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The fetal origins hypothesis suggests that health and nutrition shocks in utero are causally related to health deficits in old age. It has received considerable empirical support, both within epidemiology and economics but so far it has not been integrated into a life cycle theory of human aging and longevity. The present study shows that the health deficit model, based on the frailty index developed in gerontology, generates shock amplification consistent with the hypothesis. In order to discuss human health over the life cycle from conception to death, we develop a theory of ontogenetic growth and health in utero and during childhood, unify it with the health deficit model of adult aging, and discuss the transmission of early-life shocks to late-life health deficit accumulation.

Анотація. Зважаючи на сучасні умови переходу в дистанційний режим роботи, підприємствам важливо мати низку інструментів, які дозволять оцінити готовність об’єктів бізнесу до віддаленої роботи з усіма можливими контрагентами. Таким чином, перед підприємствами постає питання забезпечення безпеки діджиталізації. Присвячено дослідженню відмінностей між сутністю понять «інформаційна безпека» і «безпека діджиталізації», а також аналізу рівня безпеки діджиталізації підприємств. Запропоновано методику оцінювання рівня безпеки діджиталізації підприємства з позицій теорії життєвого циклу, що дозволяє виявити ознаки настання «інформаційного спаду» в його діяльності. Методологія дослідження передбачає проведення інтегрального аналізу основних аспектів функціонування підприємства на різних етапах його життєвого циклу за допомогою показника, що враховує ступінь спрацювання комп’ютерного забезпечення, рівень адміністративних витрат і витрат на збут. Виявлення умов настання «інформаційного спаду» і визначення рівня безпеки діджиталізації проводилось експертними методами. Експертами виступали спеціалісти з питань стратегічного розвитку підприємств. Зокрема, експерти виокремили такі рівні безпеки діджиталізації, як «нормальний», «допустимий» і «критичний». Методика була апробована на матеріалах провідних підприємств гірничорудної галузі Криворізького регіону України. Отримані результати характеризують умови виявлення характерних ознак «інформаційного спаду» в діяльності підприємств на таких етапах їхніх життєвих циклів, як «Становлення», «Малолітство», «Дитинство», «Ріст», «Стабільність» і «Спад». Запропонований підхід дозволить удосконалити процеси автоматизації управління та підвищити ефективність упровадження процесів діджиталізації в діяльність виробничих підприємств. Ключові слова: безпека діджиталізації, теорія життєвого циклу, інформаційний спад, метод експертних оцінок, гірничорудні підприємства, ефективність діяльності підприємства. Формул: 1; рис.: 0; табл.: 3; бібл.: 28.

This paper presents a new framework for better understanding the mechanics of police oversight reforms. It outlines a case study of New Zealand police oversight organisation reform and a comparative analysis with four other jurisdictions: England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and New York. Together these cases allow us to trace the path of police watchdog reform and demonstrate that it is not simply a series of cycles, or preordained set of management challenges. Instead it is a more complex, staggered process of reactive and proactive reform that includes reform cycles, watchdog-initiated growth, justice sector reform and the ripple effect. The paper draws upon and extends two theoretical approaches - Organisational Life Cycle theory [1, 2] and Police Complaints Reform Cycle frameworks [3] - to develop this new model of police oversight organisation reform mechanisms. Further, the paper proposes that deficits in watchdog transparency impede accountability, in turn stifling the public awareness needed for reform mechanisms to function and stunting the growth of an oversight organisation’s funding and powers.

In this article, we emphasised that ageing population does not systematically depress savings by drawing attention to the factors that may distort that prediction of the life‐cycle hypothesis (LCH). To demonstrate it, we used two indicators for ageing: the total and aged dependency ratios and we looked at the economic context influence on national saving evolution through considering the labour market imbalance interference. By applying the autoregressive distributed lag approach, with Tunisian data during 1970–2018, a dynamic long‐run relationship between ageing and national saving is found, although it seemed to be sensitive to the used ageing indicator and the economic context. Indeed, the LCH is proved only by the total dependence ratio whereas the aged dependence ratio puts a significant long‐run upward pressure on saving. Further, in a context of unemployment without any benefit scheme, the LCH prediction cannot be endorsed by the two indicators. Hence, the social and economic conditions limit the LCH scope, bearing out that elderly not depress systematically savings. Therefore, to sustain saving major economic and financial reforms are needed, as to postpone the retirement age, to move from pay‐as‐you‐go system towards funded pension system, to promote life insurance and to diversify the long‐run savings products.

