Product Design: Preference for Rounded versus Angular Design Elements

Two experiments tested whether a general relative preference for objects with rounded rather than angular form (Bar & Neta, 2006, 2007) can be applied in the context of the design of consumer products. Images of product packaging—a chocolate product (Experiment 1) and water and bleach bottles (Experiment 2)—were manipulated with regard to the shape of both contour and graphics. There was a preference for rounded designs that extended to self‐report purchase likelihood—with additive effects of contour and graphics shape that could not be accounted for by design typicality or perceived ease of use.     

The devil in the details: Non-convexities in ecosystem service provision

Standard economic theory is built on key assumptions regarding concavity and convexity, particular with respect to the production possibility frontier. Non-convexity is readily demonstrated using a two species conventional model. Now that ecosystem services are growing in prominence it is important to confirm that typical natural resource production relations obey these conditions. If not, innocently prescribing price or allocation policies can lead to a minimum rather than a maximum or to wrong equilibrium solutions in general. This is a particular danger in decentralized pricing systems.     

The relationship between technology and science: Some historical and philosophical reflections. Part II

Dr Paul Gardner was appointed to the Faculty of Education at Monash University in 1967 and is currently a Reader in Education. After graduating from the University of Melbourne with a science degree and teacher qualifications in 1960, he taught physics and chemistry in high schools for six years. He obtained the M. Ed. degree from the University of Melbourne in 1970 for a thesis which involved experimental studies of concept attainment, and in 1972 completed a Ph.D. at Monash for an investigation of student and teacher characteristics which influence students' attitudes to physics. His major field of interest is science education, and he has published extensively on the assessment of cognitive and affective outcomes, the role of language in learning science and (his current major interest) the links between science and technology. He was a founding member of the university's Centre for Science, Mathematics and Technology Education in 1989. He is currently the Editor ofResearch in Science Education, the annual journal of the Australasian Science Education Research Association, of which he was a founding member in 1970. Early in 1993, he presented a paper on science-technology relationships at a UNESCO-sponsored conference in Jerusalem; a revised version of this paper is being published inStudies in Science Education in 1994. He teaches post-graduate courses on statistical analysis, attitude measurement, curriculum issues and science and technology education.     

Money-demand and the efficacy of fiscal policy

An M2 money-demand function including the market value of government debt is estimated. The resulting equation both tracks the recent movements in money-demand and has implications for the efficacy of fiscal policy as a tool of stabilization policy.     

Slower economic growth affects the 1995 labor market

As the pace of economic activity moderated in 1995, job growth slowed. Nonetheless, it was enough to absorb the small increase in the supply of labor, with the result that the unemployment rate remained at about the same level it had reached at the end of 1994. In the first quarter of 1995, employment grew at a brisk pace but, as the economy began to slow, job gains fell sharply. Employment growth continued at a much more moderate pace for the balance of the year, so that, by the fourth quarter, nearly 1.9 million jobs had been added to the Nation's payrolls. By comparison, in the fourth quarter of 1994 alone, payroll employment had grown by 1.1 million. Most of the job gains in 1995 were in the services industry group. Manufacturing employment, which had been rising since the fall of 1993, began to decline in the spring, and by the end of 1995, that industry group had lost nearly a quarter of a million jobs. Employment increased in most of the other major industry groups, even though declines in some of their component industries partly offset gains in others.     

Statistical measurement of trees’ similarity

Diagnostic theories are fundamental to Information Systems practice and are represented in trees. One way of creating diagnostic trees is by employing independent experts to construct such trees and compare them. However, good measures of similarity to compare diagnostic trees have not been identified. This paper presents an analysis of the suitability of various measures of association to determine the similarity of two diagnostic trees using bootstrap simulations. We find that three measures of association, Goodman and Kruskal’s Lambda, Cohen’s Kappa, and Goodman and Kruskal’s Gamma (J Am Stat Assoc 49(268):732–764, 1954) each behave differently depending on what is inconsistent between the two trees thus providing both measures for assessing alignment between two trees developed by independent experts as well as identifying the causes of the differences.     

When a High Discount Rate Encourages Biodiversity

Include land in a neoclassical growth model and introduce a standard biogeographic relation between species recliners (biodiversity) and land. Assume that species provide utility. The optimal constant amount of land preserved for species is obtained from steady-state conditions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a high discount rate preserves more land when the elasticity of substitution between goods and species exceeds unity or when this elasticity is less than unity and technology is such that the output effect of a change in the interest rate exceeds the substitution effect.     

Home-owned versus foreign-owned firms in the UK automotive industry: Exploring the microfoundations of ambidextrous production and supply chain positioning

The UK automotive industry is home to a large number of foreign firms, demonstrating the open nature of competition. However, the industry necessitates both exploitative and explorative capabilities. Contingency theory suggests that firms align their internal structure with contextual factors. As such, the aims of this study were to investigate whether it was possible to distinguish home-owned (UK) and foreign-owned firms based upon: a) the microfoundations of ambidextrous production, which are conceptualised as lean and agile routines; and b) the tier at which these firms operate in the automotive supply chain. Survey data were collected from 85 home-owned and 55 foreign-owned firms within the UK Midlands automotive industry. Logistic regression results revealed that home-owned firms were significantly more likely to be implementing explorative (agile) production methods, whereas foreign-owned firms were significantly more likely to be implementing exploitative (lean) production. Home-owned and foreign-owned firms were found to be significantly more likely to be operating upstream and downstream in the automotive supply chain respectively. Thus, the findings support a contingency theory explanation, suggesting that firms align their performance priorities with contextual factors, but we argue that home-owned and foreign-owned firms have evolved to compete based on their different innovative capabilities, which are located at different tiers of the automotive supply chain. On this basis, although neither home-owned nor foreign-owned firms were found to be endogenously ambidextrous, we argue that foreign-owned firms internationalise into the UK automotive sector to exploit the explorative capabilities acquired by home-owned firms operating upstream in automotive supply chains, thus enabling ambidextrous capabilities at an exogenous, industrial level.