PRICE‐PARITY ADJUSTMENTS SHOULDN'T BE A TRADE SECRET: STATE‐LEVEL PRICE PARITY AND ASSESSMENT OF COVENANTS NOT TO COMPETE ENFORCEABILITY

This paper demonstrates the importance of making regional cost adjustments and questions the validity of papers using nationwide compensation to assess noncompete enforceability and other policies without regional price‐level adjustments. Numerous papers in recent years do not incorporate the cross‐sectional analog to inflation adjustments. Using the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parity (RPP) index, the results of a representative policy analysis study are analyzed with, and without, parity adjustment. We show that typical results demonstrating broad negative economic effects from noncompete covenants may be an artifact of using nominal, nonparity‐adjusted data. (JEL C18, R1, J31)     

Homogeneity pursuit in panel data models: Theory and application

This paper studies the estimation of a panel data model with latent structures where individuals can be classified into different groups with the slope parameters being homogeneous within the same group but heterogeneous across groups. To identify the unknown group structure of vector parameters, we design an algorithm called Panel‐CARDS. We show that it can identify the true group structure asymptotically and estimate the model parameters consistently at the same time. Simulations evaluate the performance and corroborate the asymptotic theory in several practical design settings. The empirical application reveals the heterogeneous grouping effect of income on democracy.     

Indigenous sport and heritage: Cherbourg's Ration Shed Museum

So much has been lost about the culture of Australia's Indigenous people. Their languages, traditions and heritage were dissipated under the process of white colonization from 1788. This paper investigates the actions of the people from Cherbourg, an Aboriginal settlement in southeast Queensland, Australia, to reclaim their culture, identity and heritage. The focus is specifically on the Ration Shed Museum (RSM), which officially opened in Cherbourg in 2004. The RSM is a particular type of Indigenous museum, a community museum, in which those who curate the museum are simultaneously its subjects. Through a combination of ideas drawn from new museology, critical heritage and cultural geography, the relationships between the three buildings of the museum – the Ration Shed, the Superintendent's Office and the Boys’ Dormitory – and the displays of sport are examined via the voices of Cherbourg people. The buildings evoke stories of surveillance, discipline, punishment and control and, in many ways, sport mirrors these features of life at Cherbourg. Importantly, however, sport functioned in a parallel capacity by creating identity: sporting achievements were symbols of pride, resilience and hope for Indigenous people.     

Looking back and wishing

Most chemical engineers discover soon after they enter the workplace that their preparation is lacking in one or more areas. They find themselves looking back and wishing that their education had been more complete. This article provides feedback to help students and faculty minimize the gaps in the chemical engineer's education.     

The impact of alternative operationalizations of industry structural elements on measures of performance for entrepreneurial manufacturing ventures

Using a sample of 115 manufacturing ventures, this study examined elements of industry structure which prior theory and research in the fields of industrial organization economics, strategic management, and entrepreneurship suggest are the most important structural characteristics of industries. Future researchers should carefully select the particular operationalization of industry structure as our research demonstrates that the influence of industry structural elements on measures of firm performance is strongly dependent upon the particular operationalization utilized. In addition, measures of industry structure were found to have a differential impact on alternative measures of firm performance, suggesting that different performance measures are not interchangeable proxies for one another. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An intelligent tutoring system for the accounting cycle: Enhancing textbook homework with artificial intelligence

This paper describes an electronic tutoring system, developed using principles of artificial intelligence (AI), to help students learn the accounting cycle. Unlike other educational technologies, the tutoring system provides instruction and feedback that is tailored to each individual student and addresses not only problem-solving outcomes but also problem-solving processes. To assess the effectiveness of the tutoring system, we administered a pre-test and then required students in a sophomore accounting course to use either the tutoring system or their textbook as a reference when journalizing transactions for a homework assignment. We then administered a post-test. A pre-post analysis showed that the tutor group’s test performance increased approximately 27% points, whereas the textbook group’s test performance improved by only 8% points. Implications of these findings for instructors and researchers are discussed.     

The Subprime Mortgage Calamity and the African American Woman

Many media and scholarly reports have focused on the subprime mortgage crisis and the resultant global financial meltdown. Most of the literature notes unequivocally that discrimination in the mortgage market has been, and remains, race-based and that it has damaged the African-American population disproportionately. This paper discusses the consequences of the subprime mortgage calamity and its negative impact on the Black community, women in general, and African-American women in particular. After controlling for individual, credit and housing characteristics, research shows that disparities in lending have persisted. Studies indicate that 63% of those given subprime mortgages qualified for prime mortgages. African-American females received the most high-cost loans and were over twice as likely to be given a subprime mortgage compared to White females. Moreover, African-American women were five times more likely to have received a subprime loan than similarly situated White males. Upper-income Black women were more often targeted for high-cost loans than lower-income women of color. As a result, the subprime mortgage crisis has precipitated an enormous loss of home equity and wealth among African-Americans that will affect generations to come.     

Terrorists’ Equilibrium Choices When No Attack Method is Riskless

This paper builds on Phillips (Defence and Peace Economics, 16(6), 403–414, 2009) and enhances the NM expected utility analysis of terroristic behaviour by drawing on the fact that expected utility maximising behaviour in a setting where a terroristic group makes optimal decisions from a choice set containing combinations of attack methods can be analysed in terms of two moments (mean and variance) of the random payoffs associated with each attack method combination. This paper presents an equilibrium relationship between the expected payoffs of attack method combinations and the risk associated with those payoffs. This is an equilibrium model of choice under uncertainty when the behaviour of interest is the selection by a terroristic group of an optimal decision from a choice set containing attack method combinations.