PurposeThere was unfinished business to address in the version of the planner–doer model developed in Thaler and Shefrin (1981). The unfinished business involved identifying and modeling the crucial roles played by temptation and mental accounting in pensions and savings behavior. The present paper has two objectives.Design/methodology/approachThe first objective is to describe the key lessons learned in transitioning from the model in Thaler and Shefrin (1981) to the model in Shefrin and Thaler (1988), a transition which addressed some of the unfinished business. The second objective is to describe as yet unfinished business associated with developing a multicommodity, intertemporal version of the planner–doer framework, incorporating the concepts of temptation and mental accounting, to replace the neoclassical theory of the consumer.FindingsDoing so will provide a theoretical foundation for nudges related to household budgeting, spending, saving, borrowing and investing.Originality/valueThis paper presents the first behavioral theory of the consumer, focusing on the manner in which consumers actually make decisions about budgeting, spending. borrowing and saving. The approach in the paper can be viewed as a behavioral counterpart to the neoclassical theory of the consumer. In contrast to the neoclassical approach, which assumes that consumers set and follow utility maximizing budgets, the empirical evidence indicates that only a small minority of consumers describe themselves as setting and following budgets. The behavioral theory presented here focuses on the heuristic nature of consumers' actual budgeting processes and extends the approach described in Thaler and Shefrin's 1981 seminal paper on self-control. The core of the present paper is a working paper which Shefrin and Thaler began in 1980, and as such represents unfinished business from that time. The first part of this paper describes earlier unfinished business from the 1981 framework that the authors subsequently addressed as they developed the behavioral life cycle hypothesis during the 1980s.

The life-cycle hypothesis predicts that longer life expectancy should, ceteris paribus, lead to the accumu- lation of more wealth during working life to fund consumption in retirement. The prediction is tested by examining whether subjective survival probability (SSP)- a proxy measure of self-assessed life ex- pectancy - affects wealth holdings among the pre-retirement older population. SSP is instrumented to address measurement error and reverse causality. The findings suggest that a 1 percentage point increase in the self-assessed probability of reaching age 75 increases an individual's financial wealth by approximately EUR 3,400 and total wealth (including pension wealth) by approximately EUR 6,200.

This paper examines the motivations of parent‐child co‐residence behavior in China using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. We test three possible motives: social norms, self‐interest and altruism. We find that social norms play an important role in household co‐residence behavior, showing that the belief that “sons take care of parents” is strong, and children in different birth orders take different responsibilities. Taking the one‐child policy as a natural experiment, we compared co‐residence behavior between only‐child and multi‐child families. This allowed us to test whether children in multi‐child families with wealthier parents more often co‐reside in order to compete for a bequest. We find that parents' wealth is more appealing to children in multi‐child families. The results support the life cycle theory that co‐residence decisions are motivated by self‐interest. We also find some evidence of altruism when parents and children make co‐residence decisions. These findings provide some insights for designing future elder‐support policies in China.

Empirical research on the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has focused mainly on theoretical approaches related to hierarchical order and, to a lesser extent, on trade-off theory. However, the financial literature has recently revealed that the life-cycle stages of SMEs influence their financial choices, which may explain why business financing evolves over time. Thus, this paper used a panel data approach to study the impact of life cycle phases on the capital structure of 70 Tunisian industrial SMEs during the period from 2013 to 2016. We found that Tunisian SMEs tended to use debt more intensively in the short term, while long-term debt was rarely used. We also found that the life cycle theory is perfectly adapted to describe the financial behavior adopted by Tunisian SMEs, which tend to use debt (regardless of maturity) during the early life cycle phases. Once SMEs age and mature, other sources of funding take over (mainly self-financing and even an IPO).

This study is motivated by the high frequency of loss occurrence since late 1990s among Malaysian public listed firms, and the conflicting findings of the impact of the macroeconomic conditions and firm-specific attributes on different measures of earnings quality. In addition, this study examines the impact of firms’ specific attributes on earnings quality using a better established theory, known as the life-cycle hypothesis. The objectives of this study are; (1) to examine the relationship between firms’ loss condition on conservatism as an earnings quality measure as well as the moderation of macroeconomic condition on the relationship and (2) to examine the relationship between life-cycle stages and conditional conservatism. Samples for the study are companies listed on Bursa Malaysia from 1995 to 2010. Using the C_Score measure of conservatism as the dependent variable, firms with loss condition, have been found to be significantly more conservative than profit firms. In addition, macroeconomic condition, strengthen the relationship between loss and conservatism when the results indicate that loss firms undergoing economic crisis are significantly more conservative than loss firms under normal economic condition. Incorporating the firms’ life-cycle stages, the study found that growth firms signal fewer losses than mature firms, thus accepting the set hypothesis. Implication of this study is that ignorance of these issues could lead to significantly misleading interpretation of earnings quality.

In this paper I unify the economic theories of addiction and health deficit accumulation and develop a life cycle theory in which individuals take into account the fact that the consumption of addictive goods reduces their health and longevity. I distinguish two types of addiction: sophisticated and naive. Individuals with sophisticated addiction perfectly control their addiction. Individuals with naive addiction, though otherwise rational and forward looking, fail to fully understand how their addiction develops. I argue that the life cycle consumption pattern predicted for naive addiction is more suitable for motivating empirically observable patterns of addictive goods consumption. I take the case of smoking as unhealthy behavior, calibrate the model with U.S. data, and apply it in order to investigate the life cycle patterns of smoking and quitting smoking and the socioeconomic gradients of unhealthy consumption and longevity.

