Facing the new facts of retirement income adequacy

A range of new factors is responsible for the current problem with insufficient retirement resources. Changes inside and outside the organization share partial responsibility, as do employee behaviors. In addition, other factors simply have been overlooked as employers and employees think about retirement income adequacy. The authors describe the current situation, discuss the significant risks it creates for both employers and employees and advise employers on what they should do to help employees build a more secure future in retirement.     

Tests for Stationarity in Series with Endogenously Determined Structural Change*

We consider tests of the null hypothesis of stationarity against a unit root alternative, when the series is subject to structural change at an unknown point in time. Three extant tests are reviewed which allow for an endogenously determined instantaneous structural break, and a related fourth procedure is introduced. We further propose tests which permit the structural change to be gradual rather than instantaneous, allowing the null hypothesis to be stationarity about a smooth transition in linear trend. The size and power properties of the tests are investigated, and the tests are applied to four economic time series.     

Exploring Perceptions of US State Tourism Organizations' Web Advertising Effectiveness

This article adopts, modifies and tests the Interactive Advertising Model as a potential tool for evaluating website advertising effectiveness in US state tourism organizations. The adopted model is referred to in the study as the Modified Interactive Tourism Advertising Model (MITAM). The model is tested using data gathered from an independent evaluation by 31 Korean natives on five state US tourism organization websites. The data are analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis. The study found that the proposed MITAM model should be considered as a tool for improving the advertising effectiveness of travel websites. The article concludes with a discussion on the study findings along with recommendations on how state tourism organizations can improve their website advertising effectiveness.     

The Influence of Financial Factors on Corporate Investment

Abstract
Recent theoretical developments have shown that cash flows and the structure of a firm's balance sheet may have an important influence on investment. Establishing a link between cash flows, leverage and investment provides insights into the way that monetary policy and cyclical factors more generally influence the corporate sector. If cash flows are an important determinant of investment then changes in monetary policy (by changing interest rates) will influence investment through a cash flow effect as well as through altering the rate at which the returns to investment are discounted. If this is the case, the higher leverage of the corporate sector implies, other things being equal, that monetary policy may have a larger impact on investment than in the past .
In this article we use panel-data analysis to examine the impact of financial factors on investment decisions of firms in the Australian corporate sector. We find strong support for the influence of financial factors on investment decisions. Leverage, internally generated cash flows, and the stock of cash and liquid financial assets are all important influences on investment behaviour, particularly for smaller firms, highly leveraged firms, and firms with high retention ratios .     

Statistical analysis of inequality with decompositions: the Canadian experience

This study carries out a decomposition of Theil-entropy measures into a between-group component, based on factors such as education, age, gender, and marital status, and a component representing inequality within each group. We apply a bootstrapping technique to measures of inequality to enable statistical inference. Trends in household income inequality in Canada are investigated using data from 1991 to 1997 drawn from Survey of Consumer Finance. We find an evident trend toward increasing inequality of household incomes between the years 1991–1997, during which the economy was recovering from a steep recession. Although most of the increase in measured inequality is attributed to the `within-group' component, we find the change in `between-group' inequality to be significant for education, age, and marital status. First version received: May 2001/Final version received: September 2001     

Investing in public investment: an index of public investment efficiency

Pritchett (J Econ Growth 5:361?C384, 2000) convincingly argued that the difference between investment cost and capital value is of first-order empirical importance especially for developing countries where public investment is the primary source of investment. This paper constructs a public investment efficiency index that captures the institutional environment underpinning public investment management across four different stages: project appraisal, selection, implementation, and evaluation. Covering 71 countries, including 40 low-income countries, the index allows for benchmarking across regions and country groups and for nuanced policy-relevant analysis and identification of specific areas where reform efforts could be prioritized. Research applications are outlined.     

Assessing the Cross-Sex Validity of the Goldthorpe Class Schema Using Log-linear Models with Latent Variables

In this paper we use log-linear models with latent variables to estimate and compare the structure of job characteristics and their relation to positions in the Goldthorpe class schema for male and female employees. We proceed by estimating latent class models of job attributes and then evaluate the degree of similarity in these models between men and women. Sex differences in the patterns of association between the various latent types of job attribute and between those attributes and the Goldthorpe class schema are then assessed. The structure of job attributes is found to be generally similar for men and women; and the Goldthorpe schema is shown to be a similarly effective predictor of these attributes for both sexes. The class structure of employment relations is therefore argued to be equivalent across the sexes, so confirming the generality of class relations as conceptualised by Goldthorpe and his colleagues.