Interest and reaction time analysis of credit card offers: Managerial implications of high level research procedures

This paper presents a new approach to the optimisation of direct mail offers. Conjoint measurement will be used to identify two aspects of an offer: the degree of interest; and the speed at which an individual processes the information. The approach allows the marketer to create offers that are simultaneously attractive to customers and easy to understand. The approach is illustrated by a credit card case study.     

How Africa can benefit from knowledge

Africa's poverty partly stems from the lack of strong scientific, technological and knowledge bases. The abundance of natural resources on the continent has been of limited value to the African people because they do not have the tools with which to turn their resources into consumable wealth. To rectify this situation, African policy makers would have to undertake various measures. First, they need to define the type of knowledge their countries require. Second, they ought to establish conditions for nurturing strategic leaders who will, in turn, seek the right forms of knowledge to tackle Africa's problems. Third, policy makers need to build the political and legal frameworks that encourage the absorption and application of scientific innovations. Fourth, African leaders ought to revamp the universities, establish regional research centres, and take capacity building more seriously. It is these measures that will facilitate Africa's meaningful participation in global knowledge flows. Above all, knowledge creation should aim at attaining human welfare, participatory democracy, peace building and socio-economic justice.     

Work experiences,work adjustment and psychological well-being of expatriate employees in Hong Kong

This study replicated and extended research on expatriate work adjustment by examining the antecedents of work adjustment and its outcomes in terms of psychological well-being. Data were obtained from a nationally heterogeneous sample (N = 184) of expatriate employees in Hong Kong using a structured questionnaire. Results of regression analysis revealed role conflict to be significantly negatively related to work adjustment, while role discretion, co-worker support and work-method ambiguity (clarity) were significantly positively related to work adjustment. Of the three hypothesized outcomes, work adjustment was significantly positively related only to job satisfaction but not to quality of life and marital adjustment. Though not the focus of this study, interaction adjustment was found to be significantly positively related to quality of life. Limitations of the study and implications of the findings are discussed.     

Racial Earnings Disparities and Family Structure

One explanation for the widening of racial earnings gaps among family heads during the 1980s is that black families were increasingly headed by females during that period. This explanation is tested using data on black and white family heads in 1976 and 1985 from the Institute for Research on Poverty's Current Population Survey. Log-earnings equations, corrected for selection bias and for the endogeneity of labor force participation, are estimated for blacks and whites in 1976 and 1985. If the impact of rising female-family headship on labor force participation is ignored, one finds support for the family structure explanation. But support for alternative explanations is also found. There are substantial impacts of within-race gender discrimination and of market racial discrimination. When the endogeneity of family structure is taken into account, further support is found for the view that endowment differences only explain a modest portion of the rising gap in earnings between black and white family heads.     

Law commentary: Unjust dismissal laws in other countries: some cautionary notes*

In this article the author provides a view from the USA on the workings of unfair dismissal legislation in a number of countries.     

Race and prosecution expenditures

There has been a steady accumulation of literature on racial differentials in crime and the response of the criminal justice system. A neglected component of societal response to crime has been the volume of prosecution expenditures. This article seeks to repair this neglect by examining state level difference inper capita prosecution expenditures in 1980 using a multiple regression equation. The results show that, holding other factors constant, lower prosecution expenditures are associated with higher percentages of blacks in a state’s population. The relationship of this to discrimination is discussed in terms of England.     

Mergers and synergism—some chance-constraint perspectives

This paper presents a single-period model in which profit-maximizing firms, subjected to externally imposed risk-constraints, can generate synergistic benefits through merger. It is shown that those effects depend upon several conditions and assumptions, whose reflection of the real world can vary from one case to another. The model provides some important theoretical insights to understanding the conflicting empirical results of several recent studies concerning synergistic benefits.