JORDANS potential tourism development

Following the peace accords with Israel, Jordans potential as a destination increased significantly. Jordan consequently sought advice from various international parties for developing tourism. However, almost identical development plans designed years before by some of the same parties remain unimplemented. This is because major responsibility lies with the government and its personnel policies, taxation rates, micromanagement, and unreliable record keeping. However, beyond these problems are issues having to do with guest\host relations, cultural values, and the legacy of over a half-century of wars and enmity toward those who now compose a large portion of its market—the Israeli tourists. This paper discusses whether tourism in Jordan will be an economic boon or a destabilizing factor.     

Market Alternatives, Third Party Intervention, and Third Party Informedness in Negotiation

Negotiation is one possible mechanism for setting transfer prices when no unique transfer price is obviously correct, allowing divisional managers to run their divisions with some degree of autonomy. This study examines the effects of market alternatives, third party intervention and third party informedness in transfer pricing negotiation.Experiment 1 examined the effects of market alternatives in a fully crossed design of buyer and seller's Best Alternatives To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) at four levels (no, low, medium, or high). Experiment 2 examined the effects of third party intervention with reference to role (binding vs. nonbinding) and informedness (informed vs. uninformed).Results of Experiment 1 indicated that both the existence and level of market alternatives affected reservation prices, expected profits, aspiration levels, and individual profits. Dyads with unequal BATNAs did not obtain higher joint profits than those with equal BATNAs, while dyads with unequal BATNAs distributed profits more unevenly between negotiators than dyads with equal BATNAs. Results of Experiment 2 indicated that only making the third party's role binding had an effect on joint profits. However, the presence of a third party and both the role and informedness manipulations affected resource distribution.     

Back Pain and Work Disability: The Need for a New Paradigm

Using a unique data set of workers' compensation claims from Ontario, this study analyzes the determinants of first returns to work and subsequent patterns of employment for a sample of workers with back pain and a comparison group of workers with other injuries. The results suggest that the costly and pervasive problem of work-related back claims could be reduced by abandoning the traditional work injury model in favor of a separate paradigm for back pain that reflects its unique characteristics. A change in economic incentives would increase the probability of return to work for back cases, and an expansion of employer-provided job accommodations would increase the probability of stable employment after the first return.     

Organisational practices and the post‐retirement employment experience of older workers

This study compared people aged 50 to 65 who had retired and returned to work (n = 90), who remained in their career jobs (n = 198), and who retired and remained out of the workforce (n = 321). The significant differences between post‐retirement and career employment were associated with the HR practices within organisations and were not related to the characteristics of the organisations in which post‐retirement and career jobs were found. The HR practices were rated as especially important in influencing the decision of retirees to return to work. The findings suggest that people in post‐retirement jobs are drawn to organisations that provide HR practices tailored to the needs and desires of older workers. The results also indicate that if employers expect to address labour shortages by encouraging retirees back into the workforce, they are going to have to implement those HR practices that are important to this group.     

School Grants a Bar to Consumer Sovereignty

Is funding by schools a stage towards or an obstacle to payment by parents? Marjorie Seldon, Chairman of FEVER, maintains that, once the finance is controlled by schools, they will not readily agree to its transfer to parent-consumers.     

Predicting Failure of Savings & Loan Associations

Early-warning systems are intended to provide regulators with identification of problem institutions sooner than is possible with the present system of call reports and periodic on-site examinations. Given an earlier indication of potential problems, resources can be focused on those institutions most in need of monitoring, thus potentially reducing both the number of failures and FSLIC financial assistance in the remaining failures. While some early-warning systems were developed in the mid-1970s for use by commercial bank regulators, very little attention has been focused on developing similar systems for the thrift industry. To address this issue, multiple discriminant analysis was used to develop an early-warning system for savings and loan associations in the Boston district of the Federal Home Loan Bank system. The results suggest that use of this model would have given signals of impending trouble well before the actual failure occurred. Consequently, an early-warning system could provide information to regulators sooner, permitting scarce resources to be allocated more effectively. In addition, earlier intervention could reduce the amount of FSLIC financial assistance required. By intervening earlier, FSLIC may be able to arrest the failure-promoting activities in which the association is engaged.     

Reviews

TRANSPORT AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.

Hepworth, M. and Oucatel, K. 1991: Transport in the Information Age: Wheels and Wires. London: Belhaven Press, £39.00 cloth.

THE SOUTH EAST AND EUROPE.

South East Economic Development Strategy, 1991: Continental Shift: The South East and Europe's Single Market. Stevenage: SEEDS,

£35.00.

DEFENCE CONVERSION.

Fife Regional Council and Fife Enterprise, 1991: A Study of the Fife Defence Industry. Glenrothes: Fife Regional Council, no price stated.

URBAN POLICY IN THE UK AND THE USA IN THE

1990S. Hambleton R. 1991: Another Chance for Cities? Issues for Urban Policy in the 1990s. Papers in Planning Research No 126, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Wales College at Cardiff, PO Box 906, Cardiff CF1 3Y, £6.00 paper.

Nyden, P.W. and Wiewel, W. (eds) 1991: Challenging Uneven Development: An Urban Agenda for the 1990s. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Clavel P. and Wiewel, W. (eds) 1991: Harold Washington and the Neighbourhoods: Progressive City Government in Chicago 1983-1987. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. $16.00 paper.

THE PARTNERSHIP DEBATE: CONTRACT ARRANGEMENTS BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND VOLUNTARY SECTORS.

Gutch, R. 1992: Contracting Lessons from the US. London: NCVO

Publications, £5.00 voluntary organisations, £10.00 others.

THE FAST PROGRAMME.

Cooley, M. (ed) 1989: European Competitiveness in the 21st Century (A contribution to the “FAST”

proposal for an R&D programme on “Human work in advanced technological environments"). Commission of the European Communities. No price stated.     

A note on the use of industry-relative ratios in bankruptcy prediction

The potential for industry-relative financial ratios to improve the prediction of firms in financial distress motivated this comparison of model specifications based on either unadjusted or industry-relative ratios. Both specifications yielded stable parameter estimates over the time periods examined. However, the industry-relative specification appeared to add incremental information not contained in the model based on the unadjusted financial ratios; the converse case did not hold. In addition, with the industry-relative specification, ex post forecast accuracy was slightly improved relative to the ex ante forecast, while with the unadjusted model specification, ex post forecast accuracy declined from that obtained ex ante.