Taxpayer Disclosure and Penalty Laws

The consequences of a penalty exemption available to U.S. taxpayers who disclose aggressive reporting positions is examined via a game theoretic model. Results indicate that (i) the tax agency's expected revenue collections (net of audit costs) decline under the disclosure exemption, and (ii) the impact of disclosure regulations depends on the taxpayer's type. Of particular interest, we find that taxpayers who are likely to prevail on an uncertain issue decrease their expected payments although they do not disclose in equilibrium. The impact on the amount of resources absorbed by the tax collection process is also examined.     

Recruiting leaders: an analysis of leadership advertisements

Recruiting the right leaders is an important challenge for organisations. How do organisations find these leaders? This article looks at the recruitment of leaders through advertisements. We address to what extent the ‘vocabulary of leadership’ originating in influential leadership theories is actively used in communication about leadership positions. All job advertisements (4,217) that appeared in a consistent source in the public domain in the UK (Times newspaper) were collected for a period of 15 months. Out of the total number of advertisements, 1,390 were advertisements for leadership positions (chairman, CEO or director). The information in these advertisements was recorded and content analysed. The analyses highlight what terminology organisations use in attracting the desired leaders. In general, ‘people oriented’ and ‘transformational’ terms are used far more than terms describing ‘task oriented’ or ‘transactional’ qualities. Differences were found between advertisements for CEO and lower level leader (director) positions that seem to reflect the difference in hierarchical level and magnitude of the leadership responsibility of these roles.     

The paradox of inelastic sports pricing

Rodney Fort's (2004) article in Managerial and Decision Economics attempts to explain the recurrent phenomenon of inelastic ticket pricing in professional sports. In his explanation, Fort mistakenly substitutes the marginal revenue generated by the acquisition of talent for the marginal revenue generated by lowering the gate ticket price. This article corrects the mistake, pointing out that inelastic ticket pricing is still inconsistent with profit maximization. In addition, it is demonstrated that the marginal revenue generated by additional talent cannot be negative. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multinational HRM in privatized Jordanian enterprises: An exploration of the influence of political contingencies

Within the international human resource management literature, it is recognized that a range of “host‐country effects” can influence how multinational corporations approach the management of human resources within overseas subsidiaries. This article seeks to further knowledge of these effects by using the findings obtained from two case studies conducted in companies that had come under the control of French multinationals through the Jordanian government's privatization program to explore how subsequent processes of human resource reform were shaped by governmental policies and wider political considerations and the dynamics underlying these shaping processes. In particular, it explores the tensions that arose between government policies and corporate business objectives, the negotiating strategies that the companies adopted in order to resolve them, and the factors that influenced the usage and outcome of these strategies. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Trade, convergence, and globalisation: The dynamics of the international income distribution, 1950-1998

This paper investigates the evidence for convergence in per capita incomes across 115 economies during the period 1950-1998 and examines the impact that international trade had on this process. Drawing on trade-conditioning within a distribution dynamics framework, that explicitly models frequency distributions of the cross sections of economies over time, this study suggests that trade patterns in the Golden Age were conducive to the formation of middle and high income groups or clubs of economies, but similar trade patterns (dominated by the rich economies) do not seem to explain the perpetuation of these group formations in the post-Golden Age period. If foreign trade is a key aspect of globalisation, why does it matter in accounting for the observed dynamics of the international income distribution during the Golden Age, but not during the decades since the first oil-shock? Further, the evidence from the ergodic (long-run equilibrium) distribution suggests that in the long term the established trade patterns favoured the growth of the rich at the expense of the poor economies across the world.     

Contrasting roles of financial theory and practice

Reconcilation between conflicting roles of financial theory and practice reveals a common ground. A framework is presented for placing financial theory and practice in perspective.     

New Findings on Firm Investment and Monetary Transmission in the Euro Area

In this paper we present comparative results on the determinantsof firms' investment and their link to monetary policy. Theresults have been obtained by the Eurosystem Monetary TransmissionNetwork. This network has produced a series of papers in whichthe use of micro data permits estimating and quantifying therelevance of two channels of monetary policy transmission: theinterest-rate and the broad-credit channels. The research findingsprovide evidence of an operative interest-rate channel in allcountries examined. Moreover, the results indicate that variableswhich proxy firms' financial conditions play a role. Firms characterizedby weaker balance sheets show higher liquidity sensitivity.