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Stealing, shirking, and opportunistic behavior in general can create barriers to the development of markets. The costs associated with such behavior are shared by both firms and individuals and can be large enough to even prevent the initiation of trade. Measurement of these costs is difficult because information is not available for transactions that fail to occur. We use a field experiment to identify opportunistic crime in a task that is important and relevant for trade: the delivery of mail. We subtly manipulate the content and information available in mail sent to households across neighborhoods that vary by income, and detected high levels of shirking and stealing. Eighteen percent of the mail never arrived at its destination, and significantly more was lost if there was even a slight hint of something additional inside the envelope. Our results demonstrate the importance of transaction costs created by crime and that not all populations are equally affected. Middle-income neighborhoods suffer the most. (JEL C93, K42, H41, L87, O21), I. INTRODUCTION Crime and opportunistic behavior, e.g., shirking on the job or pilfering from the office when no one is looking, impose high costs on firms and individuals. Even the [...]

Subjective probabilistic judgments in forecasting are inevitable in many real-life domains. A common way to such judgments is to assess fractiles or confidence intervals. However, these judgments tend to be systematically overconfident. Further, it has proved particularly difficult to debias such forecasts and improve the calibration. This paper proposes a simple process that systematically leads to wider confidence intervals, thus reducing overconfidence. With a series of experiments, including with professionals, we show that unpacking the distal future into intermediate more proximal futures systematically improves calibration. We refer to this phenomenon as the time unpacking effect, find it is robust to different elicitation formats, and address the possible reasons behind it. We further show that this results in better overall forecasting performance when improved calibration is traded off against less sharpness, and that substantive benefits can be obtained even from just one level of time unpacking. Key words: confidence intervals; overconfidence; time unpacking History: Received October 10, 2011; accepted October 5, 2012, by Teck Ho, decision analysis. Published online in Articles in Advance April 4, 2013., 1. Introduction In many real-life situations, especially in the socioeconomic domains, prediction of future events necessarily involves subjective probabilistic judgments since well-defined data-generating processes simply do not exist. For example, [...]

In this essay, we outline the provocative argument that in the realm of human affairs there exists an 'entrepreneurial method' analogous to the scientific method spelled out by Francis Bacon [...]

As a modeler I do have an answer to this question, but as I am also a complexity thinker, you will see that the answer is not quite straight forward. [...]

This study aims to evaluate the return on investments and its capacity to add value in Third Sector entities, enlarged by the inclusion of aspects of volunteer work. It consists of a descriptive survey of an intentional sample, which identifies multiples that form an integral part of accounting and financial values with social indicators. Investments in volunteer work show that the broader its base, the higher the return by real invested, with a contribution above 43 %, besides the financial values. The value added by this activity at the entities surveyed accounts for 67.6 % of the financial and social value allocated to human resources and for 15.6% of the hours worked. There is economy for society derived from the secondary results of the functional qualification of this labor with training and education, generating a market value 5.6 times the financial value invested in its training. The conclusion presents the preeminent need to value the undisclosed contribution of volunteer work. Key words: Third Sector; volunteer work; social return on investment; value added., 1 INTRODUCTION In Brazil the growth of nonprofit organizations dates back to the crisis established in the State in the 80's. According to Bresser (1998), the State held to be [...]

Servant leadership is an increasingly popular concept that fuses being a servant with being a leader. In this paper, servant leadership--which is characterized by active listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to growth, and community-building--is explored in the context of five selected demographic characteristics--socioeconomic status, level of educational attainment, gender, age, and respondent's domicile. Five research hypotheses are tested in this study, with full support being found for one hypothesis and partial support for the other four hypotheses. Keywords: Demographic Characteristics, Socioeconomic Status, Education, Gender, Age, Domicile, Servant Leadership, 1. INTRODUCTION Robert Greenleaf (1999, p. 1) argued that the characteristics of 'servant' and 'leader' could be fused into one person. Moreover, Greenleaf asserted that this person could be nurtured [...]

Byline: Tewodaj Mogues (1), Michael R. Carter (1) Keywords: inequality; social capital; social collateral; socio-economic polarization.; Z130 -- Social Norms and Social Capital; O--Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth. Abstract: This paper explores the idea that the distribution of wealth across social groups fundamentally affects the evolution of economic inequality. By providing microfoundations suitable for this exploration, this paper hopes to enhance our understanding of when social forces contribute to the reproduction of economic inequality. In tackling this issue, this paper offers contributions in two domains. First, it models social capital as a real capital asset with direct use and collateral values. Second, it extends the concepts of identity, alienation and polarization originally advanced by Esteban and Ray (Esteban, J.M. and Ray, D.: On the measurement of polarization, Econometrica 62(4) (1994), 819--851). This generalization permits us to consider the multiple characteristics that shape social identity, inclusion and exclusion. It also underwrites a higher-order measure of socio-economic polarization that permits us to explore the hypothesis that economic inequality is most pernicious and persistent when it is socially embedded. Holding constant the initial levels of economic polarization and wealth inequality, we show that higher socio-economic polarization increases subsequent income and wealth inequality. Far from being a distributionally neutral panacea for missing markets, social capital in this model may itself generate exclusion and deepen existing economic cleavages. Author Affiliation: (1) Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA Article History: Registration Date: 15/06/2005 Accepted Date: 01/03/2005 Online Date: 21/10/2005

