The Australian National University
Faculty of Economics and Commerce
document location: http://cbe.anu.edu.au/research/publications/default.asp

Research Publications

Home Page > Research > Publications : Listing

The College of Business & Economics members publish with leading international journals and many academic presses. This list contains a selection of recent publications by College staff members.

 

Selected Recent Publications

Work-family balance: Theoretical and empirical advancements

Paula Brough and Thomas Kalliath

Journal of Organizational Behavior

This special issue showcases papers by five authors who provide insights into the theoretical directions for work-family balance research. The special issue begins with an expert commentary by Westman, Brough and Kalliath who discuss the often overlooked role of work-family crossover. Second, Powell reviews the culture-sensitivity of work-family balance theories and advances a cultural framework for consideration. Third, van Steenbergen and Ellemers showcase a longitudinal research design which includes both objective and subjective health indicators. Van Steenbergen and Ellemers demonstrate that employees who experience low conflict and high facilitation between work and family roles are objectively healthier, less absent and better performing employees. Fourth, Taylor, DelCampo and Blancero progress current discussions concerning hte impact of organisational climate on work-family balance, with a specific focus on organisational fairness. Finally, Ngo, Foley, and Loi report how family-friendly work practices (FFWPs) of selected multi-national corporations in Hong Kong directly influenced organisational performance.

 

Expert commentary on work-life balance and crossover of emotions and experiences: Theoretical and practice advancements

Mina Westman, Paula Brough and Thomas Kalliath

Journal of Organizational Behavior

Professor Mina Westman, the head of Organisational Behaviour Program at the Tel Aviv is a leading international expert on the crossover of emotions and experiences in the family and the workplace. In this interview with Paula Brough and Thomas Kalliath (guest editors), Professor Westman clarifies the nature of two related constructs: Work-life balance and crossover. Work-life balance is the perception that work and non-work activities are compatible and promote growth in accordance with an individual's current life priorities. Crossover focuses on how stress experienced by the individual influences strain experienced by the individual's spouse or team member. In this expert commentary, Professor Westman discusses the philosophical underpinnings of work-life balance, the significance of crossover of emotions ad experiences for organizations and individuals, current advances in the file and sets out the new directions for this research.

 

Timing of Adaptive Web Personalization and Its Effects on Online Consumer Behavior

Susanna Ho, D. Bodoff and K.Y. Tam

Information Systems Research

Web personalization allows online merchants to customize web content to serve the needs of individual customers. Using data mining and click-stream analysis techniques, websites can now adapt their content in real time to capture the current preferences of online customers. While the ability to offer adaptive content in real time opens up new business opportunities for online merchants, it also raises questions of timing. One question is when to present personalized content to consumers. Consumers prefer early presentation that eases their selection process, whereas adaptive systems can make better personalized content if they are allowed to collect more consumers’ clicks over time. A review of personalization research confirms that little work has been done on these timing issues in the context of personalized services. The current study aims at filling this gap. Drawing on Consumer Search Theory, we develop hypotheses about consumer responses to differences in presentation timing and recommendation type, and the interaction between the two.

 

Political regimes, business cycles, seasonalities, and returns

John G. Powell, Jing Shi, Tom Smith, Robert E. Whaley

Journal of Banking and Finance

This paper provides a method for testing for regime differences when regimes are long-lasting. Standard testing procedures are generally inappropriate because regime persistence causes a spurious regression problem—a problem that has led to incorrect inference in a broad range of studies involving regimes representing political, business, and seasonal cycles. The paper outlines analytically how standard estimators can be adjusted for regime dummy variable persistence. While the adjustments are helpful asymptotically, spurious regression remains a problem in small samples and must be addressed using simulation or bootstrap procedures. We provide a simulation procedure for testing hypotheses in situations where an independent variable in a time-series regression is a persistent regime dummy variable. We also develop a procedure for testing hypotheses in situations where the dependent variable has similar properties.

Inequality in Indonesia: What can we learn from top incomes?

Andrew Leigh (RSSS) and Pierre van der Eng

Journal of Public Economics

Using taxation and household survey data, this paper estimates top income shares for Indonesia during 1920–2004. Our results suggest that top income shares grew during the 1920s and 1930s, but fell in the post-war era. We observe a sharp rise in top income shares during the late-1990s, coinciding with the 1997–98 economic crisis. Where comparable data are available, top income shares in Indonesia are generally higher than in other countries, a finding that is at odds with the view that Indonesia is a relatively egalitarian society. This suggests that top income shares may provide a more complete picture of developing country inequality in comparative perspective.

