An inquiry into progression in primary technology: A role for teaching

Technological activity, taken in a broad craft sense, is not new to primary schools. What is new is its organisation as a serious curriculum subject in which pupils are expected to make valuable progress. Arguing about technology-as-education must include some understanding of what it can offer of wide value to successful students. Unfortunately those who have carried out empirical research in the field of primary technology have been unable to specify what such valuable progression might look like. There are just two rather limited sources of information relevant to development and progress in technology — cognitive psychology and teacher action research. Neither of these is easy to use as they stand because they are either unconnected with the act of teaching, or on a very small and personal scale. However this paper argues that, taken together, they are beginning to show that teaching has valuable and specific tasks to carry out, which can help pupils make recognisable progress in primary technology.     

The Role of the Surrogate Consumer in Service Delivery

This article considers the overlooked role of consumer surrogates in the marketing process. While it is commonly assumed that consumers are actively involved in important purchase decisions, it is proposed that in fact they often relinquish control to external surrogate services, which may collect market data, evaluate competitive alternatives, and even conduct transactions on their behalf. Some distinguishing characteristics of surrogate services are identified and discussed. Two types of consumer surrogates, interior decorators and wardrobe consultants, are highlighted as illustrations of surrogate activity, and survey data obtained from wardrobe consultants are presented regarding the perceived importance of a variety of both functional and intangible surrogate service benefits.     

The Book-to-Market and Size Effects in a General Asset Pricing Model: Evidence from Seven National Markets

The positive relation of returns with Book-to-Market ratio (BE/ME) and their negative relation with Market Value (MVE) remains strong under a general stochastic discount function (SDF) that does not depend on a specific asset pricing model and avoids potentially serious simultaneity biases inherent in the Fama and French three-factor model. However, we find that SDFs that include the equivalent of the HML portfolio do not span all asset sub-spaces, even with additional conditioning information. Finally, macro and financial variables we introduce to the pricing functions do not offer an alternative explanation of the BE/ME effect.     

Macroeconomic Factors Do Influence Aggregate Stock Returns

Stock market returns are significantly correlated with inflationand money growth. The impact of real macroeconomic variableson aggregate equity returns has been difficult to establish,perhaps because their effects are neither linear nor time invariant.We estimate a GARCH model of daily equity returns, where realizedreturns and their conditional volatility depend on 17 macroseries' announcements. We find six candidates for priced factors:three nominal (CPI, PPI, and a Monetary Aggregate) and threereal (Balance of Trade, Employment Report, and Housing Starts).Popular measures of overall economic activity, such as IndustrialProduction or GNP are not represented.     

A survey and critique of multiobjective power plant siting decision rules

This paper reviews the use of multiobjective decision rules for solving power plant siting problems. After a discussion of exclusionary site screening methods for bounding the decision space, classes of multiobjective and goal programming desicion rules are discussedin the context of final site selection. Advances and limitations of these methods are highlighted. Although multiobjective decision rules have seen numerous applications to power plant siting in the literature, few electric utility companies have used these methods in practice. A review of the use of multiobjective methods in actual power plant siting decisions is also presented, and reasons for the paucity of real-world applications are suggested.