India is on the edge of a demographic revolution with a rapidly rising working-age population. For the first time in this study, we investigate the role of the rising working-age population on per capita small savings in post offices and banks net of socio-economic characteristics using state-level panel data compiled from multiple sources for the period 2001-2018. Our comprehensive econometric assessment with multiple robustness checks provide three key findings: (1) Per capita private savings is increasing because of India’s growing working-age population, thus the ‘economic life cycle hypothesis’ is supported. (2) The demographic factors contribute around one-fourth of the per capita private savings inequality across Indian states. (3) The demographic window of economic opportunity for India can yield maximum benefits in terms of private savings when accompanied by favourable socio-economic policies on education, health, gender equity, and economic growth.

Objective: In the light of the firm’s life cycle theory, the present teaching case aims to present the trajectory covered by Kodak – a giant in the photographic market during practically the entire 20th century –, seeking to relate the business characteristics arising from the changes that occurred overtime with each stage of an firm’s life cycle. Method: The data for the construction of the historical context of the Kodak company was taken from several sources of traditional media, giving priority to the company’s own website, digital newspapers of high international impact as well as national electronic magazines. Relevance/originality: This teaching case offers a debate about the firm’s life cycle theory, through the analysis of the trajectory of a real company, in an international context, allowing the identification of business characteristics that can raise the life cycle current organization. Theoretical/methodological contributions: A triangulation is also sought between the firm’s life cycle theory, the characteristics of the Kodak company and the various changes that have taken place in view of the various decisions taken towards restructuring the company., Objetivo: À luz da Teoria dos Ciclos de Vida da Firma, o presente caso de ensino se propõe a apresentar a trajetória percorrida pela Kodak – gigante do mercado fotográfico durante praticamente todo o século XX –, buscando relacionar as características empresariais oriundas das mudanças ocorridas ao longo do tempo com cada um dos estágios do ciclo de vida de uma organização.Método: Os dados para construção do contexto histórico da empresa Kodak foram retirados de diversas fontes da mídia tradicional, priorizando-se o próprio sítio eletrônico da empresa, jornais digitais de alto impacto internacional assim como revistas eletrônicas nacionais. Relevância/originalidade: Este caso de ensino oferece um debate acerca da Teoria dos Ciclos de Vida da Firma, por meio da análise da trajetória de uma empresa real, em um contexto internacional, permitindo a identificação de características empresariais que podem suscitar o ciclo de vida atual de uma organização. Contribuições teóricas/metodológicas: Busca-se ainda uma triangulação entre a Teoria dos Ciclos de Vida da Firma, as características da empresa Kodak e as diversas mudanças ocorridas diante das diversas decisões tomadas no sentido de restruturação da empresa.

This paper examines the joint dynamics between house prices, population aging and unemployment in South Africa. It uses provincial-level data set to compare the demographic effects of house prices across different housing segments over the period from 1995 to 2015. When heterogeneity, endogeneity and spatial effects are controlled for, the analysis finds that on average in the past 22 years, population aging has contributed to the decline of the South African house prices by 6.28 and 7.52 basis point in the large and medium housing segments, respectively, while the small segment has remained unaffected. Likewise, unemployment appears to have played a significant role in slowing down the growth rate of house prices across segments but to a lesser extent. While the response of real house prices to demographic shift is consistent with the life cycle hypothesis, the insensitivity of small house prices to aging might reveal the mitigating effect of the retirees’ relocation from larger segment houses to smaller ones. The relocation effect might induce higher demand of small segment houses which drives up their prices and offsets the detrimental effect of aging. These findings suggest that increasing the incentive to prolong the retirement age or engage elderly population in other income-generating activities to meet their increasing financial needs given the meagre social security system is likely to sustain the growth prospective of housing value in South Africa.

How can we apply the life cycle concept to social entrepreneurship? Ashta first explains the evolution of the industry life cycle concept. He then applies it to a few microfinance cases which lasted for more than a century so that the reader can see the concept in its entirety. These cases are from different developed countries that also experienced the problem of poverty and exclusion. He follows this with microfinance cases that are still booming but they have gone through the initial stages. His major contribution in this chapter is to explain how transformation (growth and demise) is a politico-legal process where political legitimacy, private interests and social compassion create a dance between the State, the for-profit banks and the social enterprise.

This study is motivated by the growing concern with the increase in the level of household debt, particularly in Malaysia. One of the debated issues is whether household borrowings are related to poverty factors or due to psychological factors. This study approaches this issue by taking into account the factors as proposed by conventional (Life Cycle Hypothesis) and heterodox (Relative Income Hypothesis) economic theories. The data presented is micro level data collected from a self-administered survey among urban working class in Klang Valley. We find no conclusive evidence supporting the conventional theory, since though age is statistically significant, yet future income expectations are not. The findings also suggested that household debt is not a poverty related phenomenon since the determinants are more “wants” rather than “needs”. Thus, any policy intervention should include educating households on rational consumption decision making.

