Business Commons^™

Lee, J.-A. (2012). Nonprofit Organizations And The Intellectual Commons. Cheltenham, Uk; Northampton, Ma, Usa: Edward Elgar., Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Professor Lee defines intellectual commons as “intellectual resources which anyone can use either without permission or with permission granted in advance.” From the vantage point of third sector studies, this is different from both the Ostrom resources approach and the commons theory of associations articulated by Lohmann. This review assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Lee's approach.

Project Foresight Annual Report, 2017-2018, Paul J. Speaker

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Project FORESIGHT is a business-guided self-evaluation of forensic science laboratories across the globe. The participating laboratories represent local, regional, state, and national agencies. Economics, accounting, finance, and forensic faculty provide assistance, guidance, and analysis. Laboratories participating in Project FORESIGHT have developed standardized definitions for metrics to evaluate work processes, linking financial information to work tasks, and functions. Laboratory managers can then assess resource allocations, efficiencies, and value of services—the mission of Project FORESIGHT is to measure, preserve what works, and change what does not.

The benchmark data for the 2017-2018 performance period includes laboratory submissions for a variety of fiscal …

Knowledge Commons In Ancient Greece, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper reviews a variety of published sources by specialists in ancient history and philosophy written for students of philanthropy, nonprofit organizations, commons and other, related social sciences. It discusses Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum, and other philosophical schools as real historically significant organizations, not merely ideas or symbols. It was expanded from one section of Chapter 3 of the author's book, The Commons: New Perspectives on Nonprofit Organizations, Voluntary Action and Philanthropy (1992).

The Principles Of Organizational Inaction, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Organization inaction and the absence of change are seriously understudied topics. This article (a spoof) reports on a research problem that identifies and studies four principles of organizational inaction: The time, subject matter, group size and controversy theorems together and separately explain a great deal of committee and organizational inaction. The article also introduces innovative techniques of invariant statistics and mystery sampling. The article is an extensive rewrite of a 'research report' that originally appeared in a peer-reviewed administrative humor journal, The Bureaucrat, in 1979.

Speaking For “Free”: Word Of Mouth In Free- And Paid-Product Settings, Samuel Bond, Stephen He, Wen Wen

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This research examines drivers of consumer word of mouth (WOM) in free-product settings, revealing fundamental differences with traditional, paid-product settings. The authors build and investigate a theoretical model that highlights two unique characteristics of free products (reciprocity motivation and diminished adoption risk) and considers their implications for WOM sharing. Results of a retrospective survey, two controlled experiments, and an analysis of more than 5,000 mobile apps at Google Play and Apple’s App Store reveal that consumers are generally more likely to share their opinions of free products than paid products, because of feelings of reciprocity toward the producer. However, this …

The Economics And Politics Of Carbon Taxes And Regulations: Evidence From Voting On Washington State’S Initiative 732, Michael Reed, Patrick O'Reilly, Joshua Hall

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

n November 2016, Washington State voters were presented with a ballot initiative (Initiative 732) advancing the first carbon tax on production and use of fossil fuels in the United States. Initiative 732 promised to reduce fossil fuel consumption by taxing carbon emissions, while remaining revenue-neutral by lowering taxes on businesses, consumers, and working families. In promising revenue-neutrality, Initiative 732 sought support beyond environmentalists and similarly sympathetic voters. It failed to pass, achieving 41.2 percent of votes cast. To investigate this initiative’s failure at the ballot, we analyzed zip code-level voting patterns and demographic data. Relying on a two-step LASSO (Least …

A Data Envelopment Analysis Of West Virginia School Districts, Eduardo Minuci, Amir B. Ferreira Neto, Joshua Hall

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

West Virginia schools are consistently below the national average on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Using Data Envelopment Analysis, we estimate the technical efficiency of West Virginia school districts. We find less variation in technical efficiency in West Virginia than in similar studies conducted in other states. This appears to be because of state policy imposing homogeneity of input usage. Due to the limited variation in technical efficiency across districts, we cannot analyze how non-school inputs such as socioeconomic factors affect technical efficiency across districts. Summary statistics organized by county economic status, however, suggest that socioeconomic status plays a …

The Public Choice Of Public Stadium Financing: Evidence From San Diego Referenda, Candon Johnson, Joshua Hall

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Abstract: Local politicians and team owners frequently argue that the public financing of stadiums is important for local economic development. The sports economics literature, however, has largely found that new professional sport facilities do not generate any new net economic activity. We provide context to this literature by exploring the public choice in the public financing of stadiums. In 2016, San Diego had two ballot measures related to the San Diego Chargers. Measure C would allow officials to raise hotel taxes to pay for a new downtown stadium for the Chargers. Measure D would also raise hotel taxes, but explicitly …