An Indirect Test of Children's Influence on Efficiencies in Parental Consumer Behavior

A statistical test is applied to explore the possibility that children can affect the efficiency with which parents consume. Parents may receive some economic benefits from children in the form of reverse integenerational transfers that occur because of a positive influence children have on family behavior. Results show that not only do children have an influence on parental consumption, but also that the influence is beneficial. In fact, not accounting for such a benefit could cause an underestimate in such measures as the rate of return to education or the benefits from such governmental programs as Head Start.     

Performance of aqueous hazmat foams on selected hazardous materials

This exploratory research program represents a continuing commitment that was undertaken to provide, where possible, some solution to vapor control problems through the use of special foams, equipment and technical information.     

Whither the Twain Shall Meet

Susan Strange, States and Markets: an Introduction to International Political Economy (London: Pinter, 1988) 263 pp., hardcover £22.00, paperback £8.95.     

The R&D Effectiveness Index: A Metric for Product Development Performance

Measuring the overall success of product development efforts has been frustrating because there is no generally recognized metric to measure effectiveness. The R&D Effectiveness Index is introduced to address this need. It measures effectiveness by comparing the profit from new products to the investment in new product development. The article provides the details for calculating the index along with alternative interpretations. Michael McGrath and Michael Romeri report that this index was validated through a study of 45 electronic systems companies. They found a strong relationship between the R&D Effectiveness Index and other performance factors and believe that the R&D Effectiveness Index can be used to compare performance, measure improvement, and evaluate business units. Its application is illustrated in a case study.     

Mining History of Gamification Towards Finding Expertise in Question and Answering Communities: Experience and Practice with Stack Exchange

Recently, an online Q&A tool has become an essential part of individual communities and organizations of experts on specific topics. Using the answers to questions about specific topics will help such communities work more efficiently in their fields. Currently, Q&A online communities are adopting gamification to engage users by granting awards to successful users. In this paper, we investigate how to mine award achievement histories to find expertise. We propose the use of sequence analysis and clustering techniques. Specifically, we study the history of Stack Exchange, a large Q&A community that employs gamification. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of using award achievement history to find expertise in Q&A communities.     

Gay tourism in a sun and beach destination

Gay tourism is seen as an attractive business opportunity for many destinations. However, there is a lack of research at identifying the resources necessary for success in this type of tourism. This work is aimed at filling this gap by using the premises of the resource based view and transfers them to the analysis of territories to identify the valuable resources that are required for a sun and beach destination to attract gay tourists. To this end, this study has focused on a gay tourism sub niche, tourists lodged in gay-exclusive resorts in Gran Canaria. In order to confirm the validity of this approach, the relationship between the satisfaction of gay tourists and the condition of the valuable resources was studied by means of a robust statistical new method, namely Bayesian model averaging. That method permits the inclusion of uncertainty in the theoretical models that determine destination competitiveness, thus reducing many of the problems that arise in the application of the more conventional statistical methods in this type of analysis.