All politics is local: The effect of fiscal and monetary constitutions on economic policy

The rules of behavior for the monetary authorities changed in 1933 and 1947 and the Fed temporarily changed its operating procedures in 1979, but these changes did not alter the fact that the monetary authorities serve as the agent of the fiscal authorities. On the fiscal side, a shift from a centralized process to one where Congress was composed of a set of individual entrepreneurs altered the fiscal focus from the national economy to one of localized interests. This change led to a more autoregressive and deficit-prone federal budget and changed the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy. It also elevated the status of monetary policy to the extent where financial markets react to every utterance from the monetary authorities.     

Consumer mobility and community tax bases : The financing of local public goods

In a model of economic ‘clubs’, size is fixed and members consuming a public good raise the question of composition; with whom would they rather consume? This depends on the way collective consumption is financed, and three results are proven With a poll tax, clubs must be homogeneous in income for all to be satisfied With a marginal benefit (Lindahl) tax, no consumer is ever satisfied with any composition; and with an income tax, at least one consumer in each club is always dissatisfied. Satisfaction implies there exists no club composition preferred to the existing one.     

Toward a Phylogenetic Reconstruction of Organizational Life

Synopsis Classification is an important activity that facilitates theory development in many academic disciplines. Scholars in fields such as organizational science, management science and economics and have long recognized that classification offers an approach for ordering and understanding the diversity of organizational taxa (groups of one or more similar organizational entities). However, even the most prominent organizational classifications have limited utility, as they tend to be shaped by a specific research bias, inadequate units of analysis and a standard neoclassical economic view that does not naturally accommodate the disequilibrium dynamics of modern competition. The result is a relatively large number of individual and unconnected organizational classifications, which tend to ignore the processes of change responsible for organizational diversity. Collectively they fail to provide any sort of universal system for ordering, compiling and presenting knowledge on organizational diversity. This paper has two purposes. First, it reviews the general status of the major theoretical approaches to biological and organizational classification and compares the methods and resulting classifications derived from each approach. Definitions of key terms and a discussion on the three principal schools of biological classification (evolutionary systematics, phenetics and cladistics) are included in this review. Second, this paper aims to encourage critical thinking and debate about the use of the cladistic classification approach for inferring and representing the historical relationships underpinning organizational diversity. This involves examining the feasibility of applying the logic of common ancestry to populations of organizations. Consequently, this paper is exploratory and preparatory in style, with illustrations and assertions concerning the study and classification of organizational diversity.     

The Effect of Respondent Experience/Knowledge in the Elicitation of Contingent Values: An Investigation of Convergent Validity,Procedural Invariance and Reliability

Tests of convergent validity and procedural invariance were used to investigate whether individuals lacking direct experience with a commodity can provide valid responses to contingent-valuation questions eliciting ex post use values. Convergent validity between samples with and without experience was shown to hold for dichotomous-choice responses, but not for open-ended responses.     

Strategic Firm Behavior Under Average-Revenue-Lagged Regulation

Price caps have been shown to have incentive properties superior to traditional rate of return regulation. Average-revenue-lagged regulation (ARL) is attractive in that steady-state prices are known to be efficient. We show that the ARL scheme can be manipulated by the firm so as to yield the unregulated global profit maximum. While tests exist that can provide the regulator with evidence of this strategic behavior, we also demonstrate that the unregulated global profit maximum will not be attainable if Laspeyres (L) regulation is employed.Jel classification: L43, L51I would like to thank Michael Crew and an anonymous referee for their extremely helpful suggestions.     

Income determination in market disequilibrium: The implications of spillover for the design of monetary policy

This paper specifies and analyzes a generalized disequilibrium macroeconomic model that explicitly includes the concept of spillover in nontatonnement financial and real markets. It is shown that the dynamic quantity and expenditure theories of income determination are special cases of the model which depend upon the degree of spillover from the bond to the commodity market. Simulation experiments designed to produce a vigorous monetary shock to the system clearly show that national product is very sensitive to the degree of spillover, and thus, the design of monetary policy within the context of gradual market clearing should consider the size of spillover.     

Politically stable pay-as-you-go pension systems: When the social-insurance budget is too small in a democracy

The essay analyzes in an overlapping-generations model, to which extent a pay-as-you-go pension system will be the outcome of majority voting, given specific institutional set-ups. Clearly, the vote of an active person depends on his expectations about how the present decision (i.e., his contribution) is linked to the future (i.e., his benefits), when he will be retired. In the paper we employ the assumption of a basic social contract where each active voter's future benefits are positively related to his contributions. It is shown that in this framework a steady-state with a positive (though lower than optimal) level of the pension system exists, even if a new majority decision about the system takes place every period.     

A framework for market-based organizational learning: Linking values, knowledge, and behavior

The authors review the concept of organizational learning and present a broad conceptual framework for its modeling. Within this framework, one specific process for market-based organizational learning is postulated. An empirical test of this model leads the authors to conclude that a more positive learning orientation (a value-based construct) will directly result in increased market information generation and dissemination (knowledge-based constructs), which, in turn, directly affects the degree to which an organization makes changes in its marketing strategies (a behavioral construct). Managerial implications are discussed. His research interests lie primarily in the areas of organizational information use and market-based organizational learning. His work has been published in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Business Research, andJournal of Marketing. His research interests include both individual and organizational learning. He has published in the areas of consumer decision making, advertising effectiveness, and market-based organizational learning. His research interests include organizational marketing and marketing channels. His work has been published in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Business Logistics, Journal of Purchasing and Materials Management, andJournal of Health Care Marketing.     

The “Iron Law of Paternalism” in Employee Grievances and Arbitration? A Comparison of Disciplinary and Nondisciplinary Cases

In the criminology literature, the iron law of paternalism suggests that women receive less serious sanctions in the judicial system. This examination of three years of grievance outcomes (n= 1216) and arbitration outcomes (n= 1146) tests this iron law in the context of organizational disciplinary and dispute resolutions. These data, across several levels of outcomes (win, lose, compromise), controlling for the severity of grievances (disciplinary/nondisciplinary) and arbitrations (termination/nontermination) provide no support for the paternalistic thesis. Moreover, we find no support for the paternalistic thesis with regard to either the incidence or length of suspensions as a function of gender.