“You Can't Make a Good Wine without a Few Beers”: Gatekeepers and knowledge flow in industrial districts

Knowledge sharing sometimes plays a key role in the performance of clustered organizations, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), however, SMEs also face significant knowledge-related disadvantages due to their lack of absorptive capacity and functional expertise. This study investigates the influence of technical specialists on knowledge flow in a wine cluster in Australia. The main contribution of this paper is a finding that the technical specialist's gatekeeping role both links clustered SMEs to the global wine “systemworld” by transferring knowledge of technical developments and innovation, and simultaneously develops and refines regional winemaking styles by sharing locally specific, experientially derived knowledge. Technical specialists drew on bridging and bonding social capital to identify and retrieve specialist knowledge, and were capable of assimilating complex technical knowledge into the cluster. These findings are particularly significant because recipients were typically small and micro-firms, which are frequently located outside cluster knowledge-network.     

How much to give? — The effect of donation size on tactical and strategic success in cause-related marketing

In cause-related marketing (CM), companies promise a donation to a cause every time a consumer makes a purchase. We analyze the impact of the size of this donation on brand choice (tactical success) and brand image (strategic success). Our results reveal different effects of donation size on these success measures. For brand choice, the effect of donation size is moderated by a financial trade-off for consumers, whereas the effect on brand image is moderated by donation framing. Specifically, we show that donation size has a positive effect on brand choice if consumers face no financial trade-off; i.e., if they do not have to choose between triggering a donation or saving money. The effect is negative if a trade-off exists such that higher donations come at higher costs. Brand image is enhanced by larger donations if the framing is nonmonetary (e.g., the campaign promises the provision of vaccinations), whereas donation size has a negative effect if donation framing is monetary (e.g., the campaign states the Euro amount). If campaigns use a combination of both frames, the effect of donation size on brand image has an inverted U shape. Our results suggest that CM enhances tactical and strategic success only if firms select the right donation size, taking into account donation framing and financial trade-offs.     

Historic District Influence on House Prices and Marketing Duration

Historic property designations have been lauded for spurring renovation beyond the historic structures themselves through positive externalities in surrounding neighborhoods. Previous historic district research focuses on whether historic designation results in a price premium. This paper takes a more comprehensive look at the buying process, which must consider marketing duration within the historic district as well as influences on the sale of properties adjacent to the historic district. We examine how historic district designation in Baton Rogue, Louisiana is capitalized either through a price premium or marketing duration and how that mechanism differs between neighborhoods inside and outside the historic district boundaries. We employ a three stage least square, 3SLS, model to account for the effects of endogenous marketing duration on price capitalization estimates. The estimates are consistent with search-market theory in that marketing duration absorbs part of the capitalization of historic designation. We find that the more certain benefits from historic designation within the district are reflected in a price premium while the reduced regulation coupled with the cachet of being located near but not inside the district result in shorter marketing duration.     

HOUSEHOLD SAVING IN THE '90s: EVIDENCE FROM CROSS-SECTION WEALTH SURVEYS

This paper uses a series of cross-section surveys to measure how wealth accumulation and active saving rates varied across cohort-groups during the early and mid 1990s. Our estimated rates of saving and wealth change across cohorts show a somewhat more dramatic life-cycle pattern than found in previous studies, in part because we use a new technique, and in part because the cross-section wealth surveys we use oversample the wealthiest families whose behavior dominates aggregate changes. Adjusting the wealth-change rates for bequests and subtracting out the capital gains component of wealth change move the estimates in the direction of results from previous studies, but the biggest changes in that direction result from excluding the top of the wealth distribution in each year.     

Advances in Joint Modelling: A Review of Recent Developments with Application to the Survival of End Stage Renal Disease Patients

The use of joint modelling approaches is becoming increasingly popular when an association exists between survival and longitudinal processes. Widely recognized for their gain in efficiency, joint models also offer a reduction in bias compared with naïve methods. With the increasing popularity comes a constantly expanding literature on joint modelling approaches. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of recent literature relating to joint models, in particular those that focus on the time‐to‐event survival process. A discussion is provided on the range of survival submodels that have been implemented in a joint modelling framework. A particular focus is given to the recent advancements in software used to build these models. Illustrated through the use of two different real‐life data examples that focus on the survival of end‐stage renal disease patients, the use of the JM and joineR packages within R are demonstrated. The possible future direction for this field of research is also discussed.     

Custom fabric ventures: An instructional resource in job costing for the introductory managerial accounting course

Job costing is a core foundational concept in the introductory managerial accounting course. The purpose of this instructional resource (IR) is to provide a thorough hands-on, active learning resource that will allow introductory students to experience a full set of accounting and management activities necessary to produce a job and assign production costs to it. For example, the IR requires students to analyze overhead costs, determine the optimal job size, schedule production, calculate the amount of materials to purchase, complete material requisitions, update raw materials records, analyze labor time records, complete a job cost record and address critical thinking questions. The IR was developed for use in a “flipped classroom” in which students work under the guidance of the instructor, but could alternatively be assigned as an unsupervised out-of-class assignment or on-line project. Since the IR was specifically developed as a learning tool for novice introductory managerial accounting students, adequate guidance is provided throughout the activity. However, to add realism and challenge students to think beyond the confines of simple mechanics, management and accounting issues are seeded throughout. Student feedback indicates that the IR not only helps students learn how a job costing system operates, but also helps students become aware of management decisions and accounting issues that impact the costs assigned to a job.     

Visitor centre staffing: Involving volunteers

Volunteer involvement in visitor centres has received little attention by tourism researchers despite the critical role staff play in welcoming tourists to a destination and promoting tourism activities. The community function of visitor centres - of which volunteering is part - has also been underplayed in previous research. Using data from a survey and interviews with visitor centre managers in Australia, this paper investigates the rationales for staffing visitor centres with volunteers and/or paid employees and, related to motivations for volunteering, the factors influencing the attractiveness of visitor centre volunteer programmes. The dominant rationales for involving volunteers are need, community involvement, visitor experience, and the personal qualities and motivations of volunteers. Visitor centre volunteering is attractive because of location and local pride, interactions with tourists and social relationships with other volunteers, and the reputation of the visitor centre and its volunteer programme.     

Reassessing welfare reform data: a response to cherry

Abstract

This is a response to Robert Cherry's comment on the article, “Welfare as We [Don't] Know It: A Review and Feminist Critique of Welfare Reform Research” that appeared in the 10(2) issue of Feminist Economics. This response argues that while some combination of welfare reform, the booming economy in the late 1990s, and changes in economic policy all worked together to decrease caseloads and increase employment rates among welfare leavers, these are incomplete measures of the impact of welfare reform on the lives of lone mothers. This paper also argues that the effects of welfare reform on lone mothers are more mixed than Cherry acknowledges. This paper concludes that when one holistically examines low-income lone mothers' lives, it is premature to declare welfare reform a success.