British trade union membership,density and decline in the 1980s: a research note

This article is concerned with British trade union membership statistics. It provides three different estimates of trade union density and considers their meaning and significance. It also assesses the reliability of union membership figures, and finally it provides fresh data on the unemployed membership of trade unions.     

Reinforcement versus balance response in sequential choice

Psychologists often explore the impact of one act on a subsequent related act. With an eye to the marketing literature, this paper explores two properties of sequential choices that involve the resolution of competing goals. Reinforcement occurs when the goals driving the first choice are made stronger by that choice and result in a congruent subsequent choice. Balance occurs when the first choice satisfies or extinguishes the goals that led to the original decision, producing an incongruent subsequent choice. This review examines a number of psychological frameworks that account for reinforcement or balance responses in sequential choice and identifies theoretically relevant moderating variables that lead to either response.     

Competitive Grants and the Funding of Agricultural Research in the United States

Efforts to improve public agricultural research efficiency include calls to increase use of competitive grants. This paper empirically assesses different instruments the USDA uses to fund state-level research. Compared with other instruments, competitive grants focus more on basic research and are concentrated among fewer states. Model results suggest that top-ranked biology and agricultural science programs were strong determinants of states' shares of competitive grants. Other significant factors were agricultural sector size and number of agricultural scientists. USDA-funded state-level research focus did not change significantly because competitive grants comprised only 15% of these funds and other instruments counteracted their influence.     

Rethinking the liquidity puzzle: Application of a new measure of the economic money stock

Historically, attempts to solve the liquidity puzzle focus on narrowly defined monetary aggregates, such as non-borrowed reserves, the monetary base, or M1. Many of these efforts fail to find a short-term negative correlation between interest rates and monetary policy innovations. More recent research uses sophisticated macroeconomic and econometric modeling. However, little research has investigated the role measurement error plays in the liquidity puzzle, since in nearly every case, work investigating the liquidity puzzle has used one of the official monetary aggregates, which have been shown to exhibit significant measurement error. In this paper, we examine the role that measurement error plays in the liquidity puzzle by (i) providing a theoretical framework explaining how the official simple-sum methodology can lead to a liquidity puzzle, and (ii) testing for the liquidity effect by estimating an unrestricted VAR.     

PRIMARY VERSUS SECONDARY PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES IN U.S. MANUFACTURING

In this paper we analyze the determinants of material inputs into individual production activities as a function of their outputs. We use observations on a large cross-section of U.S. manufacturing plants from the Census of Manufactures, including those that make goods primary to other industries, to study differences in production techniques. We find that in most cases material requirements do not depend on whether goods are made as primary products or as secondary products. We thus elucidate support for the commodity technology model as a useful working hypothesis.     

Managing service innovation: the need for selectivity rather than 'best practice'

In this paper we contrast the notions of best practice and configurations contingent on environmental conditions. The analysis draws upon our study of 38 UK and 70 US service firms. Four system configurations are identified, and the results provide an opportunity for updating the typologies of services, and suggest that practices and performance are multi-dimensional.