The Impact of Rate Regulation on Claims: Evidence From Massachusetts Automobile Insurance

The article tests the hypothesis that insurance price subsidies created by rate regulation lead to higher insurance cost growth. The article makes use of data from the Massachusetts private passenger automobile insurance market, where cross‐subsidies were explicitly built into the rate structure through rules that limit rate differentials and differences in rate increases across driver rating categories. Two approaches are taken to study the potential loss cost reaction to the Massachusetts cross‐subsidies. The first approach compares Massachusetts with all other states while controlling for demographic, regulatory, and liability coverage levels. Loss cost levels that were about 29 percent above the expected level are found for Massachusetts during years 1978–1998, when premiums charged were those fixed by the state and included explicit subsidies for high‐risk drivers. A second approach considers changing cost levels across Massachusetts by studying loss cost changes by town and relating those changes to subsidy providers and subsidy receivers. Subsidy data based on accident year data for 1993–2004 show a significant and positive (relative) growth in loss costs and an increasing proportion of high‐risk drivers for towns that were subsidy receivers, in line with the theory of underlying incentives for adverse selection and moral hazard.     

Communicating across tourism silos for inclusive sustainable partnerships

Abstract

Overcoming traditional tourism silos to develop long-term relationships with stakeholders is essential for transformational change. Adopting broader networks connects researchers to pertinent issues facing society, develops reciprocal capacities for learning, and creates inclusive sustainable partnerships. As critical tourism scholars and not-for-profit employees, we illustrate the journey of how we engaged collaboratively with diverse stakeholders, from businesses, not-for-profits and the university, to tackle issues of economic disadvantage and social exclusion. Critical hospitality and dialogue theory were adopted to provide a framework for the processes of collaboration, research, networking, and advocacy work for inclusive sustainable spaces. Drawing on our involvement with co-founding a collaborative research network, the Network for Community Hospitality, and analysis of data from two Ketso workshops and interviews with 41 network members, we present reflections on setting up and facilitating the network. In addition, two examples of collaborative Network activities are presented to illustrate the techniques and dialogic communication processes for doing critical hospitality. The article thereby contributes by providing empirically informed and reflexive understandings into the experiences of working and communicating within long-term inclusive partnerships with diverse stakeholders to create traction for positive social sustainable change.     

Attitudes of Tourism Students to the Environment and Climate Change

This paper reports on a global study of the attitudes of students studying in senior year and first-year postgraduate tourism and hospitality subjects to tourism and its relationship with the environment and climate change. The study determined that students are generally concerned about environmental degradation, feel knowledgeable about climate change, are concerned that it will become an even larger issue in the next 5 years and, generally, appreciate that tourism is a major contributor to carbon emissions. Moreover, some 70% had changed their behavior in the past 3 years to reduce their environmental impacts. However, specificity of knowledge about the causes of climate change was limited, which is symptomatic of a broader lack of detailed knowledge about environmental degradation, which in turn translates into rather generic behavior changes. Most significantly, less than 13% of students have changed their vacation patterns out of concern for the environment, with only a small minority intending to modify their travel patterns in the future.     

An Examination of Learning Preferences of U.S. and International Students

Learning styles and preferences are often discussed topics in educational psychology, but are less prevalent in business education. International students are another understudied segment of business education. This article reviews literature regarding learning styles and preferences and examines whether U.S. and international students have different learning preferences using the visual-aural-read/write-kinesthetic (VARK) model. The findings indicate a large percentage of both populations have multimodal learning preferences. For the students who have one preferred learning mode, differences do exist between international and U.S. students.     

Managing foreign subsidiaries: agents of headquarters,or an interdependent network?

In this study, two different theoretical perspectives are used to develop sets of hypotheses regarding the mechanisms used to manage foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations. First, agency theory serves as the basis for a model that predicts the use of monitoring mechanisms and incentive compensation. Then, it is argued that these mechanisms are insufficient for managing subsidiaries characterized by high levels of intra‐firm international interdependence, the management of which is critical to many of today's complex global firms. A second set of hypotheses is argued, linking international interdependence to several social control mechanisms. Primary and secondary data from U.S. based multinational corporations were used to test both sets of hypotheses. The results indicate that agency theory, although a useful foundation for studies of control within MNCs, is limited in its ability to explain fully the phenomenon of foreign subsidiary control, however, the model based on intra‐firm interdependence had much greater predictive ability. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Simple Matter of Control? NHS Hospital Nurses and New Management*

ABSTRACT Over the past two decades the National Health Hospital Service has been subjected to considerable changes in is organization. ‘New’ public sector management (NPM) has been given the task of changing hospital culture and making service provision more efficient. Nurses, as the largest occupational group within the National Health Service (NHS), have attracted considerable management attention and there are two distinct accounts concerning how NPM has supposedly gained control of the nursing labour process. Firstly, it is proposed that the physical division of labour of health care professionals is now firmly in the hands of hospital management through the use of Tayloristic techniques. Secondly, alternative accounts suggest that public sector organization cultures have been successfully orientated toward a customer service ethos, and that the convincing discourse of ‘quality’ is achieving some success as a normative control device. This paper investigates the responses of nurses to NPM, whichever form this may take, and presents data collected as part of a longitudinal study carried out in an NHS Trust hospital. It charts the changes which have occurred in the nursing labour process over a six year period, but especially draws upon more recent data to show how nurses, over a period of time, develop their own ways of reinterpreting management's desires. It argues that management is more likely to continue to rely on nurses’ traditional autonomy in the delivery of health care in recognition that nurses may resist some but accommodate many of the demands made of them.     

Exploring the role of memory for self‐selected ad experiences: Are some advertising media better liked than others?

Advertising media are associated with different degrees of self‐selected versus intrusive ad experiences. The role of such media differences in attitudes toward advertising was explored in a nationwide survey. The survey provides a national picture of attitudes toward specific ad media ranging from advertising media that deliver highly self‐selected ad experiences (catalogs and business classifieds) to highly intrusive ones (TV). A total of 2,514 adults were surveyed regarding their opinions about ads in (1) TV, (2) radio, (3) catalogs, (4) business classifieds, (5) out‐of‐home, or (6) advertising in general. Media that allow for self‐selected experiences, where perceived interest in an ad is the basis for attention to it, were evaluated much more favorably than more intrusive advertising media. Catalogs and business classifieds elicited the most favorable opinions; TV advertising elicited the least, and these media differences generally cut across demographic lines. Also, although more educated and affluent consumers generally held less favorable views of advertising, preliminary results suggested that this did not hold true for media that allow for self‐selected processing. An additional study suggested that memory for advertisements plays a significant role in the evaluation of a self‐selected ad medium (catalogs). That is, consumers' strongest memories are for those ads to which they paid the most attention, and consequently these engaging ads have a disproportionate influence on opinions toward the ad medium. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.