Satisfaction with the Informational Value of Magazine and Television Advertising

Abstract

This survey examines consumer satisfaction with the informational value of magazine and television advertising. Three significant conclusions are indicated by the data: (1) consumers are more satisfied with the informational value of magazine advertising than television advertising; (2) blacks are more satisfied with the informational value of both types of advertising than whites; and (3) middle-income are more satisfied with the informational value of both types of advertising than are low - and high-income.     

Government Partisanship and Property Rights: Cross‐Country Firm‐Level Evidence

Property rights are essential to economic development but vary with the political environment. We develop and test the claim that government partisanship influences the security of business firms' property rights: the perceived security of property rights increases when right‐wing parties take power and declines with the election of left‐leaning parties. Unlike research that uses country‐level aggregates to draw inferences about the determinants of secure property rights, we analyze survey responses of over 7,400 firm owners from 73 countries using a novel difference‐in‐differences approach. We find that the political partisanship of the government in power strongly affects individual perceptions of property rights: firm owners are more likely to perceive that their property rights are secure under right‐leaning governments. Our results are robust to firm‐ and country‐level economic performance as well as controls for political institutions that might induce more stability to property rights, such as the number of checks and balances (veto players) in a system. Overall, our results indicate that business owners' beliefs about the security of property rights are highly responsive to changes in government partisanship.     

Dynamics and objectives of international trade

Standard international trade models universally consider maximizing the availability of inexpensive goods as the objective of international trade. They then go on to show that tariffs and other impediments to trade cause a loss of economic efficiency. Fewer goods are available in the trading nations because of the impediments. The common method of analysis is to use price / quantity curves and two-nation / two-product curves.

Here we show that international trade is far more complex. It is a vast network beyond our present ability to accurately model. It can, however, be structured as a linear program. As a linear program it has many of the characteristics of a network. The chief difference is that linear programs provide static analysis. The world trade network is dynamic. However, by structuring it as a linear program, many of the components of international trade omitted by price/ quantity and two-nation / two-product analysis can be incorporated.

An important part of any programming analysis is determination of the objective function. Several objective functions are examined, particularly with respect to employment impacts. A variable compensatory tax (VCT) is selected as a means of dealing with the dynamics and complexity of international trade. It has the potential to repatriate 6 million jobs, is simple to implement, precludes retaliation, and would bring U.S. trade into a permanent balance of ± 5%.     

A Model of Spillovers Through Labor Recruitment

This paper develops a model where spillovers can be generated through domestic firm recruitment of employees at a multinational corporation (MNC) where more advanced technologies are employed. It is shown that both spillover and no-spilover equilibria are possible in the model, depending on the marginal costs and benefits of recruitment. Spillover benefits depend on demand parameters and the technological capabilities of the domestic firm, and spillover costs are determined by the MNC's internal wage. Compared with the no-spillover equilibrium, spillovers lead to fewer technology transfers by the MNC and higher market prices. [031, F23]     

An evaluation of the red-light camera programme in the city of Dammam,the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

This study evaluated the effectiveness of red-light cameras in Dammam, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Two methods were used to assess changes in crash risk at the intersections at which the red-light camera programme had been operating. Geospatial analysis was used to visualize trends in road crash density over the geographical region of Dammam and a pre--post-camera crash analysis was undertaken. The distribution of injury crashes was greater than that of crashes which included property damage, the latter of which was concentrated around central Dammam. The five red-light cameras installed in 2012 were located outside areas of high-crash and injury density, and the total number of crashes reported in the three-month periods after installation was double that before the cameras were installed. This increase in the number of crashes also occurred at the five comparison sites (without red-light cameras), indicating a null effect. The findings from this study are contrary to previous evaluations of speed management programmes associated with red-light cameras. The study highlights the challenges in obtaining data for such research and illustrates that a reliance on overt, fixed camera's to manage speed is unlikely to deliver significant reductions in road trauma.     

Generation Y’s Ethical Ideology and Its Potential Workplace Implications

Generation Y is a cohort of the population larger than the baby boom generation. Consisting of approximately 80 million people born between 1981 and 2000, Generation Y is the most recent cohort to enter the workforce. Workplaces are being redefined and organizations are being pressed to adapt as this new wave of workers is infused into business environments. One critical aspect of this phenomenon not receiving sufficient research attention is the impact of Gen Y ethical beliefs and ethical conduct in workplace contexts. It is widely accepted that distinct generational experiences shape ethical ideologies and ethical ideologies in turn affect the way people function in the workplace. Thus, Gen Y’s unique cohort experiences are likely to shape their ethical ideologies and consequent workplace judgments and actions. In this article, we examine Gen Y’s ethical ideology and study its impact on workplace functioning regarding leadership style, teamwork, and judgments about ethical violations. Our analyses indicate that Gen Y’ers tend toward situationalism (high idealism and high relativism), and their socially connected orientation produces more lenient judgments of collaborative vs. unilateral ethical violations. However, Gen Y’ers do exhibit individual variation. Relativist Gen Y’ers are more tolerant of ethical violations, whereas, Gen Y Idealists are less tolerant of ethical violations. High Idealists also show stronger teamwork and leadership characteristics. In addition, Gen Y’ers possessing servant leader traits exhibit incrementally better teamwork, and greater perceived unacceptability of ethical violations. We conclude by discussing implications of these findings for managing ethical climates and conduct.