SMOKE-FREE LAWS AND EMPLOYEE TURNOVER

This study examines how smoke-free laws influence turnover among restaurant workers. The study uses a unique data set of payroll records of a franchisee of a national full-service restaurant chain operating 23 restaurants in the state of Arizona, a state where several communities have adopted smoke-free laws. Municipal smoke-free laws did not, on average, have a statistically significant effect on the probability of employee separation in the years after implementation. These results suggest that training costs associated with employee turnover would not rise for full-service restaurants in municipalities that adopt smoke-free laws. ( JEL I18, J63)     

Do Managerial Motives Influence Firm Risk Reduction Strategies?

This article finds evidence consistent with the hypothesis that managers consider personal risk when making decisions that affect firm risk. I find that Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) with more personal wealth vested in firm equity tend to diversify. CEOs who are specialists at the existing technology tend to buy similar technologies. When specialists have many years vested, they tend to diversify, however. Poor performance in the existing lines of business is associated with movements into new lines of business.     

Inconsistencies in Macroeconomic Data

In recent years large inconsistencies have appeared in the national accounts, causing a number of problems for forecasters and policy-makers. This paper briefly summarizes these problems and discusses some of the responses available to improve the statistics. It focuses on a simple mathematical procedure which can provide coherent accounts even when the reliability of the data which is being balanced is unknown. Some of the main results of applying such a procedure are then outlined and these are compared with the CSO's recent balanced accounts exercise. The paper concludes that, although the broad macroeconomic picture for real (as opposed to financial) variables is little changed by balancing, continued balancing exercises would be worthwhile because they reduce the uncertainty surrounding forecasts and hence policy-making.     

Permitting Protest: Parsing the Fine Geography of Dissent in America

The ability to dissent and to protest is a cornerstone of western liberal democracies. But dissent always threatens to exceed its bounds and to become a threat. The issue facing liberal states, then, has not only been how to incorporate dissent, but also how to shape dissent. In this project, the politics of public space has assumed a central role, as material public spaces have become a primary venue for the shaping of dissent. This article examines the ways in which dissent is incorporated into the liberal democratic state through a case study of protest in Washington, DC. In that city, as in others throughout North America and Western Europe, protest permit systems have evolved as a bureaucratic means to actively shape, if not directly control, public dissent. And yet, even as permit systems are becoming fully regularized, debates over their legitimacy suggest that geographically based permit systems might be inadequate to the task of incorporating dissent. As we indicate, recent protest activity shows just how important geography is to regulating, incorporating and policing dissent, even as those protests expose just how blunt and how fragile a tool that geography is. Pouvoir être en désaccord et le manifester est l’une des pierres angulaires des démocraties libérales occidentales. Pourtant, le désaccord risque toujours de dépasser ses limites pour devenir une menace. La difficulté rencontrée par les États libéraux n’était pas tant d’intégrer la divergence d’opinion que de la façonner. Dans ce projet, la politique d’espace public a joué un rôle central, les espaces publics physiques étant devenus un site primordial pour ce façonnage. Les méthodes d’intégration du désaccord dans l’État démocratique libéral apparaissent à travers l’étude de cas de la protestation à Washington DC. Là, comme dans d’autres villes d’Amérique du Nord et d’Europe de l’Ouest, les systèmes d’autorisation de manifestation ont évolué en un moyen bureaucratique de façonner effectivement, si ce n’est maîtriser directement, le dissentiment public. Pourtant, tandis que ces systèmes se régularisent totalement, la mise en cause de leur légitimité suggère que les régimes d’autorisation de type géographique seraient inappropriés pour intégrer le désaccord. Récemment, l’activité de protestation a démontré l’importance de la géographie pour réguler, intégrer et contrôler le dissentiment, même si ces manifestations révèlent aussi combien la géographie est un outil limité et fragile.     

Consumer Credit: Changing Patterns in Supply and Demand Variables,and Their Implications

Retail outlets and finance companies were the first businesses to offer consumer installment credit, and for many years they enjoyed a virtual monopoly in that area. This situation has changed. There has been a gradual but continual decrease in their percentage of market share, and a corresponding increase in that held by commercial banks and credit unions. This study seeks to explain this change in market share, to measure the effects of selected supply and demand variables which may have contributed to it, and to assess the potential ramifications for the above lenders and the borrowing public at large.