Toleration or trust? Investigating the acceptance of ‘boat people’ among young Australians

There has been intense debate in Australia regarding how asylum seekers who arrive by boat should be treated. Some call for compassion towards those prepared to risk their lives to seek protection, whereas others believe ‘boat people’ should not be allowed into the country. This article uses data from a large representative sample of young people in Queensland, Australia, to understand the acceptance of asylum seekers by young people in Australia. The findings suggest that young Australians are more accepting than the Australian adult population. Several social and political background factors were also found to be associated with the belief that ‘boat people’ should be permitted into Australia. Fewer factors, however, are associated with the trust young Australians have in people from another country. This suggests that while some young Australians may believe boats carrying asylum seekers should not be turned away, fewer might be prepared to enter into trusting relationships with ‘boat people’ should they resettle in Australia.     

Bayes Hilbert Spaces

A Bayes linear space is a linear space of equivalence classes of proportional σ‐finite measures, including probability measures. Measures are identified with their density functions. Addition is given by Bayes' rule and substraction by Radon–Nikodym derivatives. The present contribution shows the subspace of square‐log‐integrable densities to be a Hilbert space, which can include probability and infinite measures, measures on the whole real line or discrete measures. It extends the ideas from the Hilbert space of densities on a finite support towards Hilbert spaces on general measure spaces. It is also a generalisation of the Euclidean structure of the simplex, the sample space of random compositions. In this framework, basic notions of mathematical statistics get a simple algebraic interpretation. A key tool is the centred‐log‐ratio transformation, a generalization of that used in compositional data analysis, which maps the Hilbert space of measures into a subspace of square‐integrable functions. As a consequence of this structure, distances between densities, orthonormal bases, and Fourier series representing measures become available. As an application, Fourier series of normal distributions and distances between them are derived, and an example related to grain size distributions is presented. The geometry of the sample space of random compositions, known as Aitchison geometry of the simplex, is obtained as a particular case of the Hilbert space when the measures have discrete and finite support.     

Confronting hate: heterosexuals' responses to anti-gay comments

An online diary study was used to examine the individual and situational variables that influence non-targets' verbal and nonverbal reactions and responses to sexually prejudiced remarks. Results indicated that anti-gay comments were extremely prevalent in a college setting and resulted in a range of reactions and behaviors. Confrontation of the perpetrator was predicted by the perceived offensiveness of the comment, perceived social pressure to confront, and the number of close same-sex attracted friends. Additionally, those who confronted felt more satisfied with their responses than those who did not confront. Implications for future research and prejudice reduction strategies are discussed.     

Bringing About Changes to Corporate Social Policy through Shareholder Activism: Filers,Issues, Targets,and Success

We examine shareholder initiated social policy proposals' capacity to exert pressure on management to force it to adopt the suggested changes in policy. We show that social proposals, filed under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Rule 14a‐8, have a more limited capacity to change corporate social policy than it has been previously reported. However, the capacity to exert pressure on firms can be substantially higher for some types of filers, notably pension funds and mutual funds. The analysis also suggests that the capacity to influence management is higher for some types of issues presented in the resolution, such as those related to board diversity, energy and environment, and international laborand human rights. We also provide suggestions explaining why shareholder activism is a persistent practice despite its limited results.     

Does Ownership Form Matter for Corporate Social Responsibility? A Longitudinal Comparison of Environmental Performance between Public,Private, and Joint‐venture Firms

This study examines whether a firm's ownership form has any influence on its social performance. Conventional wisdom suggests that public (publicly traded) corporations are more susceptible to corruption and socially irresponsible behavior than privately owned corporations because of the intense short‐term profit maximization pressure from shareholders and the lack of sufficient monitoring mechanisms. This study introduces an alternate perspective in thinking about the relationship between ownership form and corporate social responsibility. This study reasons that public corporations are more likely to become socially responsible because of their greater exposure to external influence and greater dependence on external actors with diverse interests. Using a panel data on the pollution management practices of 118 industrial facilities over a 13‐year period, this study shows that public corporations were indeed subject to greater external pressure to reduce pollution, and the pressure led to consistently stronger environmental performance.     

Using Malmquist Indexes to measure changes in the productivity and efficiency of US accounting firms before and after the Sarbanes–Oxley Act

There have been many criticisms of the Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) Act passed in July of 2002 to correct business accountability and performance practices. The act has a major emphasis on accounting and its practices. This paper attempts a response to these criticisms by investigating changes in productive efficiency for 62 of the largest US public accounting firms between the periods (2000–2001) and (2003–2004)—the periods before and after enactment of SOX in July of 2002. DEA is used to calculate Malmquist indexes of productivity and efficiency changes. This index is used because it can distinguish between changes in technical efficiency, which limit the possibilities, and changes in the performance efficiencies for each firm. Contrary to many of the criticisms, results indicate that accounting firms have exhibited significant post SOX growth in productive efficiency which is better than pre-SOX performances.     

The Microeconomics of Efficient Group Behavior: Identification1

Consider a group consisting of S members facing a common budget constraint p'ξ=1: any demand vector belonging to the budget set can be (privately or publicly) consumed by the members. Although the intragroup decision process is not known, it is assumed to generate Pareto‐efficient outcomes; neither individual consumptions nor intragroup transfers are observable. The paper analyzes when, to what extent, and under which conditions it is possible to recover the underlying structure—individual preferences and the decision process—from the group's aggregate behavior. We show that the general version of the model is not identified. However, a simple exclusion assumption (whereby each member does not consume at least one good) is sufficient to guarantee generic identifiability of the welfare‐relevant structural concepts.     

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE INNOVATION INDUSTRY: ENTREPRENEURS,VENTURE CAPITALISTS,AND OLIGOPOLISTS

We construct a model where incumbents can either acquire basic innovations from entrepreneurs, or wait and acquire developed innovations from entrepreneurial firms supported by venture capitalists. We show that venture‐backed entrepreneurial firms have an incentive to overinvest in development vis à vis incumbents due to strategic product market effects on the sales price of a developed innovation. This will trigger preemptive acquisitions by incumbents, thus increasing the reward for entrepreneurial innovations. We also show that venture capital can emerge in equilibrium if venture capitalists have cost advantages, or if development is associated with double moral hazard problems. (JEL: G24, L1, L2, M13, O3)