An Economic Analysis of Requirements to Prevent Handheld Hair Dryer Water Immersion Electrocutions in the USA

Before 1987, when handheld hair dryers were not required to protect against water immersion electrocutions, there were almost 16 such electrocutions annually in the USA. This article presents a retrospective evaluation of the benefits and costs of the 1987 and 1991 immersion protection requirements of the voluntary hair dryer safety standard in the USA. The benefits are based on estimates of the reduced risk of electrocution resulting from the requirements, and the valuation of the reduced risk derived from willingness to pay studies of the “value of statistical life” found in the economics literature. The costs were defined as the incremental costs associated with incorporating the immersion protection technology into handheld hair dryers. The study found that the requirements were highly effective and may have reduced the immersion-related mortality rate by almost 97%. The expected present value of the estimated benefits of the requirements amounted to about $4.56 per dryer in 2014 dollars and substantially exceeded the costs of about $2 per dryer. The primary outcome measure, the expected net benefits (i.e., benefits minus costs) of the requirements, amounted to an average of about $2.56 per hair dryer, over the hair dryer’s expected product life. Given sales of about 23 million handheld hair dryers annually, the present value of the expected net benefits associated with 1 year’s production would have amounted to about $58.9 million. A sensitivity analysis showed that the major findings were robust with respect to changes in the underlying parameters of the analysis. The study also discusses the factors leading to a high rate of effectiveness estimated for the immersion protection requirements.     

Building Societies

The following articles appeared in ‘The Guardian’ on 9 May 1983, and are reproduced by kind permission of the Editor. They examine how the position of building societies has changed, how well the societies are coping with this and how adequate and efficient the services that the building societies offer their customers are now proving.     

Children aged 9-14 living in disadvantaged areas in England: Opportunities and barriers for cycling

The aim of this paper is to take a holistic perspective to explore levels of cycling and opportunities and barriers to increase children’s safer cycling in disadvantaged areas in England. The study was one part of a larger study which explored the factors underlying the high level of road traffic casualties especially among children in the most disadvantaged areas of England and to explore how this impacts on mobility and quality of life. The methods involved a cross sectional survey comprising school based questionnaire surveys with children aged 9-14 and focus groups with parents who had children within this age range. The surveys were conducted in 2007 and the focus groups during 2008. 4286 children completed the survey and eight focus groups were held. Bike ownership (77%) was high, use in previous week moderate (39%) but only 2% cycled to school. Ownership was significantly lower in minority ethnic groups. Despite young children’s strong preference to travel by cycle (30%) than walk or go by car, most parents felt it was too hazardous. It is unlikely that these findings would be any different from the rest of England, however the combination of environmental and social factors may elevate the risks for young cyclists in these areas. This paper concludes that a number of barriers exist to increasing levels of cycling among children living in disadvantaged areas particularly amongst ethnic groups. These barriers could be addressed by environmental modifications to reduce speeds and by reducing the levels of antisocial driving and riding in residential areas and around destinations where children travel, by providing cycle training to improve children’s skills and parent’s confidence, and by providing secure storage facilities for bikes. Until these barriers are addressed it is unlikely that cycling will increase despite the strong preferences children have to travel by bike. Such preferences to cycle provide an opportunity for local authorities to act on.     

Entrepreneurial beacons: The Yale endowment,run‐ups,and the growth of venture capital

