The under-reported impact of age discrimination and its threat to business vitality

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA, 29 USCA, 621) is credited with helping eliminate many blatant forms of age discrimination in employment. For example, before the ADEA was enacted 37 years ago, it was common for employment ads to list age limitations, indicating people over 40 need not apply. Across the board, mandatory retirement policies went unchallenged. Despite advancements in these areas since the founding of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, it remains to be seen whether the ADEA has completed the job it set out to do. Has it proven to be an effective tool for eliminating the unreasonable prejudices that make it difficult for older workers to achieve their full potential? Has it provided adequate compensation for victims of discrimination? The following article takes a snapshot of the current work environment to gain a perspective. Based on extensive interviews with academics, employment lawyers, advocates for older workers, and older workers themselves, it reveals the need for reforms. It finds that, in a legal environment slanted toward employers, older workers continue to face bias and stereotyping, that most victims of discrimination are not made whole, and that society's lack of concern for this type of discrimination may prove more costly in the future as employers look more to older workers to fill projected workforce gaps.     

Recent trends in foreign direct investment

Global investment strategies have become a central issue in international business and in international economics. The worldwide stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) can be estimated at over US $ 1500 billion in 1990—three times the value of the 1980 stock. The following article discusses the driving forces behind this trend and identifies some recent changes in the pattern of FDI.     

Recent developments in products liability law in the USA

The author shows that, after the great evolution of U.S. product liability law in the seventies, a backlash was inevitable. These restrictions are demonstrated by reference to state statutes, court decisions, court procedures, and theories. The author argues that lobbying of powerful interest groups eventually was responsible for stopping and even reversing the expansion of products liability law.

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Neue Entwicklungen im amerikanischen Produkthaftpflichtrecht

Zusammenfassung Der Autor weist nach, daß nach den großen Umwälzungen des Produkthaftpflichtrechts in den siebziger Jahren ein Stillstand, ja sogar ein Rückschritt eingetreten ist. Der Autor zeigt dies an vielen Bereichen auf, etwa der einzelstaatlichen Gesetzgebung, der Gerichtspraxis im materiellen und Verfahrensrecht, und der Theoriediskussion. Dies ist vor dem Hintergrund eines umfangreichen lobying der betroffenen Interessenverbände zu sehen.

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Peter B. Maggs is Corman Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, 504 East Pennsylvania Avenue, Champaign, IL 61820, USA.     

美国在反倾销措施中对中国产品的歧视

据多项指标反映,中国出口产品在美国反倾销措施中受到了歧视待遇。美国对中国产品的歧视是法律、政治、经济等因素交织的结果。美国对中国产品的歧视既影响了中国的出口,也降低了美国自身的福利水平。     

Price Strategies and Compatibility in Digital Networks

We analyze competition between two horizontally differentiated network providers. New technologies help the providers to collect consumer‐specific information, and such technologies increase the providers’ ability to use price discrimination. One example is the mobile providers’ choice of investing into third generation mobile systems (3G). Compared to the current 2G systems (GSM), 3G gives the providers more accurate customer specific information (e.g. with respect to customers’ location at any time). Since new technologies give the opportunity to implement price discrimination, an interesting question is how the price strategies (price discrimination or not) affect the incentives to unilaterally establish a walled garden where the rival’s customers have imperfect access. The main message of the paper is that walled garden strategies are more likely when firms use price discrimination than when they all use linear pricing.     

城市经济转型时期人力资本回报率研究

基于Mincer基本模型和扩展模型的估算结果显示 ,中国城市地区的教育回报率比其他发展中国家的平均水平低 ,但这一回报率在不断上升 ;职工工资收入达到最高水平所需工作的年限在下降 ,工作年限的边际回报率在下降 ,尤其是女性工作年限的边际回报率下降速度更快。在 1986 /1987年 ,广东城市职工平均工资收入比湖南和四川高出 30 % ,而在 1993/1994年 ,广东城市职工平均工资收入比湖南和四川高出 70 % ,表明地区收入不平等的现象在扩大。令人费解的是 ,广东省的教育回报率并不高 ,尽管在这期间广东省男女两性的工作经验回报率大大下降。文章还发现 ,无论是工资性别歧视 ,还是职业性别歧视都似乎存在于中国城市的劳动力市场中     

论我国竞争法中的价格竞争立法问题

价格竞争是市场竞争的基本形式,对价格竞争的规制是竞争法的重要内容。由于竞争法在市场经济法律体系中的重要地位,有关价格竞争的立法日益为人们所关注和重视。缘于立法技术和体制等诸多方面的原因,我国现行价格竞争立法存在立法体例不科学、内容不协调、分类不标准及缺乏可操作性的问题和不足。应从价格竞争立法指导思想、体例、内容和执行等方式加以规制。     

HRM Role in EEO: Sheep in Shepherd’s Clothing?

