Following the story: narrative mapping as a mobile method for tracking and interrogating spatial narratives

Museums and heritage tourism sites are highly curated places of memory work whose function is the assembling and ordering of space and narrative to contour visitors’ experiences of the past. Variations in such experiences within and between sites, however, necessitates a method that: (1) captures how guides, visitors, and exhibits interact within spaces when representing and performing history and (2) allows researchers to document those variations. We developed narrative mapping, a mobile and geographically sensitive form of participant observation, to enable museum scholars and professionals to systematically capture, visualize, and interpret tendencies and variations in the content, affective qualities, and spatial arrangements of museum narratives over multiple sites and across multiple tours at the same site. Two antebellum plantation museum case studies, Laura Plantation in Louisiana and Virginia’s Berkeley Plantation, demonstrate the method’s utility in documenting how stories are spatially configured and materially enlivened in order to analyze the ways enslaved persons are placed within these narratives.     

Delayed firm‐paid general training

This article adds the empirically verified, but analytically neglected, fact of delayed worker training to a model of general training. By delaying training, firms can gain partial information on worker‐firm matches, generating wage compression. Analytical results differ from those of other training models. In the noncooperative regime, all firm‐paid training is delayed, all worker‐paid training is immediate. With no externalities to other firms, the cooperative result is Pareto‐optimal. In a continuous‐time extension, firms choose a probationary period after which workers are trained. With longer probations, fewer bad‐match workers are trained and wage compression rises. Government training mandates are also studied.     

Leveraging the power of experiential learning to achieve higher-order proficiencies

Although experiential learning approaches, such as service-learning, have been shown to increase student motivation and academic achievement, faculty concerns about the costs of developing and implementing such courses have limited their adoption within economics. One cost that can be eliminated is the opportunity cost typically associated with “required” reflection exercises that are often perceived as taking time away from economic instruction. This article contributes to the existing literature by introducing a reflection mechanism based on programmatically appropriate project-management reports. This approach not only links experience and course content, essential elements of service-learning best-practice, but also facilitates the successful management of a complex project, thereby contributing to the development of higher-order proficiencies.     

Community Attributes Influencing Local Food Processing Growth in the U.S. Corn Belt

This paper examines local and regional attributes associated with growth in the food processing industry. The paper uses industrial location studies to develop a model of food processing plants'growth. Ordinary least squares (OLS) models are estimated to analyze which local, regional and state attributes are associated with county level growth, measured by a change in the number of establishments. The results suggest that food processing growth is associated with factors similar to those influencing the location of footloose manufacturing plants. However, growth in food processing sectors is associated with different local attributes depending on a firm's industry type (demand-oriented, supply-oriented, footloose).     

Underwriter Reputation and Initial Public Offers: The Detrimental Effects of Flippers

In this research, we examine the relationship between the reputation of investment banks and the investor clientele to whom they market initial public offers. We hypothesize that the most reputable investment banks have considerable distribution power but confine initial public offer sales to investors with long-term horizons in an effort to maintain prestige. Using the level of relative after-market trading volume to proxy for investor type, we find that as underwriter reputation increases investors with short-term trading horizons (“flippers”) tend to dominate the offerings over the lower prestige levels. For underwriters in the upper reputation tier, however, this dominance begins to decline with increasing reputation. In addition, we find a negative relation between the after-market price performance of the initial public offer firm and the first week's trading volume. The results suggest that flippers can be detrimental to the performance of initial public offer firms. While distributing power may be essential for the maintenance of the reputation of investment banks, the type of investor clientele also appears to be of major importance.     

The future for producers’ co-operatives

Drawing on a wider historical perspective and an in-depth case study, the authors seek to establish the status of the recent revival in worker co-operatives and the form that these organisations may take in the future.     

Responding to a coalfield closure: old Issues for a new regional development agency?

This paper examines the response of a new Regional Development Agency, Yorkshire Forward, to the sudden announcement that the Selby coalfield in North Yorkshire would close with the potential loss of 4000 regional jobs. Once the 'jewel in the crown' of the UK coal industry, its demise has repercussions beyond the Selby district. Following an examination of coal industry restructuring, previous regeneration efforts and issues, the paper considers the impact of closure. It is argued that by rapid analysis of the situation and by leading a Task Force to engage a range of interested parties and experts, the RDA has demonstrated a coordinated sectoral and spatial response to crisis management.