Alfred Schütz and George Shackle: Two Views of Choice

Within the Austrian school of economics, Ludwig Lachmann identified Alfred Schütz and George Shackle as master subjectivists. Subjectivists trace aggregate economic phenomena back to the subjective thoughts and expectations of individuals. Schütz was a member of the Mises Circle of Austrian economists. Shackle was a student of the Austrian economist F.A. Hayek, but a follower of Hayek's great rival, John Maynard Keynes. Austrians respect both figures as important subjectivists who offered valuable accounts of the role of uncertainty in human action. The paper serves two purposes. First, it is a useful primer on the distinct theories of Schuts and Shackle. Second, it draws attention to the problem of change and novelty in the work of Schütz and Shackle. Schütz underemphasized the role of novelty in society. Shackle, by contrast, exaggerated the role of novelty in choice. A middle ground position is defended.     

Taxation and the stock market valuation of capital gains and dividends: Theory and emphirical results

Dividends seem to be more heavily taxed than capital gains. Why then do corporations pay dividends rather than repurchasing shares or retaining earnings? Either corporations are not acting in the interests of shareholders, or else shareholders desire dividends sufficiently for nontax reasons to offset the tax effect.In this paper, we measure the relative valuation of dividends and capital gains in the stock market, using a variant of the capital asset pricing model. We find that dividends are not valued differently systematically from capital gains. This finding is consistent with share price maximization by firms but inconsistent with the fact that most shareholderspay a heavier tax on dividends.We also show that the relative value of dividends provides an indirect measure of a marginal Tobin's q. The measured value of dividends relative to capital gains tends to be higher during prosperous periods, as is consistent with this interpretation. We hope that this time series on a marginal Tobin's q will prove to be useful in forecasting the rate of investment.     

Government as a discriminating monopolist in the financial market: the case of China

We show that the many unusual features of China’s financial markets are consistent with a government choosing regulations to maximize a standard type of social welfare function. Under certain conditions, these regulations are equivalent to imposing explicit taxes on business and interest income, yet should be much easier to enforce. The observed implicit tax rates are broadly in line with those observed in other countries. The theory also forecasts, however, that China will face increasing incentives over time to shift to explicit taxes.     

Fully endogenous mechanism selection on finite outcome sets

Summary This paper defines a choice process over social outcomes in which agents choose the institutional rules ormechanisms themselves without outside interference. Truly endogenizing the mechanism selection process in this way, however, involves facing an infinite regress problem in which outcomes are chosen by games which are themselves chosen by games, ad infinitum. This paper allows the possibility of such an infinite regress which we callfully endogenous mechanism selection.We introduce the notion ofFree Choice which restricts the class of mechanisms in the regress to those which prevent agents from being locked in to an equilibrium outcome by the actions of others. Under this condition, the infinite regress is shown to get truncated with the number of selection iterations endogenously determined. It turns out that the outcomes resulting from a Free Choice-constrained regress are (Weakly) Pareto optimal; in particular, these outcomes solve a weighted Rawlsian Maxmin criterion. We also show that these outcomes are invariant to the equilibrium concept used to evaluate games in the regress.This paper is based on the author's dissertation from the University of Minnesota (November, 1989).I am very grateful for the guidance, advice, and encouragement from my advisor, Marcel K. Richter, and for the many helpful suggestions from David Levine. I have also benefited from conversations with Nabil Al-Najjar, Gerhard Glomm, Leonid Hurwicz, James Jordan, Ramon Marimon, Andrew McClennan, Ariel Rubinstein, and William Thomson.     

Instrument Insufficiency and Economic Stabilisation

Recently concerns have been raised in New Zealand about the effectiveness of monetary policy in controlling inflation while avoiding damage to the economy from high exchange rates. This review examines the basis for concern and identifies the problem as a failure in the primary instrument, namely the Reserve Bank's official cash rate, to adequately impact further along the term structure curve, which has become the more sensitive area for aggregate demand. Direct control over expenditure is therefore weak, and too much leeway is left to the housing and other asset markets to sustain demand in the economy. Globalisation of credit availability and financial technology have helped to blunt the policy instrument in this respect, shifting the adjustment burden on to the exchange rate. Deft management of interest and currency expectations can help, but the problem may require closer coordination and cooperation between monetary and fiscal policy, restoring a stabilisation role for the latter.     