PurposeThis paper links the literatures on the life-cycle hypothesis, homeownership, home equity and pensions. Empirically, the focus is on the EU and USA. The paper aims to explore the extent that seniors extract their home equity and discuss the financial instruments available for equity extraction.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses data from the EU and USA to determine homeownership rates, house values and mortgage debt. With these values, the amount of seniors’ home equity is measured for each country. The usage of home equity extraction methods is reported and factors limiting their use are identified.FindingsSeniors’ home equity is a substantial share of their total wealth. Estimates for 2013 are that their home equity equals about €5tn in the USA and over €8tn in large EU countries. The authors find that only a small share of seniors extracts their home equity. While there are supply side constraints in many countries, the evidence suggests that the cause of low extraction rates is the lack of demand. Various reasons for the lack of demand are discussed.Practical implicationsThe increasing share of seniors in most countries’ population suggests that there will be increasing pressure on public pension systems. One among many options to address this issue is to impose a wealth test for eligibility, where wealth includes home equity. This study suggests that although home equity is substantial for many seniors, they are reluctant to access the funds.Originality/valueThe paper highlights the importance of home equity in the EU and USA and the factors that affect the primary methods of extraction.

Purpose This paper aims to offer a research-based assessment of why mature firms in mature industries may struggle to survive. The basic issues explored are major hurdles to the dynamic path that the contingency theory would predict. Design/methodology/approach By examining dozens of studies through the lens of organizational and industry life cycle theory, the authors investigate how organizational maturity itself thwarts better choices. Findings Environmental shifts in the marketplace, rigid policies, lengthy procedures and internally focused politics often hinder change. Research limitations/implications Limited to examining the work of others, this paper, nevertheless, offers an approach to using the life cycle theory for new insights. Practical implications The results provide practitioners with a roadmap. The authors advise them to prepare early for the maturity stage, possibly bring in external talent, evaluate potential mergers or partnerships and consider building the R&D budget. Social implications Firm failure brings dislocation to a wide array of stakeholders. This paper emphasizes viable growth strategies, given the constraints firms face in maturity. Originality/value This paper deals with survival, integrating both environmental and organizational obstacles. This unique approach offers practitioners a synthesized view of the challenges they face in a mature stage and simultaneously suggests methods for change.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the dividend initiation announcements made by firms in the information technology sector as defined in a modern system of industrial classification. Design/methodology/approach On the basis of a modern classification of the information technology industry, the authors examine a wide range of corporate performance and management measures to discriminate between the two theories of the information revealed by the announcement of dividend initiations, the signaling, and life cycle theories. Findings The empirical results are more consistent with the corporate life cycle theory of dividends than with the information signaling hypothesis. This finding helps clarify the nature of the information revealed by the announcement. Originality/value The paper has clear implications for investors who are interested in the growth prospects of technology firms, or for others interested in their prospective stability and degree of maturity.

This article investigates the moderating effects of firm age on the relationship between debt and stock returns. The system generalized method of moment’s results indicate that firm age has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between book debt and stock returns. The results are robust, as firm age positively moderates the relationship between market debt and stock returns. Moreover, firm age has a direct positive effect on stock returns. Results suggest that as firms grow older, they use their experience to make effective capital structure decisions (i.e., optimal debt-equity mix) to maximize debt interest-tax-shield and increase shareholders’ returns.

The emerging subfield of stratification economics is a response to the orthodoxy's resistance to recognizing the role of racial and ethnic disparities and its penchant for adopting cultural explanations for intergroup differences. With this view, the literature on the racial wealth gap and its particular embrace of the Life Cycle Hypothesis (LCH) offers a clear example of this critique at work. Not only is the LCH incapable of explaining why the racial wealth gap is so much larger than the income gap, but its limitations restrict the range of explanations explored. As an alternative, this paper introduces the Wealth Privilege (WP) model. Unlike the LCH, the WP model can incorporate the effects of contemporary racism as well as the systemic sources that are a legacy of several centuries of racialized policies. Using evidence from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), this article offers empirical corroboration as well. Since the SCF queries households on their attitudes toward saving and investment, this article investigates the extent that cultural differences explain the wealth gap. To limit the problem of skewness, which is inherent in wealth studies, the analysis uses an inverse hyperbolic-sine transformation of household net worth. The OLS regression results show scant support for key features of the LCH while demonstrating the importance of asset ownership and family support, both crucial facets of the WP model. Two different decomposition methods, Blinder - Oaxaca and DiNardo - Fortin - Lemieux, corroborate these conclusions. As wealth is easily transferable across generations, the evidence supports the contention that household wealth serves as a source of economic stratification as it functions to preserve and even widen the racial wealth gap.

