Investing in Eastern Europe: Perspectives of chief financial officers

This study surveyed senior corporate financial executives to determine their views on Eastern European business opportunities. Responses cover a broad range of topics and provide new insight into their perceptions and experiences about key factors that influence investment decisions: expected profitability, risk, resources, and timing. An optimistic view emerged. This is noteworthy in light of the reputation of CFOs for caution, conservatism, and reticence. Their perception of a favorable return-risk ratio may serve as further encouragement for those considering Eastern European ventures. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Job security regulations and the dynamic demand for industrial labor in India and Zimbabwe

Government permission is required to dismiss or lay off even a single worker in India and Zimbabwe. Dynamic labor demand equations, derived from a CES cost minimization model, are estimated for 64 manufacturing industries in these two countries. The data reveal a substantial reduction in demand for workers but no slowing in adjustment of number of employees following enactment of the labor laws. In India, no comparable reduction in labor demand occurred in small scale plants uncovered by the job security regulations. Among larger Indian plants, the drop in labor demand is estimated to be largest in industries where: coverage of the legislation is more extensive, private ownership dominates, and there are fewer union members.     

Integrating the disabled into the work force: A survey of fortune 500 company attitudes and practices

Full participation in the work force continues to be an elusive goal for disabled individuals. One common explanation for this state of affairs is that employers tend to have negative attitudes about what the handicapped have to offer as employees and what is required to integrate them into the work force. Unfortunately, relatively little recent data is available about such attitudes. Thus, a survey of Fortune 500 companies was conducted to examine employers' attitudes toward the disabled. Employers' hiring and accommodation practices were also examined. Results were encouraging for the handicapped in some areas (e.g., performance perceptions) and a cause for concern in others (e.g., the perceived cost of making workplace accommodations). Level of exposure to the handicapped was also related to attitudes and practices. Limitations, research directions, and implications for corporations are discussed.     

Asymptotically optimal estimation of smooth functionals for interval censoring, part 2

Estimation in the interval censoring model is considered. A class of smooth functionals is introduced, of which the mean is an example. We consider case 2, with two observation times for each unobservable event time, in the situation that the observation times cannot become arbitrarily close to each other. It is proved that the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator of the functional asymptotically reaches the information lower bound.     

Will Free Trade with Political Science Put Normative Economists Out of Work?

Telling governments what to do is an ancient and important tradition in economics. Predicting what governments will do, i.e., endogenizing policy, is a newer activity, but one of growing prominence. The two activities appear incompatible: if what governments do is the result somehow of equilibrium behavior of self-interested actors, then advising governments is as senseless an activity as advising monopolists to lower prices or advising the San Andreas fault to be quiet. We show why and how advising can sometimes be a sensible activity, even when we hold sophisticated views about how governments operate.     

Using 'hard' and 'soft' technologies for global new product development

This paper reports on a study of the use of 'hard' and 'soft' technologies as tools for managing global new product teams. 'Hard' technologies consist of electronic mail, teleconferencing, fax, video conferencing, and other electronic means of facilitating communication. 'Soft' technologies, on the other hand, reflect managerial behaviors that are necessary to deal with the social and behavioral aspects of global new product development. Our study suggests that:
The frequency of use of hard technologies is greater for higher versus lower performing global teams.
The set of hard technologies perceived to be important is different for higher versus lower performing global teams.
How well soft technologies are used is greater for higher performing global teams.
Soft technologies are seen as more important than hard technologies.
Implications of these findings for managers and future research are discussed.     

Determinants of consumers’ aesthetic responses to Point‐of‐Purchase materials

The four‐dimensional nature of the Kaplans’ model of aesthetic response to images was tested on Point‐of‐Purchase (POP) material. It was found that only two robust dimensions emerged in the analysis, Clarity and Mystery. These however, had a significant influence on the subjects’ rating of the POP’s attractiveness. Path analysis suggested each of these dimensions was independent of the other. The implications of the findings are discussed and possible future areas of research identified.     

Managerial evaluation of exogenous forecast sources

This paper concerns the managerial evaluation of forecast vendors—individuals or firms offering for sale future forecasts of random variables relevant to managerial decision making. Assuming the forecasts are exogenous in the sense they are generated by a methodology unknown or unproven to management, the paper uses a logistic regression model to present a statistical test for informativeness that allows for an interpretation of the vendor's abilities. The advantage of the approach is that it requires as input only knowledge of the unconditional probability distribution of the variable being forecast and a relatively small historical track record of the vendor's forecasting performance. No benchmark forecast is necessary and few assumptions are required about the statistical process that generates the forecasts. As an illustrative empirical application, the paper presents an evaluation of the informativeness of the published long-range price forecasts by a veteran analyst of the Iowa hog market.