Full Stop: an extraordinary appeal for an extraordinary aspiration – putting leadership theory into practice

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC)'s Full Stop campaign was launched in March 1999 with one single aim—to end cruelty to children. The Full Stop Appeal was designed to ensure that sufficient financial resources would be in place to support such an extraordinary aspiration. It is the biggest charitable appeal ever attempted in the UK and aims to raise £250m. This paper outlines how the charity applied the leadership model of fundraising to its strategy, the lessons it has learned over the past four years, and how successful it has been. Having already raised more than £100m, Full Stop has broken new ground in its sector, revolutionised the NSPCC's fundraising capacity and, more importantly, has had far‐reaching consequences for its mission to end cruelty to children. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Open-mindedness in diverse team performance: investigating a three-way interaction

Studies have shown that open-minded dynamics contribute to diverse team effectiveness; however, there are few studies on the factors that influence the impact of open-mindedness. Survey data from 218 members of 47 professionally diverse teams support a significant relationship between open-mindedness and performance. Professional identification and professional salience were found to moderate the relationship with opposing effects. The study data indicate that although open-mindedness provides a context that facilitates the open exchange and discussion of diverse ideas and perspectives in interprofessional teams, this is less influential when members strongly identify with their profession. Conversely, member focus on professional differences enhances the value of team interaction characterised by receptiveness and openness. Analysis confirms a three-way interaction between open-mindedness, professional identification and salience on performance.     

Henry George Under the Microscope: Comments on "Henry George's Political Critics"

The annual supplement of the AJES for 2008 titled Henry George: Political Ideologue, Social Philosopher, and Economic Theorist had as its first and longest essay "Henry George's Political Critics" by Professor Michael Hudson. It offered a multitude of criticisms, most of which Prof. Hudson seemed to agree with. All purported to be criticisms of George as a political strategist, though some seem more to originate from Hudson's disagreement with theoretical positions George was bound to take. The purpose of this short paper is to show that Professor Hudson's long article fails to do what it seems intended to do. That is, it fails to show that trade unionists and especially socialists were "natural allies" of the Georgist movement, that it was George's fault that that they were not, and that George "allied" his movement irrevocably to "capital," rejecting its "natural allies."     

The Canadian underground and measured economies: Granger causality results

Using new time-series data for the size of the Canadian underground economy, the relationship between unreported and measured GDP in that country is examined. Granger causality tests are conducted, with a proper allowance for the non-stationarity of the data. It is found that there is clear evidence of such causality from measured GDP to ‘hidden’ output, but only very mild evidence of Granger causality in the reverse direction. This result supports similar evidence for New Zealand reported by the first author, and has several interesting policy implications.     

The London Business School econometric model of the UK

This paper describes the London Business School econometric model — the first fully computerized model of the UK — which has been used for regular public forecasting since 1966. The model, estimated on quarterly data, is organized around the income expenditure accounts with a fully integrated flow of funds sector which ensures consistency between portfolio decisions and income, savings and investment decisions. Aggregate demand is built up from its individual components so that demand influences are important for the short- and medium-term behaviour of the model. But there are important supply-side effects which work through the real exchange rate and real wages. Monetary conditions have a powerfull effect on the model through the exchange rate, personal sector wealth and interest rates. Wages and employment are determined in a labour market in which employment decisions depend on the level of demand and real wages while real wages depend on the level of unemployment, real benefits and direct and indirect taxes as well as underlying trends in productivity. Asset prices move in any period to clear both the spot and the future market in assets so that current asset prices in the equity, gilt-edged and foreign exchange markets reflect all current information about the expected state of the economy. In contrast, goods prices adjust sluggishly. The combination of continuously clearing asset markets and sluggish wages and prices gives the model many of the theoretical characteristics associated with the open-economy models of Dornbusch and Buiter and Miller.     

Instrumental variables regressions involving seasonal data

Various approaches to handling seasonal data are known to be equivalent in the context of least squares estimation of a fixed-regressor linear model. This note extends these results to models which have stochastic regressors and are estimated by the method of Instrumental Variables.     

Personal computer software for use in marketing education. Part 2

This paper is a comprehensive survey of what materials are available for teachers in universities, colleges and polytechnics. It is a state of the art review of personal computer software and includes references on how to get the material and also suggestions on how to use it. Because of its length, the paper has been published in two parts. Part 1 appeared in Vol 7.1. Part 2 covers model‐oriented application packages, the selection of packages and setting of exercises, and a comprehensive bibliography to Parts 1 and 2 containing over 250 references.     

Company investment announcements and the market value of the firm

This paper examines the stock market reaction to 402 company investment announcements made by UK companies during the 1991–1996 period. The market-adjusted abnormal returns are generally positive but small. Investment announcements are classified according to functional categories, and we find the level of abnormal returns to vary according to the type of capital investment being announced. In particular, we find the market to react more favourably to investments that ‘create’ future investment opportunities, than to investments which can be categorized as ‘exercising’ investment opportunities. The market reaction also varies with firm size, with large companies tending to experience smaller responses to announcements than do smaller firms. Chung et al. (1998 Chung, KH, Wright, P and Charoenwong, C. (1998). Investment opportunities and market reaction to capital expenditure decisions. Journal of Banking and Finance, 22: 41–60.  ) reported that the quality of a company's investment opportunities is the primary determinant of market reactions to capital expenditure decisions. The findings presented here lend some support to a role for investment opportunities in market valuations. Project size is also found to have a significant positive impact on the level of abnormal returns.     

I: making maastricht work

Giles Keating, chief economist of Credit Suisse First Boston, puts the case for the Maastricht agreement on monetary union after the Danes said 'No' in their referendum.