Abstract. Studies investigating effects of outcomes on judgments and decisions have been increasing within the business/accounting research literatures. No study, however, has addressed the presence or absence of such effects in terms of potential explanations and the conditions affecting their viability. Three such explanations are the foci of the present study: cognitive reconstruction, self‐enhancing motive, and an escalation‐of‐commitment analogue. The viability of these explanations was investigated experimentally in an accounting context in which subjects evaluated a capital‐budgeting committee's funding priority decisions with or without project outcome information (five‐year operating results). Experimental results fully support the cognitive reconstruction explanation for outcome effects on decision appraisals but provide only limited support for the self‐enhancing motive and escalation‐of‐commitment explanations. Results of additional experimentation are presented, further supporting logic inherent in the hypothesis derived from the cognitive reconstruction explanation. The relationship of the present study to prior research and implications for future research and practice are discussed. Résumé. Les études portant sur l'analyse de l'incidence de l'issue d'une situation sur les jugements posés et les décisions prises par la suite se sont multipliées dans la recherche en gestion et en comptabilité. Aucun chercheur ne s'est pourtant penché sur la présence ou l'absence d'une telle incidence en s'interrogeant sur son explication potentielle et sur les facteurs qui influent sur sa viabilité. La présente étude s'articule autour de trois de ces explications: la reconstruction cognitive, la promotion personnelle et un équivalent de l'escalade de l'engagement. La viabilité de ces explications a été soumise à une étude expérimentale dans un contexte comptable dans lequel les sujets évaluaient les décisions d'un comité chargé du choix des investissements dans le cadre de l'établissement des priorités en matière d'affectation des fonds, avec ou sans information sur l'issue des projets (résultats d'exploitation de cinq ans). Les résultats de l'expérience confirment sans équivoque l'explication de la reconstruction cognitive relativement à l'incidence de l'issue des projets sur les évaluations décisionnelles, mais ils n'appuient que de façon mitigée les explications de la promotion personnelle et de l'escalade des engagements. Les auteurs exposent les résultats d'autres expériences, qui viennent étayer la logique sous‐jacente à l'hypothèse fondée sur l'explication de la reconstruction cognitive. Ils analysent enfin la relation entre la présente étude et les travaux de recherche antérieurs de même que ses conséquences éventuelles sur la recherche et la profession.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the identifiability of duration models with multiple spells. We prove that the results of Elbers and Ridder (1982) and Heckman and Singer (1984) can be generalized to multi-spell models with lagged duration dependence. We also prove that without lagged duration dependence, the identification result does not depend on moment conditions or tail conditions on the mixing distribution. This result is in contrast to Ridder's (1990) result for single-spell models.

This article analyzes the relationship between hours of work and labor force participation (LFP) in Heckman's model, Cogan's fixed-cost model, Moffitt's minimum hours constraint model, and a generalized version of Heckman's model. First, the parameter restrictions between the LFP and reduced-form hours-of-work equations are compared. The models are then estimated, and the results support the weakening of the link between the LFP and hours-of-work decisions. One implication of the analysis is that Heckman's model overstates the standard labor supply elasticities because it confounds the direct effect on labor supply with the participation effect.

When will an industry subject to agglomeration economies move from an old, high-cost site to a new, low-cost site? It is argued that history, in the form of sunk costs resulting from the operation of many firms at a site, creates a first-mover disadvantage that can prevent relocation. It is demonstrated that developers of industrial parks can partly overcome this inertia through discriminatory pricing of land over time, and empirical evidence is provided that they actually engage in such behavior. It is also shown that other aspects of developer land-sale strategy can be a source of information on the nature of interfirm externalities.

This lecture surveys recent models of growth and trade in search of descriptions of technologies that are consistent with episodes of very rapid income growth. Emphasis is placed on the on-the-job accumulation of human capital: learning by doing. Possib le connections between learning rates and international trade are discussed Copyright 1993 by The Econometric Society.

[We explore the dynamics of a takeover bid. In contrast to preceding models, if the initial takeover bid is unsuccessful a raider is allowed to make a new tender offer in order to try and secure the remaining shares. Numerical analysis shows that the raider's tender offer rises over time as he accumulates more shares. The anticipation of a higher tender offer in the future makes shareholders more inclined to hold their shares and forces the raider to offer a higher premium than is predicted by static theories. As the time between tender offers goes to zero, we show analytically that the expected profit from engaging in a takeover goes to zero.]