Contingent deficit sanctions and moral hazard with a stability pact

We show how a stability pact based on deficit sanctions eliminates the exacerbation of debt accumulation that may arise from monetary unification. Moreover, with sanctions contingent on the observed state of the economy, the pact avoids aggravating the situation of a country in recession. Moral hazard problems arise if the state also depends on unobservable, politically costly fiscal effort. This could explain why sanctions under the actual Stability and Growth Pact are only automatically waived in extreme recessions and why the procedure linking observed deficits and sanctions involves a long and detailed assessment of a country’s situation.     

Valuing water level changes in reservoirs using two stated preference approaches: An exploration of validity

The combination of travel cost (TCM) and contingent behaviour (CB) methods is a relatively new research avenue in the recreational valuation community. Contrary to simple TCM applications, TCM-CB facilitates the ex ante valuation of marginal welfare effects resulting from environmental quality or quantity changes, similar to the contingent valuation method (CV). Even though TCM-CB is highly policy relevant, i.e. to inform changes in management regimes at recreational sites, the validity of estimates has hardly received any attention and little is known about the performance of TCM-CB compared to CV. In this paper, TCM-CB and CV are explored with respect to several validity tests in a case study on the recreational effects of water level changes in a reservoir. Overall, the findings reveal that TCM-CB and CV perform equally well in terms of theoretical validity, but that the marginal recreational value varies significantly between the two methods. We also observe that both methods face similar internal difficulties with respect to the stability of values when the order of a set of valuation questions is changed.     

Assessing holistic economic value for multifunctional agriculture in the US

This study used contingent valuation method to shed light on public preferences on the multifunctional roles of the US agriculture and to present a holistic estimate of the economic value of the nonmarket goods and services of US agriculture. Contingent valuation survey instrument was administered to a sample composed from the Ipsos web-based panel. Fishbein’s model of reasoned behavior and mediation hypothesis were combined to model the relationship between WTP (behavioral intentions) and sets of explanatory variables including attitudes, perceived attributes (about family farms, farmland preservation programs, government involvement in agricultural markets, and ecological state of our world), and socio-demographic profiles. Results show that, while exerting a highly significant impact on WTP, attitudes mediate the effects of the attribute variables on WTP: i.e., the attributes influence WTP directly as well as indirectly through attitudes. The estimated mean WTP was $515 per taxpayer annually. Aggregating individual WTPs across the US taxpayers above 20 years old produces $105 billion, representing a crude estimate of the economic value that the US consumers place on the multifunctional roles of US agriculture.     

Analyzing firms' strategic investment decisions in a real options' framework

Within the context of investment under uncertainty, the real options literature has led to models that capture primarily the time to wait flexibility of monopolistic corporations' investment decision. In this paper, we propose an approach which relies on barrier options to model production and/or sales delocalization flexibility for multinational enterprises making decisions under exchange rate uncertainty. We then extend the model by introducing game theoretic considerations to show how the information set and the competitive structure of the market may lead firms to act strategically and exercise their delocalization options preemptively at an endogenously fixed exchange rate barrier.     

Joint estimation of contingent valuation survey responses

Hanemann's utility difference model for the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method is modified to account for interrelationships between responses to a set of contingent valuation questions. A nonlinear seemingly unrelated regression model is presented to jointly estimate the probit models and to derive WTP from the CV responses. The model is used to test and impose restrictions derived from economic theory on the utility difference model. Mean WTP estimates for three different types of changes in the quality of California deer hunting were uniformly lower for the joint response probit model compared to a set of independent probit models.     

Extending the framework of the economic evaluation of erosion control actions in Mediterranean basins

Traditionally, the benefits of erosion control projects in Mediterranean watersheds were valued by the replacement cost method (RCM). Nowadays, however, environmental economics has provided alternative methods, such as contingent valuation (CV) and others based on stated preferences, the main strength of which is their capacity to capture non-use and future use values, which are essential for the monetary valuation of erosion. This study uses CV to estimate the externalities associated with watershed restoration and erosion control projects conducted in the Aljibe Basin (Almería, Spain). Comparison shows that CV estimates of net environmental benefits are almost double those obtained using standard methods. Thus, the project meets the profitability criteria in the former case but not in the latter. In concrete terms, the Internal Rates of Return are 5.23% versus 2.25%, respectively. The above shows CV to be a useful tool for estimating the social-environmental return on investment in this kind of project. However, as the experimental phase of this study shows, CV is not without certain issues and limitations, the majority of which derive from its hypothetical nature. Moreover, being preference-based, it may be more coherent with a cost-benefit analysis approach. The RCM, on the other hand, is highly detailed in technical terms and, by using physical data, produces more objective results. The two can therefore be considered complementary rather than competing methods, since they view the valuation from different perspectives.     

The Effect of Leader Positive Affectivity on Team Member Turnover Intention and Team Organizational Citizenship Behavior

This paper develops two models to investigate the effect of team leader positive affectivity (PA) on team member turnover intention and team organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), at the individual and team levels, respectively. A two-wave longitudinal study was conducted involving a survey of 58 team leaders and 174 team members in a large Chinese telecom company across a three-month period. We found that team members’ organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) at Time 1 mediates the relationship between team leader PA at Time 1 and team member turnover intention at Time 2, whereas team aggregated OBSE at Time 1 mediates the relationship between leader PA at Time 1 and team OCB at Time 2.     

Exploring preferences towards the provision of farmland walking trails: A supply and demand perspective

Despite the potential benefits accruing from use of the rural landscape, access to farmland is a contentious issue with many landowners restricting public access. Within this context, this paper first explores general public preferences and willingness to pay for farmland walking trails in the Irish countryside. Second this paper examines farmers’ willingness to participate in a hypothetical walking scheme whereby the general public will be allowed access to specific trails. Results suggest that individuals are not a homogeneous group with regard to their preferences for farmland walking trails. From a supply perspective, this paper identified significant regional variations in farmers’ attitudes relating to public access. More generally, the analysis presented here would suggest that there is significant scope for policy intervention to improve public access to the countryside.     

辱虐管理激发员工的逢迎行为：自尊的中介作用和调节焦点的调节作用

文章基于资源保存理论,以283名MBA学员为样本,探讨辱虐管理通过自尊激发员工逢迎行为以及调节焦点在此过程所起的调节作用。结果表明：自尊部分中介了辱虐管理对逢迎行为的影响;促进焦点正向调节辱虐管理与自尊之间的关系,高促进焦点增强自尊对辱虐管理与逢迎行为关系的中介作用;防御焦点负向调节辱虐管理与自尊之间的关系,高防御焦点削弱自尊对辱虐管理与逢迎行为关系的中介作用。     

Contingent Labor and Higher Education

Over the past 30 years, the profession of college professor in the US has been changing from a high-status occupation, where faculty have extensive control over their job responsibilities, to a low-status contingent job in the peripheral labor market. This change mirrors the drift toward nonstandard employment in other sectors of the economy. Contingent and part-time faculty have grown at 10 times the rate of growth for tenure-track faculty, leading to a fundamental transformation in the nature of the professoriate. We review data related to these changes as well as the conventional explanations for this transformation. We conclude that the current system of academic labor is best understood within the core–periphery model of nonstandard employment. We conclude with some brief prospects for the future of the academic labor market and higher education.