Additive and Multiplicative Uncertainty Revisited: What Explains the Contrasting Biases?

above the certainty level while for additive uncertainty the price should be lower than the certainty level. This note gives an intuitive explanation for the result after first presenting a parsimonious review of the two models. We also discuss which, if either, of the two models is more realistic. Received December 14, 2001; revised version received July 16, 2002 Published online: April 30, 2003 We thank referees for helpful comments. Ciaran Driver would like to acknowledge the research facilities from ANU, Canberra for their help in writing this paper.     

Measuring the Impact of Regulation: A Study of Canadian Basic Cable Television

We evaluate the appropriateness of regulation within the Canadian cable television industry by applying both parametric and non-parametric approachesto measure scale efficiency. Although we begin with a sample offering adequatedegrees of freedom for parametric estimation, important policy issues lead us toconsider further estimation over sub-samples. Since some of these sub-samplesare small enough that parametric models cannot guarantee reliable estimates, weobtain production characteristics non-parametrically through data envelopmentanalysis. The nonparametric results for scale efficiency support the parametricresults. We find evidence against a natural monopoly argument that might havejustified continuation of the mandated monopolization of Canadian cable televisionservice. By the end of the sample period, there were no longer substantial economiesof scale in most relevant markets.     

Professionalisation or incarceration? Household engineering, accounting and the domestic ideal

Social constructionist theories of gender are utilised to explore the relationship between household accounting and patriarchy during the early twentieth century in the USA and Britain. This period witnessed a reformulation of the ideology of domesticity founded on precepts derived from modish scientific management. It is argued that the suite of calculative techniques prescribed by ‘household engineers’ merely attempted to occupy middle class women in the domestic sphere. Rather than offering a source of professionalisation and liberation, the practice of financial management, costing, record keeping and time and motion study, contributed to a reassertion of private patriarchy, confirmed the gendered nature of spatiality, reinforced the role of woman as a consumer and diverted attention from career building outside the home.     

ENTERPRISE WITHOUT UNIONS: THE MANAGEMENT OF EMPLOYEE RELATIONS IN NON-UNION FIRMS

Employee relations in non-union settings remain largely uninvestigated by industrial relations researchers. This article examines the management of employee relations in establishments in high technology industries in the Southeast of England - a sector and locality frequently identified with high levels of non-unionism. Moreover, high technology firms are frequently seen as exemplars of new human resource management techniques designed to substitute for unions. Our data from postal and interview surveys of 115 establishments suggests that HRM is only one, and by no means the dominant, approach to managing employee relations in high technology establishments.     

Advertising,Price and Quality in Self–regulating Professions: A Survey

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the relationship between advertising, fees and quality in the self–regulating professions. Much of the literature is derived from the perspective of advertising as an information–enhancing device, helping to reduce the information asymmetry between professional and client. This is consistent with the majority of the empirical studies which suggest that advertising tends to have a downward effect on professional fees, with little if any adverse effect on quality. There are, however, important issues of method and measurement which may lessen the force of this conclusion     

Fiscal sustainability and solvency: theory and recent experience in Indonesia

A major challenge for Indonesian economic policy makers is to avoid the recurrence of conditions that could trigger a new economic crisis. One of the important dimensions of this challenge will be to conduct fiscal policy in a way that is sustainable, given the level of interest rates and the rate of growth of the economy. This paper synthesises various approaches to the measurement of fiscal sustainability that have appeared in the economic literature, relates these measures to the fundamental concept of fiscal solvency, and applies the framework to Indonesia over the period 1991–2003. The domestic and foreign debt positions of the central government are treated separately, to capture the influence of exchange rate changes on the relative costs of domestic and foreign borrowing. The empirical analysis indicates that Indonesia has met the fiscal sustainability criterion in recent years, except when the rupiah has depreciated heavily.