Trends in helmet use by motorcycle riders in the decades following the repeal of mandatory helmet laws

Several US states repealed universal motorcycle helmet laws in the 1990s and 2000s. The purpose of this study was to examine national trends in helmet use among adult trauma patients with motorcycle-related injuries. We hypothesized that motorcycle helmet use declined over time. We retrospectively analyzed the National Trauma Data Bank's National Sample Program for 2003–2010. We also obtained data on US motorcycle fatalities reported in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau to calculate motorcycle-related fatality rates over time. A total of 255,914 patients met inclusion criteria, of whom 148,524 (58%) were helmeted. During the study period, helmet use increased from 56% in 2003 to 60% in 2010 (p < 0.001). However, motorcycle-related fatality rates also increased in states with and without universal helmet laws. Nationally, rates of helmet use have increased. However, fatalities due to motorcycle crashes have also increased during the same period.     

Impact of the TARP financing choice on existing preferred stock

The October 14, 2008 TARP program mandated a forced issuance of TARP preferred stock by the largest U.S. banks. Soon after, many smaller banks were not forced but chose to issue TARP preferred stock after being approved for issuance. We investigate the impact of TARP preferred issuance upon bonds, preferred stock, and common stock. In particular, we focus upon two different types of outstanding preferred stock. These two different types of preferred stock are (1) trust preferred stock, which is senior to TARP preferred stock, and (2) non-trust preferred stock, which has equal claim to TARP preferred stock. We present competing theories for expecting that trust preferred should enjoy greater or lesser returns relative to non-trust. Consistent with the priority rule theory, but inconsistent with the default theory, we find that trust preferred enjoyed greater benefits from TARP issuance than did non-trust preferred for both forced and non-forced banks on the October 14 TARP announcement date. In contrast, there is no clear priority rule effect on the approval dates for non-forced banks.     

The effect of product positioning in a comparison table on consumers’ evaluation of a sponsor

This paper examines the effect on consumers’ perceptions resulting from the positioning of a sponsor in relation to a competitor or competitors in a comparison table of a print advertisement. We hypothesize when a sponsor places its product in the right-hand panel and the competitor’s product in the left-hand panel, respondents will react with a favorable evaluation for the sponsor as a result of two primary forces. The first is a general preference for an object positioned on the right as opposed to an object positioned on the left. The second is a vastly prevalent left-to-right reading habit. The prevalent left-to-right reading habit can lead consumers to subconsciously perceive this layout as a positive comparative advertisement, and the reversed placement is perceived as a negative comparative advertisement. We confirmed the hypothesis with three laboratory experiments.     

The Effectiveness of Branded Mobile Phone Apps

Mobile phone applications (“apps”) have generated substantial interest among marketers, primarily because of their high level of user engagement and the positive impact this presumably has on a user's attitude toward the sponsoring brand. This study utilized a pre-test/post-test experimental design to determine whether using popular mobile phone apps affects brand attitude and brand purchase intention. The results show that using these apps has a positive persuasive impact, increasing interest in the brand and also the brand's product category. The relevance of the product category makes no difference, but apps with an informational/user-centered style were more effective at shifting purchase intention, most likely because this style focuses attention on the user, and therefore encourages making personal connections with the brand. Experiential game-like apps were less successful, because they focus attention on the phone. These results suggest that understanding how to maximize the impact of mobile phone apps will be a key topic for future research.     

Does IMF conditionality benefit lenders?

Conclusions The purpose of this paper has been to assess whether official and private lenders benefit from IMF participation in rescheduling sovereign LDC debt via the Paris Club. If IMF participation increases the expected value of any existing or newly rescheduled official or private debt contracts, then lenders benefit. The transmission process can be via the immediate liquidity the IMF provides through various loan facilities, which allows for debt service payments to be met in a timely fashion, and/or through the increased ability of the sovereign to meet future debt service payments due to the conditions attached to IMF liquidity. The results from this paper suggest that the provision of immediate IMF liquidity provides a benefit to lenders but that the attached conditions do not. These results were obtained for a large sample of 84 LDCs over the sample period 1978-1987 and may differ when specific cases are considered. IMF participation reduced the average spread over LIBOR by 155 to 179 basis points, based on a simple model relating interest spreads to default probabilities. Heavily indebted sovereign borrowers may have experienced larger reductions. The design and implementation of IMF conditions has been criticized in the literature because they confer little benefit on the sovereign borrower. Our results support the consensus view that the conditions themselves have little effect. However, our contribution results from seeing the issue from the perspective of rational lenders who expend resources to evaluate IMF conditionality programs.     

