Inflation and the Financing of Government Expenditure: an Introductory Analysis with an Application to Turkey

This article presents a simple framework to assess the consistencyof appropriately defined fiscal deficits with other macroeconomictargets, such as inflation. It also considers the relation offiscal deficits to output growth, real exchange rate developments,and management of internal and external debt. Finally, it considersthe implications of relying on interest-bearing government debtto postpone the adjustment necessary to restore consistencywith inflation targets. It demonstrates how the intertemporalbudget constraint of the government creates a tradeoff betweencurrent and future adjustment. Real interest rates and outputgrowth rates are shown to determine the terms at which thistradeoff takes place. The usefulness of this framework is demonstratedthrough an analysis of fiscal policy options in Turkey in 1985.     

At the bottom of a global commodity chain––how different really are hourly wage rates and piece rates?

Employers have a number of different ways in which they can pay their employees. Discussions of the forms of wage payment were once very fashionable and they still remain important in terms of practice, but in theoretical terms, they have disappeared from the radar and been less central to recent analysis of work. On the surface, without any theoretical analysis and primarily empirical evidence, it appears that there is a major difference between ‘time wage’ rate and ‘piece wage’ rate. This article via Marxist theoretical analysis and primarily empirical evidence from Australian, New Zealand, Chinese and Fiji garment firms argued that there is a high level of similarity between time rate and piece rate. The empirical research findings of the Fiji garment industry shows that a time rate is not really much different from a piece rate, and in fact, a time rate is a disguised form of piece rate because workers are required to meet their targets per hour via very close monitoring of output and performance. The article further argued that there exist greater work intensification and exploitation via strict management control systems such as close supervision and punitive factory rules. The article also highlighted some of the limitations of existing social science theories because they can not account for what is going on garment firms in Fiji (especially Chinese firms). The article argues that we must either expand the earlier social science theories or move beyond and developed new theories to fully capture the new emerging trends of contemporary capitalist global production system.     

Product Quality and Payment Policy

This paper provides a theoretical explanation for the choice of payment terms under which a company sells its products. In our model, these terms are chosen to permit sellers or buyers to specialize at repairing defects if they are equally well-informed about quality or if one has significantly lower repair costs than the other. Otherwise, the terms are chosen to signal product quality. We also develop the empirical implications of this theory by predicting a seller's choice of payment terms based on the characteristics of its product market.     

The Attitude of Indian Youth Toward Nutrition: Factors,Segments, and Implications

Although consumers’ attitude toward healthy or nutritious foods has been studied, factors affecting attitude have not been sufficiently studied. This study deals with the factors affecting the attitude of Indian youth toward nutrition. The article also attempts to segment youth consumers on the basis of their attitude. The responses of 379 youths to the specifically developed questionnaire were subjected to principal component analysis to identify attitudinal factors and to delineate the segments of youth cluster analysis. Discriminant analysis was performed to establish the differences among segments. Five factors, namely “not sure,” “volume consciousness,” “costly but willing to pay,” “healthy homemade,” and “taste and practical,” were identified as having influence on youths’ attitude toward nutrition. Marital status, gender, and cities where youths have spent their last 5 years had significant influence on those attitudinal factors. Based on the varying importance of different attitudinal factors, consumers were categorized in three distinct segments. Based on the findings of the study, different management interventions can be planned to increase the intake of nutritious food by the youths of different segments.     

The Rise and Fall of National Allocative Planning in Australia

In 1979 the Australian Labor Party's supreme policy making body, Federal Conference, proposed that a future Labor government embark on an extensive program of economic planning. In addition to continuing Keynesian monetary and fiscal policy, the Conference argued in favour of the introduction of a more comprehensive form of stability planning, or incomes policy; partial allocative, or industry, planning; and a national allocative plan. Since coming to power in 1983, the Federal Government has introduced an incomes policy as well as a number of industry plans. However, it has rejected national allocative planning. In this article we discuss the differences between these forms of economic planning and analyse the reasons which might explain the Government's rejection of national allocative planning.     

The convergent validity of dichotic listening and hemispheric priming as methods for studying lateralized differences in affective responses

This study investigates affective responses toward the text and music of an advertisement presented via a task involving either dichotic listening or hemispheric priming. The data indicate that affect toward the text and music does differ due to the efficiency of hemispheric specialization and that this pattern of results remains consistent across the two methods for studying lateralized differences. Specifically, the methods based on dichotic listening and hemispheric priming performed similarly in demonstrating the tendency of left-versus right-brain processing to favor words versus music, respectively. These convergent findings compensate, in part, for certain weaknesses in the apparent internal and external validities of the two approaches by supporting the reliability and generalizability of each method in producing results that corroborate those of the other.     

Information Content of Offer Date Revelations: A Fresh Look at Seasoned Equity Offerings

Besides the offer price discount, investment bankers use revisions in offer size from the amount originally filed to signal the issuer's quality to their buy‐side clients. Unlike the offer price discount, offer size revision not only relates to the offer date price reaction, it also predicts post‐SEO (seasoned equity offering) performance. Improved SEOs, whose offer size exceeds the amount originally registered, experience significantly positive returns during the registration period and on the offer date. More importantly, they do not underperform post‐issuance. Their complement, regular SEOs, exhibit significantly negative returns during the registration period, on the offer date, and underperform their benchmark following issuance.     

Gadget lovers

Marketers in firms that routinely produce high-tech innovations want rapid adoption of their products. Many believe the consumer segment that is targeted initially should consist of people who adopt innovative technology relatively early and are influential sources of information that others use as references for their own behavior. A set of adopters who might meet these requirements, but have not been the focus of prior scholarly research, are gadget lovers. This article provides insights into this segment, proposes a scale to measure its key characteristics, and reports the results of a group interview and four additional studies that support the validity of the scale (n ₁ = 1,655, n ₂ = 789, n ₃ = 1,366, and n ₄ = 188). The gadget lover scale explains adoption-related behaviors beyond the variance accounted for by technological innovativeness and key demographic variables.

Disentangling the performance effects of efficiency and bargaining power in horizontal growth strategies: An empirical investigation in the global retail industry

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and organic growth are two common strategies to achieve horizontal growth. In this study, we disentangle two distinct sources of firm performance corresponding to different theoretical perspectives on firm size: firms' bargaining power with respect to suppliers and customers, and operating efficiency arising from scale economies. We conceptually argue and empirically show that relatively, M&A enhance bargaining power in the short term while organic growth enhances operating efficiency over the long term. In order to disaggregate these effects, we use accounting rather than financial or managerial data and test our predictions in the global retail industry over a 20‐year period. We examine implications of these results for sustainability of size‐based competitive advantages. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.