Unemployment trends in some American cities with living wage ordinances

By early 2003, more than 90 American cities and counties have passed laws, called Living Wage Ordinances, which require companies that have contracts with these municipalities and/or receive tax subsidies to pay their workers a wage above the federal minimum rate. The levels of these wages and the types of workers who are affected by these living wage ordinances are reviewed. Also examined are the major arguments for and against these laws. This study looks at the trends in unemployment rates in 40 cities that have enacted Living Wage Ordinances. Each city's unemployment rate is compared to that in its metropolitan area, its state, and the nation. The study reveals that experiences are mixed. Some cities with living wage ordinances have experienced an improvement in their relative employment situation. Other cities have experienced just the opposite.     

Supply chain risk identification with value-focused process engineering

Together with numerous benefits that were brought about by the transition from the silo enterprise perspective towards the process-based supply chain view of contemporary business, new sources of risk appeared due to the complex systemic nature of the supply chains. The need to reduce the increased level of supply chain vulnerability has been identified as a key research issue in the domain of supply chain management. In this paper, a novel value-focused process engineering methodology for process-based supply chain risk identification is proposed with the aim to increase value to supply chain members and supply chain as a whole. The proposed methodology is illustrated with a generic supply chain scenario example.     

Carcinoid of the intrahepatic ducts

Carcinoid tumors of the biliary tree are rare. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported case of an intrahepatic ductal carcinoid and the thirteenth reported case of biliary carcinoid. The radiographic appearance is variable. A brief review of the previously described cases is presented.     

Sustainable management of renewable resources: an experimental investigation in continuous time

This study addresses one of the most basic questions in renewable resource management: the ability of economic agents to exploit a renewable resource in an efficient and sustainable manner. In a laboratory experiment, subjects are presented with renewable resource extraction problems, where optimal management will lead to a stable steady state. A test of sustainability of the extraction practices shows that extraction behaviour results in steady states only 56% of the time. The mode of the steady state distribution coincides with the optimal steady state extraction. The trade-off between accruing a higher payoff in the present and sustaining the resource for future exploitation leads to suboptimal behaviours such as initial overextraction of the resource compared to the optimal extraction policy, costly downward adjustment of the extraction later in time, and settling down for lower long-run resource and extraction. The suboptimal behaviours lead to 17% loss in efficiency on average in terms of the accumulated payoff. We further look at extraction behaviour in terms of the degree of impatience it projects and find, based on their extraction decisions, that most of our subjects seem more impatient in managing their resource than is justified by the decision-making problem presented to them.     

A note on Chui,Gai and Haldane’s “Sovereign liquidity crisis: Analytics and implications for public policy”

This note corrects the welfare calculations in Chui, Gai and Haldane’s paper on sovereign liquidity crisis [Chui, M., Gai, P., Haldane, A.G., 2002. Sovereign liquidity crisis: Analytics and implications for public policy. Journal of Banking and Finance 26, 519–544]. We show that the exact formula not only dramatically reduces the computed welfare consequences from 66% of ex-ante expected output to roughly 13%, but also changes the direction of some reported comparative static results. In addition, we clarify the difference between fundamentals-driven and belief-driven welfare costs and extend some of the sensitivity calculations.     

Formal and informal management training programs for women in Canada: Who seems to be doing a good job?

The increasing complexity of Canadian businesses in a changing marketplace indicates that women as well as men managers will have to be well trained to be able to position themselves in this new environment with a certain degree of success and personal happiness. As management educators, we have to accept an important share in this responsibility. This paper examines some of the factors that should be considered by those who want to develop management training programs for the future women managers or entrepreneurs.Dina Lavoie is associate professor of management and organization development at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales at Montreal since 1977. Her main area of interest is entrepreneurship. She has authored the first studies on women entrepreneurs in Canada and has developed some of the first management training programs for women managers in Quebec, New Brunswick and several Asean Countries where she has resided and worked for several years. She is secretary-treasurer general of the new National Entrepreneurship Development Institute of Canada (NEDI) and is advisor to the federal and several provincial governments on issues related to women entrepreneurs and women managers. She is member of the board of trustees of several organisations including NEDI and the Asian Institute of Technology (Bangkok). We find her listed in Who's Who of Canadian Women, The World Who's Who of Women, the International Directory of Distinguished Leadership etc.     

Managing buzz

We model the incentives of individuals to engage in word of mouth (or buzz) about a product, and how a firm may strategically influence this process through its information release and advertising strategies. Individuals receive utility by improving how others perceive them. A firm restricts access to information, advertising may crowd out word of mouth, and a credible commitment not to engage in advertising is valuable for a firm.     

Market facilities and agricultural marketing: evidence from Tamil Nadu,India

This article analyzes the effect of facilities and infrastructure available at the marketplace on a farmer's decision to sell at the market. The econometric estimation shows that the likelihood of sales at the market increases significantly with an improvement in market facilities and a decrease in travel time from the village to the market. The results suggest that wealth reduces a farmer's cost of accessing market facilities more than it increases her/his opportunity cost of leisure. The policy simulation indicates that the marginal benefits from an improvement in market facility will favor the poorer farmers in the context of India.