A computer assisted school bus routing strategy: A case study

The effect of routing changes on the efficiency of suburban-rural pupil transportation systems is demonstrated in a case study of a suburban-rural county in Virginia. A computer assisted routing method was used that included manual route design and computer aided route evaluation. Various policy options affecting routing were identified and new routes were developed. The recommended routes represented a 17% reduction in the number of routes required, a 19% reduction in the number of buses required, and a 57% reduction in the total number of vacant seats. While the computer assisted method used produced a more efficient routing structure, the process of manual route design was still slow and tedious. Techniques such as interactive computer graphics appear to be suited to the school bus routing problem and their use should be explored.     

Foreign assignment for female German managers

Foreign assignments are considered as an important instrument of management development from German companies. Professional expertise in foreign markets and cultures is becoming an increasingly important factor in advancement. It is significant that in the past only male managers have been given the chance for a foreign assignment. Consequently female German managers very seldomly have international working experience. An empirical research study in 13 German multinational companies investigated the role of German women as expatriate managers from the perspectives of personnel managers. © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

TRUCKING DEREGULATION AND MOTOR-CARRIER PERFORMANCE: THE SHAREHOLDERS' PERSPECTIVE

This paper utilizes an event study methodology to investigate the effects of deregulation on carriers' shareholders. This methodology compares the expected returns during a time period surrounding a particular event with actual returns during the same time period. These differences are referred to as prediction errors. The study investigates the prediction errors associated with individual trucking firms, as well as those associated with groups composed of regional carriers, national carriers, and the aggregate sample of firms used in the study. The results suggest that the passage of the Motor Carrier Reform Act on July 1, 1980, halted a serious 18-month downward trend in the aggregate sample's cumulative prediction error. Nearly all firms showed significant gains in the 18 months subsequent to deregulation. Using two control groups, the authors show that a large portion of this gain from the industry sample can be explained by lower and more stable fuel prices and a sharp upturn in the economy. The results also indicate that due to deregulation, the large regional trucking firms were able to outperform the small regional firms and the national firms in the more favorable economic environment present after deregulation.     

IS THERE A FRENCH SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS?

The particular history of French agriculture and the general intellectual environment in France have given the agricultural economics profession in that country a specific character which, in spite of many internal controversies, is illustrated by common beliefs about agriculture and common attitudes regarding research approaches contrasting with that of the profession in many other countries, including Britain. After the second world war, the development of agricultural economics was marked by the demise of ‘ruralism’, an ideology of agrarian fundamentalism, and its replacement by ‘productivism’, an ideology emphasizing economic growth and based on a simplified neo-classical paradigm. The surge of Marxism and dissatisfaction with the results of the policies advocated by the productivists led to a questioning of that paradigm. As a result, major hypotheses, theoretical issues, and concepts too often taken for granted in France and elsewhere should be re-examined.     

Real wages,quantity constraints and equilibrium unemployment: Belgium, 1955–1988

This paper examines the determinants of equilibrium wage and unemployment rates in Belgium within the framework of a quantity rationing, right-to-manage model with decentralised wage-setting. Empirical results are obtained by first using the Johansen maximum-likelihood procedure for the analysis of cointegration among the variables of interest. The information from this stage is then used to estimate a three equation econometric model explaining the wage share, the unemployment rate and the capital gap. The slowdown in world trade is depicted as the most important factor explaining the rise in unemployment in Belgium, with dampening effects due to wage control policies imposed in the eighties. Because we obtain only two cointegrating relations, for three endogenous variables, our results are compatible with the hypothesis of path dependency and multiple equilibria.     

The transmission of corporate financial information across national borders and equity market linkages

Although intra-industry earnings information transfers have been documented within individual nations, little or no attention has been given to examining whether these transfers also exist across national boundaries. This study sets out to investigate the issue by analyzing the abnormal stock market returns of British firms at the time of annual earnings announcements by U.S. corporations and the returns of U.S. firms at the time of profit announcements by British companies. Information transfers are also tested by examining whether earnings surprises of companies in one country are related to revisions in investment analysts' consensus profit forecasts of non-reporting firms in the other country. The accuracies of revisions in consensus earnings estimates are investigated. Evidence of transnational information transfers from the United States to Britain is found and the degree and level of the signal is related to various firm and industry characteristics including correlations in reported profits.     

Swiss banking secrecy: the stock market evidence

We examine the stock price reactions of four Swiss banks to negotiations between Switzerland and the European Union and between Switzerland and the United States to (i) obtain an estimate of the value of banking secrecy to Swiss banks, and (ii) distinguish between tax evasion and genuine privacy concerns as sources of that value. We find that the value of banking secrecy to the private banks is large, accounting for 8 to 14% of their market value; in contrast, the value of banking secrecy to the universal banks is small. We further find that tax evasion may be less important and privacy concerns more important a source of value of banking secrecy than might previously have been thought.     

Tail mutual exclusivity and Tail-VaR lower bounds

In this paper, we extend the concept of mutual exclusivity proposed by [Dhaene, J. & Denuit, M. (1999). The safest dependence structure among risks. Insurance: Mathematics and Economics 25, 11–21] to its tail counterpart and baptize this new dependency structure as tail mutual exclusivity. Probability levels are first specified for each component of the random vector. Under this dependency structure, at most one exceedance over the corresponding Value-at-Risks (VaRs) is possible, the other components being zero in such a case. No condition is imposed when all components stay below the VaRs. Several properties of this new negative dependence concept are derived. We show that this dependence structure gives rise to the smallest value of Tail-VaR (TVaR) of a sum of risks within a given Fréchet space, provided that the probability level of the TVaR is close enough to one.