Exploring public house employee's perceptions of their status: a UK case study

This paper suggests that employees' perceptions of their occupational status are important to researchers and managers concerned with the broader nature of service work. This ethnography of a single, medium-sized chain of English public houses demonstrates the complex nature of status, identifying four key influences on barworkers' views of their relative standing at work and in the wider community: the nature of the occupation and the employing organisation/environment (barwork in a ‘respectable’ pub chain); the nature of customer relationships (informal, egalitarian); perceived professionalism (personal responsibility at work); and the relative occupational opportunities available (with equivalent jobs offering considerably less status).     

Stake Management in Men's Online Cosmetics Testimonials

Although the Internet has opened up new avenues for identity expression, many web‐based sources have yet to be examined. Online testimonials as a form word‐of‐mouth advertising are a relatively new development. The present study examines the construction of masculinities in men's cosmetics adverting testimonials presented on the website of a leading brand. The dataset is examined using discursive psychology and membership categorization analysis methodologies. The findings indicate that when men write facial cosmetics testimonials they still justify the use of these non‐typical masculine products even in the absence of others’ responses. The analysis highlights the continued difficulty men report in using typically feminized products, frequently accounting for their cosmetic use as a "corrective" measure rather than for beautification. The implications for the marketing of masculine products are discussed.     

The Stability of Price Dispersion under Seller and Consumer Learning*

In many markets, it is possible to find rival sellers charging different prices for the same good. Earlier research has attempted to explain this phenomenon by demonstrating the existence of dispersed price equilibria when consumers must make use of costly search to discover prices. We ask whether such equilibria can be learned when sellers adjust prices adaptively in response to current market conditions. With consumer behavior fixed, convergence to a dispersed price equilibrium is possible in some cases. However, once consumer learning is introduced, the monopoly outcome first found by Diamond (Journal of Economic Theory3 (1971), 156–68) is the only stable equilibrium.     

Panama's exports and its sovereign debt

Conclusion Panama has a foreign debt that represents 81.2 percent of GNP. In absolute terms, this is not large by the standards established by countries such as Mexico. For countries like Panama, which are not in the severely indebted middle-income countries, there is a tendency to overlook them with debt assistance programs. In 1989, the Brady Initiative recognized the need to help SIMICs and the Paris Club also stepped in with rescheduling agreements primarily for SIMICs with high official debt. In the 1980s, Panama rescheduled $594 million in debt.That does not reduce the debt; rather, it gives the country more time to pay it off. Exports (or income) growth, if used exclusively to repay the debt, could accomplish that goal in 39 years. But the relationship between existing interest rates and export growth cannot be expected to endure for so long. In fact, it might be impossible for Panama to ever pay off its debt, particularly when its long-term and short-term sum exceed its GNP. If the ratio of debt-to-exports is indeed constant, then Panama will be able to outgrow the debt as long as export growth is greater than the cost of servicing the debt.     

Cyberspace as a medium for terrorists

Given that terrorists are quickly acquiring technical skills that increase the utility of cyberspace to an effective distributed organizational network and the likelihood of potential attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure and defense systems, we consider the value of cyberspace to terrorists. To this end, it is necessary to address the following questions pertinent to the attributes of cyberspace to examine why and how terrorists may utilize cyberspace to advance their goals: (1) What is cyberterrorism? (2) Is cyberterrorism warfare? (3) Why would terrorists use cyberspace? (4) What do we know or anticipate that terrorists want to do in cyberspace? (5) How do we deal with terrorists in cyberspace? We conclude with an assessment of the cyberterrorism threat facing the U.S. today and recommendations that address increasing technical capabilities and security measures for intelligence gathering, digital control and supervisory control and data acquisition (DC/SCADA) systems, and emergency response systems.