Motives behind willingness to pay for improving biodiversity in a water ecosystem: Economics, ethics and social psychology

This paper reports on empirical work extending the standard economic approach to valuation by including psychological and philosophical factors. More specifically a contingent valuation method survey was applied to biodiversity improvement while simultaneously assessing rights based beliefs, consequentialism and the theory of planned behaviour. The latter was assessed using measures of attitudes, subjective norms and perceptions of control over willingness to pay. The results show that standard socio-economic explanatory variables are far inferior to those of social psychology and philosophy, and that these factors offer a better understanding of the motives behind responses to contingent valuation. The implication is that alternative means of measuring an individual's pluralistic values should be taken into account in order to assess the validity and meaning of willingness to pay.     

Do female and ethnically diverse executives endure inequity in the CEO position or do they benefit from their minority status? An empirical examination

We present competing hypotheses regarding whether gender and ethnic minority CEOs endure inequities resulting in lower compensation and higher likelihood of job exit or benefit from their valuable, rare, and inimitable minority status, resulting in higher compensation and lower likelihood of job exit. Using a longitudinal sample, we find support for the resource‐based hypothesis regarding compensation that suggests CEOs benefit from their minority status to receive higher compensation than white male CEOs receive. However, we also find mixed support for our hypotheses relating CEO minority status to the likelihood of exit. We find that the effects of minority status on likelihood of exit are significantly different for female and ethnic minority CEOs such that the former relationship is negative while the latter is positive. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Housing differences in the late Soviet city: the case of Tartu,Estonia

Research on the residential and housing differences of urban populations in post‐second world war Central and Eastern Europe has a tradition extending back to the 1960s. Most studies have focused on the Polish, Czech and Hungarian (large) cities using aggregatelevel data and testing simultaneously the impact of a few factors on residential and housing differences. This research clarifies the housing differences in the late Soviet era of Tartu (the second largest city in Estonia). Using the individual‐level data of the 1989 Soviet census and multivariate methods, the article demonstrates that several factors (age, education, occupation, employment sector, ethnic origin, place of origin) shape the individual's housing and living conditions in the late Soviet period in Tartu. On the one hand, the results support the importance of the policy of different institutions (state, enterprises) in shaping people's living conditions; on the other hand, they also point to people's resources and desires as the cause.     

Identifying Outliers in Multi-Output Models

A firm may be different from other firms either in terms of the mix or scale of its input-output vector. This paper develops separate mix and scale measures of dissimilarity, and shows that these can be additively aggregated into a measure of absolute dissimilarity. The mix measure is particularly relevant in the context of frontier analysis since it will identify the firms that exert the most influence on the resulting efficiency scores.     

Assessment of the equivalence of conventional versus computer administration of the Test of Workplace Essential Skills

This study examined the equivalency of computer and conventional versions of the Test of Workplace Essential Skills (TOWES), a test of adult literacy skills in Reading Text, Document Use and Numeracy. Seventy‐three college students completed the computer version, and their scores were compared with those who had taken the test in the conventional paper‐and‐pencil mode. Scores for the two groups for all three subscales were equivalent based on their means and variances. Rank order equivalency was demonstrated for two of the three TOWES subscales (Reading Text and Document Use). Additionally, participants rated the computer version of the test as easy to use.     

Book Reviews

Francois Ruf and P.S. Siswoputantro (eds), Cocoa Cycles: The Economics of Cocoa Supply, Woodhead Publishing, Ltd, Cambridge UK, 1995, pp. xi + 384.

Rainer Rohdewohld, Public Administration in Indonesia, MONTECH (Monash University), Melbourne, 1995, pp. 179 + x, npg.

Colin Brown (ed.), Indonesia: Dealing with a Neighbour, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1996, pp. xiii + 202.

Thomas P. Tomich, Peter Kilby and Bruce F. Johnston, Transforming Agrarian Economies: Opportunities Seized, Opportunities Missed, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1995, pp. xx + 474, Paper.

T, van Rheenen, Quantifying Farming Systems: A Multiple Optimization Approach: A Case Study in the Limestone Area of East Java, Mansholt Studies 6, Wageningen Agricultural University, Wageningen, 1996, pp ix + 145, Paper.     

Book Reviews

Jim Schiller and Barbara Martin-Schiller (eds), Imagining Indonesia: Cultural Politics and Political Culture, Ohio University Centre for International Studies, Monographs in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series no. 97, Athens, Ohio, 1997, pp. xxiii + 351. US$30.00; £28.50

Bisuk Siahaan, Industrialisasi di Indonesia sejak Hutang Kehormatan sampai Banting Stir [Industrialisation in Indonesia from the Debt of Honour to the Change in Course], Pustaka Data, Jakarta, 1996, pp. xiv + 563 npg

J.Th Lindblad (ed.), Historical Foundations of a National Economy in Indonesia, 1890s–1990s, North-Holland and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, 1996, pp viii + 427. Dfl 95.‐.

Sven Cederroth, Survival and Profit in Rural Java: The Case of an East Javanese Village, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series No 63, Curzon Press, Richmond, 1995, pp. xi + 301. npg.

R William Liddle, Leadership and Culture in Indonesian Politics, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, for ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series, 1996. A$34.95.

Julius Tahija, Horizons Beyond, ‘Entrepreneurs of Asia’ series, Times Books International, Singapore, 1995, pp. xiii + 280. npg.

Mayling Oey-Gardiner, Mildred Wagemann, Evelyn Suleeman and Sulastri (eds), Perempuan Indonesia- Duht dan Kini [Indonesian Women: The Past and The Present], PT Gramcdia Pustaka Utama, Jakarta, 1996, pp. xvii + 477.

George Faulkner, Business Indonesia: A Practical Insight into Doing Business in Indonesia, Business. & Professional Publishing, Sydney, 1995, pp. xviii + 158.     

Globalization and Poverty: Oxymoron or New Possibilities?

We examine the occurrence of ethics- related terms in 10-K annual reports over 1994–2006 and offer empirical observations on the conceptual framework of Erhard et al. (Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics, and Legality (Harvard Business School, Harvard) 2007). We use a pre-Sarbanes-Oxley sample subset to compare the occurrence of ethics-related terms in our 10-K data with samples from other studies that consider virtue-related phenomena. We find that firms using ethics-related terms are more likely to be “sin” stocks, are more likely to be the object of class action lawsuits, and are more likely to score poorly on measures of corporate governance. The consistency of our results across these alternative measures of ethical behavior suggests that managers who portray their firm as “ethical” in 10-K reports are more likely to be systematically misleading the public. These results are consistent with the integrity-performance paradox.