The Immensity of Technology . . . and the Role of the Individual

Technology is a force that reshapes society, the dominant organizer which fundamentally changes everything. It provides material comforts and benefits but can change social patterns and values. Major innovations are happening simultaneously, stretching biological, mental and social adaptation to the limit. Technological decision making relies on an equal focus on three areas: resources (knowledge and information), expression (skills and practices) and responsibility (values and ethics). Decisions cannot be left to the ‘blackbox’ stage when functioning is effectively hidden from view and the technology has entered our culture. Similarly, participation in decision making cannot be left to a select few but must be the role of every citizen. Ensuring full participation in decisions should form the central role of technology education if it is finally to be recognized as a full member of the ‘general education club’. All students must be able to reflect, develop ethical standards and demonstrate how values are expressed through technology. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Capital Investment and Amortization Policies in the U.S.S.R.

This article deals with the two major problems in depreciation: how to determine actual wear and tear and, thus, life of equipment; and how to treat depreciation and its associated expenses in the accounting records. With regard to the first, the author recognizes that a certain amount of arbitrary action is probably inevitable. Industry in the USSR is evidently bound by its own equivalent of “Bulletin F”, which sets “amortization norms” or depreciation allowances for each class of machinery; and it is found that these often do not correspond to actual operating experience. The machine may be scrapped either before its allocated life span, or survive fully depreciated. This fact is, of course, quite familiar, and the author has no suggestions to offer beyond pointing out the problem. He also questions, for technical reasons, the straight line method which is now generally used. Yet it is almost impossible to justify, on functional grounds, any regulated alternative method, such as declining balance or sum-of-the-years-digits.     

Insights into the contestability and sustainability of the U.S. petroleum refining industry

Contestable market theory has been advanced in recent years by several authors, the most thorough treatment being the book by Baumol, Panzar, and Willig (1982) (BPW). Although several applications of the theory have appeared in the literature, few (if any) follow the step-by-step procedure set forth in Chapter 16 of BPW. This paper represents one of the first attempts to follow the general procedure in investigating the contestability and sustainability of an industry. The long-run cost structure of petroleum refining is first estimated using a translog multiproduct cost function and company refining data from the Financial Reporting System maintained by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The estimated cost function is then used to approximate the optimal (cost-minimizing) industry structure for petroleum refining. Given that the existing structure is significantly different than the optimal structure, the principles of contestable market theory are used in evaluating the contestability and sustainability of the industry in light of adjustments in industry structure and the performance of various classes of refining companies between 1981 and 1987.     

美国智能电网发展模式的系统分析

在全球金融危机的大背景下,智能电网作为奥巴马能源新政的一项核心内容加以提出,得到经济刺激计划大力支持,在全球掀起了建设智能电网的热潮。在系统回顾关国智能电网发展战略的孕育、成熟以及实施整个过程基础上指出,发展智能电网并非是美国政府在全球金融危机背景下的应急策略,而是经过数年的深思熟虑,依次经历了战略研究与规划、立法保障、政府主导推进3个阶段,是一个典型的美国国家发展战略推进过程,该过程具备延续性、完整性、系统性的特点,对我国当前推进智能电网建设具有一定借鉴意义。     

U.S. Debt Crisis Increases the Risk of the Chinese Textile Exports

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s on Friday downgraded the U.S.’s rating.Fear is spreading quickly through the market.It’s becoming a vicious cycle and could feed into consumers reducing their demand as well.Will it has a direct impact on Chinese textile and apparel exports?     

The Cyclic Behavior of the U.S. Lodging Industry

A recently constructed data series suggests that the hotel industry has experienced two rather large building booms from 1969 to 1994. By contrast, hotel demand seems to move closely with the United States economy, at a much higher cyclic frequency. Occupancy and room rental rates follow the slower movements in supply. A structural model is estimated over this series which displays long lags between occupancy and room rental rate changes, as well as between room rental rates and new supply. These lags create a system of difference equations that is close to being dynamically unstable. Forecasting forward with smooth economic growth, yields a new and even larger future building boom.     

Debt and taxes : Japan compared with the U.S.

The extreme reliance on debt that has been a persistent feature of corporate finance in contemporary Japan is at least partially due to low personal tax rates. This statement is supported by comparison of Japan and U.S. taxes based on the taxes and failure cost theory of finance.     

Determinants of technology cycle time in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry'

The focus of this study is to examine different factors that influence a firm's technology cycle time. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is analyzed from 1977–1991. Specifically, the sample includes 21 firms that (a) primarily produce brand ethical drugs, (b) are publicly-owned companies, and (c) have pharmaceutical sales account for a substantial portion of company sales.
Our measure of faster technology cycle time is positively correlated to measures of the knowledge base level of firms, the breadth of firms' knowledge bases, size, and age; it is negatively correlated to advertising expenditures and the percent of US. firm sales to total sales. However, the most notable finding is that technology cycle time is significantly faster for firms that predominantly generate new knowledge internally, and slower for firms that rely more on external sources of new knowledge.     

Information Costs and the Organization of the Real Estate Brokerage Industry in the U.S. and Great Britain

This paper examines the differing organizations of the residential real estate brokerage industry in the U.S. and Great Britain, and argues that they may be interpreted as alternative solutions to a common set of informational problems. Of particular interest is why the multiple listing service — an arrangement whereby brokers share market information in an effort to exploit the public-good nature of information — is so pervasive in the United States, but is largely absent in Great Britain. Some possible reasons are found in the differing histories of the parent housing markets, as well as other institutional differences.     

