U.S. Healthcare Reform, 2009-2010: Implications for African Americans

This paper describes issues that need to be addressed to reform the U.S. healthcare delivery system, the solutions to some of these issues that are part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (as amended), and the implications for African Americans of some of the recently enacted reforms. These reforms take the first steps toward eliminating the insurance coverage gap that keeps many from receiving needed care. The necessary and simultaneous emphasis on cost containment of this legislation, however, may limit access to health care for African Americans.     

INTERTEMPORAL CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT POLICY: NEW EVIDENCE ON TIME‐VARYING DISCOUNT RATES FROM VIETNAM AND RUSSIA

Assuming that individual discount rates are constant over time has important implications for policies and programs that involve intertemporal decision making. Using original data from Vietnam and Russia, we find evidence that discount rates do change over time for many individuals, implying that preferences for savings and credit might not be intertemporally consistent. We find that commonly held beliefs about gender and age influences do not hold once having children and location are controlled for. Within countries, however, residency does matter. Rural Vietnamese populations have higher discount rates, and living in a Russian trading town is associated with significantly higher discount rates and present bias than living in a government town. We argue that these behaviors are particularly likely to influence resource allocation in developing economies because there are fewer formal institutions and competitive markets to temper their effects.     

The relationship between online chatter and firm value

The visible trace of online communications has given rise to research on their effect on firm outcomes. The literature has established a link between online communication about a product and the product??s sales and price performance. On the assumption that financial markets understand this link, we conjecture financial markets consider the amount of online communication, or chatter, about a firm to be an indication of the firm??s performance in the marketplace. Our results confirm this conjecture. The relationship between stock returns and chatter are robust to alternative specifications of the model and to alternative measures of stock returns. We also investigate the issues of reverse causality and omitted variable bias driving a spurious relationship between stock returns and chatter. The data are not consistent with any of these alternative explanations for our results.     

Trends in the housing status of black americans across selected metropolitan areas

This article examines housing data for a set of metropolitan areas and their central cities, and explores the major issues that arise when considering the impacts by race of federal housing assistance programs. Housing market conditions and characteristics vary widely by race across the areas covered-Birmingham, AL; Buffalo, NY; Cleveland, OH; Indianapolis, IN; Memphis, TN; Milwaukee, WI; Newport News, VA; Oklahoma City, OK; Providence, RI; Salt Lake City, UT; and San Jose, CA. Issues related to racial impacts of federal housing assistance emanate from two major policy goals-to help low-income households and to provide equal housing opportunity.     

Selling in the new millennium: A joint agenda

Progressive sales organizations are becoming more strategic in their approaches to the initiation, development, and enhancement of customer relationships. In moving to a more strategic, less tactical approach, these organizations are exploring new leadership models to direct change. In addition, they are using emerging technologies to support sales strategy. This article presents a 15-point joint agenda following a review of pertinent research in the sales strategy, leadership, and technology areas. This joint agenda offers action items, food for thought, and research ideas for sales executives, academicians, trainers, consultants, and professional organizations.     

Judith Butler and Leadership: Reimagining Intelligibility,Social Change,and Leadership Discourse

Although Judith Butler's body of work is complex, many of her arguments have the potential to help us understand and generate new leadership realities. How Butler conceptualizes the concepts of intelligibility, performativity, discourse, and social change all have implications for the practice of leadership. The use of a critical leadership approach permits the exploration of parallels between her writings and two contemporary approaches to leadership: the Social Change Model of Leadership and adaptive leadership. Through the application of Butler's work to contemporary leadership discourse, the potential to render a broader range of subjects intelligible as leaders and to catalyze social change is explored.     

Workplace Transformation and Worker Upskilling: The Perspective of Individual Workers

How common is workplace transformation in the American economy? What are its implications for work force skill requirements and training investments? The existing literature addressing these questions is based on firm-reported survey data. Using new data available in the 1993 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), this article examines the same questions from the perspective of individual workers. Our empirical results suggest that workplace transformation is commonplace. Fully 40 percent of private-sector workers surveyed report that in the space of just one year, a change occurred at work that required them to learn new job skills. About 23 percent of all respondents reported experiencing a workplace change we term anorganizational transformation. Incidence of formal training is positively related to indicators of organizational transformation, but the effect of these indicators is found to be sensitive to the inclusion of other important workplace change variables (namely, new products, new equipment, and new government regulations). While we expected to find strong positive relationships with product development and physical capital investment, government regulation has a surprisingly large impact on formal training.     

CORPORATE LIQUIDITY AND NBER RECESSION ANNOUNCEMENTS

Using announcement memos released by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), we show that corporations increase liquidity during the quarter the NBER announces a peak in the business cycle. This reaction is primarily restricted to memos about peaks in the business cycle, whether it is a preliminary announcement or an official confirmation. Federal Open Market Committee and other monetary policy news, real‐time data releases, and tightening credit conditions do not drive the increase. This finding adds to the precautionary cash holdings literature by suggesting that corporations adjust liquidity not necessarily before recessions, but upon confirmation of a recession.