What has foreign exchange market intervention since the Plaza Agreement accomplished?

We review the conduct and scale of official intervention by monetary authorities in the U.S.A., Japan, and West Germany since the Plaza Agreement. Relative to trading volume and the stock of internatonally traded assets denominated in foreign currencies, intervention is small-scale and sporadic, hence at best limited to transitory effects. It does not appear to reduce volatility of daily exchange rates. Monetary authorities gamble that they will not suffer losses on their foreign currency holdings. Evidence in favor of sterilized foreign exchange market intervention as a way of conveying information to the private sector is far from convincing. Since changes in relative monetary growth rates are sufficient to alter bilateral exchange rates, monetary authorities can achieve their exchange rate preferences with domestic monetary policy, but at the cost of possible distortionary effects on monetary growth rates, domestic interest rates, and international capital flows.     

Do women lack ambition?

For men, ambition is considered a necessary and desirable part of life. Most women, however, associate ambition with egotism, self-aggrandizement, or manipulation. Getting to the bottom of why this is so required study of what ambition consists of--for both sexes. In childhood, the research uncovered, girls are clear about their ambitions. Their goals are grand, and they make no apologies for them. In nearly all childhood ambitions, two distinct factors are in place: the mastery of a special skill, and recognition for it. And what's true in childhood is no less true in later life: We all want our efforts and accomplishments acknowledged. Yet there are dramatic differences in how women and men create, reconfigure, and realize (or abandon) their goals. Most women are demure when praised for their achievements. One could chalk up this behavior to women's innate modesty or see it as a passive way of highlighting their accomplishments. But the fear of recognition that many women express suggests otherwise. Research has shown that such behavior varies according to social context: Women more openly seek and compete for affirmation when they are with other women, but they behave differently when competing with men. The underlying problem has to do with cultural ideals of femininity. Women face the reality that to appear feminine, they must provide or relinquish scarce resources to others--and recognition is indeed a scarce resource. Although women have more opportunities than ever before, they still come under social scrutiny that makes hard choices--such as when and whether to start a family or advance in the workplace--even harder. There are no easy solutions, but there are ways women can hold fast to their dreams. They must band together, learn to blow their own horns, and structure their lives in a way that promotes recognition.     

Cooperatives,women and political practice*

Cet article essaie d' examiner le rapport socio-culturel/politique entre l'etat et l'idéologie dominante et les nouvelles initiatives en Grande-Bretagne en matière de coopération ourvrière, notamment en ce qui concerne les femmes en situation urbaine. Il envisage les méthodes de récupération et d'interdiction d'une participation ouvrière active, et réciproquement, les conditions où la participation ouvrière change à son tour la politique de l'état et apporte des changements aux structures sociales imposées par une idéologie dominate. Il pose aussi des questions théoriques sur le fait de posséder des aptitudes, la connaissance, et l'efficacité de groupes coopératifs urbains travaillant à contre-courant de la culture dominante. De plus, au sein du cadre théorique qui entoure ces problèmes, il interroge le rapport qui existe actuellement entre la théorie universitaire et la pratique, son rapport avec les besoins de la grande masse de la population urbaine, et propose diverses formes de discussion dialectique entre ceux qui font l'expérience et ceux qui l'étudient-formes qui englobent et encouragent une pratique socialement transformatrice. Il essaie, particulièrement en ce qui concerne les femmes, de définir la façon dont la pratique coopérative, en ce qu'elle forme de nouvelles catégories et de nouveaux rapports sociaux, met en question le fondement des rôles intrasociaux que la plupart des femmes tiennent et les changements qui doivent suivre si les femmes sont appelées à jouir de la pleine participation au même titre que les hommes. The relationship between theory and practice are far more partial and fragmentary. … The relationship which holds in the application of theory is never one of resemblance. … No theory can develop without eventually encountering a wall and practice is necessary for the piercing of that wall. … A theorizing intellectual, for us, is no longer a subject, a representing or representative consciousness. … Those who act or struggle are no longer represented. Who speaks and who acts? It is always a multiplicity even within the person who speaks and acts … (Deleuze, G. in Foucault, 1977).     

