Does access to tutorial solutions enhance student performance? Evidence from an accounting course

Deciding whether to release tutorial solutions to students is quite often a dilemma for instructors. This paper provides empirical evidence on the effect of releasing tutorial solutions in a management accounting course at a large Australian university. For this purpose, this paper develops a base model for predicting performance in the course and expands the model to incorporate a variable capturing the release of tutorial solutions. Consistent with previous research (e.g. Doran et al., 1991; Danko‐McGhee and Duke, 1992; Kavanagh and Rohde, 1996), in the base model, although performances in an introductory accounting course and the mid‐semester test were found to be good predictors of performance in the final examination, evidence on the role of gender and age was weak. In the expanded model, there was no evidence that releasing tutorial solutions improved performance in the final examination. The findings of this paper have policy implications for educators and administrators in education in deciding whether to release tutorial solutions to students.     

How does the flow of remittances affect the trade balance of the Middle East and North Africa?

ABSTRACT

The Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) economies have one of the highest degrees of dependency on received remittances worldwide. In this study, we have examined the role of remittances in the trade balance of 11 labour abundant MENA countries. Our panel regression analysis showed that the inflow of remittances has fostered the trade deficit. We also found that the final effect of remittances depends on the level of domestic capital formation. The results are robust after controlling for other drivers of trade deficit such as income, inflation, exchange rate and institutions as well as country and year fixed effects.     

A fuzzy-based roadmapping model for enhancing high-tech small firms’ technological entrepreneurship capabilities: cases of Iran

ABSTRACT

Technology-based firms need to survive via technological changes. Technological entrepreneurship is concentrated on identifying and exploiting the tech-opportunities for creating product innovation. This paper introduces a fuzzy-based tool to promote innovation throughout firms in order to enhance technological entrepreneurship capabilities (TEC). The effort involves identifying components of TEC to develop the inference system, specifying the fuzzy relationship among these components, assessing the TEC in firms, and designing a TEC roadmap after a fuzzy-based gap analysis. Designed roadmaps introduce technological change priorities as a growth path to firms to move up along the ladder of competitiveness. Based on the results, a method for categorizing firms into four distinct levels that involve passive, reactive, proactive and innovative is introduced. Hence, firms have an action plan to enhance TEC from passive to innovative level in a time-based transition pathway.     

North–South Trade Liberalization and Economic Welfare

We consider a general equilibrium model of a developing economy (the South) that opens to trade with a developed economy (the North). The southern economy is characterized by open urban unemployment and rural–urban migration, a competitive agricultural sector and a monopolistically competitive manufacturing sector. Hence, there is potential for both inter‐ and intra‐industry trade to arise on liberalization, in addition to distortionary effects of duality. Southern comparative advantage in agriculture may arise from the labor market distortion and the basis for intra‐industry trade is love for variety. We characterize various configurations of the trade pattern, and the resulting welfare consequences of opening to trade in this context. We illustrate a new mechanism under which in some circumstances it may be possible for trade liberalization to lower economic welfare in the South.     

Revisiting the paradox of whether retail buyers behave more like consumers or industrial purchasers: the case of price discounts

Marketing Letters - A long-lasting debate in marketing literature is whether retail buyers who purchase consumer products behave like consumers or like industrial purchasing managers. We address...     

Does terrorism reduce life satisfaction?

We study the effect of terrorism on life satisfaction for a sample of 81 countries over the 1994–2009 period. We find that terrorism is robustly associated with less life satisfaction. This effect, however, translates into only modest social costs.     

Capital specificity,imperfect labor mobility and growth in developing economies

Labor markets in developing economies may be afflicted by a multiplicity of interacting distortions. We consider a general equilibrium model of an economy distorted by both sector-specific sticky wages and imperfect mobility of labor. In this framework, we contrast the implications of capital accumulation in the short and long run. We show that, in contrast to both the case in the absence of a sector-specific sticky wage and the case in the absence of imperfect labor mobility, the short and long-run effects of growth on the economic system converge as the degree of labor mobility is limited.     

Partial Compliance with Economic Sanctions

By bridging the gap between the strategic model of sanctions and the public choice framework of sanctions, the authors introduce a new sanctions game. Contrary to an earlier finding, they show that the partial compliance of the target country, along with mild sanctions, are not only an equilibrium outcome, but also Pareto superior to non-compliance and tough economic sanctions.     

Gender Dimensions to the Incidence of Tariff Liberalization

Abstract: This paper evaluates a topic in the globalization and poverty debate that is often difficult to measure, namely the transmission of price changes associated with tariff liberalization to households. Furthermore, it raises the question of whether there are discernible differences between male‐ and female‐headed households that affect this consumption‐trade link. It is a partial analysis as a consequence, but one that demonstrates the importance of such a focus for continued research and policy development surrounding the impacts of globalization. Specifically, the paper evaluates how tariff changes impacted male‐ and female‐headed households in South Africa over the discrete periods 1995, 2000, and 2004. The analysis of consumption trends by sex of household head shows statistically significant differences which confirm that resources are managed differently between the sexes, and these are transmitted through to the tariff incidence analysis. On the whole, it was found that: (1) male‐headed households almost always bear a greater share of the tariff incidence compared to female‐headed; (2) both male‐ and female‐headed households — across all expenditure quantiles other than the most wealthy — bear a greater share of the tariff burden compared to their share of total expenditure; and (3) changes to the incidence over 1995, 2000, and 2004 between the sexes mimicked the trends for the population as a whole, but showed crucial differences at the bottom end of the expenditure distribution. This suggests that the sex of the household head matters, and must be considered in addition to other household identifying factors (e.g. socio‐economic status) when evaluating the impacts of tariff liberalization.