How long might the younger-old live: A predictive model

Life expectancy amongst older people in industrialised countries has been improving over an extended period and still continues to do so. This has ramifications for providers of services to this population, thus necessitating a level of forward planning. Predictive models of remaining life expectancy for older age groups can assist long-term planning processes. This paper presents an extrapolative approach to forecasting remaining life expectancy. Based on logistic modelling of historic mortality and survivorship for the “younger-old” male population of England and Wales over the period 1970-2005, a parsimonious two-parameter model is derived. This model provides a close correspondence to published period life table data. Trends in these parameters are then fitted and extrapolated to enable projections of life expectancy up to 40 years into the future. Alternative assumptions are used to determine a range of future life expectancy trajectories for a 65-year-old male. Occupational pension scheme provision is identified as an area of particular concern in the context of increasing longevity. As an illustration, the life expectancy trajectories are combined with differing discount rate assumptions to generate a number of alternative pension liability scenarios for the extrapolation period.     

Access to Flexible Working and Informal Care

We use matched employer–employee data to explore the relationship between employees’ access to flexible working arrangements and the amount of informal care they provide to sick or elderly friends and relatives. Flexitime and the ability to reduce working hours are each associated with about 13% more hours of informal care. Workplaces do not respond to the presence of carers by providing flexible work, instead there is some underlying selection of carers into flexible workplaces. The wider workplace environment beyond formal flexible work may also facilitate care.     

Sales promotion—playing to win?

In recent years, below‐the‐line promotion has begun to shed its “Cinderella” image, and is starting to attract the sort of marketing budgets and academic attention that was previously only given to mass‐media advertising. However, there is a general consensus that sales promotion is still neither managed effectively, nor understood thoroughly when compared to more high‐profile above‐the‐line promotion. Improving the understanding and use of sales promotion will require academics and practitioners to analyse and understand each of the very different below‐the‐line techniques and their individual merits. This article is one of two which takes a detailed look at the use of sales promotion competitions.     

Credit evaluation,information production,and financial intermediation

Financial intermediaries such as banks, saving and loan institutions, and insurance companies play a large and important role in highly developed economies. The economic significance of financial intermediaries results from their making arrangements between borrowers and lenders more efficiently than if these agents had to trade directly. The intent of this article is to provide a better understanding of the advantage that a financial institution has over an individual lender. This research treats intermediaries as producers of information in the credit evaluation process. The lender produces borrower information that revises the expected profit of the credit decision. Though the production of credit itself holds no economic advantage for institutions over individuals. The opportunity to produce information will provide economies of scale in lending and will help to explain the existence of financial intermediaries.     

THE TREATMENT OF STOCK APPRECIATION IN THE MEASUREMENT OF NATIONAL INCOME*

In the latest official national income publication the Australian Commonwealth Statistician has altered the treatment of stock appreciation in the measurement of national income at current prices. Previously, stock appreciation had been included in both national expenditure and national product. Now the amount of stock appreciation (the difference between the change in the value of stocks and the value of the change in stocks) has been deducted from investment in stocks, and consequently national expenditure, and from trading incomes, and consequently national income. The former procedure (including stock appreciation in national expenditure and national product) had been advocated by the present author, when editor of the first official national income publications issued by the Commonwealth Statistician. In this note an attempt is made to set out the reasons for this view. A new approach is also suggested for handling the item of stock appreciation in national income accounts, which does not rest on the assumption that stock appreciation is a capital gain which should be excluded from trading incomes and national product.     

Consumer education and the OECD electronic commerce consumer protection guidelines

This paper explores the implications of e‐commerce transactions and the lack of consumer protection regulation on consumer educators and curricula. The discussion is divided into five sections: conceptualizing e‐commerce; the juggernaut of e‐commerce; consumer education defined, especially consumer protection in the electronic market‐place; the Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) 1998 Ottawa conference on electronic commerce; and the implications of this fluid market and policy context on consumer educators. Empowerment of the consumer, the ultimate objective of consumer education, is a total challenge in the global electronic market‐place, but a challenge that must be embraced by staying informed, becoming a consumer advocate, as well as educator, and remaining ever vigilant as curricula are developed for the domestic consumer transacting in an electronic global market.