Government Bias in Education,Schooling Attainment,and Long‐Run Growth

A surprising cross‐country stylized fact is that higher public spending on education tends to lower the long‐run growth rate of per capita GDP and the returns to schooling. This is contrary to the conventional wisdom that education is a major driver of growth. In this article, we revisit this issue and try to understand these puzzling facts in terms of an endogenous growth model. Our cross‐country calibration of the growth model predicts that countries with a greater government involvement in education experience lower schooling efforts and lower growth.     

Capturing the risk premium of commodity futures: The role of hedging pressure

We construct long–short factor mimicking portfolios that capture the hedging pressure risk premium of commodity futures. We consider single sorts based on the open interests of hedgers or speculators, as well as double sorts based on both positions. The long–short hedging pressure portfolios are priced cross-sectionally and present Sharpe ratios that systematically exceed those of long-only benchmarks. Further tests show that the hedging pressure risk premiums rise with the volatility of commodity futures markets and that the predictive power of hedging pressure over cross-sectional commodity futures returns is different from the previously documented forecasting power of past returns and the slope of the term structure.     

The Structure and Growth of the Credit Union Industry in the United states: Meeting Challenges of the Market

A bstract . Credit Unions in the United States have grown significantly in recent years. This paper identifies and analyzes the unique characteristics of the credit union industry contributing to this growth. The consolidation of smaller institutions and product diversification among larger credit unions in the environment of financial deregulation in recent years has resulted in enhanced services for credit union members. The industry is expected to continue its growth in membership and assets relative to other depository intermediaries.     

Cardinal utility, utilitarianism, and a class of invariance axioms in welfare analysis

This paper examines some problems of utility measurement and interpersonal comparisons. The following theorem is first established for real-valued mappings on a set of real numbers, B: If the closure of B is an interval, then such a mapping is positive affine iff it is a first-difference preserving transformation. This theorem is used to axiomatize cardinal utility. Standard invariance axioms in social choice theory are interpreted in an alternative framework and this gives new results in axiomatizing utilitarianism. It is shown that the conflict between utilitarianism and Rawlsianism arises, in some sense, earlier than traditionally supposed.     

Human resources roles: ideal versus practiced: a cross-country comparison among organizations in Asia

Human capital and its associated principles of talent management are sound platforms on which to leverage a company's fundamental resources to attain corporate goals. Unfortunately, the importance of human resource management (HRM) within organizations is often overlooked. The fundamental problem observed by many researchers in the HRM field is the discrepancy between what are considered ideal HRM roles and what is actually practiced by HRM managers. To understand the current human resource (HR) philosophy and the specific roles practiced by HR professionals among Asian companies, a survey was conducted with 377 HR managers in four Asian countries – India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Our research has shown and, hence, reiterated the sense that there are considerable differences between the current HR functions as practiced and the ideal HR functions, as indicated by the survey respondents. In addition, the survey results have identified significant differences among countries, especially in areas such as strategic practices and the roles of HR managers. Differences between practice and ideal in HR administration are also observed at different levels of management. It was also observed that differences among countries exist depending on the type of organization, the size of the organization, and whether the HR managers work for HR departments or for other functional departments.     

How Important are Earnings Announcements as an Information Source?

In a competitive information market, a single information source can only dominate other sources individually, not collectively. We explore whether earnings announcements constitute such a dominant source using Ball and Shivakumar's (2008) [How much new information is there in earnings?, Journal of Accounting Research, 2008, 46(5), pp. 975–1016] R ² metric: the proportion of the variation in annual returns explained by the four quarterly earnings announcement returns. We find that the earnings announcement days' R ² is 11% – higher than the corresponding R ² of days with dividend announcements, management forecasts, preannouncements, and 10-K and 10-Q filings and their amendments, and comparable to that of the four days with the largest realised absolute returns in a year. Additional analysis reveals that earnings announcements convey extreme bad news as often as management forecasts and preannouncements; for any other type of news, earnings announcements are much more frequent. We conclude that earnings announcements are an important source of new information in the equity market.     

Minimum Wage,International Migration And Their Effects On Welfare

This paper evaluates migration policies for an open economy in the presence of unemployment resulting from a minimum wage. Migration between countries is triggered by an expected wage differential which depends both on the market wage and the level of unemployment. Workers therefore can move in either direction. The paper shows that labor outflow raises employment and welfare. Distortion-ridden free trade with this out-migration is therefore better than distortion-ridden free trade with no migration. It might also be better than autarky. Under the scenario, free migration is an alternative to restricted trade often recommended to deal with this type of distortion. Labor inflow on the other hand generates unfavorable terms of trade, raises national and global unemployment, and reduces welfare. [F 2]     

Interactive influence of genre familiarity,star power,and critics' reviews in the cultural goods industry: The case of motion pictures

Academic research pertaining to the marketing of cultural products such as Broadway shows, books, music, and movies has identified a product's genre (or type), star power, and critics' reviews as important factors influencing the market performance of an individual product. Prior research, however, has not investigated the joint influences of these factors. The current study extends previous research by empirically investigating the managerially relevant interactive influences of these factors within the context of the motion‐picture industry. For example, should producers of more familiar genre movies, such as dramas and comedies, feature popular, but expensive, stars? Real‐world data from two distinct time periods are used to test the hypotheses. The findings are consistent across the two time periods and reveal that for more familiar genre movies, star power and the valence of critics' reviews have less impact on the movie's performance in the market. In contrast, for the less familiar genre movies, stronger (vs. weaker) star power and more (vs. less) positive reviews have positive influence on the market performance. Further, for movies with less star power, the valence of critics' reviews has no impact on the performance. In contrast, for movies with greater star power, more (less) positive reviews have positive (negative) influence on movie performance. Managerial and theoretical implications, along with limitations of the findings and directions for future research, are offered. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.