Consumer culture,the mobilisation of the narcissistic self and adolescent deviant leisure

The purpose of this analysis is to investigate the consumer packaging of adolescent deviance through commodified leisure. It argues that under conditions of neoliberalism, deviant leisure is commodified by industry, emptying deviance of its political potential, selling it back to adolescents in the form of narcissistic self-identities. These self-identities appear to challenge authority, albeit produced within youth culture and marketing, purchased and consumed in the belief that it is resistance. Forms of adolescent deviance and narcissism are normalised as challenging, exciting and risky while providing associations with power, wealth, celebrity and physical beauty. In the final analysis, we explore some possibilities for the resistance of market-based constructions of self-identity for adolescents in western consumer cultures.     

美国土地分配和使用对中低收入群体购买力的影响

研究目的：分析美国土地分配和使用政策对中低收入群体购买力的影响。研究方法：应用政策分析方法,回顾美国政府干预房地产业的历史及其后果,特别是次贷危机的成因以及政府干预房地产供给对居民购买力的影响。研究结果：（1）一般来说政府对市场的干预将造成严重的市场混乱;（2）政府旨在间接补贴或者援助某个群体而非利用税收直接补偿将造成市场混乱;（3）在某些城市,政府对房地产活动的干预对于中产阶级来说,将导致极高甚至是寻租性质的房价,这样的房价是中低收入群体不可能承受的。当政府强制进行非市场均衡的规划和土地利用管制时,只有高收入群体有能力购房,政府必须对低收入群体提供保障性住房。研究结论：政府的首要任务是允许市场自行调节住房供需并向有需要的目标人群提供直接援助。同时,任何援助都不应以限制供给为目的,限制供给只会让情况更加恶化。     

CooperationV. Rivalry and factors facilitating collusion

A perennial topic in industrial economics is collusion. Kwoka and Ravenscraft (1986) developed a model to measure the collusiveness of conjectures across industries as a function of intra-industry rivalry among leading firms. But extensive literature suggests that the degree of collusion may also depend upon underlying market characteristics. We modify the Kwoka and Ravenscraft model to account for this. Our results suggest that underlying market characteristics do matter. Intra-industry rivalry and conjectures vary with the level and stability of concentration, and to a lesser degree with product homogeneity.     

医院利用DMAIC和QFD减少用药差错

一家伊利诺依州医院在开展一个减少用药差错项目中既减少了工作量，同时又改进了90％过程绩效。 由一个黑带帮助的多学科团队实施六西格玛中DMAIC（定义、测量、分析、改进和控制）方法论 这个项目团队利用QFD（质量功能展开）来设计和开发过程职能 要想通过减少过程步骤来改进质量听起来是矛盾的。而在伊利诺依州的一个拥有200以上床位全功能医院在2005年实现减少用药差错的目标时却没有出现上述情况。事实上，医疗组织认可委联合员会（JCAHO）对奥尔顿纪念医院在该项目上实现过程绩效超过90％的改进予以了认可。     

Enhancing CSCW with Advanced Decision Making Tools for an Agile Manufacturing System Design Application

Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) can provide an efficient decision-making environment for multi-disciplinary teams faced with the challenge of evaluating agile manufacturing systems. In this paper, the development and evaluation of CSCW prototypes to aid the systematic evaluation of agile manufacturing systems are described. An industrial case study involving the evaluation of alternative design configurations of a cellular manufacturing system (CMS) for agile manufacturing was used for testing with twelve multi-disciplinary teams. The results obtained suggest that engineering design teams can obtain productivity improvements through the use of CSCW tools. The results indicate that CSCW systems can assist decision-makers in reaching consensus especially when advanced decision making tools are incorporated into the problem-solving framework. In this study, we also found that an enhanced CSCW with a neural network module for preference aggregation outperformed a basic CSCW in: (1) decision quality, (2) users' satisfaction and agreement, (3) consensus. These results also have far reaching implications for distributed product development teams that face the problem of reaching consensus on a range of alternative designs with stringent pressures to reduce development time.     

Economics at the Federal Communications Commission

This article reviews several issues confronted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the past year and discusses some of the economic analysis employed by the FCC in examining these issues. The article also identifies areas in which future academic research would be valuable to the agency.Thanks are due to Heather Dixon, David Fiske, Evan Kwerel, Jonathan Levy, and Larry White (the editor) for useful comments. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the FCC, its staff, or commissioners.     

Examining the Ethical Behavior of Ontario Chartered Accountants: A Longitudinal Review of the Disciplinary Process

The governing bodies of the Chartered Accountant (CA) profession and business schools go to great lengths to ensure accounting professionals are equipped with a skill set that meets technical, professional, ethical, and other general requirements. In spite of a strict code of ethics, violations of the professional conduct rules leading to disciplinary action are a reality. Using the total CA membership (N = 36,465) of Ontario, Canada, this study makes a 27‐year retrospective assessment of the frequency of disciplinary cases, the characteristics of offenders, the disciplinary process, and the sanctions imposed. Results indicate that: (i) approximately 1.38 percent of the members have been charged with violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct by the Institute of Chartered Accountants over that period; (ii) most were sole proprietors engaged in public accounting; (iii) on average, men make up 76 percent of the CA membership, outnumbering women by three to one (3:1); yet, men were 16 times more likely than women to be charged; (iv) the majority of the offences occurred while members with public accounting licenses were conducting external audits; and (v) sanctions ranged from a “rap on the knuckles” admonishment to expulsion from the CA profession. This study is exploring the CA disciplinary process as observed through disciplinary notices and suggests improvements to the system.     

Cofinancing to Manage Risk in the Motion Picture Industry

Cofinancing is a term used in the movie industry to describe films for which multiple firms share the cost of production and revenues. We find that one-third of movies produced by major studios between 1987 and 2000 are cofinanced. Anecdotal evidence strongly indicates that cofinancing is for the purpose of risk management. However, the major studios are publicly traded firms, which allows investors to make their own diversification decisions, leading us to question the importance of cofinancing for risk management. Contrary to industry claims, we find that cofinancing decisions are unrelated to the distribution of individual movie returns—studios do not appear to cofinance relatively risky films. But we do find that studios are more likely to cofinance movies that account for a large fraction of their total annual production budget, which reduces portfolio risk via the law of large numbers. Toward an alternative explanation for cofinancing, we also find that cofinancing between two major studios impacts the release dates of their other movies.