The compulsory public pension and the demand for life insurance: the case of Sweden, 1884–1914

We employ cost‐of‐living surveys, business archives, and firm data to examine the impact of the compulsory pension on the demand for life insurance in Sweden from 1884 to 1914—a period that covers the implementation of the first public compulsory old‐age pension reform and the take‐off of industry life insurance. As predicted on the basis of the contemporary literature on crowding‐out effects, we find that the compulsory pension reduced the demand for life insurance. Our panel‐data analysis of lapse rates on insurance policies shows a significant crowding‐out effect of pension payments. We conclude that the introduction of the general compulsory pension had a crowding‐out effect on households’ holdings of insurance policies.     

Reviews

'WOMEN IN BRITAIN TODAY' Beechey, Veronica and Whitelegg, Elizabeth (Editors), 1986: Women in Britain Today. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, £20.00 hardback, £6.95 paperback.

'WOMEN AND TRAINING' Wickham, Ann. 1986: Women and Training. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, £6.95 paperback.

'ALL WORK AND NO PLAY?' Deem, R. 1986: All Work and No Play? The Sociology of Women and Leisure Milton Keynes:Open University Press, £20.00 hardback, £6.95 paperback.

'ANY ADVANCE ON MONETARISM?' Tomlinson, J., 1986: Monetarism: Is There an Alternative? Oxford: Blackwell, £22.50 hardback, £6.50 paperback.

'LOCAL AUTHORITIES ACTION ON INDUSTRIAL CLOSURES' Local Authority Associations, 1986: Crisis and opportunity: local authorities' response to decline of major traditional industries. Available from ACC, ADC or AMA, £5.00 incl. p. and p.

'DEVELOPING THE SOCIALLY USEFUL ECONOMY' Bodington, S., George, M. and Michaelson, J., 1986: Developing the Socially Useful Economy. Macmillan, £9.95 paperback.     

Customers’ ways of making sense of a financial service relationship through intersubjective mirroring of others

The importance of relationships between buyer and sellers in marketing research is well established. This study contributes to relationship marketing (RM) research as it examines the microfoundations of financial service buyer and seller relationships. The study uses intersubjective theory and a qualitative method with the purpose of conceptualising the qualitatively different ways customers experience face-to-face interactions with a service provider. An empirical study is conducted to determine, based on the customer's own words, what is experienced in the interaction between the customer and the provider. Findings from the empirical material show that not all personal interactions between customers and a service provider, in this case a bank, can be labelled as relationships. Instead, what customers do perceive as a relationship is an encounter where the interaction entails symmetry in the way the customer and the provider mirror each other. When customers receive a treatment in opposition to an expectation of intersubjectivity, they will not refer to the situation as a relationship and, subsequently, according to the underlying assumptions of RM, do not willingly engage in further business with the provider.     

High‐Performance Management Practices and Employee Outcomes in Denmark

High‐performance work practices are frequently considered to have positive effects on corporate performance, but what do they do for employees? After assessing the correlation between organizational innovation and firm performance, this article investigates whether high‐involvement work practices affect workers in terms of wages, wage inequality and workforce composition. The analysis is based on a survey directed at Danish firms matched with linked employer–employee data and also examines whether the relationship between high‐involvement work practices and employee outcomes is affected by the industrial relations context.     

Go boldly!: Explore augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) for business

It is not surprising that managers find it hard to distinguish similar-sounding, IT-based concepts such as augmented reality and virtual reality. To many, all of these constructs mean nearly the same and, as a result, the terms are often used interchangeably. This confusion holds back those eager to explore the different opportunities these new technologies present. This Executive Digest presents six different types of reality and virtual reality—(1) reality, (2) augmented reality, (3) virtual reality, (4) mixed reality, (5) augmented virtuality, and (6) virtuality—as part of our actual reality/virtual reality continuum. We then illustrate their differences using a common example and outline business applications for each type.     

A comparison of quality function deployment and conjoint analysis in new product design

In this work, we compare two product design approaches, quality function deployment (QFD) and conjoint analysis, by applying each to the design of a new all-purpose climbing harness for the beginning/intermediate ability climber that would complement a leading manufacturer's existing product line. While many of the optimal design features were the same under both approaches, the differences allow us to highlight the strengths of each approach. With conjoint analysis, it was easier to compare the most preferred features (i.e., ones that maximized sales) to profit maximizing features and also to develop designs that optimize product line sales or profits. On the other hand, QFD was able to highlight the fact that certain engineering characteristics or design features had both positive and negative aspects. This tradeoff could point the way to "out of the box" solutions. QFD also highlighted the importance of starting explicitly with customer needs, regardless of which method is used.
Rather than competing, we view them as complementary approaches that should be conducted simultaneously; each providing feedback to the other. When the two approaches differed on the optimal level or importance of a feature, it appeared that conjoint analysis better captured customers' current preferences for product features while QFD captured what product developers thought would best satisfy customer needs. Looking at the problem through these different lenses provides a useful dialogue that should not be missed. QFD's ability to generate creative or novel solutions should be combined with conjoint analysis' ability to forecast market reaction to design changes. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.     

Economic Growth, Inequality, Democratization, and the Environment

We augment the Stokey (1998) model by allowingagents to differ with respect to environmentalquality and income in order to analyze theimpact of income and environmental inequality,and of democratization on aggregate pollution.We find that the impact of a more equal incomedistribution depends on the degree ofdemocracy. In a complete democracy a more equalincome distribution generates, ceterisparibus, less pollution, which is consistentwith indirect empirical evidence, whereas theopposite is the case if democratic rights arehighly restricted. Furthermore, ademocratization is argued to typically lowerboth the income and the environmental qualityof the median voter. In this case, if, inutility terms, the fall in environmentalquality is worse than the fall in consumptionthe median voter decides to tightenenvironmental legislation so that aggregatepollution decreases.     

Price Adjustments by a Gasoline Retail Chain

We use daily data to examine price responses in the Swedish gasoline market to changes in the Rotterdam spot price, exchange rates and taxes. The distribution of price adjustments by a leading retail chain, for the period January 1980 to December 1996, is symmetric with no small adjustments. An error correction model shows that, in the short run, prices gradually move towards the long-run equilibrium in response to cost shocks. There is some evidence that, also in the short run, prices are stickier downwards than upwards. Prices respond more rapidly to exchange rate movements than to the spot market price. Our analysis emphasizes that to fully understand price adjustments it is necessary to examine data sets where the sample frequency at least matches that of price adjustments.
JEL classification: C 22; E 31; F 14; L 71     

From ‘Publish or Perish’ to Societal Impact: Organizational Repurposing Towards Responsible Innovation through Creating a Medical Platform

Why would an academic project incentivized towards scientific publications be repurposed to become a medical platform for responsible innovation? Patient Innovation, a non-profit medical platform that focuses on the sharing and dissemination of innovations to find solutions for rare and chronic diseases, was initially set up as an academic research project. However, team members reframed their core purpose from conducting research on user innovation to providing global access to these innovations and creating societal impact. Using a framing lens to understand organizational repurposing, we illuminate how serendipitous inspiration, moral emotions and the power of socially conscious users and catalysts drove this emergent reframing of core purpose and develop a model of organizational repurposing. We show how a frame drift towards a change in purpose occurs spontaneously in interactions, as actors frame and reframe situations and feel inspired and morally motivated to transcend their immediate self-interests and serve collective goals.