Capital Controls with International Reserve Accumulation: Can this Be Optimal ?

Motivated by the Chinese experience, we analyze a semi-open economy where the central bank has access to international capital markets, but the private sector has not. This enables the central bank to choose an interest rate different from the international rate. We examine the optimal policy of the central bank by modelling it as a Ramsey planner who can choose the level of domestic public debt and of international reserves. The central bank can improve savings opportunities of credit-constrained consumers modelled as in Woodford (1990). We find that in a steady state it is optimal for the central bank to replicate the open economy, i.e., to issue debt financed by the accumulation of reserves so that the domestic interest rate equals the foreign rate. When the economy is in transition, however, a rapidly growing economy has a higher welfare without capital mobility and the optimal interest rate differs from the international rate. We argue that the domestic interest rate should be temporarily above the international rate. We also find that capital controls can still help reach the first best when the planner has more fiscal instruments.

Building legitimacy by criticising the pharmaceutical industry: a qualitative study among prescribers and local opinion leaders.

PRINCIPLES: The literature has described opinion leaders not only as marketing tools of the pharmaceutical industry, but also as educators promoting good clinical practice. This qualitative study addresses the distinction between the opinion-leader-as-marketing-tool and the opinion-leader-as-educator, as it is revealed in the discourses of physicians and experts, focusing on the prescription of antidepressants. We explore the relational dynamic between physicians, opinion leaders and the pharmaceutical industry in an area of French-speaking Switzerland. METHODS: Qualitative content analysis of 24 semistructured interviews with physicians and local experts in psychopharmacology, complemented by direct observation of educational events led by the experts, which were all sponsored by various pharmaceutical companies. RESULTS: Both physicians and experts were critical of the pharmaceutical industry and its use of opinion leaders. Local experts, in contrast, were perceived by the physicians as critical of the industry and, therefore, as a legitimate source of information. Local experts did not consider themselves opinion leaders and argued that they remained intellectually independent from the industry. Field observations confirmed that local experts criticised the industry at continuing medical education events. CONCLUSIONS: Local experts were vocal critics of the industry, which nevertheless sponsor their continuing education. This critical attitude enhanced their credibility in the eyes of the prescribing physicians. We discuss how the experts, despite their critical attitude, might still be beneficial to the industry's interests.

How women and men project their gender prototypes on leader prototypes.

Both role incongruency theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002) and the lack of fit model by Heilman (1983) suggest that the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions can be explained by the male-typedness of leader prototypes. We examine how women and men project their gender prototypes onto leader prototypes. We found initially that men more so than women projected their gender prototypes on leader prototypes. For men there is more of an overlap between a prototypical men and a prototypical leader than there is an overlap between a prototypical woman and a prototypical leader. Women, however, do not engage in so called relative ingroup projection. In the current study, we further decompose this finding asking whether the gender difference in relative ingroup projection on leadership prototypes is driven by female prototypes, male prototypes, and/or leader prototypes. We further examine to what extent this gender difference is more manifested on positively valenced or negatively valenced attributes of prototypes. Our findings show that, while women and men have similar prototypes of leaders and men on both positively and negatively valenced attributes, men relative to women have less favorable prototypes of women but only on positively valenced attributes. An interesting implication is that efforts to address gender differences in the projection of gender prototypes onto leader prototypes should focus less on leader prototypes and more on the female prototypes. Theoretically, our findings allude to the importance of distinguishing between more subtle (evaluating the outgroup less positively on positive properties) and less subtle forms (evaluating the outgroup more negatively on negative properties) of outgroup derogation.

Why Women Rarely Rise to the Top: A Social Identity Model of Leader Prototypes.

Purpose We propose a social identity model of leader prototypes to address why the maleness of leader prototypes is more pronounced among men than among women (e.g., Schein, 2001). Specifically, we argue that individuals project their ingroup prototype (e.g., a male prototype) onto a valued other category (e.g., leaders) (e.g., Wenzel, Mummendey, Weber, & Waldzus, 2003) in order to maintain a positive ingroup (e.g., gender) identity. We hypothesized that both women and men engage in ingroup projection of their gender prototype on their leader prototype, and we expected this effect to be stronger for men than women. We also investigated intelligence as a moderator of ingroup projection. Methodology Participants (276 students, University of Lausanne) assessed to what extent attributes on a list of gender traits were characteristic of a successful leader. We computed relative ingroup similarity scores (e.g., Waldzus & Mummendey, 2004) representing the difference between how characteristic ingroup traits are for a successful leader, and how characteristic outgroup traits are for a successful leader. Results Results showed that men engaged in ingroup projection while women engaged in outgroup projection, and that men engaged in ingroup projection to a greater extent. We also found a small, but positive effect of intelligence on ingroup projection among men. Limitations The use of a student sample might limit the external validity of our findings. Implications Our findings contribute to research on the under-representation of women in managerial roles, and introduce intelligence as a predictor of ingroup projection. Value Our study allows for a more fine-grained understanding of the cognitive representations of leaders of men and women.

Gender ingroup projection and the evaluative connotation of leader prototypes

The underrepresentation of women in top corporate ranks is a topic of ongoing discussion. Manager prototypes are proposed to be more male-typed than female-typed because historically men more often than women have held leadership roles. Why then is the maleness of manager prototypes even more pronounced among men than among women? Given that most personnel decision makers in organizations are men this phenomenon is problematic for women's advancement to top management positions. We address this question by investigating peoples' use of ingroup projection and their endorsement of evaluative attributes in constructing gender and leader prototypes.