Creating infographics to enhance student engagement and communication in health economics

In this article, the authors discuss and describe the implementation of and lessons learned from a course project centered on the creation of an infographic in a health economics course and an introduction to health research course. Students were asked to create a simple infographic about a particular topic, after researching and gathering data on that topic. The instructors observed how students synthesized information and data to tell a visual story with their infographic. This article adds to the limited literature regarding infographics in undergraduate instruction. An infographic offers faculty an opportunity to apply active learning strategies to enhance student engagement, retention of information, and communication skills.     

Evaluating the productive performance of UK universities as cost-constrained revenue maximizers: an empirical analysis

The study presents an empirical analysis of the relative revenue efficiency of UK universities in providing teaching and research. With government policies pressurizing the largely public-funded universities to secure efficiency in both input usage and output revenue, university producers are modelled as cost-constrained revenue maximizers. Taking explicit account of the quality of research output, the methodology uses linear programming techniques to construct nonparametric cost indirect production frontiers and to compute revenue efficiency relative to these frontiers. Revenue efficiency is then decomposed into its (output) allocative and technical components. Further analysis investigates the sources of allocative and technical inefficiencies.     

Do Women Leaders Promote Sustainability? Analyzing the Effect of Corporate Governance Composition on Environmental Performance

In this study, we investigate the impact women leaders have on the corporate environmental strategies of organizations. Using a dataset of all Fortune 500 CEOs and boards of directors for a ten‐year period, we examine several aspects of gender in leadership on environmental strategy. Specifically, we test the impact of women CEOs, the proportion of women on the BOD, the number of interlinks women board members hold, and the interactive and cumulative effects of women CEOs and gender diverse boards. Findings suggest that firms characterized by gender diverse leadership teams are more effective than other firms at pursuing environmentally friendly strategies. This study contributes to research on corporate governance and environmental performance by showing how the gender composition of leaders affects corporate practice. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Intellectual property rights and foreign direct investment

This paper develops a product cycle model with endogenous innovation, imitation, and foreign direct investment (FDI). We use this model to determine how stronger intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in the South affects innovation, imitation and FDI. We find that stronger IPR protection keeps multinationals safer from imitation, but no more so than Northern firms. Instead, the increased difficulty of imitation generates resource wasting and imitation disincentive effects that reduce both FDI and innovation. The greater resources absorbed in imitation crowd out FDI. Reduced FDI then transmits resource scarcity in the South back to the North and consequently contracts innovation.     

Multinomial distributions applied to random sampling of particulate materials

When sampling a batch consisting of particulate material, the distribution of a sample estimator can be characterized using knowledge about the sample drawing process. With Bernoulli sampling, the number of particles in the sample is binomially distributed. Because this is rarely realized in practice, we propose a sampling design in which the possible samples have a nearly equal mass. Expected values and variances of the sample estimator are calculated. It is shown that the sample estimator becomes identical to the Horvitz–Thompson estimator in the case of a large batch-to-sample mass ratio and a large sample mass. Simulations and experiments were performed to test the theory. Simulations confirm that the round-off error due to the discrete nature of particles is negligible for large sample sizes. Sampling experiments were carried out with a mixture of PolyPropylene (PP) and PolyTetraFluorEthylene (PTFE) spheres suspended in a viscous medium. The measured and theoretical variations are in good agreement.     

Between a rock and a hard place: managing diversity in a shareholder society

This study examines whether the appointment of racial/ethnic minorities into top management positions has a different impact on share price than the appointment of Caucasians into equivalent positions. Our dependent variable is the degree of change in share price following the announcement of racial/ethnic minority and Caucasian men into senior management positions. Market reaction to the naming of racial/ethnic minorities into corporate leadership positions is significant and negative, while the market's reaction to the naming of Caucasians is significant and positive. However, the negative market reaction to the appointment of racial/ethnic minorities into top management positions is mitigated in those firms that have explicitly incorporated diversity into their strategic growth plan. Our findings suggest that to successfully introduce diversity into upper management, firm decision makers must first signal the importance of diversity to market actors.     

The Wal-Mart Innovation Network: An Experiment in Stimulating American Innovation

The Wal-Mart Innovation Network (WIN) is a cooperative experiment designed to test an infrastructure for stimulating American innovations—new products invented and manufactured in the U.S.A. The WIN venture focuses on independent and small business inventors because it is here that WIN is likely to have the greatest impact. Contrary to the opinions of many, inventors continue to be a major source of new products, processes and services. Unlike their corporate and institutional counterparts, noncorporate inventors suffer from the lack of viable channels for getting their creative efforts to the marketplace and often are lacking in some essential resource or expertise. Rather than attempt to stimulate invention, the WIN strategy is simply to make it easier for existing ideas and inventions to reach the marketplace. In addition to other resources, WIN draws on the expertise of some 160 volunteer Wal-Mart executives, buyers and marketing specialists who provide an assessment of marketability. Although innovation is the primary focus of the WIN venture, the bottom line objective is the creation of new, domestic manufacturing jobs.     

Outsourcing under Imperfect Protection of Intellectual Property

The paper examines possible reasons behind expanded outsourcing by modeling outsourcing decisions when intellectual property rights are imperfectly protected. Firms in the North develop higher quality levels of existing products and then decide whether to shift some stages of production to the South. Production in the South lowers costs but entails risk of imitation by Southern firms. In this setting, a lower risk of imitation or larger labor supplies can cause increased outsourcing, a higher rate of innovation, and a lower Northern relative wage. Damage due to lower incomes can be offset by gains in terms of better quality products.     

Price discrimination and quality improvement

This paper models quality improvements when multiple quality levels can sell, owing to differences in consumers' valuations of quality improvements. Firms can collude to price discriminate, so that consumers with high valuations pay a price premium, while others receive a quality level below the highest available. Imposing minimum quality standards or price ceilings can ensure that only the highest quality level of each product is sold. Such intervention reduces the quality‐adjusted price paid by consumers but also reduces the incentives for firms to innovate. When enough consumers have high valuations, such intervention must be welfare reducing, owing to reduced innovation. JEL Classification: O31, L16 Discrimination par les prix et amélioration de la qualité. Ce mémoire présente un modèle d'amélioration de la qualité quand on peut vendre des produits à divers niveaux de qualitéà cause des différences dans les évaluations d'amélioration de qualité par les consommateurs. Les entreprises peuvent entrer en collusion pour faire de la discrimination par les prix de manière à ce que les consommateurs qui apprécient davantage la qualité paient une prime pendant que les autres consommateurs reçoivent une qualité au‐dessous de ce qui est la meilleure qualité disponible. Si on impose des normes de qualité minimale ou des plafonds aux prix, on peut s'assurer que seuls les produits de la plus haute qualité seront vendus. De telles interventions réduisent le niveau de prix ajusté pour la qualité payé par les consommateurs, mais réduisent aussi les incitations des entreprises à innover. Quand un nombre suffisant de consommateurs apprécient beaucoup la qualité, de telles interventions peuvent réduire le niveau de bien‐être à cause des innovations moins importantes.