Freedom,barriers to entry,entrepreneurship, and economic progress

While entrepreneurs benefit from unrestricted free entry into markets, they have a time-inconsistent incentive to lobby for government entry restrictions once they become successful. Bad political institutions yield to these demands, and growing barriers are placed on domestic and international competition. Good institutions do not, and this effort is instead channeled toward further wealth creation. We find that productive entrepreneurship depends on both the freedom to succeed and discipline of failure that free markets provide. Trade barriers result in fewer combinations of goods and inputs attempted, and less productive entrepreneurial resource use. We also provide evidence on the value of business failure.

Surviving an executive MBA 'riot'

UK higher education institutes (HEIs) have widened participation of students from non-traditional backgrounds. These include students who are aged over 21, students in paid employment, and those with non-traditional qualifications, perhaps from other countries or access courses. This has led to a need to explore factors that might impact upon the learning of such students. A greater understanding of such factors might better enable HEIs to provide all students with opportunities to study accounting. The participants in this study are first year students studying accounting at a post-1992 UK university, which has a high proportion of students from non-traditional backgrounds. A series of interviews with such students and the lecturers who teach them explores what engages and what detaches them from learning when studying accounting. The study suggests factors, such as employment and other commitments away from university and the student's relationship with the university, which might impact on how students engage in learning. The Note discusses the findings with reference to Lucas's (2003, A National Teaching Fellowship Project: Introductory accounting: Achieving relevance interest and understanding, available at: http://www.uwe.ac.uk/bbs/research/research/ntfs/Jan03.pdf accessed 21 August 2004) call for research in the area to be more qualitative and Reay et al's. (2001) Sociological Research Online, 5(4), consideration of Bourdieu's concept of institutional habitus and its influence on HEIs.     

Treatment patterns and predictors of costs among patients with migraine: evidence from the United States medical expenditure panel survey

Abstract

Aim: Within a treated migraine population, to evaluate if the sub-group meeting criteria for high disease-specific total costs is significantly different to the sub-group with medium and/or low-costs, and to identify the associated risk factors.

Methods: Data from the Household Component of Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-HC, 2008–2012), a nationally representative survey of non-institutionalized civilians in the US, were analyzed. Key inclusion criteria were migraine diagnosis (ICD-9 code: 346.XX) and prescribed treatment for migraine. Patients were categorized into high (>top 10th percentile), low (<bottom 10th percentile), and medium (between high and low) cost sub-groups per migraine-specific total costs. Logistic regression models were applied to identify predictors of high vs medium and medium vs low-costs. Preventive eligibility, defined as (i) past/current use of migraine preventives or (ii) overuse of acute medications, was compared to non-preventive eligibility.

Results: Within the treated migraine cohort (n?=?1,735), the mean age was 39?years, 80% were female, and the majority were in the medium-cost sub-group (n?=?1,360) (low-cost n?=?190, high-cost n?=?195). Significant predictors of high vs medium-costs were low SF-12 Physical Composite Scores (OR?=?0.95; 95% CI?=?0.92–0.97), low SF-6D health utility index scores (OR?=?0.019; 95% CI?=?0.002–0.193), preventive eligibility-i (OR?=?0.019; 95% CI?=?0.002–0.193), and preventive-eligibility-ii (OR?=?3.10; 95% CI?=?1.62–5.91). Statistically significant (p?<?0.05) predictors of medium vs low-costs included anxiety, Fleishman score, preventive-eligible-i, and preventive-eligible-ii.

Conclusions: Among patients treated for migraine, distinct characteristics, including patient-functioning measures and comorbidities, are predictive of high vs medium-costs, and medium vs low-costs. Preventive eligibility is a predictor of being in the higher cost sub-groups; however, preventive treatments that improve functioning and reduce acute medication use have the potential to reduce migraine-specific costs.

Limitations: The results are limited to a population that is diagnosed and treated for migraine. Over-the-counter medication use, and migraine headache frequency and severity were not captured.     

Fee or free checking? Noninterest checking account fees,competition and multimarket banking

This article analyses noninterest checking (NIC) account fees using a unique data set covering 11 875 observations on 1880 banks from 2008 to 2012. These data identify whether the bank has free or fee checking on NIC accounts and, where relevant, the fee and minimum balance to avoid the fee. Appealing to shrouded equilibrium theory, we hypothesize that banks, and particularly small banks, will avoid drawing the attention of myopic, low-income types by having stable policies, or will attempt to confuse depositors with contradictory policy shifts in the fee and minimum balance requirements. Competition and small bank size should favour consumers, but the meaning of ‘favour’ is complicated by large depositors and the banks subsidizing small depositors with NIC accounts.

The results support the avoid attention hypothesis, particularly for single-market banks, and weakly support the confuse depositors hypothesis. The largest banks, including three too big to fail banks, are most responsive to competition, with single-market banks far less responsive. Competition may be responsible for a dramatic decline in free checking among the largest banks, and substantial increases in minimum balances for those banks, since these effectively reduced subsidies. Simultaneously, single-market banks became more likely to offer free checking.     

