American Consumption Patterns and the Price of Time: A Time-Series Analysis

National aggregate time series data on the components of Personal Consumption Expenditures from 1955 to 1984 were used to analyze the roles played by male and female wage rates in altering American consumption patterns. Male nonmarket time was found to be a substitute for all goods and services categories except Automobiles and Parts. Female nonmarket time was found to be a net complement of Automobiles and Parts, Furniture and Household Equipment, Other Durables, Gasoline and Oil, Electricity and Natural Gas, Other Household Operations, and Transportation Services and a net substitute for all other goods and services.     

James Sullivan. Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon

How is it that jeans evolved from durable work clothes intoa global symbol of America? James Sullivan's new work surveysthe history of denim wear, showing how "... a pair of blue jeansembodies two centuries     

James Hudnut-Beumler. In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism

James Hudnut-Beumler has pointed the study of American religioushistory in an important direction, one that has seen very littletravel by scholars in this field. This book takes one familiardefining moment in American history—the disestablishmentof Christianity in the era of the early republic and the ensuingvoluntarist religious culture that replaced it—and followsits effects in an unfamiliar but fruitful way. The book is structuredalong thematic chapters that are also basically sequenced chronologically.His research     

Firm Size and Efficiency in Innovation: Comment on van Dijk et al.

Van Dijk et al. found different results for some variables explaining the large/small firm innovation advantage in a number of Acs and Audretsch publications. Their own research adds to this variety. However, the differences van Dijk et al. found between the Acs and Audretsch studies can be largely attributed to specification and sample differences. The same applies to the observed differences between Acs and Audretsch and van Dijk et al.     

Reflections on discriminant validity: Reexamining the Bove et al. (2009) findings

Bove, Pervan, Beatty and Shiu (2009) develop and test a latent variable model of the role of service workers in encouraging helpful behaviors by customers towards the service business (OCBs). Farrell (2010) questions these findings due to an incorrect application of the Fornell and Larcker (1981) discriminant validity test. The authors respond to Farrell's criticism by discussing the options available for assessing discriminant validity, the current use of these options in top journals, the underlying assumptions of these assessments, and the appropriateness of the alternative assessments under different types of situations. Finally, the authors address the specific concerns raised in Farrell (2010) in regard to Bove et al. (2009).     

John E. Murray. Origins of American Health Insurance: A History of Industrial Sickness Funds

John E. Murray's Origins of American Health Insurance concernsa little-known precursor to commercial health insurance, the"industrial sickness funds" of the book's subtitle. This well-researchedbook makes a compelling case for the importance of these fundsin shaping the American health insurance system as we know it.Murray argues that the success of sickness funds during theearly twentieth century helps to explain why European-styleuniversal health insurance does not exist in the United States. In 1915, industrial sickness funds     

政府资产风险:地方财政风险分析的一个新视角

针对目前研究地方财政风险问题时往往都从负债的角度来考察 ,本文变换了一下研究思路 ,从资产风险的角度来研究我国地方政府财政风险。本文首先定义了地方财政风险和地方政府资产风险概念 ,然后通过界定政府资产的类型 ,即财政收入、政府存量资产和政府无形资产或称政府威信 ,分别考察我国地方政府这三类资产的状况 ,结果发现我国地方政府资产质量不佳 ,存在着很大的风险 ,本文试图探究其原因 ,并为此提出了一些建议。     

反补贴价格比较基准:基于美国对市场经济国家案例的考察

频繁采用外部基准计算补贴利益是美国对华反补贴调查中的一大焦点问题。但是,美国调查当局强调,该方法完全依据现行反补贴法,其实施也早有先例,并非仅针对"非市场经济"国家。本文通过一系列美国对市场经济国家反补贴典型案例的考察,得出的基本结论是:外部基准确实是其在对市场经济国家反补贴调查中价格比较的基本方法之一,而受调查国政府通过所拥有或控制的金融机构、国有企业向涉案企业提供贷款或原材料投入是适用外部基准的两类主要情形。     

Alan P. Rudy et al. Universities in the Age of Corporate Science: The UC Berkeley-Novartis Controversy

In December 2001, a team of sociologists from Michigan StateUniversity (MSU) was hired by the Academic Senate of the Universityof California-Berkeley (UCB) to review the process by whichUCB's College of Natural Resources negotiated and implementeda five-year research funding relationship, starting in 1998,with the Swiss chemical giant Novartis. This extraordinary stepreflected the perception among the agreement's critics in theuniversity and their external allies that it threatened theintegrity of academic science. This book summarizes the findingsof the MSU team and presents their     

Philanthropy and the Making of a New Moral Order: A History of Developing Community

Journal of Business Ethics - Community development, or the socio-economic transformation of local communities, has been a significant focus of organizational ethics. Such community development...     

Nicholas Onuf and Peter Onuf. Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War

The bloodiest war ever fought by the United States, the CivilWar remains a focal point of American historical writing andresearch. How could Americans embark in such a war where brothersfought brothers? And what does this experience tell us aboutthe nature of the American union, before and after the CivilWar? Two brothers, historians Nicholas and Peter Onuf, confrontthese questions in a wide-ranging study that will challengetheir readers's     

Consumer Power: A Comparison of the Old Economy and the Internet Economy

From the very beginning of the Internet, a decisive shift from supplier power to consumer power was predicted by several authors and is still maintained in recent literature. Although the Internet has grown rapidly within the last years and electronic markets have evolved, a theoretical framework for consumer power on the Internet still cannot be identified. Few authors have taken efforts to apply common concepts of power theory to the characteristics of the Internet. Based on the concept of French and Raven, this paper analyses consumer power in traditional markets and then compares it to the situation on the Internet. This comparison shows that the Internet enables consumers (a) to overcome most information asymmetries that characterize traditional consumer markets and thus obtain high levels of market transparency, (b) to easily band together against companies and impose sanctions via exit and voice, and (c) to take on a more active role in the value chain and influence products and prices according to individual preferences. A broad literature review reveals that empirical findings confirm these hypotheses to a great extent. The authors conclude by summarizing the results and drawing implications from two different angles, namely from a marketing and a consumer policy perspective.     

Juliet B. Schor: The Overspent American. Upscaling,Downshifting, and the New Consumer. New York: Basic Books, 1998.

Journal of Consumer Policy -     

Werner Abelshauser. The Dynamics of German Industry: Germany's Path toward the New Economy and the American Challenge. New York: Berghahn Books, 2005. vii + 168 pp. ISBN 1-84545-072-8, $45.00.

Werner Abelshauser is a professor of economic history at theUniversity of Bielefeld. He has written about Germany’seconomic history since 1870, with specific studies concerningKrupp between 1933 and 1951, BASF since 1952, and Germany’seconomic history since World War II. Part of a series devotedto historiography, this volume grew out of