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This paper aims to assess all compulsory land acquisition court decisions in Australia over 1985‐2009 to provide a risk assessment and compensation analysis involved in proceeding to court for compulsory land acquisition cases.

Using the AustLII legal database, every publicly available compulsory land acquisition court case decision in Australia over 1985‐2009 is assessed. These 58 court cases are assessed for claim, offer and judgment value.

A total of 91.4 percent of compulsory land acquisition court cases over 1985‐2009 were found to be successful in achieving a judgment value of at least that of the offer. The median judgment value for successful cases was 60 percent higher than the offer value, while for unsuccessful cases it was 68 percent lower than the offer value. Successful smaller judgments (<$2 million) generated more upside compensation (median of 66 percent) than larger judgments (>$2 million) (median 41 percent upside compensation). Appealed cases were found to be only 28.6 percent successful, with only a maximum of 5.6 percent additional compensation achieved.

This paper provides a rigorous empirical risk assessment and compensation analysis for compulsory land acquisition court cases in Australia over the last 25 years. This provides an effective tool for dispossessed property owners, statutory acquirers and their professional legal and valuation advisors for more informed compulsory land acquisition court case decision making.

Using all compulsory land acquisition court decisions in Australia over the last 25 years, this paper is the first attempt internationally to rigorously and empirically conduct a risk assessment and compensation analysis involved with proceeding to court for compulsory land acquisition cases. Given the significance of the compulsory land acquisition process, this empirically validated research enables a more informed and critical understanding of the risk factors and compensation outcomes attached to the compulsory land acquisition court case judgment process.

The underdetermination argument establishes that scientists may use political values to guide inquiry, without providing criteria for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate guidance. This chapter supplies such criteria. Analysis of the confused arguments against value-laden science reveals the fundamental criterion of illegitimate guidance: when value judgments operate to drive inquiry to a predetermined conclusion. A case study of feminist research on divorce reveals numerous legitimate ways that values can guide science without violating this standard.

The economic science is again in a crisis and a new solution prolegomena to any future study in economics, finance and other social sciences has just been published by the International Institute of Social Economics in care of the MCB University Press in England. The roots of the major financial and economic problems of our time lie in an open conflict between theory and practice. In the 1930s and before the conflict was between classical theory and given realities. In the 1990s the conflict appears between the now prevailing modern, Keynesian theory and the actual realities. In addition during the twentieth century a great argument developed between the two schools of thought, argument which is not yet settled. In one sentence, the prolegomena tried and was successful to solve the conflict between theory and practice and the big doctrinal dispute of the twentieth century. It was a struggle of research and observation over half a century between 1947 and 1997.

The approach used here to the study of philsophical influences on educational administration is an examination of case studies of administrative decisions in educational organizations where the decisions are considered as dependent variables, and the value and/or fact bases of the decisions are considered as independent variables. Nine such case studies are summarized. Decision‐making which deals with educational purpose is viewed as one significant area in educational administration where philosophical consideration can be studied. The study of correlations between administrative decisions and the value and factual bases should make contributions toward the prediction of administrative decisions. Additional significance of this study should focus on the development of strategies to influence or change administrative decisions.

A major impediment to the advancement of ethics research in the accounting domain is the availability of appropriate research participants. This study aims to investigate the validity of using student surrogates in accounting ethics research.

A survey instrument was administered to a sample of US accounting practitioners (Certified Public Accountants) and two student respondent groups: intermediate and advanced-level accounting students. Both personal values and ethical judgments were measured.

Significant differences were found in both the structure of personal values and ethical judgments between practitioners and accounting students. Life-stage effects play an important role in explaining these differences. Hedonistic values are seen to become less salient through the maturation process, whereas others, such as security, become increasingly important. Unexpectedly, values are found to have little direct impact on ethical judgments.

The cross-sectional nature of the research design means the impacts of maturation and experience can only be inferred. Future corroborating longitudinal studies are encouraged.

Overall, the findings suggest caution in the use of student surrogates in this research context. In particular, adequate attention ought to be given to the close matching of ages, and to the extent possible, the education level between students and the target professional population. Insights provided by the study into factors underlying the ethical decision-making process of accountants provide a basis for evaluating the capabilities of employees and can be used in education and organizational training.

This study addresses a significant gap in the prior literature by concurrently considering the interrelationships between personal values, ethical judgment and subject type in studying the suitability of student surrogates in accounting ethics research.

This paper examines the impact that fair-value recognition of non-financial assets has on the judgments of commercial lenders.

Commercial lenders, who were attending a national banking conference, participated in a controlled experiment.

The experimental results show that commercial lenders incorporate fair values into their judgments but only when this information is recognized (vs disclosed) on the financial statements. Additionally, lenders assigned the highest loan interest rates when recognized fair values increased net income, and they assign the lowest loan amounts when recognized fair values decreased net income.

Typical limitations regarding behavioral experiments are acknowledged in the paper. For example, the commercial lenders in this study could not request additional information. In addition, because of the difficulty in obtaining these participants, the sample size is relatively small.