La teoría de ciclo vital de Franco Modigliani estudia el salario, el ahorro y el consumo futuro en relación con la edad y el mercado laboral; esta teoría establece que hay un mayor ahorro en las primeras etapas de la vida y un desahorro al final del ciclo vital. Según el autor, la renta de las personas que se encuentran en el promedio de trabajadores que se retiran del mercado laboral tiende a disminuir en la medida que el trabajador envejece. En lo que respecta a la población ocupada, los hechos empíricos demuestran que el salario de los trabajadores aumenta hasta alcanzar un máximo, que cae después del retiro laboral, cumpliéndose de esta manera la teoría de Modigliani.

In the 13th Five-Year Plan, China’s power grid has gradually developed to a high quality, and there is still huge space for power grid construction and investment. The investment scale of power grid project is huge, which needs to occupy a large amount of funds. Therefore, it is of great significance to make a reasonable evaluation of the cost management level for improving the cost management. Based on the whole process cost management, this paper introduces the whole life cycle theory and establishes the evaluation index system of the whole life cycle cost management. And fuzzy comprehensive evaluation theory is used to establish the evaluation model. Finally, a practical engineering case is selected for example analysis, and the evaluation results are compared with the whole process cost management evaluation results. The results show that the method proposed in this paper can reasonably and effectively evaluate the cost management level of power grid project.

Tourists develop important ties with particular destinations along their lives, resulting in a revisiting behaviour. In this paper we propose the tourist-destination life cycle (TDLC) hypothesis. The hypothesis states that tourist behaviour, choices and vacational experience change and evolve along the life cycle built between tourists and destinations. Increasing contacts turn into a deeper knowledge of the destination, leading to a new approach towards the vacational experience. In order to start testing for such a general hypothesis, we focus on a specific aspect of the tourist-destination relationship in this chapter. In particular, we are interested in better understanding if the role of factors driving repeating behaviour of tourists also change along the TDLC. In pursuing this objective, we employ econometric modelling techniques applied to empirical data for Spanish destinations like Quantile Regressions. Modelling approach combines variables from the repeating choice literature with those explaining attachment feelings of tourists and the tourist life cycle theory. Empirical findings of the model clearly give support to the TDLC hypothesis.

 The research on the tire industry cluster based on life cycle theory can be carried out by a four stages period namely as Initial Period, Growth Period, Maturity Period and Recession Period. This paper analyzes on the possible risks taken in each life cycle period as well as proposing corresponding suggestions to strengthens the research by looking into the conditions and factors of the continuous sustainable development process in a tire industry.

This study applies the time-varying parameter VAR and fully modified OLS cointegrating regression models to investigate the effect of demographic change on monetary policy effectiveness in Taiwan. Our results demonstrated that monetary policy effectiveness is negatively correlated with shares of total population in children (age

We examine whether corporate investment, financing, and cash policies are interdependent and follow a predictable pattern in line with the firm life-cycle. We find that investments and equity issuance decrease with firm life-cycle, while debt issuance and cash holdings increase in the introduction and growth stages and decrease in the mature and shake-out/decline stages of the firm’s life-cycle. These results are robust after using various proxies for life-cycle and controlling for firm, CEO and board level characteristics. Collectively, our results show that corporate policies follow a firm life-cycle.

Cash value life insurance (CVLI) is a risk management tool that provides not only a life cycle protection but also a cash value accumulation potential. This study used the behavioral life cycle hypothesis as a theoretical framework and investigated the role of self-discipline and risk tolerance on CVLI ownership of young adult households aged 26–30. A logistic regression model was used to analyze the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) that surveyed Americans born between 1980 and 1984. The results showed that the likelihood of owning CVLI increased with self-discipline and decreased with risk tolerance.

Whereas the corporate life cycle hypothesis says firms follow structured goals along their life cycle, others argue that corporate governance objectives vary independently of predetermined life cycle stages. This study examines the impact of the corporate life cycle on corporate governance in emerging markets, where firms can self-select into stricter rules by adopting an exchange listing level that fits the governance needs of the organization independently of life cycle requirements. We find the listing-level decision is a better predictor of corporate governance quality than corporate life cycle. Firms signal improvements in corporate governance by bonding to more stringent regulation; they determine the corporate governance quality that matches their needs at any point during their life-cycle.

Digitalization makes it necessary to change the education system in accordance with the principles of SMART-concept. The retrospective analysis of the sphere of education in Russia shows that today the University is the center of the innovation space of the regional economic system. The study presents the process of transformation of the regional University development model in the conditions of transition to the digital economy from the standpoint of the life cycle theory and the laws of the organization. The method of estimation of conformity of regional University as a driver of innovations to the principles of SMART-education concept is offered. The methodology is based on an integrated approach to assessing the potential of the University. It allows you to determine the level of readiness of the University to move to a new model of education in accordance with the selected criteria.

