Currency forecasting: an investigation of extrapolative judgement

This paper aims to explore the potential effects of trend type, noise and forecast horizon on experts' and novices' probabilistic forecasts. The subjects made forecasts over six time horizons from simulated monthly currency series based on a random walk, with zero, constant and stochastic drift, at two noise levels. The difference between the Mean Absolute Probability Score of each participant and an AR(1) model was used to evaluate performance. The results showed that the experts performed better than the novices, although worse than the model except in the case of zero drift series. No clear expertise effects occurred over horizons, albeit subjects' performance relative to the model improved as the horizon increased. Possible explanations are offered and some suggestions for future research are outlined.     

A model for economic analysis

The production process model is proposed as a way to guide economic evaluation of health care projects, programs, technology, or research. The model is illustrated with data from the development of a home care computer intervention.     

A conceptual model of the impact of advertising on service employees

Although the importance of the service employee in providing satisfying service encounters has frequently been noted, the effects of organizational marketing actions on employees has been virtually ignored. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of advertising on service employees. Ads can have positive impacts on employee organizational commitment by depicting roles which will encourage congruent expectations among the organization, the employee, and the customer; by clarifying workers' roles in the organization; by communicating the degree to which the organization values employees; and by being accurate in their messages about services, organizational policies, and treatment of employees. This employee organizational commitment is critical to the provision of quality service to consumers.     

Divergent Environmental Regulations and Trade Liberalization

The market and nonmarket consequences of environmental regulations and of trade liberalization under different regulatory regimes are explored in the context of the NAFTA through simulation modeling of the North American sheep and lamb markets. Producers are able to shift much of the cost of regulation to domestic and foreign consumers and thus gain from regulation. In the cases investigated, nonmarket effects are unlikely to reverse the sign of market gains or losses, and "level playing field" regulations may or may not be preferred.     

Productivity Growth in the UK Regions, 1968–1991

This paper provides estimates of total factor productivity growth for the regions of the UK. It shows that the peripheral regions generally performed better than the national average in the 1980's. A model to explain TFP growth found that much of this increase can be attributed to a general upskilling of a more flexible workforce, falling plant sizes, and a 'catch-up' effect in the unionized sector.     

Reemployment Differences Among Dislocated and Other Workers

Abstract Dislocated workers are often assumed to have a more difficult time becoming reemployed than their non-dislocated counterparts, especially into jobs in growth sectors of the economy. Evidence presented here suggests that it is not dislocation per se that makes reemployment difficult, but that factors associated with dislocation such as education, experience, and industry-specific skills in declining industries play the most important roles. The findings are relevant to the matter of workers' retraining programs.     

Factors Influencing Firms' Disclosures about Environmental Liabilities

This paper examines factors related to environmental liability disclosure decisions for firms in industries with substantial Superfund site involvement. We hypothesize that the extent of disclosure about environmental liabilities is associated with five factors: (1) regulation, including enforcement activity, (2) managements' information, including site uncertainty and allocation uncertainty, (3) litigation and negotiation concerns, (4) capital market concerns, and (5) other regulatory influence. Our empirical tests examine the association between measures of environmental liability disclosure, based on disclosures in firms' annual reports and Forms 10-K, and proxies for the five factors, based on information from other public sources, including the EPA. We find that all of our hypothesized factors except site uncertainty significantly influence firms' environmental disclosure decisions.