Concern with Immediate Consequences Magnifies the Impact of Compulsive Buying Tendencies on College Students' Credit Card Debt

This research examines whether temporal orientation moderates the impact of compulsive buying tendencies (CBT) on credit card debt. Participants completed the consideration of future consequences scale, a compulsive buying scale, and reported their credit card debt. Results revealed that CBT mediated the relationship between concern with immediate consequences and credit card debt, and high concern with immediate consequences magnified the impact of CBT on credit card debt. This suggests that compulsive buyers who focus on maximizing immediate consequences are at a much higher risk of building up significant amounts of credit card debt.     

Targeting Financial Management Training at Low‐Income Audiences

While interest in financial management training programs for low‐income persons has grown in recent years, the specific training needs of low‐income consumers have not been well articulated. This article describes needed training content for such audiences, based on review of previous research and the authors’ experiences in evaluating the Financial Links for Low‐Income People (FLLIP) program. We also illustrate how the choice of financial management training models can seriously impact the subgroups of the low‐income population who attend training, as well as the success of programs in recruiting and graduating participants. The implications of these findings both for financial management curriculum development and for the selection of program models are presented.     

Economies of Scale and Utilization: An Analysis of the Multi-Plant Generation Costs of the Electricity Commission of New South Wales, 1970/71–1984/85*

We examine the average costs of electricity generated in NSW at the site level employing a new simultaneous-equations model approach Further, we argue that costs depend principally on unit size and capacity utilization We reinterpret capacity utilization as a compositional variable which is a continuous proxy for the (inverse of) the intensity of demand for electricity, thus partially addressing the multi-product nature of electricity. Low capacity utilization corresponds to intense demands and hence peaking output We find that costs per kWh, as conventionally measured, are highly sensitive to the degree of capacity utilization but less so to unit size (scale). The results emphasize the need for tine-related pricing     

The Demand for Australian Rules Football*

Declining attendances at Australian Rules football games organized by the VFL recently have become the focus of much concern. An econometric analysis of the demand for football is presented, using annual average attendance data for the years 1950–86. It is found that increases in admission prices had a significant negative effect on demand, and increases in real income a positive impact. Amongst other variables of importance in explaining demand are lagged attendance and uncertainty of outcome. Elasticities of demand are calculated and it is shown how they might be used to predict attendance under different pricing scenarios.     

SENIORITY SEATING AT THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE

This paper examines lotteries and seniority queues as formsof commodity bundling price discrimination. There are good andbad seats, and two types of potential purchasers. Offered thechoice of a high-priced good seat and a moderately-priced bundleof good and bad seats, cutomers self-select into high and lowvaluation types. For single period purchases, the bundle isa lottery over good and bad seats. For repeated purchases, monopolistssuch as the Royal Opera House can do better by setting up aseniority allocation system.     

Changes in Cash: Persistence and Pricing Implications

This paper decomposes the cash component of earnings and analyzes persistence characteristics and pricing implications of various subcomponents, with particular attention to changes in cash. Changes in underlying fundamentals might dictate changes in cash to new optimal levels. Alternatively, suboptimal changes in cash might result from agency costs allowing managers’ actions to diverge from the best interests of shareholders. We predict and find that both suboptimal increases and decreases in cash bode poorly for future earnings. In fact, we find that suboptimal increases (decreases) in cash have less (greater) persistence than any of the earnings components we study, including accruals and net distributions to both shareholders and debt holders. Market efficiency tests indicate that the market severely punishes firms with suboptimal decreases in cash, but we find no evidence to support the hubris hypothesis that the market overreacts to the earnings implications of unwarranted increases in cash.     

SKEWNESS AND KURTOSIS PROPERTIES OF INCOME DISTRIBUTION MODELS

This paper explores the ability of some popular income distributions to model observed skewness and kurtosis. We present the generalized beta type 1 (GB1) and type 2 (GB2) distributions' skewness–kurtosis spaces and clarify and expand on previously known results on other distributions' skewness–kurtosis spaces. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study are used to estimate sample moments and explore the ability of the generalized gamma, Dagum, Singh–Maddala, beta of the first kind, beta of the second kind, GB1, and GB2 distributions to accommodate the skewness and kurtosis values. The GB2 has the flexibility to accurately describe the observed skewness and kurtosis.