competitive markets from Satisfied producers

What is the future of Competition Policy? Russell Lewis discusses this and other issues with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the Rt Hon, Peter Lilley MP.     

The Tomteboda Mail Centre Revisited

The first issue of NTWE featured a piece on work organisation at the Swedish Mail Centre at Tomteboda. In the light of a recent visit there, the author responds to that original account.     

discovering the truth about aid

Economists in the House of Lords are rare; Russell Lewis interviews the celebrated sceptic of foreign aid - Lord Bauer, better known perhaps as Professor P. T. Bauer, and explores his still controversial views about inter-government aid and aspects of his eventful life.     

THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CROSS-COMPLIANCE ON ARABLE FARMING

It is argued that the ongoing CAP/GATT reforms provide a basis for the introduction of environmental cross-compliance (ECC). ECC enables policymakers to restrict output-related direct support payments to those farmers who comply with specified environmental guidelines aimed at reducing the external damage effects of agricultural production. This paper is an exploratory investigation of ECC and presents the results of a farm-level linear programming analysis of 15 North-West England arable farms. The environmental guidelines, which relate to permanent as opposed to rotational set-aside and to levels of fertiliser use, are widely applicable to the extent that ECC can be implemented as a voluntary policy system. They are clearly effective in achieving policy goals since all but one of the farmers investigated would comply with the full range of restrictions considered. Within this range, gross margins are reduced by up to 10 per cent while area and output of seed crops are reduced by around 22 per cent and 12 per cent respectively. Row crops area and output are more robust, each falling by just under 4 per cent.     

Estimating the covariance matrix for regression models with ar(1) errors and lagged dependent variables

We propose a simple procedure, based on an artificial linear regression, for consistently estimating the covariance matrix of the parameter estimates for linear regression models with serially correlated errors and lagged dependent variables.     

An examination of the ethical beliefs of managers using selected scenarios in a cross-cultural environment

Academic literature addressing the topic of business ethics has paid little attention to cross-cultural studies of business ethics. Uncertainty exists concerning the effect of culture on ethical beliefs. The purpose of this research is to compare the ethical beliefs of managers operating in South Africa and Australia. Responses of 52 managers to a series of ethical scenarios were sought. Results indicate that despite differences in socio-cultural and political factors there are no statistically significant differences between the two groups regarding their own ethical beliefs. Results thus support the view that culture has little or no impact on ethical beliefs.Russell Abratt (DBA Pretoria) is Professor of Marketing at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. His research interests include business ethics and promotional strategy. His work has been published in various sources includingJournal of Business Ethics, European Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Advertising andIndustrial Marketing Management.Deon Nel (DCom Pretoria) is Professor of Marketing at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. His research interests include business ethics and group decision making in organisations. His work has been published in various sources includingJournal of Business Ethics, European Journal of Marketing, Management Research News.Nicola Higgs is a graduate student at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.     

Major league baseball division standings,sports journalists' predictions and player salaries

This paper analyzes the accuracy of predictions of division baseball winners and rankings for the 1982 to 1990 seasons. The forecasts in Sport, Sports Illustrated and the New York Times are more accurate than purely random forecasts except at predicting the National League winners. The journalists are better at predicting division winners, but not division rankings, than a naive model that assumes this season's rankings, will be the same as last seasons's. Combining the forecasts in the three publications does not result in greater forecasting accuracy. A model that uses the relative average salaries of teams significantly outperforms the journalists at predicting division rankings and, when allowance is made for ‘George Steinbrenner effect’, also at predicting division winners.