Geoeconomic Assumptions,Insecurity, and ‘Free’ Trade in Central America

The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) exemplifies interconnections and contradictions between geopolitical and geoeconomic agendas, including security, democracy, and resource marketing. Central American sovereignty is selectively weakened as states are increasingly dependent on the US and must synchronise governance with the expectations of their most important trade partner or risk becoming defendants in international tribunals. Salvadoran and Costa Rican governments have been accused of upholding environmental regulations that impede the profit-earning of multinational corporations, while the Guatemalan state was charged with violating domestic labour laws. Nevertheless, criminal behaviour and impunity are widespread across the region and seldom provoke US action. Five years after CAFTA's implementation, there is evidence of the erosion of democracy, repression of civil society, and uneven distribution of trade costs and benefits. These results have led some analysts to conclude CAFTA must be renegotiated, while others recommend human and labour rights protocols accompany free trade agreements.     

Deleveraging in a Highly Indebted Property Market: Who does it and are there Implications for Household Consumption?

A distinguishing feature of the period preceding the 2007/2008 financial crisis was the sizeable increase in private sector debt observed across many countries. A key component of household liabilities is mortgage debt and with many countries experiencing persistent increases in house prices from the mid‐1990s, a marked increase in this aspect of household leverage was observed. While aggregate statistics across countries confirm reductions in personal debt levels in recent years, relatively few sources of micro data are available to examine the nature of the deleveraging process at the household level. In this paper, using a unique dataset, we examine deleveraging amongst a representative sample of mortgaged Irish households. We identify the characteristics of households engaged in deleveraging and find that it is those households who can afford to deleverage who do. Furthermore we find some tentative evidence to suggest that the decision to deleverage has negative implications for household consumption.     

Postauditing capital assets and firm performance: An empirical investigation

The argument presented in this paper is that the adoption of sophisticated postaudit procedures should be associated with improved firm performance. Based on a matched-pair experimental design, utilizing the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test and a newly developed statistic to test for a change point, empirical evidence is provided to support this argument.     

Right-to-Work Laws and Geographic Differences in Living Costs: Comment

A bstract . M. Reynolds and M. Edwards , commenting on R. J. Cebula's study of geographic differences in living costs in states with Right-to-Work Laws , seek to extend his results and explore the relevance of alternative variables. Cebula, in reply, addresses the comment and re-estimates the living cost impact of such laws, taking into account additional factors. Even after allowing for additional South/non-South differences , Cebula reports, the original basic model is resilient.     

An analysis of technology,productivity, and regulatory distortion in the interstate natural gas transmission industry: 1977–1985

The purpose of this paper is to provide the first comprehensive firm level analysis of cost structures and production in the interstate pipeline industry during the transition from price regulation to partial deregulation, 1977–85. The regulatory changes during this period were numerous and complex. We do not attempt to isolate the impact of any single change in regulation; rather, we examine how the regulatory environment, as a whole, affected the industry. Our study is based on a newly constructed panel of twenty-four interstate pipeline firms. We give particular attention to the impact of output change, technical change, scale economies, and non-optimal input allocation on total factor productivity growth and the implication of the 1978 Natural Gas Policy Act partial price decontrol relative to total wellhead price decontrol for residential, commercial, utility, and industrial consumers of natural gas, and for the transport industry itself. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Agency Structure and Firm Culture: OSHA, EPA, and the Steel Industry

We compare models of Occupational Safety and Health Administration(OSHA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforcementand compliance for steel plants during the 1980s. We find thatOSHA and EPA respond similarly to plant-level compliance andmeasures of hazardousness, but differently to firm-level complianceand risks of plant closing, and we relate the differences tothe agencies' differing organizational structures. Plant-levelcompliance is affected by enforcement pressure, compliance costs,and the firm's overall compliance behavior in similar ways forthe two regulatory areas, but environmental compliance was alsosensitive to plant size and risk of closing. Finally, we findthat the likelihood that a plant was in compliance with oneagency seemed at most weakly related to whether it was in compliancewith the other, but that plants likely to receive enforcementattention from one agency were also more likely to receive enforcementattention from the other agency.     

Rationality of weather predictions and insurance purchases: testing the gambler’s and hot hand fallacies

Deviations from the rational behaviour assumed in many economic models have been found in a variety of settings. Two such deviations, the gambler’s and hot hand fallacies have been found in lab settings, as well as in consequential real-world decisions. Previous economic experiments have shown that the behaviour of professionals can differ from that of the general population. In this paper, we use data from two experiments conducted with a particular group of professionals who make yearly high-stakes decisions in the face of uncertain weather and market conditions: agricultural producers. In the experiments, participants were asked to make predictions about the coming year’s weather and market conditions and make decisions in a familiar decision context. Results indicate evidence of the gambler’s fallacy, such that participants were less likely to predict a good outcome if the previous outcome(s) were good. We also observe that participants were more likely to gamble if a previous gamble was successful, but find no impact on two successful gambles. These combined results indicate that even professionals with many years of experience can exhibit behaviours that deviate from those assumed by classical models.     

Demographics,personality, contact,and universal‐diverse orientation: An exploratory examination

This study explores relationships between race, gender, agreeableness, openness to experience, contact, and a measure of attitudes toward diversity—universal‐diverse orientation (UDO). UDO consists of three attitudinal components: realistic appreciation (a cognition), comfort with difference (a feeling), and diversity of contact (a behavior). Results suggest that race, agreeableness, and openness relate to UDO attitudes, primarily due to the relationships of these variables with the behavioral component—diversity of contact. Identifying characteristics of tolerant people (e.g., agreeableness) and training managers in skills related to those characteristics may improve contextual performance and make managers better role models within the organizational context. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.