An international comparison of the determinants of retail gross margins

In this paper we compare the results of applying a new economic framework for the analysis of retail gross margins to 1982 interindustry retail data for France, Germany, and the U.S. Use of the same theoretical framework and econometric methodology separately for each of the three bodies of data yields robust empirical regularities with respect to functional form and the role of distribution services in explaining retail gross margins. An interesting feature of these results is that they arise despite substantial differences in classification and in the retail environment of the three countries.We thank E. Hoffnar and P. MacNeill for excellent research assistance. We acknowledge the financial support of INSEAD's R&D department for project R2135. We also thank the CSC at Maryland for support. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the MIT Northeast Marketing Colloquium, the Simon Graduate School of Management at the University of Rochester, the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, the Yale School of Organization and Management, the School of Business Administration at the University of Washington, and the Bureau of Economics of the Federal Trade Commission. We thank the participants in these seminars for their constructive criticisms. We are especially indebted to Peter Rossi of the University of Chicago, who provided us with helpful written comments, and to Herr Krockow of the Statistisches Bundesamt Wiesbaden, who provided us with unpublished data.     

Buyer and seller perceptions of transportation purchasing variables

The study in this article involved the investigation of 15 carrier selection variables over three dimensions by three groups with high involvement in the purchasing decision—traffic managers, sales representatives, and sales managers. The primary focus of the study was the identification of significant differences in the assessment of importance of the technical abilities of a carrier, the service orientation of a carrier and the image of a carrier as perceived by sales managers and sales representatives representing the selling systems, and traffic managers representing the buying systems.     

The Information Content of Management's Prospective Comments in Financially Distressed Companies: A Note

Prior research revealed management's prospective comments (MPCs) in annual reports to be informative with respect to companies' future performance. As the finding was derived from analyses of random samples of companies, it is not known whether it is generalizable to companies that are experiencing financial distress. This study investigates whether disclosure of MPCs in the annual reports of companies experiencing financial distress is informative with regard to their future viability. The MPCs of 140 Australian public companies that had experienced significant losses were identified and then categorized as optimistic, pessimistic, mixed or no MPCs. Results from logistic regression analysis indicate that such MPCs provided information incremental to that contained in historical financial information about companies' future viability. It was also found that, while companies that did not disclose any MPCs were more likely to fail than companies that disclosed optimistic MPCs, they were as likely to fail as companies that disclosed pessimistic or mixed MPCs. This suggests that financially distressed companies avoid disclosing MPCs in the absence of an optimistic outlook, a finding that supports Darrough and Stoughton's (1990) theory of selective disclosure.     

Research Methods for Examining Independence Issues: Experimental and Economics-of-Auditing Approaches

Recent corporate failures in Australia and overseas have led many to question both the perceived and actual independence of auditors. We believe that it is unlikely that there is a general lack of independence among auditors or, at the other extreme, that there have been no breaches of independence. We suggest the need for research on factors that affect lack of actual independence. Research is also required on what factors affect independence as perceived by users of accounting reports. This paper outlines the research methods issues in the design of such studies.     

The coverage assignments of financial analysts

Previous studies document that forecast accuracy impacts analyst career outcomes. This paper investigates the influence of forecast accuracy on coverage assignments. I show that brokerage houses reward accurate analysts by assigning them to high-profile firms and penalise analysts exhibiting poor accuracy by assigning them to smaller firms. The coverage of high-profile firms increases the potential for future compensation linked to investment banking and trading commissions. In addition, covering such firms increases analysts' recognition from buy-side investors, which, in turn, increases the likelihood of obtaining broker votes and votes for the Institutional Investor star ranking. Overall, my results indicate that high forecast accuracy leads to increased future compensation.