Polarization of the worldwide distribution of productivity

We employ data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods to construct the world production frontier, which is in turn used to decompose (labor) productivity growth into components attributable to technological change (shift of the production frontier), efficiency change (movements toward or away from the frontier), physical capital deepening, and human capital accumulation over the 1965–2007 period. Using this decomposition, we provide new findings on the causes of polarization (the emergence of bimodality) and divergence (increased variance) of the world productivity distribution. First, unlike earlier studies, we find that efficiency change is the unique driver of the emergence of a second (higher) mode. Second, while earlier studies attributed the overall change in the distribution exclusively to physical capital accumulation, we find that technological change and human capital accumulation are also significant factors explaining this change in the distribution (most notably the emergence of a long right-hand tail). Robustness exercises indicate that these revisions of earlier findings are attributable to the addition of (more recent) years and a much greater number of countries included in our sample. We also check to see whether our results are changed by a correction for the downward bias in the DEA construction of the frontier, concluding that these corrections affect none of our major findings (essentially because the level correction roughly washes out in changes.)     

Financial Development,Capital Accumulation and Productivity Improvement: Evidence from China

Financial sector development may contribute to economic growth by facilitating capital accumulation and by improving productivity. This article investigates empirically the contribution that financial development may make to these two alternative drivers of economic growth in China using annual data for the period 1952 to 2005. Using cointegration and Granger-causality testing we examine the relationship between financial development and, respectively, capital accumulation and productivity in a time-series vector autoregression (VAR) framework. The substantive findings are that there is either bi-directional Granger causality between financial development and capital accumulation or that Granger causality runs from capital accumulation to financial development, depending on how capital accumulation and financial development are measured. The link between financial development and productivity is found to be statistically weak.     

The preparedness of companies to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards: Portuguese evidence

This paper uses ordinal regression, structural equation modelling, and multivariate analysis techniques to investigate the preparedness to adopt IFRS that was exhibited by listed Portuguese companies in August 2003. We find the level of preparedness was significantly associated with company size, commercial internationalization, audit by a ‘Big 4’ accounting firm, and profitability. Our findings will help to indicate the pre-conditions that are likely to spur lagging companies (and countries) to prepare to implement IFRS.     

Targeting wealthy donors: the dichotomous relationship of housing wealth with current and bequest giving

Identifying the charitable potential of current and prospective donors is a key component of successful fund‐raising, particularly in the areas of major gifts and planned giving. Previous research has provided support for the positive impact of two core financial factors, total wealth, and homeownership. Using data from the USA and Australia, this paper examines how the interaction of these two variables can generate negative effects on charitable giving. In particular, as the share of total wealth held in homeownership rises, both the likelihood and level of charitable giving falls. This relationship is consistent across current giving, planned bequest giving, and actual bequest giving and in both cross‐sectional and longitudinal models. These findings suggest that prospect research models incorporating asset type, as well as total wealth, may better predict likely donor potential. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Whistleblowing,Governance and Regulation Before the Financial Crisis: The Case of HBOS

Following the financial crisis of 2008, the Treasury Committee of the UK House of Commons undertook an inquiry into the lessons that might be learned from the banking crisis. Paul Moore, head of group regulatory risk at Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) during 2002–2005, provided evidence of his experience of questioning HBOS policies which resulted in his dismissal from HBOS. The problems that surfaced at HBOS during the financial crisis were so serious that it was forced to merge with Lloyds TSB, another UK bank, to form the Lloyds Banking Group in which the government took a significant stake. Moore’s evidence to the Treasury Committee revealed that long before the financial crisis, he had raised major concerns with the management of HBOS and with the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the UK financial services regulator. Moore’s evidence led to the submission of further disclosures, replies and rejoinders as evidence to the Treasury Committee. Moore’s case is therefore of considerable interest to researchers of whistleblowing because it is a rare instance of high-level whistleblowing, the details of which subsequently entered the public domain. The information revealed in evidence to the Treasury Committee sheds light on the process of whistleblowing in the context of the governance and regulation of a major UK bank that subsequently had to be rescued by government intervention during the financial crisis. The paper makes a contribution to the wider literature on whistleblowing, and to a greater understanding of aspects of the financial crisis.     

Thin-slicing Tremé as a subjective sashay: heretical pilgrimages to St. Augustine Catholic Church

ABSTRACT

Five heretical field researchers celebrate human subjectivity in a fractured journey toward St. Augustine Catholic Church in the heart of Tremé in September 2015. They populate their diverse pentagonal thoughts with Mary Douglas’ negotiated concepts of purity and pollution, rituals and symbols as a counterweight in their backpacks. Some are inspired by the theatrical mythologies of the guides who take them there, others are stopped in their track by the residual devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Some stop to wonder at Nicolas Cage’s future resting place, others line up at food-trucks to add smells and taste to Tremé’s mediated precreation. Some frame it as a battle ground of past and present injustice, others acknowledge the strife inside the dirty tourist. The thin-sliced meanings acquired on the boulevards to St. Augustine Catholic Church provide a touch of truthfulness, in the idiosyncratic segments, and the spirited spaces in between.