 

Rethinking organizational size in IS research: meaning, measurement and redevelopment

Sigi Goode and Shirley Gregor 

European Journal of Information Systems

While organisational size is a popular construct in information systems (IS) research, findings from its use have been inconsistent.  Few studies have explored this inconsistency or attempted to address this problem. This paper uses Churchill’s measure development paradigm to conduct three separate but related investigations into the size  construct. Study 1 explored the domain and dimensions of size. Some 2000 research papers published in six leading IS journals over an 11-year period were read in order to determine what researchers thought size meant and how they measured it. The study found 21 constructs underpinning the size construct and 25 ways of measuring size, but no clear relationship between size meaning and measurement.  Study 2 assessed the construct’s content validity using a concept map exercise involving 41 participants. Multidimensional scaling clustered the constructs into three conceptual groups.  Study 3 administered the size construct in a survey with a sample of 163 Australian firms. The study found that the data supported the constructs observed in Study 2 and that a group of eight constructs could be used to differentiate between smaller and larger firms in the sample. Analysis revealed that organisational levels, risk aversion, geographic distribution and employment reflected respondents’ self-nominated size. 

 

Optimal redistribution with unobservable disability: Welfarist versus non-welfarist social objectives

Pierre Pestieau (Universite de Liege, Belgium) and Maria Raceionero 

European Economic Review

This paper examines the optimal non-linear income and commodity tax when the same labor disutility can receive two alternative interpretations, taste for leisure or disability, but the disability is not readily observable. We compare the optimal policy under alternative social objectives, welfarist and non-welfarist, and conclude that the non- welfarist objective, in which the planner gives a higher weight to the disutility of labor of the disabled individuals, is the only reasonable specification. It has some foundation in the theory of responsibility; further, unlike the other specifications it yields an optimal solution that may involve a lower labor supply requirement from disabled individuals.

 

From posteriors to priors via cycles

Jose Alvaro Rodrigues-Neto

Journal of Economic Theory

We present new necessary and sufficient conditions for checking if a set of players' posteriors may come from a common prior. A simple diagrammatic device calculates the join and meet of players' knowledge partitions. Each cycle in the diagram has a corresponding cycle equation. Posteriors are consistent with a common prior if and only if all cycle equations are satisfied. We prove that in games of two players, where the join partition has only singletons, a common prior exists if each player's distribution of beliefs over the elements of her opponent's partition is independent of her own private information.

 

Uncovering the Hit-List for Small Inflation Targeters: A Bayesian Structural Analysis

Timothy Kam, K. Lees and P. Liu

Journal of Money, Credit and Banking

We estimate underlying structural macroeconomic policy objectives of three ofthe earliest explicit in?ation targeters within the context of a small open economy DSGEmodel. We assume central banks set policy optimally, such that we can reverse engineer policyobjectives from observed time series data. Joint tests of the posterior distributions of thesepolicy preference parameters suggest that the central banks are very similar in their overallobjective. None of the central banks show a concern for stabilizing the real exchange rate. Allthree central banks share a concern for minimizing the volatility in the change in the nominalinterest rate. We also show that the resulting optimal policy rule responds to exchange ratemovements, even in the case where the central banks do not explicitly care about exchangerate stabilization. This result is also corroborated by results from an alternative simple-rule characterization and estimation of central bank behavior. These last two ?ndings point to thepitfalls of making inferences, from the level of ad-hoc simple rules, about what central banksmay care about.

 

FDI Entry Choice of Chinese Firms: A Strategic Behavior Perspective

Lin Cui and Fuming Jiang

The Journal of World Business

This study investigates the determinants of FDI entry mode choice between a wholly owned subsidiary and a joint venture by Chinese firms that invest overseas. We argue that the FDI entry mode choice of a Chinese firm is primarily influenced by the variables related to the firm’s strategic fit in host industry and its strategic intent of conducting FDI. Using survey data of a sample of 138 Chinese firms, we conduct empirical tests on the hypotheses derived from a strategic behavior based framework. The results suggest that a Chinese firm prefers wholly owned subsidiary entry mode when it adopts a global strategy, faces severe host industry competition, and emphasizes assets seeking purposes in its FDI, whereas joint venture is preferred when the firm is investing in a high growth host market.

