Adding a freight network to a national interstate input–output model: a TransNIEMO application for California

The state of the nation’s infrastructure is the subject of widespread discussion and comment because it is thought to include many deteriorating and unsafe bridges. Ever since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, there has been increasing concern over the extent to which an attack on infrastructure could result in serious economic disruption. This research develops a model to analyze the economic consequences of an attack on a major element of the highway network. We add a freight network to a national multiregional economic impact model and make freight traffic flows endogenous. The use of a sub-national interstate model recognizes that most infrastructure planning is at the state level and most political leaders’ interest is local. We base our approach on the National Interstate Economic Model (NIEMO) and refer to an elaboration that we name Transportation network and the National Interstate Economic Model (TransNIEMO). The new model enables us to study the state-specific and industry-specific economic impacts of some significant changes in the nature of highway freight movements. We tested the model for selected freight movements in and out of California. The results are entirely plausible and encourage us to elaborate and test the model for hypothetical disruptions of freight traffic throughout the US.     

How do cities approach policy innovation and policy learning? A study of 30 policies in Northern Europe and North America

This paper reports on a study of current practice in policy transfer, and ways in which its effectiveness can be increased. A literature review identifies important factors in examining the transfer of policies. Results of interviews in eleven cities in Northern Europe and North America investigate these factors further.The principal motivations for policy transfer were strategic need and curiosity. Local officials and politicians dominated the process of initiating policy transfer, and local officials were also the leading players in transferring experience.A range of information sources are used in the search process but human interaction was the most important source of learning for two main reasons. First, there is too much information available through the Internet and the search techniques are not seen to be wholly effective in identifying the necessary information. Secondly, the information available on websites, portals and even good practice guides is not seen to be of mixed quality with risks of focussing only on successful implementation and therefore subject to some bias. Officials therefore rely on their trusted networks of peers for lessons as here they can access the ‘real implementation’ story and the unwritten lessons. Organisations which have a culture that is supportive of learning from elsewhere had strong and broad networks of external contacts and resourced their development whilst others are more insular or inward looking and reluctant to invest in policy lessons from elsewhere. Solutions to the problems identified in the evidence base are proposed.City to city policy transfer is a very active process in the field of transport. Not enough is yet understood about its benefits or the conditions under which it is most effective. Such understandings should help to promote and accelerate the uptake of effective and well matched policies.     

Takeovers and cooperatives: governance and stability in non-corporate firms

If consumers wholly or partially control a firm with market power they will charge less than the profit maximizing price. Starting at the usual monopoly price, a small price reduction will have a second order effect on profits but a first order effect on consumer surplus. Despite this desirable static result, it has been argued that cooperatives are vulnerable to take-over by outsiders who will run them as for-profit businesses. This paper studies takeovers of cooperatives. We argue that there will not be excessive takeovers of cooperatives due to the Grossman-Hart problem of free riding during takeovers.     

Wall Street and Main Street: the macroeconomic consequences of New York bank suspensions, 1866–1914

Before the formation of the Federal Reserve, banking panics were routine events in the United States. During the most severe episodes, banks in cities across the country would often suspend or restrict the par convertibility of their demand deposit liabilities. In diagnosing the causes of the Great Depression, Friedman and Schwartz famously regard these local initiatives as a second best solution, which in the absence of an effective lender of last resort would have prevented the rash of bank failures during the early 1930s and their dire monetary and real impacts. Recent research in macroeconomics though has raised the possibility that banks’ suspension of payments might also have negative real effects albeit through changes in aggregate supply such as the financing of working capital. We would expect to observe these negative shocks during the pre-Fed era, because the decentralized, private interbank payments network was especially vulnerable to systemic disruptions such as suspensions by New York and other money center banks. Reports in national trade periodicals and local newspapers during suspension periods offer many accounts of factories closing because of the inability to obtain currency for weekly payrolls and “domestic exchange” to finance internal trade. We corroborate these observations with more systematic econometric evidence at the national and regional levels. Our results show that controlling for the overall contraction and bank failures, suspension periods were associated with a statistically significant and quantitatively large decline in real activity, on the order of 10–20 %.     

A faster estimation method for the probability of informed trading using hierarchical agglomerative clustering

The probability of informed trading (PIN) is a commonly used market microstructure measure for detecting the level of information asymmetry. Estimating PIN can be problematic due to corner solutions, local maxima and floating point exceptions (FPE). Yan and Zhang [J. Bank. Finance, 2012, 36, 454–467] show that whilst factorization can solve FPE, boundary solutions appear frequently in maximum likelihood estimation for PIN. A grid search initial value algorithm is suggested to overcome this problem. We present a faster method for reducing the likelihood of boundary solutions and local maxima based on hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC). We show that HAC can be used to determine an accurate and fast starting value approximation for PIN. This assists the maximum likelihood estimation process in both speed and accuracy.     

Deception in Advertising: A Receiver Oriented Approach to Understanding

Whether or not an advertisement is said to be deceptive depends on the understanding and definition of deception being used. The position advocated here is that the focus of any definition must be the receiver of the message. Based on an analysis of veridical perception, a definition of deception in advertising is offered. An approach to measuring deception is also offered. The techniques are all seen as screening techniques, although by their regular use, advertisers should improve the ability of their advertisements to reach their stated objectives as well as reduce the amount of deception.     

Forecasting livestock prices with individual and composite methods

We investigate the incentives of private firms to adopt new technologies. Econometric investigation is performed on a pooled sample of individual US airline firms over the period 1971 to 1986 for which extensive information on available jet aircraft technology and fleet choice have been recorded. Given the incidence of successive commercial aircraft innovations and variation in production attributes across firms, we are able to consider a wider array of ‘time-dependent’ and ‘time-independent’ adoption influences than in previous firm-level studies. To the extent that our study provides useful general insights into adoption decisions by firms, the results have implications for US global competitiveness policy. One key finding is that firms subject to increased product market competition exhibit a higher propensity to adopt technological innovations.     

The Relevance of Responsibility to Ethical Business Decisions

This paper addresses researchers’ call for integrating workplace spirituality with organizational literature. This paper points out that self-interest transcendence is a common aspect in the workplace spirituality concept that emerged in the last decade and also in four OB concepts – transformational leadership, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational support, and procedural justice – that emerged in OB about two decades ago. Based on this common aspect of self-interest transcendence and the temporal precedence of these four OB concepts’ emergence, it indicates that these four OB concepts constitute a precursor of workplace spirituality. It places workplace spirituality in the larger context of OB␣and outlines the associated research and practice implications. The author also holds a lien on the position of professor at XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, India.     

The effects of role strain on the consumer decision process for groceries in single-parent households

Single-parent families are becoming a larger part of American society. But what is known about their decision-making processes? Role strain is of particular interest when studying single parents because of their need to serve multiple family roles otherwise carried out by dual-parent families. In this study, the consumer decision process for single parents is empirically examined in the context of grocery shopping. Role strain was found to have a significant effect on problem recognition style and reactive shopping behaviors. Advertising positively influenced proactive shopping behaviors and had a negative relationship with reactive shopping behaviors. Implications for food retailers are provided.     

Who Benefits in an Insider Negotiated Block Trade?

We examine insider negotiated block trades to investigate whether new active blockholders with special expertise create shareholder value. In contrast to existing studies, we find no reliable overall evidence of permanent stock price increases, operating changes, or improved net of industry profitability associated with these major control changes. Top executive turnover is extensive, but appears largely attributable to the block sellers’ actions, not the imposition of discipline by the block buyer. Results suggest initial shareholder gains anticipate takeovers, not improvements in profitability. When a takeover is not forthcoming, the gain disappears.