Contents of Volume 8 2001

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 8 2001     

Confidentiality of student records in the electronic frontier: professors' and administrators' obligations

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was created to provide parents and students over the age of 18 with access to education records and to limit disclosure of those records without proper consent. Recent changes in information technology and amendments to the law itself have put FERPA in a state of flux and uncertainty. In this article we describe the rights of students and obligations of professors and administrators. We provide guidance for maintaining student information, especially in light of advances in information technology. A number of recommendations are made to help protect the rights of students as well as to minimize the likelihood of violations under the Act.     

The death knells of mature technologies

The oscillatory behavior in the mature phase of some technologies' diffusion-related S curves are investigated, specifically with regard to the influences that other technologies can have on the oscillations. The notion of mortality indicators is raised, that is, whether such behavior is a signal that the mature technology is under attack from an emerging technology. The case of structural panels in the wood products industry is considered as an example, and an updated forecast of the substitution of oriented strand board for plywood is made. It is concluded that factors such as macroeconomic business cycles are primarily responsible for the oscillations in plywood's S-curve, although it is argued that an emerging technology can also contribute to perturbations in a mature technology's S-curve. Two possible alternative explanations for the oscillatory behavior are also discussed, a previously proposed chaos formulation, and a mathematical model based on modified Lotka-Volterra equations. This model shows that the oscillatory behavior in mature technologies' S-curves can also result from symbiotic interaction between two technologies under certain circumstances.     

An Overlapping-generations Model of Escape Clause Protection

The paper explores the efficiency consequences of using temporary protection to ease adjustment following an unexpected, permanent improvement in a country's terms of trade. In the model, workers trade off the potentially higher wage that the export sector has to offer with a lower job acquisition rate. An unexpected improvement in the terms of trade surprises old workers who cannot undo the decisions they made while young. Some old workers who had not planned to search for work in the export sector end up changing their plans, adding to the pool of searchers, creating congestion. Temporary protection can reduce congestion and make the transition to the new steady state smoother. Moreover, there are conditions under which the congestion externalities lead to multiple steady‐state equilibria that can be Pareto‐ranked. Temporary protection may lead to a permanent change in the allocation of resources, and this permanent change may be welfare‐enhancing.     

FOCUS: The Volkswagen Experience of Investing in Central Europe

The Chairman of Volkswagen's Board of Management made the following presentation in London last November at a Conference on'Business and Moral Standards in Post-Communist Europe', held under the auspices of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and sponsored by the Sedgwick Group and KPMG Peat Marwick. Dr Hahn's lecture is reproduced with permission.     

The structural stability of the market model after the Three Mile Island accident

This article examines the stability of alpha and beta in the market model resulting from the Three Mile Island accident. The data consist of weekly returns on 70 utility stocks. Both a dummy variable test and the Fisher F statistics are utilized to test for stability. In addition to the individual stocks, the 70 utilities are partitioned into two portfolios for the test—nuclear and non-nuclear. The main conclusions are 1) for the non-nuclear portfolio, no change is observed; 2) for the nuclear portfolio, alpha fell and beta rose—the impact, however, is transitory and insignificant; and 3) the behavior of the residuals suggests that the result is consistent with an efficient market.