South Africa's special employment programme of R600 million∗

In 1985 an amount of R6OO million was allocated for special employment projects. The most important ones were labour intensive projects by the public and private sectors, projects to support the small business sector, and the training of unemployed persons.

Various conditions were set for the programmes. Regarding the labour‐intensive projects for instance, a relatively small allowance was paid to the unemployed person in order to accommodate as many persons as possible, and to ensure the workers were not diverted from other employment opportunities. Furthermore, at least 50 per cent of the total funds allocated had to be for the wages of the unemployed persons. In terms of acceptability among both training institutions and the persons involved, the scheme for the training of unemployed persons was particularly successful.

Only a relatively small part of South Africa's unemployment problem can be addressed with a programme of this nature. Measures to address the structural unemployment problem remain first priority.     

Organizational Causes and Strategic Consequences of the Extent of Top Management Team Replacement During Turnaround Attempts

Researchers have argued that top management team changes are an important force spurring change at declining firms. Yet, studies find that top executives at some firms are able to avoid being replaced even though their firms perform poorly. Also, despite support from numerous case analyses, there is little systematic evidence that replacing top managers leads to substantial organizational change at declining firms. In this study, we examine these issues by looking at levels of top management team replacement at a sample of declining firms attempting turnarounds. We find that top management team replacement levels vary with the presence of inertial or change-creating forces within firms. In particular, reduced levels of top management team replacement occur during turnaround attempts at large firms and those that have followed the same strategic orientation for a long period of time. Meanwhile, increases in outsider control of the board are associated with increased levels of replacement. We further find that higher levels of top management team replacement are associated with greater changes in firm competitive strategy and firm structure and controls during turnaround attempts. Overall, our findings show that organizational-level forces play an important role in top management and strategic change processes at declining firms.     

EVALUATING UNCERTAINTY IN RISK-BASED INTERDEPENDENCY MODELING WITH INTERVAL ARITHMETIC

Several sources of uncertainty exist in the effort to quantify the efficacy of preparedness decision-making in interdependent systems. For the Inoperability Input–Output Model (IIM), a risk-based extension of the traditional Leontief model, which describes the propagation of inoperability throughout interconnected economic sectors, uncertainty is manifested in parameters describing the strength of interdependencies among sectors and in parameters describing the adverse impacts of a disruptive event, among others. As the model is used to evaluate preparedness options to reduce the impact of these disruptive events, such uncertainty can impact decision-making efforts. This paper introduces interval arithmetic as an approach for dealing with uncertainties in the IIM when probability distributions are not known and only variable bounds are available. Illustrative examples highlight the use of the approach as well as a means to improve the evaluation and comparison of risk management strategies in interdependent systems when only intervals are known.     

Deregulation and Women's Employment: The Diverse Experiences of Women in Britain

Tony Lawson (1999) argues that critical realism will facilitate revelatory and emancipatory projects in feminist economics. The strength of Lawson's argument lies in its rejection of social atomism and methodological individualism. Societies are best understood as structurally connected systems rather than as atomistic aggregates. Its weakness lies in its reliance on a humanist conception of human agency, a conception that is increasingly questioned by some feminists.     

Housing: the challenge for policy

In this article, Kate Barker, Chief Economic Advisor to the CBI, argues that housing market policies need to adapt to reflect the changing nature of the UK economy. In a flexible labour market with more job insecurity, a stronger rented sector is likely to be needed. But while policies have recently shifted away from supporting owner-occupation - in particular by reducing mortgage tax relief - there has been a lack of a coherent approach to encouraging affective forms of tenure. The article discusses a number of different policies which meet the two objectives of stimulating a stronger supply of rented housing, while reducing the volatility of the owner-occupied sector.     

The buyer's side of marketing research

The number of marketing research firms and the significance of their work is increasing. To clarify the procedure of contracting for their services, the authors provide guidelines for obtaining and evaluating marketing research proposals. They explain what kinds of information will be exchanged during the preliminary states of solicitation—what the research firm must know about the company and what the company must learn about the research firm. The nature of a research proposal is described in detail, both the kinds and amount of information it provides. The authors conclude with an explanation of five criteria for evaluating a research proposal.     

The Use of Valuation Models by UK Investment Analysts

This paper examines the use of valuation models by UK investment analysts. The study is based on, first, semi-structured interviews with 35 sell-side analysts from 10 leading investment banks and with 7 buy-side analysts from 3 asset management firms and, second, content analysis based on 98 equity research reports for FTSE-100 companies covered by the sell-side interviewees. We observe that analysts perceive the discounted cash flow (DCF) (and to some extent ‘sophisticated’ models in general) to have become significantly more important than prior survey evidence suggests, although we also find the (somewhat paradoxical) continued importance of ‘unsophisticated’ valuation multiples, notably the price/earnings ratio (PE). We find perceived limitations in the technical applicability of the DCF, which cause analysts to rely in practice upon valuation multiples and subjective judgement of whether the market price ‘feels right’. We also find that contextual factors, notably the analysts' need for their research to be credible to buy-side clients, cause the use of subjective, unsophisticated methods of valuation to be played down. Given the inherent flexibility of the DCF model, coupled with its ostensible credibility, it becomes the natural vehicle for conveying the analyst's research, even though it is very rarely relied upon to determine target prices and investment recommendations. We conclude that, while the literature has focused on the technical merits of alternative valuation models, analysts' actual usage of valuation models also requires an understanding of social and economic context and motivations.     

Examining fidelity of program implementation in a STEM-oriented out-of-school setting

In the United States and many other countries there is a growing emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education that is expanding the number of both in-school and out-of-school instructional programs targeting important STEM outcomes. As instructional leaders increasingly train teachers and facilitators to undertake new STEM focused programs, it will become especially important for these leaders to understand the concept of program fidelity, which seeks to examine the alignment between how a program is designed to be implemented and how that program is actually implemented in the field. This article discusses an exploratory study examining program fidelity within the geospatial and robotics technologies for the twenty-first century (GEAR-Tech-21) project, which is an out-of-school program teaching educational robotics and geospatial-related STEM concepts, across more than 20 different states, as funded by the National Science Foundation. The study results identified relationships related to program fidelity that were identifiable across various instructional modules, and associated with specific training and content characteristics.     

How Big of a Lemons Market is the Secondary Market for Private Equity Real Estate Limited Partnerships?

We find that shares of real estate limited partnerships sell at substantial discounts to net asset values (NAV) and these discounts are influenced by factors associated with agency costs and unrealized gains. Our study builds on previous work by Barber (1996) by examining a much longer time period (1994-2013), including additional control variables, and utilizing Tobit estimation instead of OLS, which we find superior. We find much larger effects of unrealized capital gains than Barber (1996). Factors that reduce fund managers’ freedom to take actions that might reduce shareholder returns such as leverage and high dividend payments reduce discounts.