Missed opportunities? Reaching the ethnic consumer market

Changing population demographics within the UK have become a source of increased interest to marketers as companies have realized the importance of targeting their products and advertising efforts towards minority and ethnic groups. In addition, as the UK’s ethnic minorities grow in both numbers and in terms of prosperity, so does the commercial significance of this market. A clearer understanding of both the nature of changing markets and the relative importance of different minority ethnic groups as consumers is imperative to facilitate both consumer understanding and business development; marketers need to understand better how to target these people, what they have in common with the mainstream and where the differences lie. This paper seeks to describe current understanding of ethnic consumers and their impact on the marketplace while highlighting an area where future research is potentially of considerable benefit.     

Decision Making in Employment and Labor Arbitration

This experimental study examined the labor and employment arbitration decisions of four groups of arbitrators: (1) employment arbitrators who resolve disputes involving nonunion employees, (2) labor arbitrators who arbitrate cases in which an employee is represented by a union, (3) arbitrators in the National Academy of Arbitrators (NAA), and (4) students as a comparison of nonarbitrator decision makers with experienced arbitrators. A 2 ×2 ×4 factorial design was used, crossing arbitrator group with discipline standard and sex of the grievant. Results indicate that employment artibrators reinstate the grievant significantly less frequently than other arbitrators; however, the findings also reveal that all arbitrators make more favorable decisions under a just‐cause standard than under the newer META standard of discipline.     

On the Power of GLS-Type Unit Root Tests

Elliott, Rothenberg and Stock (1996), (ERS), present a 'GLS' variant of the Dickey-Fuller (DF) unit root test. Their statistic is approximately point-optimal invariant at a chosen local alternative, and usually displays better finite sample power than the DF test. Following the usual efficiency motive for GLS estimation, the higher finite sample power of the ERS test has often been attributed to the greater accuracy of the estimate of the series' non-stochastic component under stationary alternatives close to the null. This paper shows that the GLS estimates of the non-stochastic component are not, in general, more accurate. The power gain arises from the fact that the GLS statistic's null distribution has a greater positive shift relative to the DF test, than its distribution under relevant alternatives, and this persists even when the GLS estimates of the non stochastics have higher variance than the OLS estimates.     

Pamela Walker Laird. Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. xiv + 439 pp. ISBN 0-674-01907-5, $29.95 (paper).

Success is as much about whom you know as it is about what youknow and how you perform. Networks, mentors, and role modelsplay pivotal roles in corporate climbing and entrepreneurship.Although the business lexicon only recently incorporated theseterms into its vocabulary, Pamela Laird convincingly arguesthat these forms of social capital, which she calls pull, havealways helped determine success. Moreover, because they existprimarily among individuals who see each other as belongingto the same cohort, success     

Agendas and Strategic Voting

This paper describes a simple classroom experiment in which students decide which projects to fund on the basis of majority voting. Several agendas are used to generate a voting cycle and an inefficiently high level of public spending. Classroom discussion allows students to discover for themselves how to manipulate outcomes through agenda design and strategic voting. The exercise leads naturally to a discussion of political institutions and the size of government. Use: This experiment can be used in introductory and public economics classes to teach concepts of voting cycles and inefficiencies in public choice. Time required: Twenty minutes for reading instructions and taking votes and 15 minutes for discussion. Materials: A printout of the instructions for each participant and one deck of ordinary playing cards for each group of seven voters.     

The Impact of Statutory Sanctions on the Level and Information Content of Voluntary Corporate Disclosure

This article examines the effect of statutory civil and criminal sanctions on voluntary corporate disclosures by firms listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). Apart from direct investigation of the quantity of voluntary disclosure, we also investigate several possible consequences of altered corporate disclosure policies, namely properties of analysts' forecasts, the degree to which share prices anticipate the information content of periodic earnings reports, and the relationship between volatility and corporate disclosures. Results suggest that, post-sanctions, any increase in voluntary disclosure is confined to smaller firms and those which performed relatively poorly. Moreover, analysts' earnings forecasts did not become more accurate or less diverse following the introduction of statutory sanctions, and there was no statistically significant increase in the weight placed on each disclosure's ability to explain return volatility. There is some evidence that share prices have anticipated earlier the value relevant components of annual periodic accounting data, although this result is again confined to smaller firms. Although the tests used are not independent and have a limited time period post-sanctions, the results cast doubt on the extent to which the imposition of substantive civil or criminal sanctions affects corporate disclosure policy.     

业绩衡量的七宗罪

千万不要被"衡量,就会有改进"这句老话欺骗,如果衡量的是错误的东西,改进指标就没有什么好处。6世纪,教皇格里高利提出了著名的七宗罪——暴食、贪婪、愤怒、好色、懒惰、嫉妒和骄傲。企业的业绩衡量指标也有七宗罪。格里高利列举七宗罪的目的是