Buying process in the U.S. Department of Defense

The purpose of this article is (1) to compare the key differences between the buying behavior of the defense organization with commercial buying behavior, (2) to address key policy and strategy concerns of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) within the 1980s that also have strategic importance to the marketing operations of civilian contractors, (3) to address areas of proposed and completed policy change, strategy implementation, and emerging trends within the DOD buying process, and (4) to briefly identify significant research efforts and opportunities being sponsored by government agencies with important overtones and implications for marketing/purchasing practitioners and academics.     

Price transmission across the U.S. food distribution system

Price transmission models are estimated using recursive methods across 100 food commodities. From the individual commodities, short- and long-run price transmission coefficients are estimated for rising and falling prices. These coefficients are classified into five commodity categories and expressed as one vector while coding for causality, market levels, rising/falling prices, short and long run, and time period. Then the impact of each variable is estimated and inferences are drawn about the degree of price transmission. Results show that price linkages are strong but slightly declining over time, with some evidence of asymmetric behavior. Long-run rising prices are passed through more than long-run falling prices, except for fruits and vegetables.     

美国贸易法中“市场扰乱”的认定标准研究

美国1974贸易法421条的“市场扰乱”标准是根据WTO的有关规定而制定,但该标准带有模糊性、不公平性,在实务案件中更是表露无遗。我国政府和企业均应采取措施应对之。     

Evidence of directional price discrimination in the U.S. airline industry

This paper explores possible determinants that may affect an airline’s decision to charge passengers different roundtrip fares depending on trip origin, a case of directional price discrimination. Such fare differences cannot be the result of differences in cost, as the cost of flying a roundtrip passenger does not significantly differ depending on direction. It is argued that directional fare differences result from airlines recognizing that passenger price elasticities differ between route endpoints. A price discriminating airline will then charge a higher roundtrip fare at the endpoint where the passenger price elasticity of demand is comparatively lower. Evidence is found suggesting that airlines do use differences in income to price discriminate when setting roundtrip fares. Fares are found to be $0.18-$0.43 higher on average for each $1000 difference in average per capita income between origin and destination metro areas. This finding is sensible assuming that higher incomes reduce the price elasticity of demand for air travel, with richer passengers being less sensitive to the cost of travel.     

Urban and population decentralization policies: the experience of Taiwan,R.O.C.

The policies that have been successfully implemented in Taiwan to minimize the impact of urbanization and to slow the pace of population concentration are described. Consideration is given to policies designed to affect spatial distribution both directly and indirectly.     

Management of Scientific Staff at the Harwell Laboratory of the U. K. Atomic Energy Authority

Harwell's primary role. is to serve as the main research laboratory supporting the U. K. nuclear power development programme; in addition it undertakes research and development outside of the nuclear field for Government and industrial customers. Overall, there is the need to manage a very large number of separate and often disparate items of work and to ensure effective communication with senior managers of the nuclear power programme and with commercial customers on allocation of resources and technical progress. This is done through a version of "matrix management". A large proportion of the technical, commercial and staff management decisions are devolved within Harwell's matrix organisation where teams of staff required for particular items of R & D are formed by arrangements agreed locally between the two axes of the matrix. The smaller groupings of staff created in the matrix are important in providing environments where good staff management practices can be established and where a team spirit aids motivation and technical initiative.     

The effects of the business cycle on oligopoly coordination: Evidence from the U.S. rayon industry

Recent game-theoretic studies of the effects of the business cycle on oligopoly coordination predict that coordination is weakest when demand is high and expected future profit is lower. An empirical model that uses a conjectural elasticity term to measure the degree of coordination is developed to test for these two effects. The rayon industry of the 1930s is one that exhibited significantly non-competitive conduct that appears to have varied, in degree, with fluctuations in demand. Application of the empirical model to data from this industry produces results that support the predictions of recent theoretical models.     

Comparing technology education in the U.S. and U.K.

British and American discourses and experiences with respect to technology education are compared. Out of this comparison important issues are identified that have implications for the larger ongoing conversation on technology beyond these countries. They include the role of the state in establishing and validating the subject, the dual claims of technology literacy and technological capability, and dual curricular approaches — content and process.     

On the sources of scope economies in U.S. manufacturing firms

This paper tests hypotheses on the sources of scope economies in a large sample of U.S. manufacturing firms. Federal Trade Commission Line of Business data are used to construct a new measure of scope economies that is appropriate for cross-section data. The measure and the LB data are capable of distinguishing between production and distribution economies of scope. In general, the results indicate that sharing assets is not important and that some sources of production scope economies may also be sources of diseconomies in multiproduct promotion, and vice versa. Implications for merger policy are briefly discussed.     

Political Parties and Labour legislation in Canada and the U.S.

This article shows that structural political and legal factors, better than cultural or economic ones, explain why Canada's workforce is twice as unionized as that of the United States. Its main argument demonstrates that Canada's legal environment is more pro-union due to systematic national differences in party systems and constitutions—i.e., the presence of a social-democratic party and a federalized and parliamentary constitution, versus the U.S.'s separation of powers, more nationalized polity, and absence of a social democratic party.     

Vacation Time and Unionism in the U.S. and Europe

American employees receive substantially less paid vacation than Europeans despite earning higher real wages and having greater personal wealth. Here we present past and current averages for individual countries, along with a brief history of the growth of paid vacations in the U.S. and Europe. Regression analyses of individual household data from the U.S. indicate that union membership substantially influences the length of vacation time for U.S. workers. This finding helps explain why the U.S. vacation time average is lower than the European average.