Ensuring Pareto Optimality by Referendum Voting

We consider a society confronting the decision of accepting or rejecting a list of (at least two) proposals. Assuming separability of preferences, we show the impossibility of guaranteeing Pareto optimal outcomes through anonymous referendum voting, except in the case of an odd number of voters confronting precisely two proposals. In this special case, majority voting is the only anonymous social choice rule which guarantees Pareto optimal referendum outcomes.     

When do Public Managers Imitate Each Other? Mimetic Decision Making in Contracting Decisions of Danish Municipalities

Using organizational new institutional theory, this paper explores a core mechanism underlying contracting decisions in public organizations. A central proposition of this branch of institutional theory is that uncertainty leads to organizational isomorphism. The present study investigates this proposition by asking: When does perceived uncertainty lead public managers to imitative behavior in contracting out decisions? Contrary to most previous studies, we apply an individual level approach and relate different types of perceived uncertainty of decision makers to mimetic decision making. We define mimetic decision making as when decision makers deliberately obtain information about other organizations in order to possibly imitate them. In a survey of Danish municipal managers facing important and complex contracting decisions, we test our hypotheses about three types of perceived uncertainty and mimetic decision making. The results show that technological uncertainty is strongly related to mimetic decision making among public managers. However, we do not find significant results for either volume uncertainty or performance uncertainty. The paper illustrates how uncertainty, through mimetic decision making, is connected to organizational isomorphism. It further highlights that future studies should pay attention to the multidimensionality of uncertainty and its consequences.     

Clustering the mixed panel dataset using Gower's distance and k-prototypes algorithms

ABSTRACT

Panel datasets have been increasingly used in economics to analyze complex economic phenomena. Panel data is a two-dimensional array that combines cross-sectional and time series data. Through constructing a panel data matrix, the clustering method is applied to panel data analysis. This method solves the heterogeneity question of the dependent variable, which belongs to panel data, before the analysis. Clustering is a widely used statistical tool in determining subsets in a given dataset. In this article, we present that the mixed panel dataset is clustered by agglomerative hierarchical algorithms based on Gower's distance and by k-prototypes. The performance of these algorithms has been studied on panel data with mixed numerical and categorical features. The effectiveness of these algorithms is compared by using cluster accuracy. An experimental analysis is illustrated on a real dataset using Stata and R package software.     

A new test for the extreme value distribution

In this paper a test statistic which is a modification of the W statistic for testing the goodness of fit for the two paremeter extreme value (smallest element) distribution is proposed. The test statistic Is obtained as the ratio of two linear estimates of the scale parameter. It Is shown that the suggested statistic is computationally simple and has good power properties. Percentage points of the statistic are obtained by performing Monte Carlo experiments. An example is given to illustrate the test procedure.     

Welfare service privatization and opinions about service quality: The role of political ideology among local politicians and the public

In this article, we join the discussion about the potential consequences of welfare service privatization by examining the relationship between the privatization of welfare service delivery and public opinion about service quality in Sweden. Due to the politically polarized debate about welfare service privatization in Sweden, we also examine the extent to which individualsapos; ideological orientations influence this relationship in both local politicians and ordinary citizens. For local politicians, the results show that a higher municipal degree of privatization is generally associated with slightly lower levels of satisfaction overall with welfare services, although no such relationship exists for the public. Most importantly, however, the results indicate that political ideology constitutes an important moderator in the relationship between privatization and opinions about service quality. Local politicians and, to some extent, ordinary citizens who place themselves to the left on the ideological left–right scale tend to be less satisfied with services as the municipal degree of welfare service privatization increases. For local politicians who position themselves far to the right on the scale, the relationship between welfare service privatization and satisfaction is positive. These findings suggest that there is no clear-cut relationship between privatization and individualsapos; opinions about services; rather, this relationship depends on the ideological predispositions of local politicians and ordinary citizens.     

CEO burnout,managerial discretion,and firm performance: The role of CEO locus of control,structural power,and organizational factors

Despite the possibility of burnout resulting from dynamics in firms' upper echelons, little if any work has focused on chief executive officer's (CEO's) burnout and firm performance. Drawing on managerial discretion theory, this article analyzes the influence of CEO burnout on firm performance and the moderating roles of the individual (CEO locus of control), structural power (CEO duality and CEO tenure), and organizational characteristics (size, age, and resource availability) related to managerial discretion. Using a sample of 156 CEOs in Swedish firms, we find a negative association between CEOs who report higher burnout and firm performance. Our results confirm that CEO duality and resource availability ameliorate and firm size exacerbates the negative association between CEO burnout and firm performance. Contrary to our expectations, CEO locus of control, CEO tenure, and firm age do not influence this relationship. We discuss the implications of our research for upper echelons theory and strategic leadership theory.     

IS ECONOMICS A HOUSE DIVIDED? ANALYSIS OF CITATION NETWORKS

We investigate divisions within the citation network in economics using citation data between 1990 and 2010. We consider all partitions of top institutions into two equal‐sized clusters and pick the one that minimizes cross‐cluster citations. The strongest division is much stronger than could be expected to be found under idiosyncratic citation patterns and is consistent with the reputed freshwater/saltwater division in macroeconomics. The division is stable over time but varies across the fields of economics. (JEL A11, D85, I23)     

Economic Adversity and Voter Turnout: Evidence from Turkish Parliamentary Elections

Social Indicators Research - This paper investigates the relationship between economic adversity and voter participation in Turkish parliamentary elections. We employ a dynamic model of voter...     

On the probability distribution of economic growth

Three important and significantly heteroscedastic gross domestic product series are studied. Omnipresent heteroscedasticity is removed and the distributions of the series are then compared to normal, normal mixture and normal–asymmetric Laplace (NAL) distributions. NAL represents a skewed and leptokurtic distribution, which is in line with the Aghion and Howitt [1 Aghion, P. and Howitt, P. 1992. A model of growth through creative destruction. Econometrica, 60: 323–351. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]] model for economic growth, based on Schumpeter's idea of creative destruction. Statistical properties of the NAL distributions are provided and it is shown that NAL fits the data better than the alternatives.