Life cycle theory predicts that elderly households have higher levels of wealth than households with children, but these wealth gaps are likely dynamic, responding to changes in labor market conditions, patterns of debt accumulation, and the overall economic context. Using Survey of Consumer Finances data from 1989 through 2013, we compare wealth levels between and within the two groups that make up America’s dependents: the elderly and child households (households with a resident child aged 18 or younger). Over the observed period, the absolute wealth gap between elderly and child households in the United States increased substantially, and diverging trends in wealth accumulation exacerbated preexisting between-group disparities. Widening gaps were particularly pronounced among the least-wealthy elderly and child households. Differential demographic change in marital status and racial composition by subgroup do not explain the widening gap. We also find increasing wealth inequality within child households and the rise of a “parental 1 %.” During a time of overall economic growth, the elderly have been able to maintain or increase their wealth, whereas many of the least-wealthy child households saw precipitous declines. Our findings suggest that many child households may lack sufficient assets to promote the successful flourishing of the next generation.

I respond to Atkinson's plea to revive welfare economics, and to consider alternative ethical frameworks when making policy recommendations. I examine a measure of self-reported evaluative wellbeing, the Cantril Ladder, and use data from Gallup to examine wellbeing over the life-cycle. I assess the validity of the measure, and show that it is hard to reconcile with familiar theories of intertemporal choice. I find a worldwide optimism about the future; in spite of repeated evidence to the contrary, people consistently but irrationally predict they will be better off five years from now. The gap between future and current wellbeing diminishes with age, and in rich countries, is negative among the elderly. I also use the measure to think about income transfers by age and sex. Policies that give priority those with low incomes favor the young and the old, while utilitarian policies favor the middle aged, and men over women.

Entrepreneurs are involved in entrepreneurial ecosystems. These ecosystems incorporate institutions that interact with entrepreneurs in different ways depending on the stage of the business life cycle the entrepreneur is in. By incorporating institutional theory and business life cycle theory to the analysis of ecosystems, we propose which kind of institution will answer the entrepreneurial question addressing who is there to help their venture depending on the stage of the life cycle it is in. This paper seeks to provide guidance on the institutional support available to increase a venture’s chance of success and improve the efficiency of the resource base of ecosystems.

Given the worldwide concern that individuals are not saving sufficiently for retirement, many governments are taking action to try and rectify this tendency. A key focus area is implementing policies to dissuade individuals from accessing accumulated retirement funds when changing jobs. While traditional economic theories assume that individuals act rationally and make optimal decisions without outside intervention, current policy interventions support behavioural theories of decision-making where sub-optimal choices occur due to limitations in human decision-making. Therefore, interventions are based on the assumption that individuals act irrationally. Despite these interventions, many individuals still access their funds suggesting that current interventions may not be sufficiently aligned with the factors influencing decision making in this environment. The main research objective of this study was to test empirically both rational and behavioural factors that could potentially influence retirement preservation decisions, to determine which factors were the best predictors of whether an individual preserved funds when changing jobs. A research instrument was designed using a combination of existing psychometric measures and customised questions to form an analytical survey. This was used to test the factors that predicted the preservation decisions of a sample of 256 academic and non-academic personnel at a tertiary education institution in South Africa. The study found that behavioural factors play an important role in predicting preservation decisions. In particular, behavioural factors related to bounded rationality, due to the computational complexity of the decision-making environment, emerged as important explanatory variables, indicating that interventions such as decision support and guidance may assist individuals in making optimal decisions.

In this article, we build on recent attempts to theorize about the evolution of boards of directors by juxtaposing firms’ strategies to gain, maintain, and repair legitimacy onto their life cycle to examine how board characteristics change – both symbolically and substantively – to reflect their firm’s evolving legitimating strategy. In doing so, we develop insights contributing to our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the evolving structure and composition of boards of directors. We suggest that boards fulfill an important role ingrained in the firm’s legitimacy in addition to, and intertwined with, their substantive contribution to the firm’s performance at each life cycle stage. We also address firms’ real ability to effect change in their board as a function of the factors that pertain to each stage of life cycle. We conclude by expounding the implications of this novel framework for future research and managerial practice.

This study analyses the effect of basketball coaches on performance and the question of life cycles on their tenures. From theoretical perspectives like coach-performance relationship, succession theories, life cycle theory and based on a longitudinal analysis from 1997 to 2012 of a professional Spanish basketball league, we show that the objective established at the season's start and coach quality positively influences team performance, that a mid-season coaching change negatively influences performance, and the existence of longer tenures coaches that improve team performance. The work is especially interested for sport managers, sport coaches in their decisions-taking, but it is useful to general management to understand the consequences of the tenures or dismissals of their key managers on results.

The outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008 witnessed a significant contraction in US consumption spending, as households began deleveraging following a period marked by historically high levels of household borrowing. These events call into question the canonical life-cycle theory of consumption, with its benign view of debt as a neutral instrument of optimal intertemporal expenditure smoothing. This paper draws attention to an alternative, post-Keynesian account of consumption spending in which current income, household borrowing and household indebtedness all affect current consumption. Central to the analysis is an empirical investigation of US consumption spending since the 1950s. The results of this inquiry cast doubt on the life-cycle hypothesis, but are congruent with the alternative, post-Keynesian account of consumption.

This study investigates the relation of executive cash compensation and gender characteristics of senior executives of Thai listed companies using 1,660 firm-years observations from 2009 to 2013. The findings show that male executives earn more cash compensation than do their female counterparts and that compensation is higher for male CEOs whose educational qualifications were Master’s degree or above. Companies with a higher proportion of male executives and with better firm performance (measured by ROA, ROE, and Tobin’s q) pay higher cash compensation. The results conform with the Expectancy theory that male executives receive more compensation than do female executives because of their (expected) abilities to make higher returns to the firm’s assets. Other significant determinants are that older and larger firms pay more cash compensation to the executives (Life cycle theory) and that companies with a higher proportion of independent directors (Agency Theory) and higher ownership concentrations (Stewardship theory) offer less compensation.

Currently, there exsits a Serious resource wasting phenomenon. In order to achieve the sustainable development of construction industry, the development of green building has become the inevitable choice of all countries in the world. This paper based on the sustainable development as the guiding ideology, through the basic theory of green building, based on the life cycle cost theory understanding as the foundation. First of all ,know the current situation of the development of green building cost at home and abroad, then according to the life cycle theory will be divided into green building decision-making, design, construction debugging, operation maintenance and recycling discarded five stages, points out the life cycle cost characteristics of green building.

On the basis of construction engineering quality management and the whole life cycle theory as well as the related theories to value chain, this paper explores the main issues of the construction engineering quality supervision in whole life cycle from the construction project investment decision-making, preparation phase, implementation, completion acceptance and operation phase under the perspective of whole life cycle, and builds construction engineering quality supervision in whole life cycle system which gives priority to the government regulatory system with social supervision as supplement by defining the obligations of each other. The system is expected to comprehensively improve construction quality.

Low retirement savings rates, coupled with a lack of preservation of retirement funds when individuals move jobs, could have adverse repercussions on a person’s ability to retire with sufficient funds. The traditional response to low preservation levels has been to impose taxes on cash withdrawals and in some cases to mandate preservation. However, without a complete understanding of the factors that drive low levels of preservation, these policy interventions might do more harm than good. This study carries out a critical, interdisciplinary literature review to construct a conceptual model of the factors which potentially lead to low preservation levels and outlines proposed interventions. The resultant model highlights the distinct differences in the drivers of rational and irrational behaviour and therefore, the distinctly different interventions required. Little is known about the rationality or otherwise of the decision making process of individuals in the retirement preservation context, however current interventions only assist if individuals display bounded willpower. It is essential that a better understanding of the decision making process is obtained to determine whether existing solutions address the problem adequately.

At present, it has become a hot academic research about microblog in the world. Introducing the customer life cycle theory, through the empirical analysis influence factors of microblog users loyalty in different lifecycle stages, finding factors influence on the microblog users’ loyalty has a significant difference in different lifecycle phase.

South East Asian petroleum retailers are under considerable pressure to improve service quality by reducing turnover. An empirical methodology from this industry determined the extent to which job characteristics, training opportunities, age and salary influenced the level of job satisfaction, an indicator of turnover. Responses are reported on a random sample of 165 site employees (a 68% response rate) of a Singaporean retail petroleum firm. A restricted multivariate regression model of autonomy and training opportunities explained the majority (35.4%) of the variability of job satisfaction. Age did not moderate these relationships, except for employees >21 years of age, who reported enhanced job satisfaction with additional salary. Human Capital theory, Life Cycle theory and Job Enrichment theory are invoked and explored in the context of these findings in the South East Asian retail petroleum industry. In the South East Asian retail petroleum industry, jobs providing employees with the opportunity to u...

This study examines the determinants of private saving in Botswana for the period covering 19942009. We use quarterly time series data to evaluate the magnitude and direction of the effects of key policy and non-policy variables on private saving. The variables examined are inflation, real interest rates, real gross national disposable income, degree of financial depth and dependency ratio. The dependency ratio is included in order to capture the effect of demographic influence on private savings. The stated determinants of savings are articulated in the context of the life cycle hypothesis. We investigate the short and long run behavior of the variables using an ARDL-ECM. The results suggest that there is a positive relationship between household income and their savings. The dependency ratio exerts a negative impact on private savings which supports the Lifecycle Hypothesis. The results also suggest that financial sector development has induced a positive impact on private savings in Botswana. Interest rates have a positive relationship with private savings; and, lastly, inflation has a negative relationship with private savings. Financial depth and real interest rates are the core policy instruments that the government can use to encourage savings in Botswana.

