Depreciation,investor compensation,and welfare under rate-of-return regulation

Depreciation schedules allocate capital expenditure over time. Investors are properly compensated under any full depreciation schedule, when the allowed rate of return plus inflation adjustments to the rate base just equal the investors' nominal discount rate. Whether changes in this nominal rate are reflected in adjustments to the rate base or the rate of return, depreciation schedules can be chosen to generate efficient time paths of output prices. Practical limits on depreciation schedules, nominal rates, or information may affect the choice between adjusting the rate base or rate of return for temporal changes in capital cost.     

ECONOMIC FREEDOM AND INCOME LEVELS ACROSS U.S. STATES: A SPATIAL PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

There is a large literature estimating the effect of economic freedom on economic growth or income levels. Most studies examine the relationship between economic freedom and growth or income levels for countries, while a few examine the relationship for U.S. states. Absent in the state‐level literature is consideration of the presence of spatial spillovers affecting the freedom‐income relationship. Neglecting to account for spatial autocorrelation can bias estimation results and therefore inferences drawn. We find evidence of a spatial pattern in real per‐capita gross state product (GSP) that affects nonspatial estimates of the freedom‐income relationship. Taking into account the direct and indirect effects of economic freedom on real per‐capita GSP, we find a 10% increase in economic freedom is associated with a 5% increase in real per‐capita GSP. (JEL E02, O47, R11)     

Fighting Childhood Poverty: How a Universal Child Allowance Would Impact the U.S. Population

Modern developed economies have a material abundance beyond the imagination of people living two centuries ago, yet for many the guaranteed ability to access that material abundance is more tenuous than ever. In the United States, a job loss or an illness can strip the family of all assets faster than a drought could destroy the livelihood of a nineteenth-century farmer. As a reaction to this, many young adults are choosing to delay or forego having children. The largest age demographic in the United States who live in poverty are children. Social Security is politically popular and has been successful at dramatically lowering poverty amongst the elderly. A similar policy could be equally successful for children. This article uses Consumer Expenditure Survey data to explore how a universal child allowance could decrease the number of children living in poverty and help all U.S. families with children.     

Infant mortality decline in rural and urban Bavaria: fertility,economic transformation,infant care,and inequality in Bavaria and Munich, 1825–1910†

During most of the nineteenth century, Bavaria was notorious for infant mortality rates that were among the highest in Europe. After 1870, infant mortality in Bavaria began a sustained decline. This decline, which was impressive in urban areas, was even more dramatic in Bavaria's capital, Munich. From a peak of 40 deaths per 100 births in the 1860s, infant mortality had fallen two‐thirds by 1914. This article examines the causes of infant mortality in rural and urban districts of Bavaria from 1880 to 1910 and in Munich from 1825 up to shortly before the First World War. In rural Bavaria, structural change in agriculture lowered infant mortality, even as stark differences in infant survival driven by income gaps and deficient infant care remained. In urban areas, high fertility was strongly associated with high infant mortality. Individual‐level data from Munich reveal that infant care, fertility, and incomes mattered. Even prior to industrialization, occupational status influenced infant survival. Munich's growth into a leading industrial centre after 1875 apparently widened the gap between rich and poor. Families at the top of the occupational distribution and couples able to acquire real property saw the steepest declines in infant mortality. The poorest one‐third without property saw little improvement.     

Nonparticipation or Misspecification? The Impacts of Nonparticipation on Dichotomous Choice Contingent Valuation

Dichotomous choice (or Referendum) contingent valuation surveys have become the predominate choice for valuing goods and services otherwise not valued in a standard market (nonmarket goods and services). A number of researchers have recently recommended that dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies include a follow-up question to all no responses to determine whether the no response is a result of unwillingness to pay, or nonparticipation. If the goal of the study is to investigate the impact of covariates on either mean willingness to pay or the probability of nonparticipation, simple identification of indifferent individuals will not suffice. A simulation study shows that existing econometric models designed to account for nonparticipation are extremely sensitive to misspecification bias. Accurate identification of the probability of nonparticipation is hampered by potential misspecification of the distribution of willingness to pay.     

