Don't tax me? : Determinants of individual attitudes toward progressive taxation

This contribution empirically analyses the individual determinants of tax rate preferences. For that purpose we make use of the representative German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) that offers data on the individual attitudes toward progressive, proportional, and regressive taxation. Our theoretical considerations suggest that beyond self-interest, information, fairness considerations, economic beliefs and several other individual factors drive individual preferences for tax rate structures. Our empirical results indicate that the self-interest view does not offer the sole explanation for the heterogeneity in attitudes toward progressive taxation. Rather, we show that the choice of the favoured tax rate is also driven by fairness considerations

Best care options for older prisoners with dementia – a scoping review

Introduction: The prisoner population is ageing and consideration is needed for how to best support those with age-related health conditions in the system. Existing work practices and organisational structures often fail to meet the needs of prisoners with dementia, and prison staff experience high levels of burden due to these prisoners’ increased needs. Little is known about the best method of responding to the needs of this growing sub-population of prisoners. Method: A scoping review was conducted to answer the question: What are the perceived best care options for prisoners with dementia? To be included, publications had to be publicly available, reported on research findings, or viewed opinions and commentaries on care practices relevant to older prisoners with dementia. Searches were conducted in eleven databases to identify relevant publications. Data from the included publications were extracted and summarised into themes. Results: Eight themes were identified that could support better care practices for prisoners with dementia: (1) early and ongoing screening for older prisoners; (2) specialised services; (3) specialised units; (4) programs/activities; (5) adaptations to current contexts; (6) early release or parole for older prisoners with dementia deemed at low risk of re-offending; and (7) training younger prisoners (8) as well as staff to assist older prisoners with dementia. Besides practical strategies improving care practice, costs, prison-specific resources and staff skills were highlighted as care barriers across all themes. A lack of empirical evidence supported these findings. Conclusion: One of the implications of the international ageing prison population is higher numbers of people incarcerated with dementia. Suggestions for best care approaches for prisoners with dementia now need to move from opinion to empirical approaches to guide practice

Exploring the role of individual level and firm level dynamic capabilities in SMEs’ internationalization

This paper presents a multi-level model that examines the impact of dynamic capabilities on the internationalization of SMEs while taking into account the interactions among them. The purpose of the research is to understand the applicability of dynamic capabilities at the individual and the firm level to the SME internationalization process in developing country context and to assess to what extent a firm’s asset position and individual level dynamic capabilities influence the generation of firm level dynamic capabilities in SMEs. First, the dynamic capabilities theory was theoretically linked to the internationalization phenomenon. The relationships among firm-level dynamic capabilities, individual-level dynamic capabilities (owner specific dynamic capabilities), and internationalization were identified. The research framework and hypotheses were developed and empirically tested with 197 SMEs. The findings established that owner-specific dynamic capabilities have a positive influence on both firm dynamic capabilities and internationalization, and firm dynamic capabilities positively influence internationalization. It was also found that the market assets position measured as perceptual environmental dynamism positively influenced firm dynamic capabilities but structural and reputational asset positions of SMEs did not influence generation of firm dynamic capabilities. Moreover, firm dynamic capabilities had a mediation effect in the relationship between owner-specific dynamic capabilities and internationalization. Theoretically, this confirms the relevance of dynamic capability theory to internationalization and the possibility of integrating existing internationalization theories. Entrepreneurs, SME managers, and policy-makers could gain valuable insights on how entrepreneur and firm capabilities lead to better international prospects from this outcome

Economic Literacy or Economic Ideology?

The Test of Economic Literacy (TEL), is a standardized multiple choice test developed under the auspices of the Joint Council on Economic Education with esteemed economists in an advisory role. The Test of Economic Literacy (TEL) is administered in many high school economics courses both to measure economic understanding and to monitor the effectiveness of teaching. We found that some of the questions in the test have a pronounced ideological slant. We view the biases in the TEL as characteristic vices of economists. In their weaker moments, economists can slip into a thought pattern which glorifies laissez-faire microeconomics while at the same time favoring Keynesian interventionist macroeconomics; this is precisely the bias of the TEL. The next two sections examine the ideological components of the microeconomics and macroeconomics respectively. For each part, we present a few of the questions and discuss their ideological content. For the micro part, we use the TEL data bank to analyze a matched sample of students who took the test before and after a course in economics. This empirical exercise allows us to address the questions in the title of the paper: what is taught and measured, literacy or ideology?