Workplace Transformation and Worker Upskilling: The Perspective of Individual Workers

How common is workplace transformation in the American economy? What are its implications for work force skill requirements and training investments? The existing literature addressing these questions is based on firm-reported survey data. Using new data available in the 1993 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), this article examines the same questions from the perspective of individual workers. Our empirical results suggest that workplace transformation is commonplace. Fully 40 percent of private-sector workers surveyed report that in the space of just one year, a change occurred at work that required them to learn new job skills. About 23 percent of all respondents reported experiencing a workplace change we term anorganizational transformation. Incidence of formal training is positively related to indicators of organizational transformation, but the effect of these indicators is found to be sensitive to the inclusion of other important workplace change variables (namely, new products, new equipment, and new government regulations). While we expected to find strong positive relationships with product development and physical capital investment, government regulation has a surprisingly large impact on formal training.     

Measuring the Impact of Ethanol Plants on Local Grain Prices

A considerable number of farmer-owned ethanol plants have been built in the past few years, with many more planned. In part, farmers' investment in ethanol plants is an attempt to increase grain prices in their local market. We examined this issue by estimating the impact on local grain prices of twelve ethanol plants that opened from 2001 to 2002. We find that these new ethanol plants increased local grain prices, but the impact was not uniform around the plant. Markets downstream from a new plant, where prices tend to be higher, experienced a smaller price impact from the ethanol plant. On average across plants, corn prices increased by 12.5 cents per bushel at the plant site, and some positive price response was felt 68 miles away from the plant.     

Natural capital and quality of life: a model for evaluating the sustainability of alternative regional development paths

Natural capital contributes to the quality of life of a region in two complementary ways: first, by directly providing environmental services that cannot be imported, and second, by supplying the natural resources that, through a human controlled production process, become valuable to humans. The evolution of the combination of these two components of the quality of life determines the path of development a region takes. Environmental services also determine the ability of natural capital to regenerate itself. Ecosystems and other components of the regional natural capital produce environmental services that provide life-support functions necessary for natural capital reproduction. The destruction of this critical natural capital impairs the internal sources of improvement of the quality of life of a region, leading to a non-sustainable path of development. This article describes a model of the relationship between natural capital and quality of life that provides a stricter definition of sustainable development through explicit characterization and classification of natural capital according to its ability to produce life-supporting environmental services, by its substitutability, and by its possible reconstruction. Application of this model then shows that there are 51 possible regional development paths, only 32 of which are sustainable and only 14 of which are sustainable while also providing improvements in quality of life. Only six of these 14 sustainable development paths are attained with economic growth, however, while the other eight paths increase quality of life by increasing the production of environmental services. The model could help in the development of institutional interventions that would promote regional development paths that are sustainable.     

Systems-thinking social marketing: conceptual extensions and empirical investigations

ABSTRACT

Systems thinking dominated the 2015 World Social Marketing conference with the premise that a more holistic approach takes into account all the issues at play for effective change. Augmenting the broadening social marketing literature, we contend that systems-thinking social marketing enhances the field’s conventional behavioural change with concepts of scale, causation, and iterative co-creating change processes for complex health and environmental problems. The results of our empirical Sea for Society study, a sustainable European marine ecosystem examination of what the barriers to change are and how they are interrelated, find systems-thinking social marketing offers the potential to strategically and critically reinforce, not replace, behavioural change campaigns. With systems-thinking social marketing, a coherent theory of change becomes a possibility. Orchestrating social change may become a reality.