparability of accounting reports and may cause problems for regulators.     

Does Financial Development 'Lead' Economic Growth?

We use the Toda & Yamamoto (1995) causality testing procedure to investigate the relationship, if any, between financial development and economic growth.We use quarterly data from 19 OECD countries and China, and use total credit and interest spread as indicators of financial development. We also consider the impact of financial development on investment and productivity. We find meagre evidence that financial development 'leads' economic growth, either directly or indirectly. This casts further doubt on claims that financial development is a necessary and perhaps sufficient precursor to economic growth.     

Evolutionary targeting

Evolutionary Targeting is a dynamic, systems-evolutionary policy perspective which focuses on triggering, re-enforcing and sustaining market-led evolutionary processes of emergence of Multiagent Structures (industries, clusters, markets, etc). A major aspect is leveraging existing successes in firms to promote emergence of such structures. This requires discrete policy interventions directed at varying areas of system/market failure, which make their appearance at difference phases of the overall process. The paper briefly illustrates the approach through an analysis of VC policies in Israel and selected European countries, and by referring to the traditional view of Infant Industry development and existing views on high tech cluster development. The resulting framework of analysis, which differs radically from the ‘Picking Winners’ policies of the past and from the successful targeting of infant industries in Korea and post war Japan, seems to fit the increasingly turbulent and high return/high risk global environment prevailing today.

The impact of public R&D investments on patenting activity: technology transfer at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

ABSTRACT

This paper presents estimates of the impact of public R&D on patenting activity at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Using a time series of public sector agency data, we estimate the per-capita R&D elasticity of new patent applications using a knowledge production function framework model that is an expanded version of what other scholars have used with private sector data. New patent applications are an important step in the technology transfer activities of a federal agency. We estimate this elasticity to be about 2.0. This elasticity value represents an initial estimate of the impact of EPA’s R&D investments on its technology transfer activity.