Power transformer is one of the key equipment in the power grid. Its quality is directly related to the continuous and stable operation of the power system. It is difficult to evaluate the power transformer quality, because of the complex technology, longtime manufacturing cycle, and high fuzzy information. The quality fuzzy synthetic evaluation method for power transformer based on life cycle theory is proposed, which can solve the above problem. The factor set is established, which contains multi-source information and quality defects information. The multi-source information can be classified to manufacturing, manufacturing, installation, commission, and operation stage. The evaluation set is established with four ranks. The membership degree set is determined based on the fuzzy statistical method. The weighting set is calculated based on the Delphi method. At last, the method proposed is verified by the example.

An interesting idea is to look at the importance of different factors affecting the capital structure choice at different stages of a firm’s development (so called “life cycle theory” of capital structure). For example, start-up firms usually do not have much profit, so the tax advantage of debt is not as important as it is for a mature firm. Likewise, start-up firms do not usually need to provide strong incentives for managers since there is no large separation between ownership and management as there is in big public corporations. This leads to the idea that mature firms value debt more than start-up firms do.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the popular press has noted a rebound in casino revenues in some states, and some expect casino revenues to grow and increase again along with any economic recovery. However, before the recent recession, there were trends indicating stagnation or a peak of casino revenues in most states, and as the last recession has indicated, casino revenues were not “recession-proof” as most had thought previously. In fact, casino revenues in most states saw big declines. In this paper, we show that the casino revenues have stagnated or declined partially due to a saturation point being reached with regard to casino gaming in many areas of the United States. The growth rate of casino revenues as well as the tax receipts for the state governments from casinos follows an ‘S’ curve which is similar to a product life cycle curve. The introduction of more gambling venues as well as putting in slot machines at race tracks may give a temporary boost to state gambling tax receipts, but longer run trends indicate that the years of casinos showing large gains in revenues may be over unless casino operations continue to re-invent themselves.

This paper investigates the behavior of consumption and saving in Malaysia from the perspective of the life cycle hypothesis (LCH). Specifically, the analysis employs the Deaton-Paxson model which decomposes the pattern of household consumption and saving into age effects and cohort effects. Using the household data from three Household Expenditure Surveys of Malaysia, this study produces two key results. First, the age effects of income and consumption rise with age but the latter rise more rapidly; thus, the age effects of saving fallwith age. This set of results suggests that individuals engage in a lifetime saving plan early in their working lives (which is consistent with the prediction of LCH); yet, their saving falls gradually over time and approaches zero (instead of becoming negative) toward the end of their lifetime (inconsistent with the prediction of LCH). Second, the cohort effects of income and consumption fall with cohort but the latter fall more rapidly; hence, the cohort effects of saving rise with cohort. This set of results suggests that economic boom generates an unwarranted optimism in that individuals choose to consume at the expense saving; therefore, growth stimulates consumption instead of saving (inconsistent with the prediction of LCH).

We revisit the alleged retirement consumption puzzle. According to the life- cycle theory, foreseeable income reductions such as those around retirement should not affect consumption. However, we first recall that given higher leisure endowments after retirement, the theory does predict a fall of total market consumption expenditures. In order not to mistake this predicted drop for a puzzle we focus on housing consumption which can be plausibly regarded as complementary to leisure, and we control for the leisure change in our empirical specifications, using micro data for Germany (SOEP), where housing expenditures are observable as rents for the majority (60%), as well as dwelling relocations. We still find significant negative impacts of the retirement status on housing consumption, which is hard to reconcile with the life-cycle theory. For retirees we also find significant effects of the income reduction at retirement on housing. However, the effects are small in quantitative terms, given the lock-in nature of past housing decisions.

This paper examines the impact of mispricing, corporate life cycle, and financing waves on the debt/equity decision when firms (1) acquire funds and (2) repurchase funds by using a large international data set from 47 countries for the period 1984–2006. Our results support the mispricing hypothesis and the corporate life cycle hypothesis for both the acquisition of new funds and the repurchase of funds. However, our findings are consistent with the financing wave hypothesis only for repurchases of firms residing in common law countries as well as market-based countries.

Neighbourhood life-cycle theory has provided some important insights into the question of how population ageing may influence local neighbourhoods. But this theory has been rightly criticized by urban scholars for its deterministic and highly pessimistic approach. More recent theoretical ideas about “positive ageing” challenge the underlying pessimistic view of ageing in neighbourhood life-cycle theory, and provide opportunities to consider new and more optimistic conceptualizations of neighbourhood ageing. This paper provides a brief review of some of the key literature underpinning neighbourhood life-cycle theory and, drawing on some of its principal concepts, proposes two hypothetical neighbourhood life-cycle scenarios, one “pessimistic” and the other “optimistic”, which represent two ends of a full spectrum of neighbourhood life cycles.