Taxes,Tuition Fees,and Education for Pleasure

The fact that education provides both a productive and a consumptive (nonproductive) return has important and, in some cases, dramatic implications for optimal taxes and tuition fees. Using a simple model, we show that when the consumption share in education is endogenous and tuition fees are unconstrained, the optimal tax/fee system involves regressive income taxes and high tuition fees. A progressive labor income tax system may, on the other hand, be a second‐best response to politically constrained, low tuition fees. Finally, the existence of individuals with different abilities will also move the optimal income tax system toward progressivity.     

An exploratory study of organizational politics in Kuwait

Because politics is a way of life in organizations, organizational politics has been studied by several scholars over the past 40 years. Few studies, though, have examined organizational politics outside of the United States and Europe. This study is a further step toward closing that gap. In particular, we (1) examined the applicability of the Perceptions of Organizational Politics Scale (POPS) instrument in Kuwait, (2) examined the perceived existence of organizational politics in a public organization in Kuwait, and (3) sought to determine if perceptions of organizational politics seemed to be influenced by the same variables in Kuwait as in Western societies. The study found that the perception of organizational politics is relatively strong and that the POPS instrument was applicable in the Kuwaiti culture and could lead to an expanded understanding of organizational politics. The gender of the respondents, their tenure, and their current positions had some influence on perceptions of organizational politics. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Behaviours and entrepreneurial intention: Empirical findings about secondary students

This paper aims to identify some factors that may be explaining differences among secondary students in start-up intentions. For that, the study develops an entrepreneurial intention model sustained by the use of Azjen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour (TBP). Using a sample of students aged between 14 and 15 years old, a questionnaire based on the Li?án and Chen’s Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire was administrated. The purpose is to test a model of entrepreneurial intention using structural equations. The findings point that TPB is an appropriate tool to model the development of entrepreneurial intention through pedagogical processes and learning contexts. The education and training should centre itself much more in changing personal attitudes than in knowledge. Moreover, it is desirable that an entrepreneurship educational programme could contribute to the development of competences related to entrepreneurship, social and civic skills, and cultural awareness.     

Trying to complain: the impact of self‐referencing on complaining intentions

This paper introduces the Theory of Trying to complaining behaviour, and argues that complaining intentions can be explained by the model. Moreover, we model propensity to self‐reference (SR) as a moderating variable, and suggest that the effects of the causes to complaining intentions depend on the SR‐level held by consumers. A sample of undergraduate business students participated in the study, where the goal was to get a better understanding of complaining intentions. Our study provides new and additional insights in the drivers of complaining by also taking dispositional personality differences into consideration. The results demonstrate that boundary conditions for main‐effect models like the theory of trying can be fruitfully addressed through the notion of individual differences. The research documented that customers' propensity to complain systematically differed as a function of their level of self‐referencing. This is both good and bad news to managers. The good news is that a proportion of the customers rely less on their previous experiences in the complaining domain when they form intentions to complain. The bad news is that some others do. The obstacle is that managers cannot tell by the look if they are talking to an individual with high or low propensity to self‐reference. As the customer base contains both types case could be taken in designing marketing communication campaigns that target the groups differently.     

The role of intellectual capital in the success of new ventures

Identifying the factors that contribute to the success of new ventures is a difficult and challenging task. In that respect, this paper proposes an analysis of the intellectual capital within new business ventures. Based on the study of a sample of 130 new companies, for the purpose of this work we have analysed the influence of the proposed intangible assets on the success of newly-created organizations, acknowledging the key role of the human and relational capital in the first few years of the life of the business.     

New Keynesian Phillips Curve and inflation dynamics in Australia

The New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) was developed as a response to the New Classical critique that Keynesian macroeconomics lacked micro-foundations. The NKPC provides theoretical micro-foundations that attempt to explain, inter alia, nominal rigidities and, explicitly price stickiness. This paper investigates the validity of the NKPC for Australia. In contrast to the findings for the USA and Euro area, we find that neither the output gap nor marginal cost appears to be a key driving force variable across different set of instruments and estimators (GMM and 2SLS) over the sample period from 1959 to 2009. The flattening of the NKPC along with significant presence of price stickiness is also found in the data. In particular, the reduced form coefficients and implied estimates from the structural parameters of the model support the view that inflation dynamics are forward looking while the role of lagged inflation is also statistically important only after 1980s. However, we claim that the forward looking baseline NKPC contrary to the hybrid NKPC is stable and better explains inflation dynamics for the Australian economy.     

Simultaneous versus sequential information processing

Subjects update prior information simultaneously versus sequentially. The mean prediction is remarkably close to the correct Bayesian estimate with simultaneous information, but differs significantly conditional on whether good news precedes bad news or vice versa.     

A simple method for estimating unconditional heterogeneity distributions in correlated random effects models

I propose a general, simple approach to recovering an unconditional heterogeneity distribution when a conditional distribution has been estimated. The approach can be applied to cross section models and panel data models-both static and dynamic-with unobserved heterogeneity.     

Valuing improved hurricane forecasts

The value to households of improved hurricane forecasts is estimated from a pilot survey using discrete choice econometric methods. Each household is willing to pay approximately $13 for improvements in forecast attributes such as landfall time and position, wind speed, and storm surge.     

Endowment effects in contests

We experimentally study overbidding in contests and find that overbidding is significantly higher when subjects are given a large per-experiment endowment rather than when the endowment is given per-period. Risk-aversion and non-monetary utility of winning can partially explain our findings.