A probit analysis of the changes in the financial characteristics of newly quoted small firms, 1970–73 and 1980–83

An important reason for the establishment of the UK Unlisted Securities Market was to provide capital for promising small firms. This paper makes two comparisons: a) between selected financial characteristics of a sample of small firms that took advantage of this opportunity and a sample of firms that did not; and b) between any differences in these characteristics and those between a sample of small firms that were floated on the Stock Market between 1970–73 and a sample of small firms that remained unfloated. Probit was employed. The results suggest floated firms were on average more profitable and faster growing, though with the latter relationship not particularly strong. There was little significant difference in gearing or liquidity. The owners of floated firms were prepared to take less remuneration than average during the 1970s but not during the 1980s.     

Point pattern analyses of accomodation in Toronto

This paper draws attention to the significance of large cities as tourist destinations and to the importance of accomodation establishments as a component of the urban fabric. Using accomodation directories as the major source of information, the changing numbers and types of accomodation are described and the spatial distribution of accomodation is analyzed using three methods of point pattern analysis. An increase in the number of establishments has been replaced by a more recent decline. There has also been a decline in the relative importance of motels. The average size of establishments has increased markedly and the very large hotels, which are less constrained spatially than the smaller units, nevertheless are concentrated in the downtown area and the airport environ.     

A review of some unusual applications of signal detection theory

Quality & Quantity -     

Non-Conscious Influences on Consumer Choice

While consumer choice research has dedicated considerable research attention to aspects of choice that are deliberative and conscious, only limited attention has been paid to aspects of choice that occur outside of conscious awareness. We review relevant research that suggests that consumer choice is a mix of conscious and nonconscious influences, and argue that the degree to which nonconscious influences affect choice is much greater than many choice researchers believe. Across a series of research domains, these influences are found to include stimulus that are not consciously perceived by the consumer, nonconscious downstream effects of a consciously perceived stimuli or thought process, and decision processes that occur entirely outside of awareness.     

A generalisation of Gumbel's bivariate logistic distribution

Summary The bivariate distributionF(x, y)=1/[1+exp(–x)+exp(–y)] was examined byGumbel. We have generalised this expression by raising it to an arbitarary power. Such a distribution may occur as a mixture of bivariate extreme-value distribution. As well as giving its basic properties, we have paid special attention to measures of correlation alternative to the product-moment, namely, Kendall's and Spearman's rank correlations and the product-moment correlation calculated after transforming the marginal distributions into Normal ones. An application to the multifactorial model of disease transmission is outlined.     

Resolving questions about bias in real and hypothetical referenda

Despite 10 years of research on behavior in hypothetical referenda, conflict remains in the literature on whether or not the mechanism generates biased responses compared to real referenda, and the nature and source of any such bias. Almost all previous inquiry in respect of this issue has concentrated on bias at the aggregate level. This paper reports a series of three experiments which focuses on bias at the individual level and how this can translate to bias at the aggregate level. The authors argue that only an individual approach to hypothetical bias is consistent with the concept of incentive compatibility. The results of these experiments reflect these previous conflicting findings but go on to show that individual hypothetical bias is a robust result driven by the differing influence of pure self-interest and other- regarding preferences in real and hypothetical situations, rather than by a single behavioral theory such as free riding. In a hypothetical situation these preferences cause yea-saying and non-demand revealing voting. This suggests that investigation of individual respondents in other hypothetical one-shot binary choices may also provide us with insights into aggregate behavior in these situations. Alphabetical list of authors no seniority of authorship attributed.     

BEVQUAL: a tool for measuring performance quality in beverage operations

The main objective of this study was to develop an instrument to measure the multidimensional nature of performance quality in beverage establishments. This study was based on a sequential exploratory mixed methods design. Interviews with beverage managers and customer focus groups were conducted to create an initial instrument. After that, 405 customers were surveyed, and the final BEVQUAL instrument was developed, including six dimensions that were measured with 23 items. Atmosphere, service quality, and pricing were shown to be good predictors of customer satisfaction, while ambiance, beverage quality, and location did not affect customer satisfaction.     

Measuring the Success of the Holland Hexagon

J. L. Holland's approach to personality (and careers that aresuitable for different personality types) involves scoring peopleon six personality measures and intercorrelating the six scores;there is a hypothesis about the relative sizes of the fifteencorrelations. In the present paper, some statistics are proposed fordescribing how well this hypothesis (and three variants of it) matches an observed correlation matrix. These statistics are analogousto a correlation coefficient. A variables-in-common model isgiven that justifies the most parsimonious of the hypotheses considered.