Research summary : This article investigates the social context of entrepreneurship in organizational sectors. Prior research suggests that firm foundings are driven by collective patterns of activity—such as patterns of prior foundings in a given sector. Building on research on social salience and signals, we consider the influence of singular sector‐level triggers, which we call entrepreneurial beacons. We argue that the actions or outcomes of single, salient organizations attract and motivate entrepreneurs, thus increasing the rate of foundings. We test this logic by examining the impact of the Y ale U niversity endowment's investment choices and of venture‐capital‐backed IPO run‐ups on venture‐capital foundings between 1984 and 2011. We find support for the existence and influence of beacons and outline boundary conditions for their effects . Managerial summary : What leads entrepreneurs to found new companies in nascent sectors? In contrast to prior research, which emphasizes patterns of activity, we argue that entrepreneurial activity can sometimes be driven by the actions of a singular trigger—what we call an entrepreneurial beacon. We examine the influence of two such beacons, Y ale U niversity's endowment investments and exceptional venture‐capital‐backed IPO run‐ups, on the founding of new venture‐capital firms over a 28‐year period. We find that Y ale's increased allocations to the venture‐capital asset‐class has a significant influence on the founding of new venture‐capital firms, while exceptional venture‐capital‐backed IPO run‐ups only influence venture‐capital foundings under certain conditions. Overall, we offer an explanation for heretofore anecdotal accounts of certain organizations or events that appear to have an outsized influence on entrepreneurial activity . Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving the speed of adoption of agricultural technologies and farm performance through farmer groups: evidence from the Great Lakes region of Africa

The article examines the effect of membership in farmer groups (MFG) on adoption lag of agricultural technologies and farm performance in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. We use duration and stochastic production frontier models on farm household data. We find that the longer the duration of MFG, the shorter the adoption lag and much more so if combined with extension service delivery. Farmer groups function as an important mechanism for improving farm productivity through reduced technical inefficiency in input use. We discuss policy implications under which farmer groups are a useful channel to reduce adoption lag, and the means through which improved farm performance can be achieved.     

Human factors in the transfer of the ‘Japanese best practice’ manufacturing system to Singapore

A detailed examination of the practices reported by managers in thirty-one affiliates of Japanese companies engaged in manufacturing in Singapore revealed a high degree of conformity with the Japanese best practice (also known as ‘lean production’) model in the way work is organized and in the shop-floor level manufacturing practices, but greater conformity to host country norms in the HRM practices applied to the local work-force. This is consistent with the patterns reported in the existing literature regarding Japanese transplants in other countries, including the US and the UK. Strong statistical relationships were found in the Singapore study among the work organization cluster, the manufacturing practices cluster, and the performance outcomes. No significant relationships were found between the HRM cluster and any of the ‘downstream’ variables (work organization, manufacturing practices or performance outcomes), but relatively heavy reliance on expatriates was found to be highly related to work organization, manufacturing practices and performance outcomes. These findings suggest that heavy reliance on expatriates may function as an alternative to Japanese-style HRM practices in situations where it would be unduly difficult or costly to extend the whole package of Japanese-style HRM practices to the local work-force.     

Economic importance and statistical significance: Guidelines for communicating empirical research

Abstract

A critical objective for many empirical studies is a thorough evaluation of both substantive importance and statistical significance. Feminist economists have critiqued neoclassical economics studies for an excessive focus on statistical machinery at the expense of substantive issues. Drawing from the ongoing debate about the rhetoric of economic inquiry and significance tests, this paper examines approaches for presenting empirical results effectively to ensure that the analysis is accurate, meaningful, and relevant for the conceptual and empirical context. To that end, it demonstrates several measurement issues that affect the interpretation of economic significance and are commonly overlooked in empirical studies. This paper provides guidelines for clearly communicating two distinct aspects of “significance” in empirical research, using prose, tables, and charts based on OLS, logit, and probit regression results. These guidelines are illustrated with samples of ineffective writing annotated to show weaknesses, followed by concrete examples and explanations of improved presentation.     

Encouraging Tutorial Attendance at University Did Not Improve Performance

When tertiary education is subsidised the cost of poor student performance in university subjects falls not only on the individual student but also on society in general. Society therefore has an interest in promoting student performance. There is evidence in the literature that absenteeism from university classes is widespread and that absenteeism adversely affects student performance. In this paper I describe an incentive scheme that increased attendance of business and economics students in an introductory statistics subject at a typical Australian university. Like other authors I find a strong positive association between attendance and academic performance, both in the presence and absence of the scheme. However, there is no evidence that the incentive scheme caused student performance to improve. Although students attended more classes they did not perform better than students in the previous year's class who had the same observable characteristics and attendance levels but who were not exposed to the scheme.