Byline: Karl Mosler (1) Keywords: inequality measurement; lift zonoid order; Lorenz order; majorization; multivariate inequality ordering Abstract: The paper investigates Lorenz dominance and generalized Lorenz dominance to compare distributions of economic status in one and several attributes. Restrictions of these dominance relations are developed that focus on central parts of the distributions and facilitate their comparison. Author Affiliation: (1) Seminar fUr Wirtschafts- und Sozialstatistik, Universitat zu Koln, 50923, Koln, Germany Article History: Registration Date: 19/01/2005

Byline: Anthony Shorrocks (001) Keywords: income distributions; inequality; living standards; needs Abstract: This paper establishes the principles that should govern the welfare and inequality analysis of heterogeneous income distributions. Two basic criteria -- the 'equity preference' condition and the 'compensation principle' -- are shown to be fundamentally incompatible. The paper favours the latter, thereby vindicating the traditional method of dealing with heterogeneous samples. However, inequality and welfare comparisons will usually be well defined only if equivalent incomes are obtained using constant scale factors and researchers will need to distinguish clearly between inequality of nominal incomes and inequality of living standards. Furthermore, household observations must always be weighted according to family size. Author Affiliation: (001) World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki, Finland Article History: Registration Date: 21/12/2004 Received Date: 29/04/2004 Accepted Date: 09/07/2004

Byline: Karl Mosler (001) Keywords: inequality measurement; lift zonoid order; Lorenz order; majorization; multivariate inequality ordering Abstract: The paper investigates Lorenz dominance and generalized Lorenz dominance to compare distributions of economic status in one and several attributes. Restrictions of these dominance relations are developed that focus on central parts of the distributions and facilitate their comparison. Author Affiliation: (001) Seminar fur Wirtschafts- und Sozialstatistik, Universitat zu Koln, 50923, Koln, Germany Article History: Registration Date: 26/08/2004

One of the crucial intellectual and social challenges facing corporation leaders is to foster a new way of thinking about business and society which recognizes the multinational corporation as a key player in society's responsibility to support and maintain fairness in the global reorganization of markets. In order to establish a sound global social economy, we are in need of the organizing and directing principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. Both of these principles speak to the need of transforming our public and private institutions in such a way that all persons are placed in positions whereby they can share in the benefits of the newly-formed global economy. KEY WORDS: freedom-as-participation, relationality, solidarism, subsidiarity

In this paper, we consider research on links between higher education and family background, focusing particularly on the experiences of two cohorts of individuals born in 1958 and 1970. The findings point to a rise in educational inequality during the period relevant to these two cohorts. Specifically, links between educational achievement and parental income/social class strengthened during this period. Furthermore, a person's actual (measured) ability became a poorer predictor of whether they would get a degree than was previously the case. The expansion of higher education in the UK during this period appears to have disproportionately benefited children from richer families rather than the most able. Furthermore, the labour market success or failure of individuals became more closely connected to their parents' income, revealing a fall in the extent of intergenerational mobility over time. JEL classification: I2.

ABSTRACT Egypt, a developing country, is still going through a transition process from a socialist to a free market economy. With the declining role of centralized control, an institutional void [...]

Abstract Why do some households accumulate a prodigious amount of wealth while others have barely enough to meet their needs? This study investigates the effects of financial attitudes, financial behavior, [...]

The Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities contains useful information about the language ability of Britain's non-whites as well as a wealth of comparative information for whites. The paper attempts to establish how much of the lower unemployment and higher earnings enjoyed by whites is the result of a comparative advantage in language. Language is shown to contribute to a part of the non-white disadvantage, but after language effects are removed non-whites males still have higher unemployment rates and lower earnings. Language disadvantage among non-white females leads to higher inactivity rates rather than more unemployment.

Russia's transition from a centrally planned economy to a freer capitalist economy has been accompanied by a substantial decline in real per capita income and production. However, extensive analysis shows that these economic variables do not accurately reflect human welfare conditions. Thus, economic indicators of development should not be correlated with social achievement in the country's transition to a market economy.

Dualistic notions on structural transformation in Subsaharan Africa are analyzed. It is argued that structural transformation involves interactions between the capitalist market and traditional systems, wherein African households and communities make optimal choices from both traditional and market norms. A continuum approach showing the influence of the modern/traditional, rural/urban and formal/informal dichotomies is discussed.

A study was conducted to analyze the effects of social and economic change on well-being in counties in the Pacific Northwest from 1970 to 1990. Economic and social well-being were represented as income growth and low income inequality. They were modeled utilizing net migration information and measures of social and economic restructuring. Results indicated that growth in the retail sector promotes increases in income.

A previous study showed that regional differences in the socioeconomic well-being of the Appalachian counties did not emanate from differences in urbanization but from regional differences in the well-being among nonmetropolitan counties. The data from this study were reanalyzed using spatial autoregression approaches to determine the validity of the perceived superior status of nonmetropolitan Appalachian counties. It was discovered that even with the use of the spatial analysis, southern nonmetropolitan counties in Appalachia continued to manifest higher levels of well-being.