变革性无网点银行业务的监管:使用移动电话和其他技术增加金融服务的覆盖面(上)

世界银行扶贫协商小组(Consultative Group to Assist the Poor,CGAP)是世界银行下属的一家研究机构,致力于改善世界贫困人口的金融可获得性。经与CGAP协商,CGAP同意授权《西部金融》非排他性刊登其研究成果。本期特别选登了CGAP和英国国际发展部(DFID)联手,与世界700多家移动电话运营商组成的全球行业协会合作进行的互联网金融方面的研究成果。该文主要对发展中国家发展无网点银行业务的现状和监管情况进行了介绍,内容详细,并配有案例分析及监管政策评述,对我国互联网金融发展和监管具有重要的参考价值。     

Motivating faculty through transactional and transformational leadership strategies

The use of both transactional and transformational leadership strategies can have a tremendous impact on the dynamics of organizational agility and subsequent competitive advantage. For educational institutions, organizational agility refers to the ability of administration and faculty to identify, acknowledge, and adapt to factors important to academic quality, quality of instruction, and overall learning experiences. When it comes to motivating faculty performance, both transactional and transformational leadership styles are important. From a transactional perspective, faculty appreciate administrators who clearly communicate both university and departmental goals. For true motivation, administrators must seek to affect faculty on an intrinsic level where personal efficacy is raised through the successful accomplishment of objectives. A model for college steering committees and a specific faculty training program for sharper instructional focus are presented.     

A Citation Analysis of Business Ethics Research: A Global Perspective

The paper documents the post-war retrenchment and failure of the post-war British Consumer Co-operative Movement. In contrast to the general failure one CEO, Terry Thomas stands out both for his success in co-operative rebranding and returning to profitability the UK Co-operative Bank and because he alone amongst the top echelons of the Co-operative Groups Management based his strategies on a clearly articulated philosophy based on his understanding of the values and purpose of the co-operative movement rooted in its historical traditions grounded in the writings and achievements of Robert Owen, The paper goes on to provide a case study of the bank’s process of transformation from loss-making subsidiary to the first positive co-operative national brand in the post-war period of its history. The author argues that lack of appropriate vision based on the founding values and purposes of the Co-operative Movement is the principal reason for the management’s and governance failures that have beset the UK Co-operative Group. Instead of using the past to help in understanding the present and planning for the future, the UK Co-operative Group Leadership ignored it or worse used the past successes to congratulate itself and disguise its manifest failures. In this, they were supported by an uncritical Co-operative Union (later renamed Co-operatives UK). Davis argues large co-operatives cannot be managed by a civil service responsible to an elected board. Co-operatives need a servant-leadership model of professional management dedicated to the transformational goals set by the founders of the co-operative movement. This needs a radical rethink and promotion of co-operative management education and a dedicated executive recruitment that seeks out value-based professionals whose attitudes and values are compatible with Co-operative values, ownership and purpose.     

Market Orientation and CSR: Performance Implications

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become of great interest to both researchers and practitioners alike with much discussion on whether the costs outweigh the performance implications. CSR has become a firm strategic tool (not only an ethical concept) as firms recognize that the customer value proposition and CSR is integrated with the focus on how to differentiate the firm from the view of the customer. We utilized market orientation (MO) theory as our foundation for our research as it explains how organizations adapt to their customer environment to develop competitive advantages. With the current customer focus on CSR, MO assists the field in identifying a possible firm differentiation. Our research found that firms that ranked high on CSR correlated positively to performance. We also found our theoretically developed constructs of firm customer orientation (CO) and firm market orientation correlated with the firm adopting CSR. The results also indicated that CSR positively mediates CO and MO to firm performance. As past research had mixed results over the direct relation of MO to performance, our research suggests that CSR may be the missing variable to explain the MO/Performance relationship.