The use of performance information in cutback budgeting

Not having access to mainstream financial services, such as a bank account or a credit card, can lead to a variety of social and economic exclusions. In a number of countries, particularly Ireland, Spain, Canada and the UK, credit unions— member-owned financial co-operatives—play a significant role in reaching under-served and excluded communities, as well as providing ‘safe’ avenues for savings and credit. Yet many credit unions are facing financial and operational problems. This article looks at the experience of Welsh credit unions. The research has implications for policy development and government–credit union relations in Wales and further research on credit unions and financial inclusion.     

Menu Dependence and Group Decision Making

This paper is concerned with the problem of group decision making. We introduce the notion of a collective system rule. A collective system rule maps each preference profile to a group-preference system, which is a collection of social preferences on the subsets of the alternatives. By formulating the Arrovian conditions, we show the Arrow-type impossibility theorems. We also discuss how our approach is related to the standard group decision-making process.     

Local envy-freeness and equal-income Walrasian allocations

This paper introduces a local version of envy-freeness and investigates its implications in a continuum agent economy with connected preferences. We show that the set of locally envy-free and Pareto efficient allocations coincides with the set of equal-income Walrasian allocations.     

Fair allocations in large economies with unequal production skills

This paper considers the problem of fair allocation among individuals with unequal production skills. We introduce the concept of productivity‐adjusted average no‐envy. It is shown that equal‐income Walrasian allocations are the only surviving allocations that are productivity‐adjusted average envy‐free and efficient when the original economy is infinitely replicated. We also examine local versions of productivity‐adjusted average no‐envy and other equity concepts.     

Explaining the choice of accounting standards in municipal corporations: Positive accounting theory and institutional theory as competitive or concurrent theories

Municipal corporations exist in an institutional twilight area, being both private and public, a characteristic, which presumably would be reflected in their choice of accounting standards. The literature of accounting choice does not, however, live in a twilight area, but is fragmented into two main divisions: positive accounting theory (PAT) and institutional theory (IT); only in a very few cases do the theories meet or cross-fertilize. We use both theories in this paper and derive hypotheses from them to explain accounting choices made by municipal corporations. Through testing the hypotheses on a sample of 545 Swedish municipal corporations, we indicate the empirical relevance of both PAT and IT. We conclude by suggesting an integrative approach of PAT and IT in an eclectic alternative.     

SZPILRAJN,ARROW AND SUZUMURA: CONCISE PROOFS OF EXTENSION THEOREMS AND AN EXTENSION

This paper extends the classical extension theorem established by Edward Szpilrajn (Fundamenta Mathematicae, 16, pp. 386–389, 1930). Szpilrajn's theorem states that every quasi‐ordering has an ordering extension. Because of its usefulness in various themes of economics, it has been applied by many researchers. Important generalizations have been presented by two authors, Kenneth Arrow and Kotaro Suzumura, among others. First, we provide concise proofs of four extension theorems by Szpilrajn, Arrow and Suzumura. We then show an extension of their extension theorems.     

Incompleteness,regularity, and collective preference

This paper examines the incompleteness of collective preference. We provide a series of Arrovian impossibility theorems without completeness. First, we consider the notion of regularity introduced by Eliaz and Ok (2006, Games and Economic Behavior 56, 61–86); it is an appropriate richness property for strict preference when preference is allowed to be incomplete. We examine the implication of imposing regularity on collective preference. Second, we propose responsiveness, a variation of positive responsiveness. This axiom requires that some changes in individual preferences make an alternative weakly better than another. Third, we consider coherency conditions for collective preferences; this conditionally requires the existence of comparable pairs in a certain manner. We prove an impossibility result for each condition using Arrovian axioms.     

Weak Independence and Social Semi‐Orders

This paper provides variants of Arrow's impossibility theorem, which states that there exists no non‐dictatorial aggregation rule satisfying weak Pareto, independence of irrelevant alternatives and collective rationality. In this paper, independence of irrelevant alternatives and collective rationality are simultaneously relaxed. Weak independence is imposed instead of independence of irrelevant alternatives. Social preferences are assumed to satisfy the semi‐order properties of semi‐transitivity and the interval‐order property. We prove that there exists a vetoer when the number of alternatives is greater than or equal to six.     

REMARKS ON A PROCEDURAL CONDITION FOR THE VOTING PARADOX

Schwartz [A Procedural Condition Necessary and Sufficient for Cyclic Social Preference, J. Econ. Theory 137 (2007), 688–695] provides a generalization of the voting paradox by using the impotence‐partition condition. This paper aims to clarify his result by providing several remarks. We show that a main result of Schwartz can be strengthened by replacing strong Pareto by weak Pareto. We also discuss how the impotence partition is related to the standard concept of decisiveness, which is widely employed in the literature on social choice.     

The top-dog and the lean and hungry look strategies in endogenous entry

This paper examines the strategic commitment behavior of heterogeneous leaders in an endogenous market structure. We demonstrate that each leader's investment level is independent of the other leaders' characters. Furthermore, we show that a leader over-invests (resp. under-invests) when an investment increases (resp. decreases) the leader's marginal profitability. Such an investment always makes leaders employ aggressive strategies in the competition relative to those in a no-commitment case. This result implies that aggressiveness of leaders is a robust observation in an endogenous market structure.