Employment, The Labour Force and Unemployment in Australia: A Disagregegated Approach

This article presents statistical analysis of the distributional aspects of labour market developments in the Australian economy from 1966 to 1985. The focus is on the adjustment of the labour force to changes in employment opportunities. Two sets of data for selected age/sex/marital groups are utilised in the analysis: regressions to test for differences in the sensitivity of labour force participation to employment opportunities and a series of tables documenting population adjusted changes in employment and the labour force. The aggregate relationship between employment changes and labour force changes (and hence changes in unemployment) is explained by the disaggregated data.     

III. Some causes and consequences of dependence and independence in the stock market

The fact that there are times when market movement is random and times when it is not is interpreted in terms of the hypothesis that the price of a stock is an aggregate opinion — the resultant of the opinions and decisions of a community of investors. Price, like any other opinion, will be most vulnerable to social and other sources of influence during times of uncertainty, an aggregate psychological state which can generate the kind of statistical dependence characteristic of non-random walks. Ramifications of this hypothesis are explored in a variety of stock market behaviors, such as the effect of tips, the impact of runs on trading volume during rising and falling markets, and the like.     

The Consumer’s Micro-Micro Gasoline Buying Decision

A “micro-micro” consumer problem of gasoline purchases is examined using daily price data. Comparing the optimizing consumer with one who buys gasoline at random, the paper finds optimizers save about 4% of their annual gasoline bill. The paper also provides some evidence about the costs of non-optimal gasoline buying strategies.      

The economic performance of cities: A Markov-switching approach

This paper examines the determinants of employment growth in metro areas. To obtain growth rates, we use a Markov-switching model that separates a city's growth path into two distinct phases (high and low), each with its own growth rate. The simple average growth rate over some period is, therefore, the weighted average of the high-phase and low-phase growth rates, with the weight being the frequency of the two phases. We estimate the effects of a variety of factors separately for the high-phase and low-phase growth rates. Growth in the high phase is related to both human capital and industry mix, while growth in the low phase is related to industry mix only, specifically, the relative importance of manufacturing. Overall, our results strongly reject the notion that city-level characteristics influence employment growth equally across the phases of the business cycle.     

Identifying Decision Useful Information with the Matrix Format Income Statement

We conduct an experiment to investigate the potential benefits of an alternative format for the income statement, the matrix format, initially developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and UK Accounting Standards Board in their joint project on performance reporting. Sophisticated financial statement users (financial analysts and professional accountants) and less sophisticated financial statement users (MBA students) were asked to extract information from a set of financial statements that included an income statement either in the IAS 1 format or in the matrix format. We find that the matrix format improves the accuracy with which users extract financial information. This result is driven by greater accuracy, for all user groups, on “below‐the‐line” items. Furthermore, despite lack of familiarity with the matrix format, its use did not appear to affect the time taken, the ease of extracting financial information, or users' task completion confidence; further experience with the matrix format could lead to benefits along these lines as well. Our findings may assist the FASB and IASB in their joint project on financial statement presentation.     

Der alte psychisch kranke Mensch

Zusammenfassung  Pflegediagnose Orientierungsst?rung — Es gibt immer mehr alte Menschen in unserer Gesellschaft. Damit steigt die M?glichkeit, im Alter psychisch zu erkranken. Das Institut für Gesundheits-System-Forschung Kiel prognostiziert eine Steigerung von an Demenz erkrankten Personen in den Jahren 2000 bis 2050 von 149,4%.     

The Effect of Multiknowledge Individuals on Performance in Cross‐Functional New Product Development Teams*

This study examines the effect of multiknowledge individuals (especially those possessing both marketing and technological knowledge) on performance in cross‐functional new product development teams. A survey of 62 cross‐functional teams shows that the proportion of multiknowledge individuals has an indirect positive effect through information sharing on product innovativeness and a direct positive effect on time efficiency of new product development teams.