Analysis of visual presentation of cultural dimensions: Culture demonstrated by pictures on homepages of universities in Pakistan

The recent prominence of culturally rich visuals for effective global communication and establishing brands of organizations cannot be denied. This inquest observed how Pakistan universities used their homepages to demonstrate culture through a content analysis of 1064 pictures from 100 top universities. The researcher tried to take a stance on visual presentation of cultural aspects by using Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory, and evaluated the impact of cultural elements in choosing pictures as part of web design and marketing strategy. Results indicated that faculty in groups doing academic and official activities were the predominant visual element, and websites mostly marketed faculty. Choice of pictures was positively correlated with Hofstede’s scores on power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance and indulgence, but a different trend was observed for masculinity and pragmatism. Findings suggest that institutions should ameliorate their web marketing according to cultural needs of local as well as international students, and further research is needed.     

A Game Model of New and Remanufactured Goods,Brown and Green Consumers,and Market Share Dominance

Journal of Quantitative Economics - The n total consumers in the market for a particular good are made up of b brown and g green consumers so that $$b+g=n$$ . The b brown (g green) consumers are...     

On the accuracy of Blue Chip forecasts of interest rates and country risk premiums

We examine the accuracy of Blue Chip forecasts of short- and long-term interest rates and country risk premiums for the Eurozone and six other industrial countries for 1999–2008. In so doing, we utilize comparable random walk forecasts as benchmarks. Consistent with the efficient market hypothesis, the long-term interest rate forecasts fail to outperform the random walk. Our findings on the accuracy of short-term interest rate forecasts are, however, mixed. Further results reveal that Blue Chip is more (less) accurate in predicting country risk premiums associated with short-term (long-term) interest rates. Such evidence is reasonable since the short-term country risk premiums contain only the perceived default risk, while the long-term risk premiums, in addition, can contain the perceived inflation and exchange rate differentials.     

Ethical Principles that Make the World and its Economy More Equal

Abstract

No doubt, the global economic (and political) structure is very unequal. The paper begins by demonstrating the various dimensions of this inequality as they relate to economic measures such as per capita GDP, degree of consumption and ownership, health measures, education, and power and influence in various global organizations such as the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and others. Next, the paper, supporting a more equal global economic and political structure, investigates the various instruments in welfare economies and ethics theory that can be utilized to justify a sort of distributional change that could lead to more global equality. Finding various economic and ethical instruments associated with utilitarianism, Pareto Optimality and the Hicks–Kaldor compensation test less than satisfactory in dealing with and advocating sufficient global distributional changes, we will investigate ethical principles developed by John Rawls in both his 1971 The Theory of Justice and his 1999 The Law of Peoples, Sen's capability approach, the debate between Rawls and Sen regarding their ethical principles, and whether or not those ethical principles can justify necessary global distributional changes. As we will argue, although the principles developed by Sen and Rawls can be utilized to justify global distributional changes to a degree, they cannot advocate a global difference principle that can justify sufficient global distributional changes. Attempt is made to develop a global difference principle that can justify and advocate more drastic distributional changes.     

Johnson's algorithm: A key to solve optimally or approximately flow shop scheduling problems with unavailability periods

Johnson's algorithm (JA) is perhaps the most classical algorithm in the scheduling area. JA gives the optimal solution to the two machine flow shop to minimize the makespan in polynomial time. Researchers have tried to extend this notorious result to obtain polynomial time algorithms for more general cases. Such importance motivated us to devote this paper to JA applied to three flow shop problems with unavailability periods to minimize the makespan. First we focus on the optimality condition of JA. Then we propose a modification of JA. After we calculate new performances of JA as a heuristic. Last we deal with an extension of JA.     

International Trade and Growth: An Overview Using the New Growth Theory

An overview of the new growth theory is provided from both an analytical and empirical perspective. Following a historical outline and a brief analytical sketch of the R&D-based models, the results from fitting two structural models to data are presented. Results show the relative impacts on growth from trade and R&D-based policies including technological spillovers from trade. The mechanism of intersectoral adjustments to the long-run growth path is also discussed. Insights provided by the theory are related to agriculture from the view of agriculture in the context of the broader economy within which it must compete for resources, and in terms of growth in agricultural factor productivity as evidenced by the recent growth in genetic engineering.     

On the loss structure of federal reserve forecasts of output growth

Utilizing recent techniques with comparable private forecasts as benchmarks, we test the rationality of the Federal Reserve forecasts of growth under flexible loss. Our findings for 1984–2006 indicate that these forecasts are rational (efficient) and directionally accurate under symmetric loss and are thus of value when similar cost is assigned to both incorrect upward and downward predictions. Over-predictions (under-predictions) are costly when the Fed responds by implementing an unnecessary contractionary (expansionary) monetary policy and thus causes lower growth (higher inflation). Symmetric loss thus indicates that the Fed is equally concerned about both low growth and high inflation. Further results reveal that the private sector closely replicates the Federal Reserve forecasts released to the public with a five-year lag, suggesting that one can utilize the readily available private data as proxies for the not-yet-released Federal Reserve forecasts.