Work and Life Integration: Organizational,Cultural, and Individual Perspectives – Edited by Ellen Ernst Kossek and Susan J. Lambert Work‐Life Balance in the 21st Century – Edited by Diane M. Houston

Books reviewed: Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural, and Individual Perspectives edited by Ellen Ernst Kossek and Susan J. Lambert. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ and London, 2005, xxviii + 570 pp., ISBN 0 8058 4616 6, $42.50, paper. Work‐Life Balance in the 21st Century edited by Diane M. Houston. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK, 2005, xv + 271 pp., ISBN 1 4039 2062 1, £50.00.     

A Sample Selection Approach to Censored Demand Systems

The multivariate sample selection model is extended to a nonlinear equation system with partial selection and applied to household meat consumption in China. Elasticity estimates differ from those obtained from conventional maximum likelihood and Tobit estimates. Chinese meat products are gross complements while net substitution also exists in some cases.     

Undesirable Juvenile Behavior and the Quality of Parental Relationships

We examine how undesirable juvenile behavior is related to the structure and quality of home life. In homes with both own-parents or one parent and another adult partner, we distinguish among unhappy, moderately happy, and very happy relationships for the adults. Single-parents are treated as one category. Living with both own-parents in a very or moderately happy relationship is associated with reduced likelihood of most undesirable behaviors. In most cases, we cannot reject the hypothesis that the probability of juvenile undesirable behavior is the same across own-parents in ah unhappy relationship, a very or moderately happy parent and stepparent, and a single-parent.     

Why environmental and resource economists should care about non-expected utility models

Experimental and theoretical analysis has shown that the conventional expected utility (EU) and subjective expected utility (SEU) models, which are linear in probabilities, have serious limitations in certain situations. We argue here that these limitations are often highly relevant to the work that environmental and natural resource economists do. We discuss some of the experimental evidence and alternatives to the SEU. We consider the theory used, the problems studied, and the methods employed by resource economists. Finally, we highlight some recent work that has begun to use some of the alternatives to the EU and SEU frameworks and discuss areas where much future work is needed.     

Managing customer relationships. The challenge of deploying scarce managerial resources

In industrial markets many managers from marketing, technical service and production functions interact with customers. How should these managers be allocated to an evolving array of customers? This paper reports on the customer visits made by the managers of one packaging supplier. The visits of the marketing people seem related to the financial significance of the customer, whereas the technical visits are best understood by a ‘portfolio’ approach. At the same time many idiosyncratic and situational factors affect resource deployments.     

Diagnosing urban development by an indicator system

The paper shows the need for improving the information support of the practice of urban planning. It provides methodological approaches to the formation of systems of urban indicators for diagnosing the situation in preparing programs, plans, taking management decisions and estimating the results of their implementation.     

Predicting the sample mean by extreme order statistics

Summary This paper considers the prediction of the sample mean by extreme order statistics when the population distribution is known. The predictor and its mean square error are found. The problem is studied in details for the normal model.     

The Race to Connect East Asia: An Unending Steeplechase

East Asia has become more integrated as a region over the past quarter century. In looking ahead, this article identifies five central obstacles to further regionalism. Three address the composition of any future East Asian region: the arenas in which cooperation is sought, the geographic scope of any future region, and the extent to which regional ties are formalized. The other two variables will influence the future regardless of how the first three are resolved: the structure and balance of domestic political forces, and leadership. The complex interactions of these five are then examined in the recent moves toward preferential trade pacts, increased regional monetary and financial cooperation, and security.     

Calibration and hedging under jump diffusion

A jump diffusion model coupled with a local volatility function has been suggested by Andersen and Andreasen (2000). By generating a set of option prices assuming a jump diffusion with known parameters, we investigate two crucial challenges intrinsic to this type of model: calibration of parameters and hedging of jump risk. Even though the estimation problem is ill-posed, our results suggest that the model can be calibrated with sufficient accuracy. Two different strategies are explored for hedging jump risk: a semi-static approach and a dynamic technique. Simulation experiments indicate that each of these methods can sharply reduce risk exposure. JEL Classification G12 · G13