How well do ‘off-price’ retailers satisfy consumers?

Off-price retailing is a new form of discount or low-price retailing that has become prominent in the U. S. during the past decade. In an attempt to satisfy today's quality-and price-conscious consumers, off-price retailers have utilized a marketing strategy of ‘brand and designer names for less’. Based on research assessing consumers' attitudes towards apparel offerings of off-price versus conventional retailers, we suggest that off-price retailers are not yet successful at satisfying consumers' needs and wants in their special niche of the market. We recommend several revised marketing strategies to enable off-price retailers to satisfy consumers better, and thereby maintain their niche in the ever competitive consumer market. We conclude by observing that it is important that consumer-orientated professionals take an advocacy role in encouraging retail institutions such as off-price stores to revise their marketing strategies to serve consumer interests better.     

Jury Decisions and Awards in Personal Injury Lawsuits Involving Foodborne Pathogens

A study of food poisoning jury verdicts in 32 states (1988–1997) revealed that plaintiffs won awards in food poisoning jury trials 31% of the time, and received a median award of $25,560. Multivariate analyses were performed to examine the effects of various factors on food poisoning jury verdicts and on the size of the award. The odds of a plaintiff victory increased if a foodborne pathogen or illness was specified, and decreased if defendants had “deep pockets”or used medical expert testimony. Illnesses involving hospitalization, death, or chronic complications received higher awards than other illnesses.     

Environmental education: a task for home economists

Environmental education, with its aims of promoting an awareness of and responsibility for the environment, should be a lifelong process in order to protect the environment now and in the future. As home economics education takes place at all levels and in all kinds of schools throughout the world it can be used to demonstrate practical consequences and to motivate personal responsibility. Multiplierc in home economics (professors, teachers, etc) therefore have to integrate environmental education into home economics education and training. It is very important not just to enter into the so called ‘technical protection’ of the environment (water cleaning, reduction of waste, etc.) but to integrate environmental issues into a global view based on a holistic concept. Environmental education in home economics in different countries will be analysed but the main example will be the environmental education in the Federal Republic of Germany (F. R. G.). At the same time questions of content and aims will be discussed.     

Leaving Welfare: Independence or Continued Vulnerability?

Data from two semi‐structured interviews gathered approximately six months apart from seven women who were receiving cash welfare benefits at the time of the first interview and were not receiving benefits at the second interview were used to analyze the experiences of leaving welfare. Emergent themes about the post‐welfare experience are: (1) the low wages and lack of advancement opportunities in jobs, (2) confusion related to program administration, (3) the continued reliance on income support programs and kin, and (4) the banking of cash benefits under the five‐year time limit as a new safety net.     

LABOUR MARKET FLEXIBILITY AND EMPLOYMENT ADJUSTMENT: MICRO EVIDENCE FROM UK ESTABLISHMENTS

In this paper we study how firms react to demand shocks, examininghow different aspects of flexibility shape their responses.Our main findings are: (i) very few firms choose to adjust pricein response to a demand shock; (ii) firms with more flexibilityare more likely to respond to demand shocks by adjusting employmentand hours. Our results provide a microeconomic explanation forrecent macroeconomic evidence that labour input has become moreclosely aligned to the business cycle.     

Securitization and Bank Performance

Using predominantly precrisis U.S. commercial bank data, this paper employs a propensity score matching approach to analyze whether individual banks did improve their performance through securitization. On average, our results show that securitizing banks tend to be more profitable institutions, with higher credit risk exposure. Despite a more diversified funding structure, they face higher funding costs. We also find that securitizing banks tend to hold larger and less diversified loan portfolios, have less liquidity, and hold less capital. However, our analysis does not provide evidence to suggest that securitization had an impact upon bank performance.     

Monitoring and Forecasting Currency Crises

Can we improve forecasts of currency crises by using a large number of predictors? Which predictors should we use? This paper evaluates the performance of traditional leading indicators and a new Diffusion Index (DI) method as Early Warning Systems to monitor the risk and forecast the likelihood of the recent currency crises in East Asia. We find that the DI performs quite well in real time. For most countries, the forecasted probabilities of a crisis increase substantially around the actual time of the crisis. The economic variables that help in forecasting future crises are output growth, interest rates and money growth.     

Detecting and Predicting Forecast Breakdowns

We propose a theoretical framework for assessing whether a forecast model estimated over one period can provide good forecasts over a subsequent period. We formalize this idea by defining a forecast breakdown as a situation in which the out-of-sample performance of the model, judged by some loss function, is significantly worse than its in-sample performance. Our framework, which is valid under general conditions, can be used not only to detect past forecast breakdowns but also to predict future ones. We show that main causes of forecast breakdowns are instabilities in the data-generating process and relate the properties of our forecast breakdown test to those of structural break tests. The empirical application finds evidence of a forecast breakdown in the Phillips' curve forecasts of U.S. inflation, and links it to inflation volatility and to changes in the monetary policy reaction function of the Fed.