Bringing Home the Bacon: The Relationships among Breadwinner Role,Performance, and Pay

We evaluate the relationships among breadwinner role, performance, and pay. Differences in pay are present despite limited differences in performance. We find a pay premium for primary‐breadwinner employees across gender, yet a pay penalty for secondary‐breadwinners employees only for women, suggesting an asymmetric relationship among breadwinner role, gender, and pay.     

英国开放大学的学习者支持服务与质量提高(下)

艾伦·泰特教授认为,远程开放教育是由三个重要因素构成的,包括课程资源建设、学习支持服务和系统管理模式。英国开放大学以其开放的办学思想、灵活的办学方式、编写高质量的媒体教材、建立严格的教学质量保障体系和完善的学习支持服务系统等特色而闻名于世。英国质量保障局开展的学生满意度调查显示,英国开放大学学生对开放大学所提供的学习支持服务给予了充分的肯定,学生满意度连续三年名列前茅,说明英国开放大学能够将学习者的利益考虑在先,满足了学生对开放大学的期待。在构建远程教育学习支持服务体系的过程中,英国开放大学已经形成了自己的运行模式,它的学习支持服务系统建设值得借鉴。中央农广校对外交流处组织翻译了英国开放大学两名教授在第22届ICED世界大会上的论文,分两期连续刊登,供大家学习参考。     

Technologists talk: making the links between design, problem-solving and experiences with hard materials

Design and problem-solving is a key learning focus in technology education and remains a distinguishing factor that separates it from other subject areas. This research investigated how two expert designers considered experiences with hard materials contributed to their learning design and problem-solving with these materials. The research project used a qualitative approach and conducted semi-structured interviews with two mechanical engineers. They identified their experiences under three key headings that provided them with much of the essential knowledge and understanding they employ today to design and problem-solve with hard materials. These included experience of seeing outcomes that provided feedback on their designs, experiences that informed about materials and material selection and accessing others’ experiences from communities of practice.     

Share Prices and Macroeconomic Factors

The APT with macroeconomic factors put forward by Chen, Roll and Ross (1986) was tested using monthly Australian sectoral share-price indexes for 1980–1994. The inflation rate was found to be consistently priced. The significance of other factors was found to depend on the choice of sample period and estimation method. The model was compared to both an APT with artificial factors and the CAPM. Both versions of the APT were found to clearly out-perform the CAPM but neither version of the APT was clearly superior to the other in terms of both within- and out-of-sample explanatory power.     

A method to obtain new copulas from a given one

Given a strictly increasing continuous function φ from [0, 1] to [0, 1] and its pseudo-inverse φ^[−1], conditions that φ must satisfy for C_φ(x₁, . . . ,x_n)=φ^[−1](C(φ(x₁), . . . ,φ(x_n))) to be a copula for any copula C are studied. Some basic properties of the copulas obtained in this way are analyzed and several examples of generator functions φ that can be used to construct copulas C_φ are presented. In this manner, a method to obtain from a given copula C a variety of new copulas is provided. This method generalizes that used to construct Archimedean copulas in which the original copula C is the product copula, and it is related with mixtures     

Influence of varied parking tariffs on parking occupancy levels by trip purpose

The potential impact of parking-pricing on trip generation and modal choice is gaining greater acknowledgement within transport demand management research. However, although the aggregate effect of a transport demand management pricing measure is often noted or estimated, the potential varied impact of pricing measures on specific subsets of the market are often overlooked in the policy process. The variance of price impacts on different trip purposes, initially, and as tariffs increase progressively, is an important consideration for policy makers. Using the results from a survey on 1007 on-street parkers in Dublin, Ireland, this paper shows a progressively widening gap in price sensitivity between trips made for business purposes relative to non-business purposes, as the suggested parking pricing scenarios are increased. The results highlight the complication that the varied price sensitivity of particular market subsets can bring to development of a pricing policy and warns of threshold points where the gap between the price responsiveness of specific market subsets become considerably more pronounced.     

Reproducing Difference? Schooling,Jobs, and Empowerment in Uttar Pradesh,India

This article examines the role of school education in reproducing caste and class inequalities in rural Bijnor district, Uttar Pradesh, India. Drawing on Bourdieu’s work, the article shows that a rural elite has used its superior wealth, connections, and social status to ensure that their sons receive privileged access to schooling credentials and government employment. The greater availability of formal educational opportunities allied to the political rise of lower castes has allowed a small group of Dalits to raise their social standing, but has failed to alter historical relationships of dependence and exploitation.     

The Importance of Board Quality in the Event of a CEO Death

We examine board quality and executive replacement decisions around deaths of senior executives. Stock price reactions to executive deaths are positively related to board independence. Controlling for such factors as the deceased's stockholdings, outside blockholdings, board size, and whether the deceased was a founder, board independence is the most significant factor explaining abnormal returns. Board independence is particularly important when there is no apparent successor and firm performance is poor. The results are consistent with independent boards being reluctant to discipline poorly performing incumbent managers, but nevertheless using the opportunity of an executive death to improve the quality of management.