Employee communications and health care reform

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has made health care reform a reality. Although many of PPACA's details are still unclear to many employers, and most of the act's major reforms will take effect over the next several years, companies have reason to begin preparing for change and enough information to begin a communications effort with employees. The authors describe a number of immediate actions that employers should take to make the most of their own understanding of PPACA as it develops, as well as help their employee benefits leaders make the most informed decisions about when and how to communicate with employees about the law and its impact on their group health plan coverage.     

AUDITOR PREFERENCES FOR LIABILITY LIMITATION

Debate over statutorily limiting auditor civil liability has implicitly assumed auditors are homogeneous in their preferences for capping liability. This study examines the preferences of auditors for limiting auditor liability and investigates reasons for the preferences. The study uses an Australian setting in which there has been a persistent debate for a decade or more over regulatory intervention in this area. The study provides a background to the debate over this issue and addresses the effects of two factors suggested by the extant literature, namely auditor size and the business risk of an auditor's client portfolio. These factors are argued to affect the expected costs of litigation facing auditors and therefore their preferences on capping liability. Using the submissions by audit firms on an Australian Companies and Securities Law Review Committee Discussion Paper on limiting auditor liability, the study finds larger audit firms that have greater capacities to lobby and greater expected costs of litigation from unlimited liability than smaller firms, dominate the respondents on the Paper and tend to be more supportive of liability limitation than smaller audit firms. Within the array of possible methods of capping liability canvassed by the Discussion Paper, the study documents evidence of diversity in preferences among audit firms. Larger audit firm size is associated with a preference for a group of methods that provides such firms with opportunities to benefit from the capping at the expense of the smaller audit firms. The method most preferred by the larger audit firms is the multiple of fee with a prescribed minimum. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is also the preferred method of the professional accounting bodies in Australia. As to the effect of the riskiness of the client portfolio on preferences for methods of limiting liability, the study finds that higher business risk in an auditor's portfolio is associated with a preference for methods that give greater control over their liability exposure. The study has implications for the impact of regulation of capping liability on competition in the audit services market.     

A Statewide Assessment of Precollege Economic Understanding and DEEP

Effects of various student, teacher, and school system characteristics on levels of student economic understanding and learning during the 1982–83 school year are estimated using a stratified random sample of schools from around the state of Indiana. Particular attention is paid to a binary variable indicating which schools are participating in the Developmental Economic Education Program (DEEP).     

School District Inputs and Biased Estimation of Educational Production Functions

This study offers some highly tentative statistical evidence on a potential problem, noted by Eric Hanushek in 1979, in estimating educational production functions, particularly at the precollege level. Hanushek observed that it is frequently inappropriate to include school-system variables in equations using the individual student as the unit of observation. This study offers limited evidence supporting this concern.     

Female employment growth in Britain, 1979–92: some competing hypotheses ∗

Over the period 1979–92, the gender and status composition of employment has undergone significant change in Britain, which cannot be attributed merely to cyclical influences. In this paper changes in the pattern of employment by occupation, gender and part-time and full-time status are decomposed to cast some light on three hypotheses (buffer stock, substitution and segregation) which are designed to explain the growth of female employment in Britain over the period 1979–92. The results reveal that women have made some progress in achieving full-time employment positions, after correction for the influence of structural change and the declining full-time share of employment. It is noted, however, that following the labour market legislation of the 1980s full-time employment is not necessarily more secure than part-time. The long run substitution of part-time for full-time employment has benefited the employment of women, even though their share of part-time employment has declined. The analysis informs the debate on the flexible firm at least in respect of numerical flexibility.     

增长领先者制胜之道——以运营战略创造优势

对于许多公司而言．在当前竞争加剧的情况下保持盈利和持续性的增长，尤如海市蜃楼。尽管存在诸多障碍，实现持续增长仍然并不是难以企及的目标。但是，要实现这一目标．仅有脉络清楚的业务战略是远远不够的，采用强有力的运营战略至关重要。     

Book review

A study was undertaken to examine how Chinese advertising professionals perceive issues surrounding advertising education. Participants were solicited from advertising agencies in the cities of Beijing and Hangzhou. The findings indicate that Chinese advertising professionals hold a positive attitude towards advertising education and strongly believe that more undergraduate and graduate advertising programmes are needed in China. Degrees from advertising education programmes abroad were also seen in a favourable light and were thought to lead to faster raises and promotions. The results also established an initial picture of the individual and agency demographics of today's Chinese advertising professionals. The implications for Chinese and Western advertising education programmes are discussed.     

Owner-managers,clusters and local embeddedness: small firms in the Sheffield (UK) metal-working cluster

The primary objective of this paper is to explore the ways in which the characteristics of owner-managers influence the extent to which their firms are embedded within local clusters of economic activity. Data are drawn from an interview survey of a random sample of small metal-working firms in Sheffield, UK. The data are analysed using non-parametric statistical methods to test bivariate relationships. Owner-manager attributes are found to have no influence on the extent of the use of local material supply networks but they do influence the extent of dependence on local markets. Owner-managers born and bred in the local region with limited formal education, working as an operative (rather than executive) prior to start up and with many years experience are more likely to rely on local markets. Owner-manager characteristics are also linked to participation in business networks. Those with most experience and those previously working for large firms are more likely to participate. It is concluded that owner-manager attributes can be important in explaining the level of embeddedness of small firms in a cluster of economic activity and that such attributes need to be built into theories of cluster behaviour.