A Regression Approach for Estimating Multiday Adverse Health Effects of PM10 When Daily PM10 Data Are Unavailable

Michael A. Martin and Steven Roberts

American Journal of Epidemiology

The authors propose a regression-based approach for obtaining multiday estimates of the adverse health effects of ambient particulate matter less than 10 µm in diameter (PM10) when daily PM10 time-series data are unavailable. This situation is common in the United States, because most US cities take PM10 measurements every 6 days. Current evidence suggests that adverse effects of PM10 are not concentrated on a single day but rather are spread out over multiple days, so the unavailability of daily PM10 data presents a problem for the estimation of these effects. The proposed model estimates weights that are used to construct a linear combination of single-lag PM10 effect estimates obtained from the available PM10 data. It is shown that this new approach provides estimates of the effect of PM10 on mortality that have less bias and mean squared error than currently available methods. Application of this method to the US cities contained in the National Morbidity, Mortality, and Air Pollution Study database produces an estimated national average effect of PM10 on nonaccidental mortality in persons over age 65 years, corresponding to a 0.32% increase per 10-µg/m3 increment in PM10. The estimated effects for cardiorespiratory mortality and other mortality are 0.34% and 0.22%, respectively.

Individual Power Distance Orientation and Follower Reactions to Transformational Leaders: A Cross-Level, Cross-Cultural Examination

Bradley L. Kirkman, Gilad Chen, Jiing-Lih Farh, Zhen Xiong Chen, Kevin B. Lowe

Academy of Management Journal

Using 560 followers and 174 leaders in the People's Republic of China and United States, we found that individual follower's power distance orientation and their group's shared perceptions of transformational leadership were positively related to follower's procedural justice perceptions. Power distance orientation also moderated the cross-level relationship that transformational leadership had with procedural justice, such that the relationship was more positive when power distance orientation was lower, rather than higher. Procedural justice, in turn, linked the unique and interactive relationships of transformational leadership and power distance orientation with followers' organizational citizenship behavior. Country differences did not significantly affect these relationships.

The Causes, Costs and Compensations of Inflation. An Investigation of three problems in monetary theory

William Coleman

This book explores the causes, costs and benefits of inflationin the ‘aftermath of Monetarism’. It argues that while the cause of inflation is essentially monetary, the costs and benefits of inflation lie in inflation’s distortion of the economy's responses to real shocks. The book begins by securing the quantity theory of money from certain critiques and then advances a simple and tractable neo-Wicksellian theory of inflation which is shown to exhibit a striking homology with the quantity theory.It then traces the costliness of inflation, not to any disturbance of the money market, but to the damage inflation does to the bond market's function of sharing out disturbances to consumption caused by technological shocks. The same damage, however, imparts an egalitarian dynamic to accumulation that produces a convergence in the wealth of economic interests, which will not occur without risky inflation.

Explaining US Immigration 1971-1988

Ximena Clark, Timothy J. Hatton and Jeffrey G Williamson

Review of Economics and Statistics

In this paper we develop and estimate a model to explain variations in immigration to the United States by source country since the early 1970's. The model incorporates ratios to the US of source country income and education as well as relative inequality as suggested by the Roy model applied to migrant selection. In addition we incorporate "the friends and relatives effect" as reflected in the stock of previous immigrants and a variety of variables representing different dimensions of the immigration quotas set by policy. We estimate our immigration model on a panel of 81 soucre countries for the years 1971 - 1998. The results strongly support the influence of economic and policy variables. We use the results to shed light on the effects of policy by stimulating the effects of the key changes in immigration policy since the late 1970's. We also examine the factors that influenced the composition of US Immigration by source region over the entire period.

 

Preparing performance information in the public sector: an Australian perspective

Janet Lee

Financial Accountability & Management

This paper examines performance information and reporting issues through a survey of the views of public sector managers in Australia regarding the importance of selected performance information in achieving the objectives of an organization, the extent of information development, usefulness for reporting in annual reports, and actual reporting.  The results reveal the existence of a gap between information considered important, the extent of development, and information considered useful for annual reporting. Most non-financial performance information is still being developed and less frequently reported, particularly output quality information. 

 

Forecasting the volatility of Australian stock returns: do common factors help?
Anderson, Heather, Vahid, Farshid
Journal of Business & Economic Statistics

This paper develops multivariate factor models for forecasting volatility in Australian stocks. We suggest estimation procedures for approximate factor models that are robust to jumps when the cross-sectional dimension is not very large, and we also work with volatility measures that have been constructed so that they contain no jump components. Out of sample forecast analysis shows that multivariate factor models of volatility outperform univariate models, but that there is little difference between simple and sophisticated factor models.

 

 

Financial liberalization, financial sector development and growth: Evidence from Malaysia.
Ang, James B., McKibbin, Warwick J.
Journal of Development Economics

The objective of this paper is to examine whether financial development leads to economic growth or vice versa in the small open economy of Malaysia. Using time series data from 1960 to 2001, we conduct cointegration and causality tests to assess the finance-growth link by taking the real interest rate and financial repression into account. The empirical evidence suggests that financial liberalization, through removing the repressionist policies, has a favorable effect in stimulating financial sector development. Financial depth and economic development are positively related; but contrary to the conventional findings, our results support Robinson’s view that output growth leads to higher financial depth in the long-run.

