The spa experience at Radium Hot Springs

This paper examines the spa experience at Radium Hot Springs from the earliest days to the present in an attempt to indicate similarities and differences between Canadian spas and those in the United States and Western Europe. Radium is examined for five time periods under the headings of environment, strategies and institutions, perceptions and attitudes, and technology. Western Canadian spas share many traits with those of the United States, especially the western states, but the emphasis on natural attractions and federal government involvement have caused them to differ from those in Western Europe.     

Institutional framing and perceptions of fairness

This paper's goal is to construct a positive theory of economic fairness. Using the theoretical schema developed by Hurwicz and others, the paper makes precise the notions of an “institution,” “fairness fraiming,” and “institutional framing.” Four fairness propositions yield an important corollary: the economic environment, the operative institution and history give meaning to the often used FORMAL PRINCIPLE OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE (“equals should be treated equally, and unequals unequellay, in proportion to relevant similarities and differences”). We support these four propositions and corollary by an analysis of laboratory, survey, and anecdotal evidence. Finally we describe a number of areas for future research. The authors would like to thank Allen Buchanan, James Buchanan, Joel Feinberg, Elizabeth Hoffman, David Schmitz, Linda Schnabel Stizer, Vernon Smith, Richard Wagner, the participants in the Aspen Institute's Conference on “Local Justice and Fair Allocation”, the members of the Industrial Organization Workshop of the Department of Economics at the University of Arizona, and panel participants at the Public Choice Society Meeting for their help and comments at various stages of this paper's preparation. Responsibility for errors is the authors' alone.     

The value relevance of IFRS in the European banking industry

The main purpose of the paper is to investigate the market valuation of accounting information in the European banking industry before and after the adoption of IFRS, the latest version of International Accounting Standards. In a value relevance framework, we apply panel methods to a multiplicative interaction model, in which the partial effects of earnings and book value on share prices are conditional on the adoption of IFRS. According to our evidence, the IFRS introduction enhanced the information content of both earnings and book value for more transparent banks. By contrast, less transparent entities did not experience significant increase in the value relevance of book value.     

Country Competition and US Overseas Assembly

To examine the role of international competition in outsourcing production decisions, I study the decisions of producers who used the U.S. Overseas Assembly Program (OAP) to conduct assembly operations in developing countries. The evidence, which is based on U.S. OAP imports between 1991 to 2000, shows that production costs and corporate tax policies both shaped production decisions. While increases in own country costs reduced the size of a developing country's OAP shipments, increases in competitor costs helped to increase a country's shipments. The effects of competitor country cost changes were relatively large, as the analysis suggests that a ten percent increase in competing country costs would increase a country's OAP outsourcing activities by 5.8 percent, while a ten percent increase in competitor country taxes would increase a country's OAP exports by 1.6 percent.     

A Fuzzy Clustering Algorithm Based on the Analogy with Mechanical Physics: MeccFuz

This paper presents a new algorithm of fuzzy clustering, based on analogy withmechanics physics. The vectors x_i are compared with `material points' and the clusters can be looked on as material points clouds, that are characterized byspecific units. The choice is based on a study of potential energy. Once a specificunit is chosen, we calculated the membership of the other units whit respect it.A study of a sociology test is performed and the results are very encouraging,though an further deepening is needed like a thermodynamics analogy application.     

“Damn with faint praise” The legal,practical, and ethical implications of providing and not providing employee references

In the past decade, there has been a multiplicity of lawsuits by employees against former employers based on defamatory references. Many of these lawsuits have proven to be successful and have caused wary employers to use great care in providing references. A number have gone so far as to refuse to provide references at all, instead adopting a “no-comment” policy, often on the advice of legal counsel. This article reviews defamation laws within the context of employee references. Recent cases and trends are analyzed, guidelines to avoid liability are suggested, and a critique of the traditional legal advice of “no-comment” is provided. Finally, business-related and socioethical aspects of the problem are considered.