GET OUT THE (COSTLY) VOTE: INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN FOR GREATER PARTICIPATION

We examine two commonly discussed institutions inducing turnout: abstention penalties (used in 32 countries) and lotteries rewarding one randomly chosen participant (as proposed on the 2006 Arizona ballot). We analyze a benchmark model in which voters vary in their information quality and participation is costly. We illustrate that both institutions can improve collective outcomes, though lotteries are a more effective instrument asymptotically. Experimentally, we provide strong evidence for selective participation: lab voters participate more when better informed or when institutionally induced. Lotteries fare better than fines, suggesting that they may be a useful alternative to commonly used compulsory voting schemes. (JEL C92, D72, D02)     

The effect of unconditional preferences on Sen’s paradox

Theory and Decision - Sen’s Liberal paradox describes a conflict between weak Pareto, minimal liberalism, and either transitivity or a best element over a domain of individual preferences....     

‘The Hidden Holocaust’: The East Timor Alert Network (ETAN) and Human Rights Claims in Canada, 1985–1998

This article examines the East Timor Alert Network's (ETAN) claims-making strategies regarding support for human rights and self-determination of East Timor during the Indonesian occupation from 1975–1998. This research seeks to understand how ETAN attempted to persuade Canadians to care about a geographically distant horror. I examine various claims-making strategies that ETAN used to encourage Canadian audiences to evaluate the problem as an object of public concern, the Timorese as victims deserving of their sympathy, and Canadian government as condemnation-worthy.     

Charismatic,ideological, & pragmatic (CIP) model of leadership: A critical review and agenda for future research

Criticisms of the dominant leadership perspectives in the literature are increasing and, as such, a growing number of scholars are calling for more complex and conceptually sound theories of leadership. With a multi-faceted perspective on effective leadership, detailed conceptual underpinnings, and increasing body of empirical support, the Charismatic, Ideological, and Pragmatic (CIP) model of leadership has the potential to address many of these concerns and substantively contribute to our understanding of effective leadership. Despite such advantages, however, wide scale proliferation of the model remains elusive. As such, this effort provides the first comprehensive review of the CIP model to analyze its potential to expand our understanding of leadership in science and practice. In doing so this review frames and organizes the existing CIP literature, identifies key strengths of the model, addresses key limitations of the model, and outlines future research opportunities that would benefit from adopting a CIP perspective.     

CANDY ELASTICITY: HALLOWEEN EXPERIMENTS ON PUBLIC POLITICAL STATEMENTS

We conducted experiments during trick‐or‐treating on Halloween in a predominantly liberal neighborhood in the weeks preceding the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. We decorated one side of a house porch with McCain material in 2008 (Romney material in 2012) and the other side with Obama material. Children were asked to choose a side, with half receiving the same candy on either side and half receiving more candy to go to the McCain/Romney side. This yields a “candy elasticity” of children's political support. Results vary by age: children ages nine and older were two to three times more likely to choose the Republican candidate when offered double candy for voting Republican compared to when offered equal candy, whereas children ages eight and under were particularly sticky and did not waver in their choice of candidate despite the offer of double candy. (JEL C93, D72, D12)     

Figured Worlds in the Field of Power

This article seeks to deepen our understanding of how structural relations of power should be understood in local accounts of activity and identity. Thus, we critically review the synthesis of Bourdieu and activity theory in Figured Worlds, analyzing two critiques of Bourdieu: his insufficient localism and his overemphasis on embodiment of habitus. We are left with Bourdieu’s overwhelming concern to explain how the field of power is locally refracted and critique its doxa in a field of opinion, while arguably doing so at the expense of imagination, self-authoring, and world making. We conclude with our own suggestions of a synthesis.     

Does vertical diversification create superior value? Evidence from the construction industry

The discussion of diversification discounts is one of the most controversial in corporate finance and strategic management. We are eager to reexamine this issue from the standpoint of vertical versus lateral diversification, and horizontal growth through construction industry M&A. We build on previous evidence of positive acquirer abnormal returns for vertical M&A, and we add new insight into stock return risk. Considering the high idiosyncratic risk levels of builders, we expect to find considerable informational content in systematic risk (beta) behavior, which has been neglected to date. In fact, we find that vertical M&A experience a negative asset beta shift, lateral M&A experience an increase in systematic risk, and only horizontal M&A exhibit no risk changes. Hence, our evidence on risk and previous evidence on return-induced wealth creation through vertical M&A shows that related industrial diversification is superior to unrelated—at least in the construction industry.     

Agency Problems and Airport Security: Quantitative and Qualitative Evidence on the Impact of Security Training

We analyze the issue of agency costs in aviation security by combining results from a quantitative economic model with a qualitative study based on semi‐structured interviews. Our model extends previous principal‐agent models by combining the traditional fixed and varying monetary responses to physical and cognitive effort with nonmonetary welfare and potentially transferable value of employees' own human capital. To provide empirical evidence for the tradeoffs identified in the quantitative model, we have undertaken an extensive interview process with regulators, airport managers, security personnel, and those tasked with training security personnel from an airport operating in a relatively high‐risk state, Turkey. Our results indicate that the effectiveness of additional training depends on the mix of “transferable skills” and “emotional” buy‐in of the security agents. Principals need to identify on which side of a critical tipping point their agents are to ensure that additional training, with attached expectations of the burden of work, aligns the incentives of employees with the principals' own objectives.     

Ambiguity in the Cross-Section of Expected Returns: An Empirical Assessment

This article estimates and tests the smooth ambiguity model of Klibanoff, Marinacci, and Mukerji based on stock market data. We introduce a novel methodology to estimate the conditional expectation, which characterizes the impact of a decision maker’s ambiguity attitude on asset prices. Our point estimates of the ambiguity parameter are between 25 and 60, whereas our risk aversion estimates are considerably lower. The substantial difference indicates that market participants are ambiguity averse. Furthermore, we evaluate if ambiguity aversion helps explaining the cross-section of expected returns. Compared with Epstein and Zin preferences, we find that incorporating ambiguity into the decision model improves the fit to the data while keeping relative risk aversion at more reasonable levels. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Social capital and community building through an electronic network

This paper describes a social policy experiment that explores current and potential links between trends in Australian public policy. The central example is provided by the implementation of a wired community set up in a low‐income public housing estate by an entrepreneurial not‐for‐profit internet service provider, InfoXchange. ‘Reach for the Clouds’, the wired community being established at Atherton Gardens in Fitzroy, Melbourne, is attractive to policy‐makers and funding bodies, combining community‐building, public‐private partnerships, self‐help and place‐based management. However, although the project is promoted as an exercise in community‐building through technology, many of the key assumptions are untested. It seems self‐evident that low‐income people who are socially and economically excluded would benefit from greater ‘connectedness’ with one another. However, it is not clear that such exchanges, online or off‐line, will build ‘community’. The paper attempts to establish some distinctions between online communities of interest and place based communities, untangling the relationship between social connectedness and models of social capital.