Despite a plethora of laws prohibiting discrimination in employment, supporting and enforcing equal employment opportunity (EEO) principles has proven to be an enormous challenge for those charged with this responsibility. The question often asked is who should exercise this role in organizations. Not surprisingly, there has been a call for HRM to become the guardian of EEO in organizations but should human resource managers be male or female, and/or would line managers be better positioned to assume this responsibility? This paper overviews the literature and then summarizes an empirical study that attempted to address the possible impact of these options as they exist in organizations. One hundred and eighty respondents who met the criterion of having interviewed one or more job applicants in the previous 6 months were systematically selected from business telephone listings. Based on self-reported behaviors, no significant difference was found between the expected and actual distributions of HR and line managers in respect to whether decisions were made on unlawful grounds. The percentage of each respondent category that asked unlawful questions varied from 1% to 36% depending upon the attribute (unlawful ground of discrimination) under consideration. This begs the question as to what value HR managers contribute to EEO in the selection process. The second finding was that significantly less female managers admit to making decisions on the basis of unlawful questions than male managers. Thus, support was found for female line managers as guardians of EEO but no clear justification for HRM in this role.     

Traffic law enforcement in Hyderabad,India

The aim of the study was to understand traffic law enforcement (TLE) carried out by the police to reduce non-compliance with traffic laws on the roads of Hyderabad city in India for 2001?–?2003.

The Traffic Police database of citations issued to drivers who violated traffic laws in Hyderabad was analysed for the years 2001?–?2003 to describe the TLE activities of the police, to describe and compare the TLE activities for the different types of vehicles and to compare the TLE activities for the 3 years. The violations were classified in five categories – those related to driving, parking, vehicle, document and others; and TLE into safety and other TLE.

A total of 646?161 traffic-law violations were registered in 2001, 904?447 in 2002 and 964?275 in 2003 for Hyderabad. Driving and parking violations were the most common violations registered in all 3 years, with parking violations slightly higher in 2001 (43.5%) and driving violations slightly higher in 2002 (35%) and 2003 (36.4%). Auto-rickshaws (three-wheel commercial passenger vehicles) accounted for the highest violations registered in 2001 (41.4%) whereas motorized two-wheelers had the highest registered violations in 2002 (35.5%) and 2003 (33.2%). Safety TLE activity (detecting and registering driving violations) was only one-third of all the TLE activity performed by the police in the 3 years, and disobeying traffic signals was the most common violation registered under safety TLE. Indian rupees 50 (US$1.1) were collected by way of a fine in 87% of the cases registered. Age and gender of the violators were not recorded in the database.

These data can be used for planning, monitoring and evaluating TLE in Hyderabad. These can help identify traffic control and human factors that could lead to traffic non-compliance, and help identify priorities for improving road safety. These data indicate a need to enhance the safety TLE activity of the police, to make TLE more visible in Hyderabad, and to assess the effectiveness of the current legal action as deterrence to improve road safety. Recommendations to enhance TLE within the given resources of the police are made. More effort is needed towards systematic collection and analysis of data on TLE in India to facilitate long-term improvements in TLE for safer roads.     

Explanations for continued gender discrimination in South Korean workplaces

This paper investigates potential explanations for the continued gender discrimination in South Korean workplaces despite decades of gender policy reforms and improved education for women. Making use of both primary and secondary data sources, the institutional theory, the voluntary compliance regulatory enforcement strategy and the typology of regulatory noncompliance provide a framework from which four explanations regarding the origin and nature of Korean firm equal opportunity (EO) compliance issues are derived. Identified through data analysis, explanations include a lack of legal enforcement, a weak punishment system, a tacit acceptance of the status quo by women, organizational cultural issues stemming from the traditional Korean mind-set that allow gender discrimination and a general lack of knowledge about EO regulations by many companies. Reforms and paradigm changes addressing these gender policy compliance issues could yield considerable social benefits in reducing the scope and quantity of gender discrimination in Korean workplaces.     

