Appraising and Evaluating PFI for NHS Hospitals

This paper explores the use of appraisal in the development of proposals to use private finance to provide acute hospitals under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). It addresses the extent to which value for money (VFM) and affordability (which must be satisfied to enable a scheme to be approved) are demonstrated in the documents prepared by hospital Trusts. It identifies a number of issues (such as the transfer of risk and the development of public sector comparators) that pose new problems for investment appraisal, which are specific to its application to PFI.     

Are services advertised differently? An analysis of the relationship between product and service types and the informational content of their advertisements

This study examines the informational content of service and product advertisements and analyses the relationship between the amount and type of information in an advertisement and the type of product or service being advertised. The influence that service characteristics have on advertising strategy is still not well understood. One theory is that services need to be more tangible in order to assist in the consumer decision-making process and advertising can assist with this by providing factual information. The purpose of this paper is to establish whether this theory is recognized and adopted in advertising practice. This is achieved by performing a content analysis. The results indicate that product advertisements contain more information than services, which indicates a discrepancy between advertising theory and practice. The results also prove that there are variances in the amount and type of information included in product and service advertisements. The paper examines these variances and applies existing classification frameworks to explain them. Areas for further research are also identified.     

Sinking Ships? Liberal Theorists on the American Economy

In the Asia-Pacific region, the conditions and consequences of East Asian success have understandably attracted more attention than the causes and implications of North American failure. In the American case, any failure must be relative when the US remains a bloc-sized market and the only surviving superpower. Thus, for Asians the US figures economically as an export opportunity and socially, for puritans like Lee Kuan Yew, as a warning about decadence. The discussion among Americans is altogether more interesting. This article analyses the debate about national competitiveness among American liberal democrats like Magaziner, Reich, Tyson and Krugman and looks behind the differences of position that separate these protagonists, with two conclusions. First, as the old 1980s problem of national uncompetitivencss is jettisoned in the 1990s; all the liberals now agree that Americans are no longer in the same boat, that while some are becoming increasingly successful, others are sinking fast. Second; the protagonists have moved from an industrial policy fix in the 1980s to an end of policy era in the 1990s where the question for American liberals is whether and how the political system can absorb the stresses createted by increasing inequality.     

Environmental Performance Focus in Private Family Firms: The Role of Social Embeddedness

The macro-level business ethics in Scholasticism contrasts with modern Anglo-Saxon Capitalism, which is very influential worldwide. Scholasticism, developed between the thirteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries, deals with key elements of free market morality, including private property, contracts, profits, prices, and free competition. For over 500 years Scholasticism tried to understand economic phenomena and business activities and reflected on them from an ethical perspective. Scholasticism offered the crucial lesson of the centrality of justice and the role of practical wisdom in considering market morality. Justice is seen as both a virtue and a principle, and commutative justice (justice in exchanges) with the common good of society as the reference for the Scholastics, is regarded as being especially important.     

How consumer shopping orientation influences perceived crowding, excitement, and stress at the mall

While a few researchers have started to chip away at the notion that retail density is always negative, extant studies do not empirically address the question of why some shoppers respond negatively to a specific level of density while others respond positively. We examine this issue by drawing upon field theory (Lewin 1939) to shed light on how shoppers vary in terms of deeper motives (McClelland 1953) to seek control or intimacy with others in retail mall settings, and whether these motives influence shopping orientations. Shopping orientation is then hypothesized to affect perceptions of crowding, and, in turn, subsequent affective responses to the mall shopping experience. Moreover, we examine whether individual differences (gender and age) can help retailers segment those with different shopping orientations and the motives that influence these orientations. We found that task and social shopping orientations were influenced by deeper motives for control and intimacy. The causal relationships between shopping motive, shopping orientation, and consumers?? affective responses of stress and excitement were also discovered. Finally, we address theoretical and managerial implications of our results.     

Perspectives on evaluation in financial education: Landscape,issues, and studies

This review discusses the heterogeneity in the effectiveness of financial education programs that occurs because of the unique conditions for programs and methods to evaluate them. The authors define six groups served by financial education: children, youth, college students and young adults, working adults, military personnel, and low-income consumers. They then discuss research and evaluation literature for each group with a critical eye on program purpose, content, and evaluation. They also present findings affecting multiple groups on four issues: student loans, homeownership, retirement planning, and financial advising. The accumulated evidence on the effectiveness of financial education is positive, although the results are nuanced and sometimes limited. The authors argue that understanding this broad landscape in studying financial education is critical for future research and evaluation.     

Incorporating innovation subsidies in the CDM framework: empirical evidence from Belgium

ABSTRACT

This paper integrates innovation input and output effects of R&D subsidies into a modified Crépon–Duguet–Mairesse (CDM) model. Our results largely confirm insights of the input additionality literature, i.e. public subsidies complement private R&D investment. In addition, results point to positive output effects of both purely privately funded and subsidy-induced R&D. Furthermore, we do not find evidence of a premium or discount of subsidy-induced R&D in terms of its marginal contribution on new product sales when compared to purely privately financed R&D.     

Earnings Attribution and Information Transfers

Managers frequently attribute the news in their earnings forecasts to various economic events. Using textual analysis, we identify the economic factors underlying earnings news from press releases. We document a wide range of industry‐wide shocks and firm‐specific actions to which the earnings news in management forecasts is attributed. As expected, earnings attributions significantly affect peer firms’ price reactions to the earnings news. Specifically, earnings news attributed to industry‐wide trends or firm structural changes leads to positive information transfers but earnings news attributed to firm competitive moves triggers negative information transfers. Information transfers are much stronger when each economic factor is mentioned the first time in a given industry‐year. Further analysis reveals that the strength of information transfers varies with firm‐level rivalry within the industry (i.e., similar business strategies, market position, and level of competition).     

Developing pandemic communication strategies: Preparation without panic

Communication in the media regarding a potential avian influenza epidemic can serve to accurately and effectively inform the public OR misinform and contribute to unnecessary public panic and subsequent undesirable responses. Governments have time to develop communication strategies and specific messages that can effectively convey desired information at different stages of the anticipated pandemic. Effective social marketing incorporates the concepts of formative research, audience segmentation, and consumer focus. Based on the findings from earlier research on public awareness and understanding of bird flu, the collaborators of the project developed evidence-based advertising messages for two primary time-points in pandemic preparation and tested in a series of focus groups; modified them based on the findings; and then re-tested the final campaign. These findings provide important recommendations for the development of future social marketing campaigns in the event of pandemics or other public health crises.