Rural telework: case studies from the Australian outback

This paper examines the effects of infrastructure and isolation on rural telework, and the potential of telework for rural communities. It draws on findings from two Australian case studies: a government initiative and a community-initiated training project. Differences between the experiences of rural and urban teleworkers are highlighted.     

Adam Smith’s theory of economic development: “Of the natural progress of opulence”

Adam Smith’s theory of economic development contained within Chapter I, Book III, of theWealth of Nations is presented in this paper. According to Smith, the natural order of development as it proceeds from primary to secondary to tertiary activity is determined by the evaluation of the relative risk and potential profit to be earned in alternative uses of capital. The emphasis of this theory is on the behavior of economic agents facing risk, rather than the amount of capital or the size of national saving or other measurable variables as in some modern approaches.     

Some current issues in technology transfer and academic-industrial relations: a review

This paper is concerned with rmiewing some of the issues underbing current inbrest infacilitating effective technology transfer between academia, other research organizations and industy,from the point of ciew of an actively participating organization, i.e, The Oxford Trust. It draws upon published literature, conference presentations and case study material from the author's current research within The Oxford Trust on technology transfer in Oxfordshire.     

Current practice in the modelling of age,period and cohort effects with panel data: a commentary on Tawfik et al. (2012), Clarke et al. (2009), and McCulloch (2012)

This comment assesses how age, period and cohort (APC) effects are modelled with panel data in the social sciences. It considers variations on a 2-level multilevel model which has been used to show apparent evidence for simultaneous APC effects. We show that such an interpretation is often misleading, and that the formulation and interpretation of these models requires a better understanding of APC effects and the exact collinearity present between them. This interpretation must draw on theory to justify the claims that are made. By comparing two papers which over-interpret such a model, and another that in our view interprets it appropriately, we outline best practice for researchers aiming to use panel datasets to find APC effects, with an understanding that it is impossible for any statistical model to find and separate all three effects.     

The credit relationship between Henry III and merchants of Douai and Ypres, 1247–70

This article looks at an important but neglected aspect of medieval sovereign debt, namely ‘accounts payable’ owed by the Crown to merchants and employees. It focuses on the unusually well‐documented relationship between Henry III, King of England between 1216 and 1272, and Flemish merchants from the towns of Douai and Ypres, who provided cloth on credit to the royal wardrobe. From the surviving royal documents, we reconstruct the credit advanced to the royal wardrobe by the merchants of Ypres and Douai for each year between 1247 and 1270, together with the king's repayment history. The interactions between the king and the merchants are then analysed. The insights from this analysis are applied to the historical data to explain the trading decisions made by the merchants during this period, as well as why the strategies of the Yprois sometimes differed from those of the Douaissiens.     

The U-shape of happiness in Scotland

We examine well-being in Scotland using micro data from the Scottish Health Survey and the UK Annual Population Surveys. We find evidence of a midlife nadir or zenith in Scotland in well-being at around age 50 using a variety of measures of both happiness and unhappiness. We confirm that higher consumption of fruit and vegetables is associated with higher levels of happiness in Scotland. We compare this with evidence for England from the Health Survey of England. The decline in well-being between youth and midlife is comparable in size to the loss of a spouse or of a job and around half of the fall in well-being in the COVID-19 lockdown. We also find a midlife peak in suicides in Scotland. Despite higher mortality and suicide rates in Scotland than in England, paradoxically we find that the Scots are happier than the English. Northern Ireland is the happiest of the four home countries. We also find evidence of U-shapes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in the mid to late forties.     

Behavioral research and empirical modeling of marketing channels: Implications for both fields and a call for future research

Game theoretic models of marketing channels typically rely on simplifying assumptions that, from a behavioral perspective, often appear naïve. However, behavioral researchers have produced such an abundance of behavioral regularities that they are impossible to incorporate into game theoretic models. We believe that a focus on three core findings would benefit both fields; these are: first, beliefs that are held by the various players regarding profit consequences of different actions are incomplete and often biased; second, players’ preferences and optimization objectives are not commonly known; and third, players have insufficient cognitive abilities to achieve optimization objectives. Embracing these three findings shifts the focus from rational decision making to how decision makers learn to improve their decision-making skills. Concluding, we believe that greater convergence of game theoretic modeling and behavioral research in marketing channels would lead to new insights for both fields.     

The effects of behavioral,cognitive, and decisional control in co-production service experiences

Companies are encouraging customers to participate in the process of creating and delivering their offering(s). In this strategy, not only do providers select a level of customer co-production, but also the level of customer control. This study examines the effects of control types (cognitive, behavioral, and decisional) and their interaction on customers’ affective responses in service operations with varying levels of co-production. An extensive two-study design, across two service contexts, tests the interaction of different levels of co-production and control types on customers’ affective responses. Results show when decisional control is low, one additional control type (behavioral or cognitive) in the operational process can compensate for low decisional control. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.