The nature of value created by UK online grocery retailers

The UK retail environment is extremely competitive, forcing retailers to constantly develop and enhance both their offerings and their formats. Probably the most significant changes taking place are coming from not the products being sold themselves, but rather when, how and where they are being sold. For example, new technologies such as the Internet, CD‐Roms, electronic kiosks and digital television are opening up new opportunities for retailers through remote purchasing and delivery. While a number of large retailers have made heavy investments into electronic retailing, such as Arcadia, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury, it is uncertain how they are going to use this technology to gain competitive or market advantages. Given the media attention which technologies such as the Internet has attracted, there is the danger that businesses may adopt an unfocussed use. This report identifies and evaluates the ways in which major UK grocery retailers are using the Internet to create value for their users over and above that which is offered by bricks and mortar stores. Web sites of three grocery retailers were evaluated via preselected criteria in order to assess how they created value for their customers. Applying Holbrook’s typology of consumer value, the findings of the research suggest that each of the retailers surveyed are similar in terms of the nature of the value they have created for consumers online, these being value‐as‐convenience and value‐as excellence.     

Engineered nanomaterials: risk perception,regulation and insurance

Concerns surrounding the health risk of engineered nanomaterials, effective regulation and the lack of specifically tailored insurance products for the nanotechnology sector are putting the industry’s long-term economic viability at risk. From the perspective of the underwriter, this article speculates on the relationship between risk perception, regulation and insurability. In the nanotechnology sector, regulators are currently failing to keep pace with innovation, and insurers generally lack guiding principles for underwriting occupational risk from nanomaterial exposure. Such vulnerabilities when combined with misguided risk perceptions can lead to the overpricing of risk transfer and ill-conceived regulatory initiatives, thus potentially exhausting resources and stifling innovation in the sector. In the absence of well-developed regulatory protocols, the insurance industry has, and will continue, to occupy a key role as an effective lobby in terms of improved risk management practice. We suggest that the insurance industry will increasingly rely on control banding frameworks and ‘risk mitigation at source’ methods developed in conjunction with their clients to manage severe acute diversifiable risks. Long tail risk will continue to represent a serious challenge to insurers and regulators. In the meantime, insurers will have to bridge their current needs with improvised solutions. As an example of one possible solution, we outline a framework that utilizes financial instruments to hedge an insurer’s exposure to uncertain estimates of these long-term risks.     

When the baby boom grows old: impacts on Canada's public sector

The authors discuss the dependency burden that is expected to result from demographic aging in Canada. "The estimated size of the burden depends on projections of demographic change, economic growth, and structural aspects of the major age-sensitive public-sector programmes. The burdens are analysed for 2016 and 2036, the period when demographic aging may be expected to have its most adverse impacts on old-age dependency ratios and public-sector programme costs. Contrary to many popularly expressed concerns, demographic aging is not the most important factor in determining future public-sector costs and revenues. Rather, aspects of the design and management of public-sector programmes represent the greatest area of uncertainty."     

Payroll tax incidence when the tax varies by jurisdiction: The case of the U.S. unemployment insurance tax

Standard treatment of payroll tax incidence suggests that labor, both because of inelastic supply and because workers value the benefit financed by the tax, bears most of the tax. This note considers the special case of the U.S. unemployment insurance tax, which is a payroll tax that varies by jurisdiction (states). The model set forth in this paper allows for differing degrees of both labor mobility and substitutability between types of labor and capital. Contrary to the standard treatment, this paper predicts that some types of labor will avoid this particular type of payroll tax completely. I thank Daniel Hamermesh and seminar participants at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and at Oakland University for helpful comments on an earlier draft. I also gratefully acknowledge sabbatical support provided by Oakland University during the initial conceptualization of the ideas presented in this paper.     

A Picture of Male and Female Unemployment among Britain's Ethnic Minorities

Using a sample of around one million observations, formed by combining two micro datasets from the 1991 Census of Population, the paper explores male and female unemployment differences across Britain's ethnic minorities. The large sample size allows a detailed multivariate analysis of females for the first time. Unemployment differences are not simply the result of characteristic differences or discrimination by the white majority. The empirical work shows that there are equally wide discrepancies in female unemployment rates, compared with males, between the white majority and the non-white ethnic minorities. Of particular interest is the comparison between UK born and foreign born ethnic minorities. Unemployment rates among the former tend to be considerably higher, but this is accounted for by characteristic differences. Thus there is no evidence that the UK born are doing worse, as the raw data suggest, but they do not seem to be becoming better assimilated either.     

Commonage land and farmer uptake of the rural environment protection scheme in Ireland

This paper looks at some of the factors which may influence REPS participation among commonage farmers in the west of The Republic of Ireland and on the impact REPS has had on participating farmers’ income and on their environmental practices and attitudes. Commonage is land held in common ownership on which two or more farmers have grazing rights. There are about 4500 commonages in Ireland and they are important to Irish agriculture, to conservation of the uplands, in managing the environment and in sustaining rural livelihoods. The study reveals that sheep farmers are less likely to join REPS than cattle farmers and that being in receipt of other sources of State income acted as a deterrent to participation. REPS appears to have had a positive impact on participants’ income and seems to have been successful in changing farmer practices in a more environmentally benign direction, when doing so imposed no additional costs on the farmer. Environmental awareness among all farmers appears to be poor although REPS farmers display more appreciation of the degraded state of commonage than do non-REPS farmers. Farmers preference for a continuation of the status quo with respect to commonage management and a lack of discontent with respect to the distribution of past commonage rights points to the potential of building on a more co-operative approach to environmental management.