Unequal jobs or unequal pay?

This article draws on new data to consider whether women would benefit most from upgrading the skill levels of their jobs or from achieving equal pay for work of equal value. It looks in detail at skill, gender, and whether work is full-time or part-time, concluding that reassessment of the value of women's jobs would be of greater immediate financial benefit to women than upgrading the skill level of their jobs unless this upgrading gave them access to men's jobs at men's pay and benefit rates.     

The role of market research for charities: Identifying target groups and developing successful relationships

No one can find friends by sitting at home, and no relationship can develop without plenty of interaction between the people involved. However, charities with large numbers of donors and volunteers cannot be expected to have day-to-day contact with more than a handful of their key supporters. This paper illustrates how market research can be used by charities as the conduit between charities and their supporters — not only to show how the relationship between the two sides can be developed to best effect, but also to identify the most appropriate target groups to find new support.     

Work–life policies and female faculty representation in US doctoral‐granting economics departments

This article examines the relationships between work–life policies and female faculty representation and promotion at US doctoral‐granting economics departments. The data were collected in 2012 on tenure‐track and tenured full‐time faculty from 125 departments and updated in 2018 to include promotion status. Variables include individuals and their educational backgrounds, professional experience and publications. Only publications and experience are statistically significant for predicting academic rank for the female subsample, and the impact of publications is much larger for women compared with men. Work–life policies differ in explaining the representation of women across academic ranks. Dual‐career policies have a positive effect on female representation at the assistant and associate levels but do not have a statistically significant impact at the full professor level. National Science Foundation ADVANCE grantee universities have increased female representation across all ranks, but the effect is the smallest at the full professor level. Work–life policies are insignificant in predicting promotion.     

The North American–European Union Dispute Over Beef Produced Using Growth Hormones: A Major Test for the New International Trade Regime

At the time, the negotiation of the SPS agreement was seen as a major accomplishment of the Uruguay Round. One of the first major tests of both the SPS and the WTO’s new dispute settlement system was the long standing and acrimonious dispute between the EU and the US and Canada over trade in beef produced using hormones. Both the SPS and the disputes system performed as expected but the EU, the loser in the case, has chosen to ignore the WTO Panel’s ruling and accept retaliation. As a result, the credibility of the WTO is threatened and the outcome suggests that new negotiations may be required. The issues in the case are outlined and implications for trade in biological products drawn.     

Culture and accounting change: A new perspective on corporate reporting regulation and accounting policy formulation

This paper proposes and illustrates a new methodological framework for studying corporate reporting regulation and accounting policy formulation at the nation specific level. The process of corporate reporting regulation is viewed as a social system, and change analysis is used to determine the essential properties of such a system. The framework allows examination of the system's norms and values; the nature of its interdependencies both internally and with other social systems; the factors to which the system is especially sensitive; and the way in which culture influences the form and functioning of the system's elements.     

Traceability in the Canadian Red Meat Sector: Do Consumers Care?

Increased traceability of food and food ingredients through the agri-food chain has featured in recent industry initiatives in the Canadian livestock sector and is an important facet of the new Canadian Agricultural Policy Framework (APF). While traceability is usually implicitly associated with ensuring food safety and delivering quality assurances, there has been very little economic analysis of the functions of traceability systems and the value that consumers place on traceability assurances. This paper examines the economic incentives for implementing traceability systems in the meat and livestock sector. Experimental auctions are used to assess the willingness to pay of Canadian consumers for a traceability assurance, a food safety assurance, and an on-farm production method assurance for beef and pork products. Results from these laboratory market experiments provide insights into the relative value for Canadian consumers of traceability and quality assurances. Traceability, in the absence of quality verification, is of limited value to individual consumers. Bundling traceability with quality assurances has the potential to deliver more value.     

The Role of Hospital and Market Characteristics in Invasive Cardiac Service Diffusion

Little is known about how the adoption and diffusion of medical innovation is related to and influenced by market characteristics such as competition. The particular complications that are involved in investigating these relationships in the health care sector may explain the dearth of research. We examine three invasive cardiac services: diagnostic angiography, percutaneous coronary interventions, and coronary artery bypass grafting. We document the relationship between the adoption by hospitals of these three invasive cardiac services and the characteristics of the hospitals, their markets, and the interactions among them, from 1997 to 2014. The results show that the probability of hospitals’ adopting a new cardiac service depends on competition in two distinct ways: (1) hospitals are substantially more likely to adopt an invasive cardiac service if competitor hospitals also adopt new services; and (2) hospitals are less likely to adopt a new service if a larger fraction of the nearby population already has geographic access to the service at a nearby hospital. The first effect is stronger, leading to the net effect that hospitals duplicate rather than expand access to care. In addition, for-profit hospitals are considerably more likely to adopt these cardiac services than are either nonprofit or government-owned hospitals. Nonprofit hospitals in high-penetration, for-profit markets are also more likely to adopt them relative to other nonprofits. These results suggest that factors other than medical need—such as a medical arms race—partially explain technological adoption.     

RV Traveler’s Pull Factors to Campgrounds in Leisure Tourism

The purpose of this study was to identify the underlying structures of RV traveler’s pull factors to campgrounds and confirm the results by using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis with multiple data sets. The results identified the following five dimensions of the campground traveler’s key attributes: Activity, Amenity, Essentials, Price, and Store. The “Essentials” factor had a grand mean of 4.47, which was the highest among the five factors. Therefore, campground owners and managers should pay extra attention to maintaining a high quality on those essential attributes first, before considering adding or promoting any other items.