Minimal rights based solidarity

In a model where individuals with different levels of skills exert different levels of effort, we propose to use individuals’ minimal rights to divide an extra amount of income generated by a change in the skill profile. Priority is given to individuals with a positive minimal right which ensures that the way redistribution is performed depends on the total sum of income available in society. We characterize two families of minimal rights based Egalitarian mechanisms. One family guarantees each individual her claim when claims are feasible. The other family guarantees a non-negative income after redistribution for all individuals.     

Does European Union policy making explain accounting choices? An empirical analysis of the effects of investigations by the Directorate General for Competition on accounting choices

The hypothesis that political costs caused by the regulatory process impact upon accounting has been tested extensively and has found considerable empirical support. However, most studies use data from the United States. Whether the conclusions carry over to different institutional settings is an open question. This study exploits the fact that, in the European Union, there exists a policy area—competition policy—in which the European Commission can act in a manner significantly less constrained than in most other policy areas, imposing substantial fines on companies found to be in infringement of European competition regulations. Companies investigated by the Commission’s Directorate General for Competition have strong incentives to deflect attention and keep a low profile. It is conjectured that such companies will use income-decreasing accruals in order not to appear to be making unjustified profits. The results confirm this conjecture.     

Why is Six Sigma so successful?

There can be little doubt that Motorola, General Electric, Black and Decker, Allied Signal (now Honeywell), ABB and Bombardier, have achieved impressive business performance in recent years. Their annual reports document this success. Furthermore, in several cases, the Annual Report clearly attributes this success to having followed a Six Sigma strategy. Not surprisingly, many other companies wish to learn what Six Sigma can do for them, and their first question is 'What exactly is Six Sigma?'. Unfortunately it is rather difficult, if not impossible, to define Six Sigma in one or two sentences. This paper identifies the essential elements of Six Sigma. Some are obvious, such as the extensive use of statistical techniques by employees known as Blackbelts. However, other more subtle, but very important, features of Six Sigma are concealed within the business culture of these successful companies. It is clear to those who have participated in this success, that any company embarking on Six Sigma will not succeed if it focuses on statistics whilst failing to develop a supporting culture.     

Impact of Economic Conditions and Crises on Mortality and its Predictability

To investigate how economic conditions and crises affect mortality and its predictability in industrialized countries, we review the related literature, and we forecast mortality developments in Spain, Hungary, and Russia—three countries which have recently undergone major transformation processes following the introduction of radical economic and political reforms. The results of our retrospective mortality forecasts from 1991 to 2009 suggest that our model can capture major changes in long-term mortality trends, and that the forecast errors it generates are usually smaller than those of other well-accepted models, like the Lee-Carter model and its coherent variant. This is because our approach is capable of modeling (1) dynamic shifts in survival improvements from younger to older ages over time, as well as (2) substantial changes in long-term trends by optionally complementing the extrapolated mortality trends in a country of interest with those of selected reference countries. However, the forecasting performance of our model is limited (like that of every model): e.g., if mortality becomes extremely volatile—as was the case in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—generating a precise forecast will depend more on luck than on methodology and expert judgment. In general, we conclude that, on their own, recent economic changes appear to have minor effects on life expectancy in industrialized countries, but that the effects of these changes are greater if they occur in conjunction with other major social and political changes.     

A political economy of accounting standard setting

In recent years accounting researchers have identified “political” lobbying as a problem for accounting standard setting. This paper presents a simple game-theoretic analysis of the political process to identify situations where companies have incentives to lobby the political principal instead of participating in the usual due process of accounting standard setting. Analysis of the model suggests that “political” lobbying is more likely to happen in the EU than in the US. Furthermore it is suggested that if the relevant standard setters wish to achieve harmonization of accounting standards between the EU and the US, European companies have more lobbying leverage than their American counterparts because there are more European veto players than American ones.     

A unified Europe? How euro-attitudes relate to psychological differences between countries

In this study, a number of psychological concepts have been measured (through questionnaire-items) in 15 countries under the hypothesis that they could explain national differences in attitudes towards the euro. Based on the average country scores for each of these concepts, multidimensional scaling (combined with hierarchical cluster analysis) revealed 5 regions and 2 unclustered countries (UK and Ireland) in three dimensions: 1. National economic pride and satisfaction; 2. Self-confident open-mindedness; 3. Progressive non-nationalistic. Structural equation modelling was further used to perform multiple group regression analyses in order to test for differential relationships between the psychological concepts and the attitudes, for the different country regions. It could be shown that the majority of psychological variables have a significantly different impact on euro-attitudes.PsycINFO classification: 2229; 2930; 2960; 3920     

Mammals in and around suburban yards,and the attraction of chicken coops

Urban areas are an important and growing land use class. Nearly 5 % of the world is covered with urban development and residential yards make up a large proportion of that area. Yards have unique but homogenous biological characteristics and are known to be rich with bird fauna, but little is known about backyard mammals. We used camera traps to sample mammal communities in backyards and urban woodlots in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, USA and related species activity to yard characteristics and levels of neighborhood development. We found a vibrant community of smaller herbivores and carnivores using residential yards in urban areas, but larger ungulates and carnivores were only detected on the urban fringe, or in woodlots. Backyard chicken coops were positively correlated with raccoon activity but were not positively correlated with other predators, suggesting that chicken coops are attracting raccoons, but not other predators, to yards. Fenced-in dogs were negatively correlated with most mammals suggesting that confined dogs keep mammals out of yards. Unfenced dogs and fences without dogs, showed a more varied relationship with mammal activity. These results show an encouraging sign of how humans can coexist with wildlife, even in urban areas, and suggest some strategies to minimize conflict regarding backyard chicken coops and dogs.