Search results

Analyses the Bureau of Municipal Research′s (BMR) role in the 1912 New York City School Inquiry to show the democratic orientation of key people trying to transfer scientific management to government. Because much modern public administration literature portrays scientific management as authoritarian, some people assume its proponents wanted to shut the populace out of public‐sector decision making by transfering power from elected officials to experts. The School Inquiry case shows how important reformers committed to scientific management sought to maximize the control that elected officials had over a key administrative function. The BMR stressed this democratic point of view until threats from its principal financial backer forced it to downplay its voice on educational issues and its innovative concept of efficient citizenship.

This paper examines the determinants of corporate dividend policy in Jordan. The study uses a firm‐level panel data set of all publicly traded firms on the Amman Stock Exchange between 1989 and 2000. The study develops eight research hypotheses, which are used to represent the main theories of corporate dividends. A general‐to‐specific modeling approach is used to choose between the competing hypotheses. The study examines the determinants of the amount of dividends using Tobit specifications. The results suggest that the proportion of stocks held by insiders and state ownership significantly affect the amount of dividends paid. Size, age, and profitability of the firm seem to be determinant factors of corporate dividend policy in Jordan. The findings provide strong support for the agency costs hypothesis and are broadly consistent with the pecking order hypothesis. The results provide no support for the signaling hypothesis.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate long‐run elasticities for housing prices in Tehran's (capital of Iran) 20 different zones relative to several explanatory variables available for use such as land price, total substructure area, material price, etc. Moreover, another goal of this paper is to propose a new approach to deal with problems which arise due to a lack of proper data.

The data set is gathered from “The Municipality of Tehran” and “The Central Bank of Islamic Republic of Iran (CBI)”. One‐way fixed effects and one‐way random effects approaches (which are panel data approaches) are applied to model housing price forecasting function in Tehran's 20 different zones. Results are compared with ordinary least squares approach which is a common approach in this field. Finally, outcomes of the preferred approach are discussed and analyzed with regard to the economic point of view.

Results show that one‐way fixed effects approach provides more accurate forecasts and can be considered as a suitable tool to deal with housing price forecasting problems in environments which are: uncertain, complex, and faced with a lack of proper data. Moreover, it is found that land price is the most effective factor that has impact on total housing cost in Tehran, i.e. the main portion of house prices in Tehran is affected by land price, so appropriate policies have to be made by the government to control fluctuations of this factor.

The proposed approach will supply policy makers with improved estimations with decreased errors in uncertain and complex environments which are faced with a lack of proper data, and it extracts valuable information which enables policy makers for handling non‐linearity, complexity, as well as uncertainty that may exist in actual data sets with respect to housing price forecasting. Moreover, the proposed approach can be applied to similar housing price case studies to obtain more accurate and more reliable outcomes.

Applying panel data approach for estimation of housing prices is relatively new in the field of housing economics. Moreover, this is the first study which employs panel data approach for analyzing the housing market in Tehran.

We examine whether Douglas and Santerre's (1990) substitutes hypothesis obtains for bank holding companies (BHCs); i.e. whether degree of ownership concentration and salary incentives are alternative methods of aligning BHC CEO incentives with those of shareholders. Also examined is the relation between CEO salary and bonus and CEO tenure. Using a sample of 95 BHC drawn from the 1990 Forbes magazine compensation survey, we regress CEO salary and bonus against ROE, stock return, two measures of ownership concentration, and a CEO tenure variable. Our results 1) support the substitutes hypothesis as applied to BHCs, and, 2) find a negative relation between CEO salary and bonus and CEO tenure.

This paper aims to suggest that a police organization should prefer change management approaches and methods that would not only lead the organization towards an effective position in preventing crime and fighting terrorism but also enable it to be in harmony with the organizational environment that answers both the expectations of the organization's employees and of the public.

This is a discussion paper.

The goal will be achieved through developing a new approach, namely the “Tailoring model”, setting out from the similarities between the change manager and a tailor, who designs and prepares a garment taking into consideration both the physical characteristics and personal preferences of the client with the environmental conditions where the suit will be worn.

The paper not only adds significant perspectives for police organization managers in conducting reform initiatives to adapt community policing successfully but also contributes to the literature by developing a model for adapting change management approaches on a specific field of police organizations.

EVEN when it rains, and it did rain, Edinburgh has many attractions. It is a fine centre for a conference with some splendid libraries to visit and this year, as in other years, our hosts put themselves out to make us welcome.

This paper examines the dynamic determinants of signaling firm’s market value. The underlying assumption is that when a firm changes its capital structure, it actually changes the relative position and the market values of its capital suppliers’ securities holdings. As for the determinants of capital structure, the paper examines a comprehensive number of factors that have been examined or pointed out in the literature. The paper utilizes the properties of partial adjustment model where the desired (or target) level of market value is adjusted according to both of the changes in actual market values and changes in firm’s capital structure. The results indicate that firm’s market value is not affected by neither factors of tradeoff theory nor free cash flow theories of capital structure. If firm’s liquidity position is taken as a source of short‐term financing, the results indicate that factors of pecking order theory do exist. The premises of dividend irrelevancy and information asymmetry do exist with a negative estimate of the dividend payout ratio. The results also indicate that firms’ financial‐agency signaling is affected by eight factors. These factors are (1) debt financing, (2) bankruptcy risk, (3) type of industry, (4) size, (5) financial flexibility, (6) liquidity position, (7) interest rate and (8) transaction costs of borrowing or paying off debt.

This study examines the effects of the accruals vs. cash flow bases on firm’s MB ratio as a proxy for shareholder value. The methodology utilizes the benefits of the ‘partial adjustment model’ where it addresses the extent to which the shareholder value adjusts to a target level. The final results indicate that (a) the accrual basis helps adjust the shareholder value to a target level more than the cash flow basis, (b) the shareholder value is associated with profitability‐related ratios and dividend‐related ratios, (c) in both bases, the shareholders value is positively associated with earnings per share and price‐to‐earnings ratio, (d) the significant effects of firm‐specific controls indicate that the shareholder value is affected by the accounting base in certain industries, certain size, and affected by the time as well. The results of the sensitivity analysis show that the accruals‐based estimates and cash flow estimates are robust and reliable.

This article discusses factor models for portfolio credit. In these models, correlations between individual defaults are driven by a few systematic factors. By conditioning on these factors, defaults observed within are independent. This allows a greater degree of analytical tractability in the model with a realistic dependency structure.

The main objective of this study is to identify the determinants of TV ads avoiding behavior between light and heavy avoiders in greater Cairo. To achieve the study objective, five hypotheses have been developed and tested by such statistical techniques as discriminant analysis, t‐tests, MannWhitney tests, and Chi Square tests. A questionnaire has been designed to collect data from a systematic random sample of adults in social clubs and shopping centers in greater Cairo. The number of usable questionnaires in data analysis was 364. The study findings show that all respondents except 3 were doing one or more of TV ads avoiding behavior. Cognitive avoiding represents the most frequently used avoiding behavior by light and heavy TV ads avoiders. The results also demonstrate that perceptions, attitudes toward advertising, and some motives were determinants of TV ads avoiding behavior. On the other hand, it was found that all demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, except types of channels, were not determinants of TV ads avoiding behavior between light and heavy TV ads avoiders. The study concludes with a number of academic and practical recommendations.