LABOR TURNOVER IN THE USA AND JAPAN: A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES

Abstract. The labor turnover rate in Japan is less than half the US level. A small-scale survey of companies that operate in both Japan and the USA was conducted to examine reasons for the discrepancy. The main findings are that Japanese human resource policies, including steep seniority-earnings profiles, extensive fringe benefits, participatory management, and a reluctance to recruit experienced workers from other firms, contribute to the lower Japanese turnover rate. Additionally, workers of Japanese descent in the USA have a somewhat lower labor turnover rate than other Americans, suggesting some role for cultural differences.     

Water Resources in the Asia-Pacific Region: Managing Scarcity

Irrigation, together with improved crop varieties and substantial growth in fertiliser use in the late 1960s through the early 1980s, was a key factor in stimulating strong agricultural growth in much of the Asia-Pacific region. New sources of water are increasingly expensive to exploit, but irrigation continues to be a major catalyst for agricultural growth. In the face of increasing degradation, the maintenance of the water resource base must be a high priority policy objective. This paper reviews the management of water resources in the Asia-Pacific region, for countries with significant irrigated area: Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Korea-DPR, Republic of Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.     

ON-FARM FACTORS INFLUENCING INVESTMENT IN CROP SOWING MACHINERY*

Farmers in grain industries make important decisions about investment in crop sowing machinery. This paper shows how some on-farm factors affect profit-maximising levels of investment in crop sowing machinery. The paper examines the effect on optimal investment of discontinuities in sowing opportunities, varietal portfolios and soil portfolios.     

Adverse selection as an explanation of credit rationing and different lender types

An adverse selection model is utilized to demonstrate that informational asymmetry may make it wealth optimal for the financial intermediary (FI) to credit ration and to rationalize the existence of different lenders in the credit market. The crucial assumption is that borrowers differ in their tolerance for a lender-imposed default penalty, the severity of which also varies with the lender. The credit rationing portion proves that the FI will: 1) be forced by a binding regulatory constraint to overinvest in capital; 2) ration its worst risk class borrowers; 3) establish its optimal loan interest rate on the basis of the average quality of its loans and the interest rate elasticity of the borrower demand in its best risk category; and 4) decrease the total loan volume and increase the loan interest rate due to an increase in the capital requirement, but the effect on the default risk quality of its loan portfolio is ambiguous. The existence result is that if a lender has a high default penalty, he can charge a lower rate and attract only “good” borrowers, i.e., heterogeneous lender types encourage the screening of borrowers and vice versa.     

Methodological considerations in the use of electroencephalographic techniques in advertising research

This paper focuses on methodological concerns of interest to advertising researchers who seek to employ electroencephalographic (EEG) methods for assessing the impact of advertising stimuli. It is suggested that the validity of EEG applications in advertising research needs to be demonstrated on the basis of examining relationships between EEG measures and more traditional measures of evaluating advertising effectiveness. More attention needs to be focused on determining the content-specific cues that engage the viewer's attentional processes. Further research is necessary to determine hemispheric differences in processing emotional cues in advertising stimuli and relationships between subjective reactions to advertising stimuli and lateralized differences in activation patterns. It is suggested that individual differences in hemispheric preferences may be related to response to advertising stimuli and that computersimulated brain topographical techniques may by useful in revealing shifts in region-specific activation patterns during exposure to advertising stimuli such as television commercials.