Author Index of Volume 8 2001

Authors Index

Author Index of Volume 8 2001     

Public Sympathy for O. J. Simpson

ABSTRACT This paper examines those factors affecting public attitudes about the O. J. Simpson trial and the American criminal justice system. The separate and combined effects of these factors–which include race, age, gender, income, and education–were estimated using a logit model. It was found that blacks were more likely than whites to be sympathetic to Simpson and to believe he was innocent of the crimes he was charged with. Older individuals, males, those with higher incomes, and those with more education were less likely to be sympathetic to Simpson and more likely to think he was guilty. Finally, it was found that blacks were more likely than whites to perceive that the criminal justice system is biased against blacks.     

Contents Volume 18 2001

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 18 2001     

Excess supply equilibria

This paper addresses a fundamental problem in economic theory: How can there be equilibria of the economic system where some commodity is in excess supply, yet that commodity's relative price shows no tendency to fall? Of course, the principal example of such a phenomenon is an economy experiencing a prolonged period of involuntary unemployment of the labor force during which there is no significant change in the real wage.In the following pages, I shall describe a two-commodity, general equilibrium model that has a continuum of unemployment equilibria, one for any given unemployment rate. The important feature of this model is that workers establish their wage rates in an attempt to maximize expected utility. The information upon which these wage setting decisions are based is provided by actual labor market transactions.Despite the voluntary nature of the wage setting decision, I shall argue that each equilibrium of this economy exhibits involuntary unemployment in the Keynesian sense. For there will always be another equilibrium with a lower real wage, a higher level of employment, and at which (at least when workers are risk neutral) each worker achieves a higher level of expected utility.     

The upgrading effect of voluntary export restraints

Summary Given that a volume-defined VER is introduced on two differently priced varieties of a good,(i) the transfer of the VER-rent to the exporting country will cause imports of both varieties to fall,(ii) the relative price change in favour of the high cost variety counteracts this import fall and could in fact outweigh it,(iii) an ad valorem tariff restoring the original relative price of the two varieties would increase welfare and that welfare increase could in fact outweigh the welfare loss due to the VER-transfer to the exporting country.     

Reading geopolitics beyond the state: organisational discourse in response to 11 September

This essay explores organizations in civil society as constituting an important sphere of social action in which alternative geopolitical worldviews are produced and disseminated beyond the state. The authors discuss the conceptual relationship between non-governmental organizations and the geopolitics pursued by states and also develop an appropriate methodological program to investigate organizational geopolitics. This is accomplished by employing critical discourse analysis methods in the examination of press releases made by notable civil society organizations in response to the events of 11 September. While most organizational responses condemned the attacks and expressed a shared sense of sympathy for the victims, there was considerable divergence in the preferred geopolitical and social response – ranging from restraint and tolerance to aggressive militarism. The findings suggest organizations are not only important sites of alternative geopolitical representations beyond the state, but may also serve to reproduce and re-circulate dominant statecentered geopolitical visions as well.     

First-author conditions: evidence from finance journal coauthorship

We study the trend and the author name-ordering rule in finance publication using the publication records of 21 core finance journals during the period from 1990 to 2004. We empirically model the underlying factors that affect the alphabetical ordering rule among multi-authored finance articles. We find that the choice of alphabetical ordering is based on the quality of the article, institutional heterogeneity, team size and cultural factors. The central argument rests upon the need to signal and the importance of signalling within the context of bargaining behaviour among coauthors. The probability of choosing alphabetical name ordering rule is associated with high article quality, higher ranked institutions, smaller research team and the presence of European authors.     

State competition in higher education: A race to the top,or a race to the bottom?

How does competition affect higher education? This paper explores this question for public and private universities. Theory indicates that competition can push higher education policy in one of two different directions. On the one hand, competition may increase spending. For states, this would occur if states treat higher education as developmental; for private universities this would occur if they view spending as a means to attract students and prestige. On the other hand, competition may decrease spending if states treat higher education spending as redistributive, and competition may decrease spending by private schools if lower spending enhances their ability to attract students with low tuition. To determine which of these perspectives is most valid, we examine higher education policy choices in the 1980s and 1990s. We find that states appear to act as if higher education funding is redistributive while private schools appear to compete more on the basis of tuition than spending. These results demonstrate the important effects competition and governance structure have on higher education.Received: August 2001, Accepted: May 2002, JEL Classification: I2, I22, H72, I3