North and south: long-run social mobility in England and attitudes toward welfare

In this paper, we examine the long-run social mobility experience in England. We present evidence for surprisingly constant levels of social mobility over the period 1550–1749, despite huge structural changes. Examining regional differences, we show that the North of England exhibited higher rates of social mobility than the South. We link this to the hypothesis that historically high levels of social mobility can lead to a culture of non-acceptance of redistribution and welfare provision. Taking advantage of the fact that welfare provision was determined at the local level at the time, we are able to compare social mobility rates and welfare spending within a single country. Consistent with the hypothesis, we find evidence for historically higher levels of social mobility as well as lower welfare spending and less acceptance of redistribution in the North.     

Budgeting for Equality: The Australian Experience

Gender budgets have now been introduced in varying forms in more than forty countries throughout the world. These exercises emerged out of feminist practical politics initially in Australia and later in a number of other countries. The idea of gender budgets gathered further momentum when the United Nations Beijing Platform for Action called for the integration of a gender perspective into budgetary decision-making. Most of these experiments share three core goals. They seek to: (1) mainstream gender issues within government policies; (2) promote greater accountability for governments' commitment to gender equality; and (3) change budgets and policies. However, very little research has examined their success in achieving these goals. In discussing the lessons learnt from the Australian experience, this paper adopts a feminist political economy perspective on the state as an analytical starting point for discussing the future of gender budgets elsewhere in the world.     

Organizational Learning in Cooperative Alliances: Some Case Studies in Biotechnology

Dedicated biotechnology firms (DBFs) have played an important role in commercializing biotechnology. They emerged first in the US and, after a 5-year time lag, they also appeared in Europe. Faced with long and costly product lead times, DBFs raised money by entering into research contracts, mainly with large chemical and pharmaceutical companies. These coopertive research alliances have not vanished as biotechnology has matured and are more in evidence today than they were in the early dasy of the commercialization of biotechnology. This paper investigates how and why large and small companies enter research collaborations, what they learn from working together, and the effects on European competitiveness.     

Does Innovativeness Drive Environmentally Conscious Consumer Behavior?

This study seeks to improve the predictive utility of the attitude–behavior link within the realm of environmentally responsible consumption by examining the role of consumer innovativeness as a mediator. A sample of over 1400 American consumers provided data regarding their attitudes about the environment, receptiveness to new and innovative ideas, propensity to adopt new products early, and likelihood of performing a variety of green behaviors. The evidence suggests that one dimension of consumer innovativeness mediates the link between environmentally conscious attitudes and behaviors: the general affinity for new ideas. Managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

Cause‐Related Marketing from the Nonprofit's Perspective: Classifying Goals and Experienced Outcomes

This research examines the cause‐related marketing (CRM) experience from a nonprofit (NPO) perspective, using qualitative and quantitative methods. U.S. NPO managers with direct CRM experience (n = 154) participated. Results demonstrate that NPOs have both first order (immediate financial support) and second order (less tangible, longer term) goals when undertaking CRM, and that they generally realize these outcomes, though not always. NPOs primarily seek event support, networking opportunities and public awareness, followed by funding opportunities, with less emphasis on gaining business expertise. This research extends the framework of Gourville and Rangan (2004 Gourville, J. T. and Rangan, V. K. 2004. Valuing the cause marketing relationship.. California Management Review, 47: 38–57. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) by offering a more precise, differentiated model.     

Are Women Held to a Higher Moral Standard Than Men? Gender Bias Among University Students

This study examines gender bias in ethical decision-making, defined as a difference in the evaluation of the morality of an action depending on the gender of the person performing the action. Results indicate that college student respondents exhibited some degree of gender bias, and that it was especially noticeable among the male respondents. Bias was somewhat more pronounced among liberal arts majors than other business majors, and non- existent among accounting majors. Implications for early-career professional training and business ethics research are discussed.     

SAVING IS NEVER A CONSTRAINT ON INVESTMENT1

Saving is regarded in mainstream macroeconomics as a volitional relationship, like consumption. This paper argues that this view is incorrect. There is no independent volitional saving function. Since all goods produced are either consumption goods or investment goods, saving, defined as “income not consumed”, is the accounting record of investment spending. Changes in the definition of investment produce identical changes in saving, with no accompanying volitional change in saving behavior. “Saving” in economics should properly be termed “abstention” since it does not constitute transitive behavior. To understand saving behavior a Hicksian definition of income must be used, and capital gains and losses must be included in the definition of income. In modern capitalist economies most saving undertaken by agents is non‐volitional, and takes the form of permitting the market value of total net wealth to increase.     

Experience curve models in the electricity supply industry

There has been much controversy over the use of the Experience Curve for forecasting purposes. The Experience Curve model has been criticised both on theoretical grounds and because of the practical problems of using it. An alternative model of experience effects due to Towill has certain attractions from the standpoint of theory. However, a rather deeper question is whether experience curve type models produce superior forecasts to those derived using extrapolative techniques.This paper examines these questions in the context of three time series taken from the electricity supply industry, viz: average thermal efficiency; works costs; and price of electricity. The two latter series require price deflation. Both the implied GDP consumption deflator, and a wholesale price index for fuel and electricity were used for this purpose. It is argued that because of the absence of substitutes and of the effects of competition, along with the high quality of data available on the electricity supply industry, these three series provide a favourable test of the experience curve approach to forecasting. The two experience curves performed on the whole markedly worse than the simpler extrapolative methods on the two financial series examined. For the average thermal efficiency series the Towill model and the Experience Curve model marginally outperformed the extrapolative methods.Overall, there was little support for using either the Experience Curve or Towill models. These are obviously more difficult to use than simple univariate models and do not provide significantly better forecasts. Moreover, the Towill model gave rise to considerable estimation and specification problems with the data used here.