Attention All Shoppers,Queer Customers in Aisle Two: Investigating Lesbian and Gay Discrimination in the Marketplace

In this paper, drawing on epistemologies in social and behavioral sciences, we discuss the tenuous social-cultural climate of sexual minorities within markets. Discourses across disciplines address the socio-political and cultural evolution of sexual minorities, most notably self-identified and out lesbians and gay men. Yet, consumptive and marketing spheres offer mixed metaphors about the value and desirability of lesbians and gays, and often work to enact the homophobic at an institutional level. We review research on homonegative bias and heteronormativity within psychological and sociological domains, and then illustrate how homonegativity toward perceived lesbians and gays is structurally enacted within the marketplace. We posit four methodological strategies that may be used to further research queries in these domains, and comment on the ethical parameters of using deception to investigate discriminatory behavior against (perceived) lesbians and gay men.     

谈塑料在现代汽车上的应用趋势

本文根据塑料在现代汽车上的应用趋势,详细介绍了轿车广泛应用的塑料内饰件和外装件制品,并列举了车用功能件的塑料制品实例,以及其他车用塑料件.     

Competition and price discrimination in the market for mailing lists

This paper examines whether mailing list sellers, when faced with additional competitors, are more likely to try to segment consumers by offering additional choices at different prices (second-degree price discrimination) and/or offering different prices to readily identifiable groups of consumers (third-degree price discrimination). We utilize a dataset that includes information about all consumer response lists derived from mail order buyers (i.e. lists derived from catalogs) available for rental in 1997 and 2002. Our results indicate that increased competition leads to an increased propensity to price discriminate along each of the dimensions we investigate. These results hold for both second-degree and third-degree price discrimination. Further, list owners offer menus with more choices in more competitive markets. These results, taken together with results from other empirical studies, suggest that the connection between competition and increased price discrimination is a result that applies broadly.

Comovement in GDP trends and cycles among trading partners

It has long been recognized that business cycle comovement is greater between countries that trade more intensively with one another. However, nations face shocks to both the cyclical and trend components of their GDP series. Contrary to the result for cyclical fluctuations, we find comovement of shocks to the trend component of real GDP is weaker among countries that trade more intensively with one another. We simulate changes in ten-year output growth correlations corresponding to the estimated effects of trade and show that the impact of trade on trend comovement is quantitatively more important than its effect on cyclical comovement.     

Recent developments in the economics of entrepreneurship

This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue of JBV on the economics of entrepreneurship. Since the beginning of the 18th century, economics has recognized the importance of entrepreneurship at both the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. This paper reviews recent developments in the economics of entrepreneurship, discusses the principles behind the emergence of a new heterodoxy in economics, and how these new principles provide fertile grounds to further our understanding of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behavior. Finally, the paper reviews the contributions included in this special issue and puts them in the context of recent developments in entrepreneurship research.     

Recent Progress on Endogeneity in Choice Modeling

We describe recent progress in several areas related to endogeneity, including: choice set formation and attention to attributes; interactions among decision-makers; respondents' strategic behavior in answering stated preference choices; models of multiple discrete/continuous choice; distributions of willingness-to-pay; and methods for handling traditionally endogenous explanatory variables.     

核磁共振技术在地沟油鉴别中的应用研究

采用布鲁克核磁仪（600兆）做H谱全扫,根据H谱的化学位移和积分面积进行归纳总结,建立了不同种类植物油和不同来源地沟油中H谱变化的规律。本方法一共开发出12个指标对植物油和地沟油进行鉴别,同时引进统计分析方法,在对植物油和地沟油的样本数据库聚类分析基础上,对考核盲样进行判别分析。采用该方法对卫生部两次考核盲样进行判别分析,准确率可达到90%,表明核磁共振方法是一种有效的地沟油鉴别方法。     

Estimating temporal trends in preferences measured by graded paired comparisons

A sizable marketing research literature on preference measurement, prediction, and explanation has thus far been more concerned with point estimates of preference than with consistent changes over time. Such temporal trends can be estimated using data collected from graded paired comparisons. An appropriate technique for deriving individual and group trend parameters is first described and then illustrated using data from an experiment dealing with aesthetic preferences. Suggestions are offered concerning its advantages and limitations for applications in marketing.