DOES MOTHER'S EDUCATION MATTER IN CHILD'S HEALTH? EVIDENCE FROM SOUTH AFRICA1

Using the 1993 South Africa Integrated Household Survey, this paper studies the effect that mother's education through the knowledge channel has on children's health using height for age Z‐scores as health measure. Under a two‐stage least square methodology we find that an increase in 4 years on mother's education (approximately 1 standard deviation) will lead to an increase of 0.6 standard deviations on her child's height for age Z‐score. We also find, as the medical literature suggests, support for the hypothesis that mother's education is more important for children older than 24 months of age.     

What is the most flexible component of wage bill adjustment? Evidence from Belgium

This paper decomposes wage bill changes at the firm level into components due to wage changes, and components due to flows of employment. It relies on an administrative matched employer–employee dataset of individual earnings merged with firms' annual accounts for Belgium over the period 1997–2001. The results are in line with what one would expect in a downward wage rigidity environment. On average, wage bill contractions result essentially from employment cuts in spite of wage increases. Wage growth of job stayers is moderated but positive; and wages of entrants compared with those of incumbents are no lower. The labour force cuts are achieved through both reduced entries and increased exits, due to more layoffs, especially in smaller firms, and wider use of early retirement, especially in manufacturing. In addition, the paper points out the role of overtime hours, temporary unemployment and interim workers in adapting hours worked to economic circumstances.     

Organizing and integrating marketing and purchasing in business markets: An introduction to the special issue, issues and implications

The article is the introductory paper to the special issue on “Organizing and Integrating Marketing and Purchasing in Business markets”. It analyses the different organizational issues in the marketing and purchasing interfaces by an extensive analysis of the literature. It introduces the different contributions to the special issue and draw some reflections on further research steps.     

Corporate discourse and environmental performance in Argentina

There is substantial research and policy interest in the relationship between firms and the natural environment, including how this relationship is influenced by regulators, international pressures, rival firms and stakeholder demands. With some exceptions, the ‘softer’ dimensions of environmental aspect management – how attitudes, beliefs and perceptions and the human factors drive corporate behaviour – have been understudied. The work that exists tends to be informal, and allows little scope for the statistical validation that is required for robust inference. This paper examines whether corporate values towards the environment affect a firm's environmental performance. It uses survey methods as well as content and discourse analyses of interview text and corporate reports and web sites to explore the links between managerial ‘mindsets’ and the environmental performance of the firms of which they are a part. Though the application is Argentina, the lessons learned can be generalized to other developing and industrialized countries. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Gender-Based Pricing in the Hairdressing Industry

This paper reviews the evidence and evaluates the claim that the hairdressing industry systematically discriminates on the basis of gender and compares the way in which courts in the UK and US have dealt with such allegations. We argue that "transaction costs" can be used to provide an alternative (perhaps more satisfactory) explanation for the pricing patterns observed than does price discrimination. Any decision to ban gender-based pricing will imply a difficult trade-off between economic efficiency and concerns for gender equality.     

Testing the bases of ethical decision-making: a study of the New Zealand auditing profession

This paper reports on a survey of auditors in New Zealand which investigates the nature of the moral judgements they make on a series of problems with ethical dimensions. The framework adopted for this purpose is developed from earlier work which identifies a range of ethical principles which may be involved in business ethical decision-making. Auditors responded to a questionnaire which posed, firstly, several questions about the context of their ethical decision-making, and secondly, a series of vignettes elaborating problematical dilemmas which required the selection of one of four possible responses. Data was analysed to determine whether or not it confirmed previous findings in suggesting a predominant ethical orientation for auditors. The results were correlated with demographic variables in order to determine whether or not age, gender, position in firm and size of employee firm were significantly correlated to ethical response. The survey results, on the whole, confirmed the ethical orientation suggested by previous findings, but there were some unexpected results in three out of the ten vignettes examined. Although some correlations were found between the demographic variables and subject responses, the evidence of this survey does not strongly suggest a consistent significant correlation.     

Bilateral Bargaining with Externalities

This paper provides an analysis of a non‐cooperative pairwise bargaining game between agents in a network. We establish that there exists an equilibrium that generates a coalitional bargaining division of the reduced surplus that arises as a result of externalities between agents. That is, we provide a non‐cooperative justification for a cooperative division of a non‐cooperative surplus. The resulting division is related to the Myerson‐Shapley value with properties that are particularly useful and tractable in applications. We demonstrate this by examining buyer‐seller networks and vertical foreclosure.     

A Contingent Valuation Estimate of the Benefits of Wolves in Minnesota

In this paper we estimate the willingness topay for a wolf management plan and a wolfdamage plan in Minnesota using the contingentvaluation method. The theoretical definition ofwillingness to pay for wolf protection iscomposed of use and non-use values. Weincorporate a don't know response option in thedichotomous choice valuation questions. A largenumber of respondents answered don't know. Themultinomial logit model is used todifferentiate between don't know and noresponses. Non-use motives are importantfactors that explain willingness to pay. We usethese benefit estimates in combination with twoalternative cost estimates to consider theefficiency of the wolf management and damageplans. Both plans have estimated benefitsgreater than costs.