Causes and Consequences of Inflation

While ethical implications of direct taxation systems have recently received renewed attention, a more veiled scheme remains unnoticed: inflation. We overview the causes of inflation and assess its consequences. Salient wealth redistributions are a defining feature of inflation, as savers and fixed income individuals see a relative wealth reduction. While avoiding this “tax” is difficult in many instances because of the primacy of money in a monetary economy, the tax codes of most developed countries allow avoidance techniques to be employed. We analyze three ways that inflation may be avoided in an attempt to preserve personal wealth, as well as the consequences of such practices.     

Classification of three-level strength-3 arrays

Generalized aberration (GA) is one of the most frequently used criteria to quantify the suitability of an orthogonal array (OA) to be used as an experimental design. The two main motivations for GA are that it quantifies bias in a main-effects only model and that it is a good surrogate for estimation efficiencies of models with all the main effects and some two-factor interaction components. We demonstrate that these motivations are not appropriate for three-level OAs of strength 3 and we propose a direct classification with other criteria instead. To illustrate, we classified complete series of three-level strength-3 OAs with 27, 54 and 81 runs using the GA criterion, the rank of the matrix with two-factor interaction contrasts, the estimation efficiency of two-factor interactions, the projection estimation capacity, and a new model robustness criterion. For all of the series, we provide a list of admissible designs according to these criteria.     

Discerning Work as a Calling: The Role of Job Crafting

On the basis of career construction theory (CCT), the authors aimed to describe mechanisms by which work may be perceived as a calling. They did so by measuring the mediation and moderation effects of job crafting and power distance orientation (PDO) within the relationship between cognitive flexibility and calling. PDO levels become essential for high‐power‐distance societies such as Indonesia because PDO can decrease proactive behaviors, such as job crafting. Three hundred four employees in Indonesia responded to measures of calling, PDO, job crafting, and cognitive flexibility. Analyses indicated that the relationship between cognitive flexibility and calling is mediated by cognitive crafting and moderated by PDO. Results support CCT as useful for understanding the mechanisms of calling. For a high‐power‐distance country, the process of discerning a calling is influenced by submissive attitudes toward a superior. Thus, in assisting job‐crafting processes, counselors should focus on the relationship between employees and their superiors.