Cross-national differences in trade union membership in OECD countries

This article examines how trade union membership varies across 16 OECD countries in the 1980s. Higher density of membership is found to be associated with a higher degree of centralisation of wage bargaining, higher percentage of employees covered by collective bargaining, a larger public sector and a more leftist party of government.     

Detecting alcohol abuse: the value of carbohydrate deficient transferrin

The author, an advocate of CDT testing for insurance applicants, senses considerable uncertainty among medical directors concerning the value of the test. This review of CDT literature and the history of CDT testing in insurance laboratories is an attempt to mitigate that confusion. Two principle problems are identified: 1) the expected sensitivity of the CDT test in insurance applicants will be 50% at most, usually considerably less. 2) adapting CDT testing to commercial laboratories has been, and still is, an unsolved problem for there remains an important disparity between the method used at Clinical Reference Laboratories and LabOne. Other important issues are also reviewed: gender differences, ethnicity, LFT's and CDT, and technical facts.     

Annual Reporting Mechanisms of National Health Service Trusts

This article investigates the role of the annual report and the annual general meeting (AGM) in the context of NHS trusts. The authors report the results of a questionnaire survey of every NHS trust in the UK. Significant variation in the approach taken within a common framework of accountability was found. In general, there seems to be little public demand for trusts' annual reports and attendance at their AGMs was low. The research indicates possibilities of extending annual reporting in the public sector beyond the annual report and AGM and discloses innovative ways that trusts have attempted to overcome the limited interest of stakeholders produced by the traditional reporting mechanisms.     

Buyer-Type Effects in Conservation and Preservation Property Values

Properties can be bought by government agencies, land trusts, or private entities for conservation and preservation purposes, such as farmland preservation, wildlife refuges, other conservation, and cultural and historical preservation. There is variation in the dollars paid per acre across properties and across buyer type. An option value model based on future potential land uses is used to explain much of this variation. The data used in our analysis is sales transactions data for conservation and preservation purposes from throughout the United States. We find that much of the value of conservation properties is derived from future potential land uses, including housing, timber, recreation, and conservation. We confirm that public versus private buyers value options differently, which makes sense from a public good point of view, if markets are thin.     

The effect of oil price shocks on asset markets: Evidence from oil inventory news

We quantify the reaction of U.S. equity, bond futures, and exchange rate returns to oil price shocks driven by oil inventory news. Across most sectors, equity prices decrease in response to higher oil prices before the 2007/2008 crisis but increase after it. Positive oil price shocks cause a depreciation of the U.S. dollar against a broad range of currencies but have only a modest effect on bond futures returns. The evidence suggests that changes in risk premia help to explain the time-varying effect of oil price shocks on U.S. equity returns.     

Assessing the Reliability of Self‐reported Income Information in Informal Small Business Lending through a Bogus Pipeline Experiment

Coping with asymmetric information plays a major role in successful small business lending. Our purpose is to determine if small business applicants report their income information correctly when requesting a loan. We use a randomised controlled trial bogus pipeline experiment, established during a typical cash‐flow analysis of a bank for small businesses in the Philippines. The bogus pipeline approach is commonly applied in social science and aims to increase the rate of truth telling by informing participants that answers will be verified by a lie detector. The experimental data, which include 243 observations of credit clients that are mainly from the agricultural and food value chain, served to identify asymmetric information. Additionally, debtors’ repayment behaviour for approved loans was observed by the bank. Our results indicate that loan applicants of the treatment group report lower incomes, an effect which is most pronounced in lower income quantile. Our analyses also reveal higher loan delinquencies in the control group.     

Educating limited resource older adults for better choices to lower risk of food insecurity

United States (U.S.) national and North Carolina state data on older adult food insecurity in combination with associated poor nutrition‐related health outcomes point to a critical need for interventions to improve their food security. Nearly 8% of North Carolinians aged 60 and older and 11% of those aged 50–59 are food insecure, placing North Carolina in the top ten states in the U.S. for food insecurity for both age groups. Therefore, the Better Choices intervention was designed to educate limited‐income older adults in ways to manage their meager resources to purchase more and healthier foods. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the Better Choices intervention in improving the knowledge, attitude, and behavior of participants concerning their food money resource management. Older adults (n = 453) with ages ranging from 59 to over 90 years participated in 8 weeks of educational programming delivered by educators in 15 participating North Carolina counties. In a cross‐over program design participating counties were randomly assigned to two groups, to create a control for the food money resource management treatment. A three‐points‐in‐time survey supported longitudinal measurement. Independent samples t‐tests showed no significant differences between groups at baseline. Paired sample t‐test results show the intervention was effective with statistically significant improvement of participants' knowledge regarding preparing a healthy meal on a budget, beans as a low‐cost alternative to meat, and the use of unit pricing to compare products to identify the best value. Participant‐developed action plans reflected planned behavior change. Study results show this group of older adults were capable of and willing to adopt new behaviors for a healthier lifestyle. While not a representative sample, the broad applicability of adult learning and planned behavior theories underpinning the program lead us to conclude that the methods and theories applied in this intervention should be of use to educators and practitioners serving limited‐resource older adult populations.     

Consumption in Contemporary Capitalism: The Backward Art of Living

Western economies have undergone a significant transformation over the last half a century as they have moved away from a commitment to full employment, going from activist fiscal policy to its abandonment with the adoption of budgetary austerity. This is not because of any technical or physical incapacity to achieve full employment. Analyzing the broad macroeconomic experience of Canada and the United States in the post-WWII era, the article finds that this growing unemployment has essentially resulted from a deliberate policy choice not to stimulate sufficiently demand via fiscal measures. Learning from the experience of the Great Depression, Michal Kalecki had offered an explanation for this type of policy response in favor of rising long-term unemployment. This article recognizes the relevance and appropriateness of Kalecki's analysis and seeks to determine whether the Minskian institutional proposal for achieving effective full employment (via government as the employer of last resort) would withstand an original Kaleckian critique.