Intelligent knowledge based systems (IKBS): organisational implications

Many factors other than technology can influence the forms of work organisation at several key stages during the process of change. This article discusses developments in the design of intelligent knowledge-based systems (IKBS) and argues that these new forms of computerisation will undermine the position of a number of management functions in the enterprise.     

Under what circumstances might demand and price rise? Does such an observation contradict the law of diminishing marginal utility?

Graham Dawson, Head of Economics at Bedford School, gives the fourth in the series of Model Answers for 'A' Level economics.     

How Much Will Consumers Pay? A Hedonic Analysis of the Cable Television Industry

Because cable television is the classic example of a bundled commodity, it is difficult to determine how consumers value individual cable networks offered on a typical system. This paper uses a modified hedonic framework to determine the marginal willingness to pay by consumers for individual cable networks. The traditional hedonic framework is adapted to allow for the lack of competition on the supply side of the market. It is clear that consumers do value some types of programming more than other types. Sports, news, and family programming all have positive implicit prices while program guides have negative marginal prices.     

Macroeconomic Impacts on Bulgarian Agriculture during Transition

An unstable and erratic macroeconomy in an economy in transition might be expected to affect agricultural performance. This is tested for Bulgaria between 1992 and 1997 using impulse response functions from a vector autoregressive (VAR) model. Despite data limitations, it is found that shocks to the foreign exchange rate and interest rate feed into farm prices and agricultural exports but equilibrium will be re–established within 5 years. Agricultural policies may not be sufficient to counteract the wider macroeconomic forces.     

Economic information versus quality variation in cross-country data

Data quality in the Penn World Tables varies systematically across countries that have different growth rates and are at different stages of economic development, thus introducing measurement error correlated with variables of economic interest. We explore this problem with three examples from the literature, showing that the problem appears to be minor in growth convergence regressions but serious in estimating the effect of income volatility on growth and in a cross-country test of the Permanent Income Hypothesis. The results suggest, at the least, a need for performing appropriate sensitivity tests before drawing conclusions from analyses based on these data. JEL Classification: E21, O47     

Determinants of Schooling in Egypt: The Role of Gender and Rural/Urban Residence

In this paper, we examine if there are gender differences in schooling attainment and the extent to which these differences are exacerbated for rural children in Egypt. Using a nationally representative cross-sectional survey, our estimation results find strong support for the hypothesis that being male and living in urban areas significantly improves child schooling. We show that relative to a female child who is “never enrolled” in school, a male child is over twice as likely to be currently attending school, and over two-and-a-half times more likely to have some schooling. These positive effects are particularly strong for rural male children. There are also regional variations, with a child (male or female) living in Upper Rural Egypt having a significantly lower likelihood of being currently enrolled. Finally, our estimation results point to large positive effects of father's education on the probability of current enrolment for all children. Mother's education, however, improves only the likelihood of current enrolment for female children, with no significant effect on male children.     

World consumer lifestyles databook

A case is made that the adoption of IT in European retailing is inhearntly conservative and is not characterized by the rapid revolutionary change sometimes argued to be the case. Reasons are suggested for the slow rate of integration of IT into retail management process and the limited range of applications in use operationally. These reasons are considered as within the nature of IT and within the culture of retailing. The impact of IT in retailing is considered in respect of cost reduction, improved asset productivity, changing internal relationships and the changing external relationships of retailers. Some areas of potential research are listed.     

Review of Economic indicators for professionals by Charles Steindel

Business Economics -