US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) does not allow the fair-market valuation for most non-current assets while International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) require such valuations. The article adds to our understanding about how a significant user group of financial statements, commercial lenders, view GAAP and IFRS accounting.

This article provides insights regarding how commercial lenders' decisions may change based on accounting principles related to asset valuation. Obtaining credit through loans has significant implications for society.

This article is unique because it examines commercial lenders' judgments using different asset valuations on the financial statements.

An open question of behavioral pricing literature is: What are the factors which influence consumers’ judgments of acquisition value and transaction value? An important framework to explain consumers’ shopping and purchase decisions is their decision-making styles. This paper aims to examine the influence of consumers’ decision-making styles, that is, perfectionistic high-quality conscious, brand conscious-price equals quality, novelty-fashion conscious, recreational-hedonistic, price conscious-value for money, impulsive-careless, habitual-brand loyal and confused by overchoice on their judgments of acquisition value and transaction value.

From the literature, a conceptual framework was formulated. Data was collected from a survey of 304 respondents. The measurement model was tested using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The structural model was tested using structural equation modeling.

The consumers’ judgments of acquisition value and transaction value vary with their decision-making styles. The measurement and structural models exhibited good fit, and 12 of the 16 proposed hypotheses were found to be significant.

The respondents for this research study were urban and postgraduate students.

The results of this study can help managers personalize their promotional offers and market offerings targeted at consumers with different decision-making styles.

Behavioral pricing literature has not convincingly shown that consumers make the judgments of the two values, acquisition value and transaction value, in a purchase scenario. There is limited literature on the impact of decision-making styles on the marketing variables. The results of this study contribute to the literature by showing that consumers make the judgments of these two values, and these judgments vary with their decision-making styles. Also, this is one of only a few studies to examine the two components of the purchase value in an Indian context.

Analyses the influence of value judgements in the mechanics of testing econometric theories against empirical data. The orthodox view of mainstream, positive economics is that value judgements play no part in the above process. Contests this view; defines value judgements and shows the orthodox conception to be too narrow, compared with the meaning and use of the term in other disciplines. Reviews many published examples from the 1970s and 1980s and ways in which value judgements have affected testing procedures in economics. Hypothesis testing via econometric techniques is fraught with value judgements because the application of statistical methodology is not a determinate, neutral or objective process.

The critical dimension and the one that can unify knowledge through systemic interrelationships, is unification of the purely a priori with the purely a posteriori parts of total reality into a congruous whole. This is a circular cause and effect interrelationship between premises. The emerging kind of world view may also be substantively called the epistemic‐ontic circular causation and continuity model of unified reality. The essence of this order is to ground philosophy of science in both the natural and social sciences, in a perpetually interactive and integrative mould of deriving, evolving and enhancing or revising change. Knowledge is then defined as the output of every such interaction. Interaction arises first from purely epistemological roots to form ontological reality. This is the passage from the a priori to the a posteriori realms in the traditions of Kant and Heidegger. Conversely, the passage from the a posteriori to a priori reality is the approach to knowledge in the natural sciences proferred by Cartesian meditations, David Hume, A.N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, as examples. Yet the continuity and renewal of knowledge by interaction and integration of these two premises are not rooted in the philosophy of western science. Husserl tried for it through his critique of western civilization and philosophical methods in the Crisis of Western Civilization. The unified field theory of Relativity‐Quantum physics is being tried for. A theory of everything has been imagined. Yet after all is done, scientific research program remains in a limbo. Unification of knowledge appears to be methodologically impossible in occidental philosophy of science.

Although considerable evidence shows that online product reviews (OPRs) can greatly affect consumers, how interface designs of OPR systems (i.e. websites where consumers read and write OPRs) impact online buying behavior has not yet been well investigated. Using research on confidence in judgment and the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework, this study aims to develop a model of the effects of OPR system design on consumer purchase behavior.

A study using a two by two by two factorial experimental design was conducted. The structural model with AMOS 23 based on 319 useable data points was tested.

Findings are very interesting. First, designs that manipulate positions of reviews impact perceived value but surprisingly have no effects on confidence in judgment. Second, designs using default display order based on helpfulness votes rather than on recency of reviews increase confidence to a higher level. Third, although unstructured organization methods are used by many major OPR systems, they are inferior in enhancing consumers’ emotional reactions to structured ones.

This paper highlights the need for more academic research on how interface designs of online product review systems impact purchase behavior. Additionally, this study emphasizes the need for examining how confidence in judgment is impacted in the online environment.

For practitioners, this research provides them with design implications on how to increase consumer purchase behavior.

This research enhances the understanding of the effects of OPR system interface design on purchase behavior. In addition, the current paper sheds light on how confidence in judgment, given its importance in reducing online consumer’s hesitance to buy, is impacted by various interface designs of OPR systems. Furthermore, this study applies the SOR framework to the context of OPR system designs.