The social disorder of the broadened concept of marketing

The concept of “social order” is fundamental to the stability of most social systems. In this paper, three dimensions of social order—drawn predominantly from the writings of Talcott Parsons—are analyzed in terms of how they are influenced by broadened marketing. The authors maintain that the widespread acceptance and application of broadened marketing,defined as marketing, is inconsistant with social order and could ultimately erode the reputation of all marketing practioners. Furthermore, such a series of events could lead to the severe regulation of marketing practices and the development of inhibitions by bright young students regarding the formal study of marketing.     

Technology scanning: An evaluation procedure

This paper descibes an approach to the problem of evaluation in the public sector. The schema, called technology scanning, was developed during 1968 to create a research and development priority program for the State of Connecticut. In late 1969, a second major application was initiated in the Cohoes, New York, Model Cities program. The basis of technology scanning is a grid on which the problems or system's goals are arrayed against the solutions. The socio-economic importance of the goals and the effectiveness of the solutions in meeting these goals are rated by panels made up of the system's members ranging from technical experts to concerned citizens. The grid is then solved to produce a list of the most important solutions. These solutions are later evaluated against their projected contribution as described in the grid. The process may be repeated cyclically to allow programs to be replanned on an annual basis.     

Classical Ricardian Theory of Comparative Advantage Revisited

According to the classical Ricardian theory of comparative advantage, relative labor productivities determine trade patterns. The Ricardian model plays an important pedagogical role in international economics, but has received scant empirical attention since the 1960s. This paper assesses the contemporary relevance of the Ricardian model for US trade. Cross-section seemingly unrelated regressions of sectoral trade flows on relative labor productivity and unit labor costs are run for a number of countries vis-à-vis the United States. The coefficients are almost always correctly signed and statistically significant, although much of the sectoral variation of trade remains unexplained.     

The role of securitization in mortgage renegotiation

We study the effects of securitization on renegotiation of distressed residential mortgages over the current financial crisis. Unlike prior studies, we employ unique data that directly observe lender renegotiation actions and cover more than 60% of the U.S. mortgage market. Exploiting within-servicer variation in these data, we find that bank-held loans are 26–36% more likely to be renegotiated than comparable securitized mortgages (4.2–5.7% in absolute terms). Also, modifications of bank-held loans are more efficient: conditional on a modification, bank-held loans have 9% lower post-modification default rates (3.5% in absolute terms). Our findings support the view that frictions introduced by securitization create a significant challenge to effective renegotiation of residential loans. We also provide evidence supporting the affordability focus of recent policy actions, such as the Home Affordability Modification Program.     

Male nudity in advertisements: A modified replication and extension of gender and product effects

This article explores the relatively unknown effects of male nudity in print ads on selected consumer responses. A previously used experimental design that examines different model dress levels in conjunction with two different products was replicated to test dress level, respondent, and product effects. Multivariate analysis of variance results indicated that respondent gender and dress level of the model significantly affect measures of mood, attitude toward the advertiser, attitude toward the ad, and attitude toward the brand. These findings provide important information to advertisers considering using male nudity or suggestive poses in ads and provide support for oppositesex and product congruency effects found previously in other research. She received her D.B.A. from Louisiana Tech University. Her research has appeared in theJournal of Business Ethics, Journal of Health Care Marketing, and numerous conference proceedings. His research has been published in regional journals and conference proceedings. His articles have appeared in journals such as theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Retailing, andJournal of Business Ethics.     

Rules and software for detecting rank degeneracy

We describe an algorithm that can be used to select a set of independent columns of a matrix when numerical rank can be determined, and we associate the uncertainty of the data with rank selection. Mathematical software written in Fortran which implements this algorithm is available for a variety of computing machines.     

Chicken Soup for the Out‐of‐Step Scholar's Soul

This paper argues that the long‐standing predominance of a particular approach to science neither makes it uniquely scientific nor superior to rival approaches. To do so it examines the dominant scientific explanation of the 17^th and early 18^th centuries: the mechanical philosophy. The mechanical philosophy episode demonstrates the fragility of even the most entrenched scientific wisdoms and provides encouragement for out‐of‐step scholars everywhere.