Self‐help in housing and chengzhongcun in China's urbanization

This article focuses on the housing issues of rural migrants arising from urbanization, with particular reference to chengzhongcun, a topic with considerable impact on policymaking. An attempt is made to understand the underlying rationale of self‐help in housing and the important role of chengzhongcun in sheltering rural migrants in the context of China's rural‐urban dichotomy. As demonstrated in this study, chengzhongcun accommodate, with little in the way of government resources and assistance, millions of rural migrants because of their social accessibility and affordability. While not denying their social problems, we argue that chengzhongcun in fact act as an innovative and positive agent to promote urbanization in present day China by housing massive numbers of rural migrants and assimilating them into cities. Current government policies towards chengzhongcun have generated a wide range of interest conflicts and confrontations. The consequences of such conflicts show that the government policies were problematic and unworkable, as they violated basic market principles as well as citizen rights. Policy strategy towards the redevelopment of chengzhongcun must acknowledge their credibility in the Chinese road to urbanization and requires more thoughtful and prudent consideration of migrants' demands for affordable housing.     

Equilibrium Investment Strategies and Output Price Behavior: A Real-Options Approach

The effects of competitive interactions on investment decisionsand on the dynamics of the price of a nonstorable commodityare studied in a model of incremental investment with time tobuild and operating flexibility. I find that an increase inuncertainty may encourage firms to increase their capacity.Furthermore, I show that it may be optimal to invest in additionalcapacity during periods in which part of the operational capacityis not being utilized. The impact of competition on the propertiesof the endogenous output price is dramatic. For example, I findthat price volatility may be increasing in the number of competitorsin the industry.     

Role transitions in older adults: A marketing opportunity

Consumers act out roles throughout their lives. Marketers assist in this role playing by providing the wardrobes, props, and sets in the form of products and services. They also help people understand acceptable role behavior by portraying roles in their communication programs. Consumers assume new roles as they age. This article is designed to enhance understanding of the often-ignored roles that accompany aging and provides examples of and suggestions for effective marketing for these role transitions.     

Rural traffic management: The Burrator Reservoir experiment

The introduction of traffic management schemes has been one response of the National Parks to the problem of ever-increasing car-borne visitors and the consequent damage caused to the rural environment. By reviewing these schemes and by determining and explaining attitudes towards one particular traffic management experiment, the paper aims to deduce lessons for future policy. The analysis, based on two visitor surveys, suggests that the likelihood of success is improved when schemes are integrated, containing both ‘carrot’ and ‘stick’ elements. Since public perceptions are also found to be pivotal to its success, appropriate marketing of a scheme is vital. The paper concludes, however, that to achieve the fundamental objective of greater accessibility with less mobility, a more wide-ranging marketing effort is required intended to engender a sea change in attitude towards both the car and public transport.     

Futures assessment by field anomaly relaxation : A review and appraisal

Futures research includes the problem of generating reasonably exhaustive and plausible scenarios for a given topic, a problem for which there are no truly satisfactory solutions. This article reviews and evaluates a method, field anomaly relaxation, first put forward some 20 years ago. The evaluation is in the context of an illustrative study of political developments in Europe. The research reconstructs and further develops the method and concludes that it has something to offer for scenario generation. Its weaknesses are identified and suggestions for further research are made.     

Multinationals and Training: Some Evidence from Irish Manufacturing Industries

This paper sets out to analyse the effect of plant and sectoral level characteristics on the provision of training to employees using plant level data for Irish manufacturing. There is no clear evidence that foreign owned plants are more likely to provide training. By contrast, we find that they spend less than domestic plants on training, ceteris paribus. There is also no evidence that plants that receive training grants are more likely to provide training. This may be likely to reflect the targeting of training grants on plants that are otherwise unlikely to provide much training. We do, however, find that training activity in the sector, either by other foreign or domestic plants, has a positive effect on plant level training activity, at least for domestic owned plants.