Housing,mortgage bailout guarantees and the macro economy

What are the macroeconomic and distributional effects of government bailout guarantees for Government Sponsored Enterprises (e.g., Fannie Mae)? A model with heterogeneous, infinitely lived households and competitive housing and mortgage markets is constructed to evaluate this question. Households can default on their mortgages via foreclosure. The bailout guarantee is a tax-financed mortgage interest rate subsidy. Eliminating this subsidy leads to a large decline in mortgage origination and increases aggregate welfare by 0.5% in consumption equivalent variation, but has little effect on foreclosure rates and housing investment. The interest rate subsidy is a regressive policy: it hurts low-income and low-asset households.     

A Conversation with Kurt Rothschild

Kurt Rothschild was born in Vienna in 1914. In 1938 he came to Glasgow as a refugee from the Nazis, and taught there until his return to Austria in 1947. Between 1947 and 1966 he was a researcher at the Austrian Economic Research Institute in Vienna (WIFO), specialising in labour market and trade issues; he still works for WIFO as a consultant. From 1966 until 1985 he was Professor of Economics at the University of Linz. Two volumes of his collected papers appeared in the 1990s (Rothschild, 1993, 1995). His recent publications include Rothschild (2004a, 2004b, 2006, 2007a, 2007b). This interview took place in Vienna on 1 November 2007.     

Neoliberalism,EU and the Evaluation of Policies

Changes in GDP growth, unemployment and inflation are utilized as indicators of the transition of nineteen OECD countries from Keynesian to neoliberal policies in the period 1960 to 2007. The paper then shows how evaluations of this change and of the success of the European Union can vary depending on the value basis of the observer.     

A Social Cognitive Perspective on the Relationships Between Ethics Education, Moral Attentiveness, and PRESOR

This research examines the relationships between education in business ethics, Reynolds’s (J Appl Psychol 93:1027–1041, 2008) “moral attentiveness” construct, or the extent to which individuals chronically perceive and reflect on morality and moral elements in their experiences, and Singhapakdi et al.’s (J Bus Ethics 15:1131–1140, 1996) measure of perceptions of the role of ethics and social responsibility (PRESOR). Education in business ethics was found to be positively associated with the two identified factors of moral attentiveness, “reflective” and “perceptual” moral attentiveness, and with the PRESOR “stakeholder view” factor. Also, reflective moral attentiveness was found to act as a mediator in the relationship between education in business ethics and the PRESOR stakeholder view factor. Evidence of gender and social desirability bias effects was also found. The implications of these relationships and social cognitive theory for improved understanding of the mechanisms by which a variety of variables have their effects on PRESOR in business are discussed.     

CROSS-PRODUCT SPILLOVERS IN THE SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY: IMPLICATIONS FOR STRATEGIC TRADE POLICY

Although the manufacture of semiconductor products has been alleged to create substantial benefits to the economy resulting from the spillover of knowledge, this claim, with the exception of Irwin and Klenow (1994a), has not been subjected substantially to empirical analysis. Our article extends the analysis of Irwin and Klenow and develops and tests a model of knowledge spillovers across several semiconductor memory products. The results indicate that cross-product spillovers from Dynamic Random Access Memories (DRAMs) the integrated circuit product often designated as a "technology driver" to other memory products were limited. We discuss the implications of these results for strategic trade policy.     

Strategic substitutes or complements? The game of where to fish

The “global game with strategic substitutes and complements” of Karp et al. (2007) is used to model the decision of where to fish. A complete information game is assumed, but the model is generalized to S>1$S>1$ sites. In this game, a fisherman’s payoff depends on fish density in each site and the actions of other fishermen which can lead to congestion or agglomeration effects. Stable and unstable equilibria are characterized, as well as notions of equilibrium dominance. The model is applied to the Alaskan flatfish fishery by specifying a strategic interaction function (response to congestion) that is a non-linear function of the degree of congestion present in a given site. Results suggest that the interaction function may be non-monotonic in congestion.     

The Value of Changes in Deer Season Length: An Application of the Nested Multinomial Logit Model

Increasing deer populations can be controlled through manipulatingharvest limits or season length. While such actions often result in benefitsto hunters, both motorists and the agricultural sector also benefit as alower deer population leads to fewer incidences of harmful human-deerencounters. Traditional recreation demand models are often employed toexamine the welfare implications of changes in daily hunting bag limits.Studies measuring the effects of changes in season length, however, arenoticeably absent from the literature. This study uses a nested randomutility model to examine hunter choice over site and season selection toderive the values of changes in season length.     

Quality in reflective thinking: elicitation and classification of reflective acts

The concept of reflective thinking needs to be instantiated for more effective educational implementations and practice in the process of thinking and learning. This article therefore expounds on the elicitation and classification of the Reflective Acts derived primarily from various studies conducted on reflective practice, student reflections and metacognition. In order to elicit and classify the Reflective Acts, the study employed three sequential phases of analyses: qualitative meta-analysis, purport analysis and Intention Clustering Method. As a result, 17 types of reflective acts were identified and classified into four main categories: Interpretive, Associative, Transformative and Affective. It is concluded in the article that through the presence and awareness of Reflective Acts, the concept of reflective thinking will be better comprehended, perceived and retained, engendering the process of reflective thinking into a straightforward practice to guide individuals to perform structured, efficacious and successful reflective acts in order to improve the quality of their reflective thinking and learning.