What comes after the welfare state?: A post-welfare development path for the UK

One vision of post-industrial society projects a sane, humane, ecological future. Achievement of this requires societal transformation of almost unprecedented dimensions. This paper offers a preliminary exploration of how changing directions to this kind of future would affect social welfare and social services in the UK. Current community activities which may help accelerate change in local futures are outlined.     

Choice and the Internet: From Clickstream to Research Stream

The authors discuss research progress and future opportunities for modeling consumer choice on the Internet using clickstream data (the electronic records of Internet usage recorded by company web servers and syndicated data services). The authors compare the nature of Internet choice (as captured by clickstream data) with supermarket choice (as captured by UPC scanner panel data), highlighting the differences relevant to choice modelers. Though the application of choice models to clickstream data is relatively new, the authors review existing early work and provide a two-by-two categorization of the applications studied to date (delineating search versus purchase on the one hand and within-site versus across-site choices on the other). The paper offers directions for further research in these areas and discusses additional opportunities afforded by clickstream information, including personalization, data mining, automation, and customer valuation. Notwithstanding the numerous challenges associated with clickstream data research, the authors conclude that the detailed nature of the information tracked about Internet usage and e-commerce transactions presents an enormous opportunity for empirical modelers to enhance the understanding and prediction of choice behavior.     

下个十亿市场

事实上,下一代新兴市场可以定夺许多产业中的胜利者和失败者,且是下一个崭新商业巨人的崛起之处。     

A stochastic production function for machine repair

Although work by Levhari and Sheshinski (1970) and Syrquin (1972) suggests that general functional forms, such as the Cobb–Douglas and CES, accurately approximate a machine-repair stochastic production process, this paper shows that these authors have not adequately captured the stochastic nature of the production process. More importantly, while general forms are convenient and widely employed, this paper argues that there is a more direct method for determining the properties of the production process.     

World Trade Law,Culture, Heritage and Tourism. Towards a Holistic Conceptual Approach?

This article argues that law is an important factor in the consideration of the evolution of tourism discourse. Thus it is important for academics to consider the law-tourism connection. But law is a dynamic phenomenon that is experiencing change. Within law, the domain of world trade is increasingly significant. In addition, the conceptualisation of culture and heritage is ongoing and as the law has implications for the development of those concepts, then correspondingly the law-culture and heritage connection should be considered. World trade law in turn has culture and heritage implications. Tourism will be affected by both the evolution of world trade and evolving conceptions of culture and heritage, not least legal ones. Accordingly, as a result of the increasing interpenetration and interconnections of issues, it is submitted that consideration of the four conceptual domains of world trade, law, tourism and culture and heritage, suggests the desirability of a holistic approach to (or awareness of) the consideration of certain issues that may fall into the intellectual space advanced by the potential intersection of these issues. This is especially justifiable in view of the multiplicity of academic viewpoints that studies of tourism embrace. It may be necessary in order to provide options for the solution of legal issues that involve these factors. Thus it is argued that it is important to consider the domain delineated above in a holistic way, recognising that the forces of development act reflexively on each other as a start in order to overcome inevitable epistemological difficulties.