Management across boundaries: A municipal dilemma

Public sector mergers have the potential of being viable alternative to other public sector reforms in the striving toward making public service provision more equipped to confront some of the challenges faced today. Mergers however often fail to deliver promised results. Previous research point to the importance of post‐merger integrating processes for realizing the synergies expected from mergers. However, so far these studies have focused on what occurs inside organizations and less on the interplay between different levels. By adopting a governance and top management perspective, this study increases our understanding of the importance of political decisions on the outcome of a merger in the public sector context. Further, this study increases our understanding of how organizational boundaries on different levels of merging organizations influence post‐merger integrating processes and the role of different actors as boundary spanners. The results of this study are based on five case studies of public sector mergers at the local level in Sweden.     

Workplace heterogeneity and wage inequality in Denmark

Wage inequality is on the rise in most developed economies, and this phenomenon has fostered a growing body of research on its potential drivers. Using German data over the period 1985–2009, Card et al. (The Quarterly Journal of Economics 2013, 128(3), 967-1015) argue that rising workplace heterogeneity has contributed substantially to the rise in wage inequality. I revisit their findings in two ways. First, because the generalization of their findings remains an open question, I apply their methodological approach to Danish register data and test whether rising workplace heterogeneity explains a significant share of the rise in wage inequality in Denmark. I find that, contrary to Germany, workplace heterogeneity remained practically stable over time, and this pattern contributed slightly negatively to the rise in wage inequality. Second, I complement Card et al.'s (2013) methods with the variance decomposition exercise proposed by Song et al. (2019) to identify more precisely the sources of the rise in wage inequality in Denmark. Although the rise in wage inequality is partly a between-establishment phenomenon, I show that the strengthening of assortative matching patterns and the rising heterogeneity of workers within establishments are the main drivers of growing inequality.     

Employer branding: Attracting and retaining talent in financial services

This study develops and investigates a framework for better understanding employer branding. More specifically, the overall purpose is to provide a deeper understanding on how employer branding is used to attract and retain talent. An extensive literature review leads to a proposed conceptual framework focusing on two key research questions: How can the relationship between corporate branding, internal branding and employer branding in service industries be described? And, How can the role of corporate values in delivering the brand promise be described? A qualitative, case study approach is used to collect data from a financial services company in Sweden. The data collected and analyzed reveals that the areas of employer, internal and corporate branding are not mutually exclusive, but instead an intertwined collection of branding issues that together form the corporation’s core values. All of this together is what allows the corporation to in turn deliver its brand(s) promise to several stakeholder groups.     

Consumer Preferences as Drivers of the Common Bean Trade in Tanzania: A Marketing Perspective

The objective of this study is to determine the impact of bean grain quality characteristics on market price. The data were collected from retail markets in Tanzania. Hedonic pricing provides a statistical estimate of premiums and discounts. Implications for the development of bean markets include the following: (a) extension agents should identify cost-effective ways to educate producers on targeting urban market niches based on consumer preferences for varieties, (b) breeding for bruchid-resistant beans and use of appropriate storage technologies would alleviate the problems of storage damage, and (c) a portfolio of grain quality characteristics to fit consumer preferences in local markets should be required.     

Exploring Convenience Food Consumption Through a Structural Equation Model

In this study the model of convenience orientation suggested by Scholderer and Grunert (2005 Scholderer, J. and Grunert, K. G. 2005. Consumers, food and convenience: The long way from resource constraints to actual consumption patterns. Journal of Economic Psychology, 26: 105–128. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is applied in order to examine consumer behavior in the context of convenience food usage. The empirical results indicate that sociodemographic characteristics affect behavior both directly and indirectly through perceived time resources and convenience orientation toward meal preparation and clearing up. Findings seem to be important for all the bodies involved in the marketing of convenience food products because they describe the way various consumer characteristics interact, affecting the consumption of such products.