UK food shopping in the 1950s: the social context of customer loyalty

Food shopping – although often dismissed as dreary necessity – has always served a range of latent functions. In the 1950s, food storage limitations and tight budgets gave rise to weekly – often daily – shopping patterns that also allowed shoppers to meet certain social needs. Going to food shops, and the way that customer service was organized, produced significant interactional opportunities which were valued by participants. Exchanging news with other customers may have reinforced shopping patterns but shopkeepers, and knowledgeable assistants, were also useful intermediaries for product and usage information. Functional specialization in food commodities bestowed the aura of expertise, and direct accountability for the quality of what was sold provided a more personal style of retailing than is currently typical. Much depended on the perception of relationships. The 1950s were an important transitional period in the UK. Rationing gave way to wider choice and availability, while the market position of corner shops was increasingly eclipsed by town centre supermarkets. This article explores the social context of food shopping, and its relationship to the specific issue of customer loyalty.     

Evidence About Auditor–Client Management Negotiation Concerning Client's Financial Reporting

We develop a model of auditor-client accounting negotiation, using the elements of negotiation examined in the behavioral negotiation literature, elaborated to include accounting contextual features indicated in the accounting literature and suggested by interviews with senior practitioners. We use a questionnaire structured according to the model to describe the elements, contextual features and associations between the two groups in a sample of real negotiations chosen by 93 experienced audit partners. The paper demonstrates important aspects of the sampled accounting negotiations and makes suggestions for further empirical and model development research.     

Pattern recognition and financial time‐series

This paper investigates financial time‐series from the perspective of a practitioner in artificial intelligence methods and pattern recognition. It presents results from statistical experiments which suggest that financial markets operate with a measure of inefficiency and predictability. However, identifying the nature of any regularities and patterns presents a difficult challenge to the artificial intelligence community, in that established techniques make assumptions about the underlying process that mostly prove to be invalid for this class of data. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

实时嵌入式领导厂商翻身了吗?

尽管嵌入式软件由世界各地众多OEM设计者制造,但大多数的支持却由少量的软件供应商提供,他们供应操作系统、开发工具和通用开发环境,比如安全和通讯环境。     

From Partners to Players: Extending the HR Playing Field

HR professionals must always be “becoming” or constantly changing and adapting. For the last decade, many have argued the business partner role as a complement to traditional HR administrative work. We argue in this paper that HR professionals should move beyond partners to become players. HR professionals as players are “in the game, on the field, making a difference” through their HR work. In this article, we suggest that to become players, HR professionals must learn to coach, architect, build, facilitate, lead, and provide a conscience to business leaders. Specific knowledge and tools for each of these roles are described. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Real Estate Investment Acquisition Rules for Life Insurance Companies and Pension Funds: A Survey

Real estate comprises the major wealth of the United States as well as the world. Life insurance companies and pension funds are rapidly becoming major investors in real estate due to their large portfolios and annual cash inflows. Aggregate inflows of life insurance companies and pension funds are estimated to be about 150 billion dollars per year. Increasing amounts of these funds are believed to be going into real estate investments. This study surveys life insurance companies and pension managers on all facets of their real estate investments. The survey covers real estate portfolio size and type, portfolio composition, investment by property type, international investments, before-tax analysis, after-tax analysis, diversification strategies, computer usage, holding period assumptions and criteria for obtaining mortgages, equity positions and construction loans. The results of this study are then compared and contrasted with previous studies.     

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ECONOMIC POLICY REFORM?

The recent wave of democratization in developing countries andin formerly communist ones has sparked renewed interest in therelation between politics and economic adjustment. Adjustmentprograms, however well designed in a technical economic sense,are often politically difficult to launch and, once launched,to keep afloat. Success in implementing an adjustment programmay depend on a government's skill in generating political supportand holding off the opposition. This article explores the politicsof economic reform, drawing on country studies by politicalscientists and country specialists, the growing theoreticalliterature by economists, and the findings of a World Bank researchproject on the political economy of adjustment in new democracies.The article examines three broad clusters of variables: institutionalcharacteristics of the political system, aspects of the internaland external economy, and the design of the reform program.It also considers the relevance of political analysis for policymakersand for international financial institutions.      

Migration and education subsidies by governments: a game-theoretic analysis

This study is concerned with the implications of the brain drain. "The brain drain alters both the endowments of educated labor and the cost of increasing the endowment of such labor in both countries of immigration and emigration." It thus affects government subsidies for education both directly and indirectly. "This has implications for the burden of education expenditures and net supplies of educated labor in a world with a brain drain. The [author] shows the need for inclusion of a mechanism for transfers between the involved governments if a compensation scheme is to yield Pareto efficient migration."