The Role of Narcissistic Hypocrisy in the Development of Accounting Estimates

In an experiment including experienced managers, we investigate how supervisor and subordinate narcissism influence a supervisor's review of a subordinate's accounting estimate. While narcissistic supervisors express greater liking for narcissistic subordinates (narcissistic tolerance), they nonetheless reject and revise the accounting estimates of narcissistic subordinates to a greater extent than they reject estimates of non-narcissistic subordinates (narcissistic hypocrisy), even when doing so inhibits the supervisor's ability to reach a profit target. Our findings contribute to extant research in accounting and psychology. We demonstrate that narcissistic hypocrisy extends beyond the evaluation of others and alters narcissists' willingness to rely on other narcissists in a meaningful financial reporting decision. We also find that narcissistic hypocrisy is robust across age, gender, and supervisory experience.     

A note on decomposing the Malmquist productivity index by means of subvector homotheticity

Summary. This paper introduces a decomposition of the Malmquist productivity index into component indexes. The motivation is to derive an analogue of the decomposition of the T?rnqvist index into productivity and quality change provided by Fixler and Zieschang (1992) to the Malmquist index. Since we employ no second order approximations, this decomposition requires additional structure, namely a generalized version of Shephard's (1970) inverse homotheticity, which we dub subvector homotheticity. We show that subvector homotheticity is necessary and sufficient for our decomposition. Received: July 10, 1998; revised version: August 11, 1999     

On the Determinants of School District Efficiency: Competition and Monitoring

A number of researchers have asserted that inefficiency in the U.S. school system arises from a lack of incentives for public schools to behave efficiently. This paper uses a Shephard input distance function to model educational production, and a switching-regressions estimation to explore the relationship between school district efficiency and two existing incentive mechanisms—competition and voter monitoring. We find evidence that ease of monitoring enhances both technical and allocative efficiency of urban school districts, and that increased competition reduces allocative inefficiency in communities above a competitive threshold. We find no evidence that competition is related to technical inefficiency.     

Preference Learning in Consecutive Experimental Auctions

This paper explores the origins of the strikingly high price premia paid for new food products in lab valuation exercises. Our experimental design distinguishes between two explanations of this phenomenon: novelty of the experimental experience versus the novelty of the good, i.e., preference learning—bids reflect a person's desire to learn how an unfamiliar good fits into their preference set. Subjects bid in four consecutive experimental auctions for three goods that vary in familiarity, candy bars, mangos, and irradiated meat. Our results suggest that preference learning is the main source of the high premia, and that novelty of the experimental experience does not in itself artificially inflate valuations.     

Talking Your Way into Entrepreneurial Support: An Analysis of Satisfaction Drivers in Entrepreneur Mutual Aid Groups

The role of organized peer networks in entrepreneurial support systems has been surprisingly neglected in the literature, despite their undisputed effectiveness in numerous areas outside the entrepreneurship realm. This study explores the efficacy of mutual aid groups for entrepreneurial support, as theoretically distinct from other group‐based mechanisms (such as peer group mentoring and many to one group mentoring). Drawing from respondent data of small, local mutual aid groups within the global entrepreneurship support organization (2,869 responses from members of 540 groups worldwide), we investigate the factors determining the entrepreneurs' satisfaction with the entrepreneur mutual aid groups. Understanding the antecedents of members' subjective satisfaction with the group serves an essential first step toward developing the models explaining the objective effectiveness of these organizations (e.g., performance, survival, and growth), in that the former is an essential, necessary condition for continuing participation in the voluntary mutual aid groups. Our analysis reveals that group climate and leadership are important drivers of group satisfaction.     

Livestock Revenue Insurance

This study outlines several possible structures for livestock revenue insurance. The policies take the form of an exotic option, an Asian basket option. The actuarially fair premiums for these policies are equal to the prices of the options they represent. Because of the complexity of pricing Asian basket options, we combined two techniques for pricing options to reach the actuarially fair premiums. Projected premiums, producer welfare, and program efficiency are evaluated for the insurance products and existing market tools. Using efficiency ratios and certainty equivalent returns, we compare the insurance policies to strategies involving existing futures and options. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21:553–580, 2001