The evolution of educational inequalities through secondary school: Evidence from a South African panel study

Schooling outcomes in South Africa are characterised by significant inequalities on the basis of race and socio-economic status. This paper reports on findings from a unique panel dataset that follows individuals who participated in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study in 2002 as Grade 8 students through to their secondary school-leaving examination (known as ‘matric’) in Grade 12. The paper investigates the extent to which secondary schools differ in converting Grade 8 achievement into matric outcomes. Achievement in Grade 8 is strongly predictive of survival to matric, passing matric and performance in matric. Many students had extremely weak mathematical proficiency in Grade 8 and yet decided to take matric mathematics, only to fail the subject. Increasing the number of matric mathematics passes is a strong policy imperative. Our analysis suggests that the way to achieve this is to improve mathematics learning at earlier stages of the school programme rather than through indiscriminate mathematics participation in matric.     

Positioning of Financial Services for Competitive Advantage

The financial services sector is becoming increasingly competitive. Deregulation allows formerly nonoverlapping financial institutions to compete. To survive and succeed, financial institutions must develop strong positions. A position summarizes the distinctive competence that a company seeks to convey to the marketplace to establish its competitive advantage. In this article, Christopher Easingwood and Vijay Mahajan describe a number of positioning attempts in the financial services sector. They are guided by two central objectives.
The first is to show how the special characteristics of services give rise to eight different positioning possibilities for financial services organizations. These positions present a range of potential options from which the manager may choose. For instance, an "extra service" position is one option, a "performance" position is another.
The second objective is to demonstrate the use of the positioning framework, with examples taken from the insurance sector to provide illustrations rather than a complete picture of insurance positioning.
The article concludes with a number of recommendations. For instance, financial institutions should avoid overcrowded positions and occupy underexploited positions. If accepted, these recommendations should help the financial services executive develop a competitive positioning strategy.     

New Product Models: Practice, Shortcomings and Desired Improvements

Vijay Mahajan and Jerry Wind report the results of a study conducted to assess the role of new product models in supporting and improving the new product development process. The study focused on current industry practice in deciding which models and methods to use, their shortcomings and desired improvements. The results have implications for developers, suppliers and users of new product forecasting models. The article concludes with a research and implementation agenda to further foster and benefit from advances in new product models.     

Integrating time and space in technological substitution models

This article presents a model that simultaneously considers both time and space dimensions of innovation adoption for forecasting technological substitution. An empirical illustration is presented, and model limitations and further extensions are discussed.     

Voluntary Disclosure of Management Earnings Forecasts in IPO Prospectuses

Asymmetric information and mechanisms for its resolution in the initial public offering (IPO) process are subjects of extensive research and debate. In this paper, we investigate the impact of one such mechanism, namely voluntary disclosure of management earnings forecasts by issuers of IPOs, as a means of reducing asymmetric information as well as ex ante uncertainty. Our focus is on the relative importance of this voluntary disclosure mechanism on both IPO underpricing and post‐issue return performance. Our results indicate that management earnings forecasts provide important and incremental information compared to other means of reducing asymmetric information, and these disclosures appear to improve the environment of IPO issuance. For example, our underpricing results show that firms that choose to provide forecasts leave 'less money on the table' with a lower degree of underpricing. In terms of post‐issue performance, firms whose forecasts turn out to be optimistic are penalized significantly relative to other forecasters and non‐forecasters.     

Localization--the revolution in consumer markets

Standardization has been a powerful strategy in consumer markets, but it's reached the point of diminishing returns. And diversity is not the only chink in standardization's armor: Attempts to build stores in the remaining attractive locations often meet fierce resistance from community activists. From California to Florida to New Jersey, neighborhoods are passing ordinances that dictate the sizes and even architectural styles of new shops. Building more of the same--long the cornerstone of retailer growth--seems to be tapped out as a strategy. Of course, a company can't customize every element of its business in every location. Strategists have begun to use clustering techniques to simplify and smooth out decision making and to focus their efforts on the relatively small number of variables that usually drive the bulk of consumer purchases. The customization-by-clusters approach, which began as a strategy for grocery stores in 1995, has since proven effective in drugstores, department stores, mass merchants, big-box retailers, restaurants, apparel companies, and a variety of consumer goods manufacturers. Clustering sorts things into groups, so that the associations are strong between members of the same cluster and weak between members of different clusters. In fact, by centralizing data-intensive and scale-sensitive functions (such as store design, merchandise assortment, buying, and supply chain management), localization liberates store personnel to do what they do best: Test innovative solutions to local challenges and forge strong bonds with communities. Ultimately, all companies serving consumers will face the challenge of local customization. We are advancing to a world where the strategies of the most successful businesses will be as diverse as the communities they serve.     

The art of conversation: eliciting information from experts through multi-stage communication

We examine the strategic interaction between an informed expert and an uninformed decision maker, extending the analysis of Crawford and Sobel (Econometrica 50 (1982) 1431). We modify their model to allow for more extensive communication between the two parties and show that face-to-face communication between the expert and the uninformed decision maker followed by a written report from the expert leads to improved information transmission. In (almost) all cases, there exists an equilibrium in our modified model that ex ante Pareto dominates all of the equilibria identified by Crawford and Sobel. This remains true even if the expert's bias is so great that in their model no information would be disclosed.     

Understanding the quality–quantity conundrum of customer referral programs: effects of contribution margin,extraversion, and opinion leadership

Firms can substantially profit from customer referrals, but they must understand the different stages of the referral process to determine what drives the number of referrals (first stage), conversion (second stage), and average contribution margin per referral (third stage). Applying a framework that integrates perceptual and behavioral drivers, this study uses a financial services company’s customer survey and transaction data to investigate how the effect of contribution margins of referring customers at all three stages depends on their perceived extraversion and opinion leadership. Extreme extraversion and opinion leadership diminish the positive effect of the contribution margins of referring customers on the number of referrals; their effect on the number of successful referrals is insignificant. In terms of the contribution margin of successful referrals, extraversion has a negative and opinion leadership a positive moderating effect.