How Indonesian Lecturers have Adjusted to Civil Service Compensation

To compensate for low civil service incomes, most lecturers at Indonesia's public universities hold one or more other jobs. The career path of the typical lecturer is away from teaching: the higher the classification the greater is the number of outside jobs and the smaller is the time devoted to undergraduate teaching. In effect, public universities cannot now compete for the time of their lecturers. Indonesia has been attempting to increase the quality of undergraduate education by investing in further education of lecturers. Our findings show that such efforts will be futile unless concomitant changes are also made on the demand side.     

Advertising,Price and Quality in Self–regulating Professions: A Survey

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the relationship between advertising, fees and quality in the self–regulating professions. Much of the literature is derived from the perspective of advertising as an information–enhancing device, helping to reduce the information asymmetry between professional and client. This is consistent with the majority of the empirical studies which suggest that advertising tends to have a downward effect on professional fees, with little if any adverse effect on quality. There are, however, important issues of method and measurement which may lessen the force of this conclusion     

LESSONS FROM A MIDDLE MARKET LBO: THE CASE OF O.M. SCOTT

In 1986 The O.M. Scott & Sons Company, the largest producer of lawn care products in the U.S., was sold by the ITT Corporation in a divisional leveraged buyout. The company was founded in Marysville, Ohio in 1870 by Orlando McLean Scott to sell farm crop seed. In 1900, the company began to sell weedfree lawn seed through the mail. In the 1920s, the company introduced the first home lawn fertilizer, the first lawn spreader, and the first patented bluegrass seed. Today, Scott is the acknowledged leader in the “do-it-yourself” lawn care market, with sales of over $300 million and over 1500 employees. Scott remained closely held until 1971, when it was purchased by ITT. The company then became a part of the consumer products division of the huge conglomerate, and operated as a wholly-owned subsidiary for 14 years. In 1984, prompted by a decline in financial performance and rumors of takeover and liquidation, ITT began a series of divestitures. Over the next two years, total divestitures exceeded $2 billion and, after years of substandard performance, ITT's stock price significantly outperformed the market. On November 26, 1986, in the midst of this divestiture activity, ITT announced that the managers of Scott, along with Clayton & Dubilier (C & D), a private firm specializing in leveraged buyouts, had agreed to purchase the stock of Scott and another ITT subsidiary, the W. Atlee Burpee Company. The deal closed on December 30. Clayton & Dubilier raised roughly $211 million to finance the purchase of the two companies. Of that $211 million, almost $191 milion, or 91% of the total, was debt: bank loans, subordinated notes, and subordinated debentures. The $20 million of new equity was distributed as follows: roughly 62% of the shares were held by a C & D partnership, 21% by Scott's new subordinated debtholders, and 17.5% by Scott management and employees. After this radical change in financial structure and concentration of equity ownership, Scott's operating performance improved dramatically. Between the end of December 1986 and the end of September 1988, sales were up 25% and earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) increased by 56%. As shown in Table 1, this increase in operating earnings was not achieved by cutting back on marketing and distribution or R & D. In fact, spending on marketing and distribution increased by 21% and R & D spending went up by 7%. Capital spending also increased by 23%.     

The local economic impact of construction projects in a small and relatively self-contained economy: The case of Lancaster University

Whilst the local multiplier impacts of the annual operation of universities has been the subject of intensive research, the economic impacts of capital construction projects have been almost completely ignored. This paper presents the results of detailed analysis of capital projects at Lancaster University in 1993-The reasons for the radically different annual operation and construction multipliers estimated in the Lancaster study are examined. Despite the smaller size of construction multipliers it is argued that it is a serious mistake to estimate local construction multipliers by making simplifying assumptions on the size of the key parameters in the multiplier equations.     

Two-Part Trade Policy under Imperfect Competition

In this paper we consider the potential gain of a government pursuing a two-part trade policy: an import license for entry, along with a per-unit tariff on imports. The model is a two-stage game of complete but imperfect information. In the first stage, the domestic government sets trade policy, while in the second stage the home and foreign producers behave as Cournot competitors. The paper demonstrates that the optimal trade policy depends upon the number of firms, the degree of heterogeneity in cost functions, and the degree of convexity in cost functions.     

Information technology developments and implications for national policies

A review is made of the global status of information technology (IT) development and new opportunities identified for government IT policies. Despite operational problems, IT innovations continue apace. Poor human-computer interaction, user friendliness and lack of standardization are all key issues which must be addressed. Globalization trends, east-west politicomilitary changes and third world development, all have implications for government IT policies over the coming decade—and the right directions must be pursued now to derive real benefits from IT and move towards a true information economy.