 

On the distribution tail of an integrated risk model: A numerical approach.
Brokate, M, Seydel, R, Kostdinova, R, Kluppelbert, C and Maller, RA.
Insurance: Mathematics Economics

We consider an insurance risk process with the possibility to invest the capital reserve into a portfolio consisting of risky assets anda riskless asset. The stock price is modeled by an exponential Levy process and the riskless interest rate is assumed to be constant. Risk assessment of the integrated risk process is made in terms of a high quantile. We indicate an application to an optimal investment strategy of an insurer.

 

Reactions to psychological contract breach: A dual perspective.
Chen, George
Journal of Organisational Behaviour

This study examined reactions to psychological contract breach from two separate perspectives, i.e., employee’s reactions to perceptions of employer breach and supervisor’s reactions to perceptions of employee breach of the psychological contract.  We proposed and tested four hypotheses with a sample from China. The results showed that employer breach correlated negatively with organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and work performance, but this negative relationship was weaker for employees with traditional values. The results also demonstrated that employee breach correlated negatively with responses from the supervisor, in terms of the mentoring and leader-member exchange quality. However, more benevolent supervisors reacted less negatively in terms of the mentoring than did the less benevolent supervisors.

 

Delegation and employee work outcomes: an examination of the cultural context of mediating processes in China.
Chen, Zhen Xiong and Aryee, Samuel
Academy of Management Journal

We used cultural self-representation theory to develop a model of the processes linking delegation to work outcomes. We tested this model with data from a sample of 171 subordinate-supervisor dyads from the People’s Republic of China. Regression results revealed that organization-based self-esteem and perceived insider status fully mediated the influence of delegation on affective organizational commitment, task performance, and innovative behavior and partially mediated delegation’s influence on job satisfaction. Furthermore, traditionality moderated the relationships between delegation and the mediators in such a way that the relationships were stronger for individuals lower rather than higher in traditionality.

 

Anatomy of a Design Theory.
Gregor, Shirley and Jones, David
Journal of Association of Information Systems

Design work and design knowledge in Information Systems (IS) is important for both research and practice. Yet there has been comparatively little critical attention paid to the problem of specifying design theory so that it can be communicated, justified and developed cumulatively. In this essay we focus on the structural components or anatomy of design theories in IS as a special class of theory. In doing so we aim to extend the work of Walls, Widemeyer and El Sawy (1992) on the specification of information systems design theories (ISDT), drawing on other streams of thought on design research and theory to provide a basis for a more systematic and useable formulation of these theories. Eight separate components of design theories are identified: (1) purpose and scope; (2) constructs; (3) principles of form and function; (4) artifact mutability; (5) testable propositions; (6) justificatory knowledge (kernel theories); (7) principles of implementation; and (8) an expository instantiation. This specification includes components missing in the Walls et al. adaptation of Dubin (1978) and Simon (1969) and also addresses explicitly problems associated with the role of instantiations and the specification of design theories for methodologies and interventions as well as for products and applications. The essay is significant as the unambiguous establishment of design knowledge as theory gives a sounder base for arguments for the rigor and legitimacy of IS as an applied discipline and for its continuing progress. A craft can proceed with the copying of one example of a design artifact by one artisan after another. A discipline cannot.

Bootstrap hypothesis testing for some common statistical problems: a critical evaluation of size and power properties.
Martin, M.
Computational Statistics and Data Analysis

The construction of bootstrap hypothesis tests can differ from that of bootstrap confidence intervals because of the need to generate the bootstrap distribution of test statistics under a specific null hypothesis. Similarly, bootstrap power calculations rely on resampling being carried out under specific alternatives. We describe and develop null and alternative resampling schemes for common scenarios, constructing bootstrap tests for the correlation coefficient, variance, and regression/ANOVA models. Bootstrap power calculations for these scenarios are described. In some cases, null-resampling bootstrap tests are equivalent to tests based on appropriately constructed bootstrap confidence intervals. In other cases, particularly those for which simple percentile-method bootstrap intervals are in routine use such as the correlation coefficient, null-resampling tests differ from interval-based tests. We critically assess the performance of bootstrap tests, examining size and power properties of the tests numerically using both real and simulated data. Where they differ from tests based on bootstrap confidence intervals, null-resampling tests have reasonable size properties, outperforming tests based on bootstrapping without regard to the null hypothesis. The bootstrap tests also have reasonable power properties.