Privatization, pluralism and PWRs—looking beyond market forces

Market forces were generally held to be responsible for the failure of the UK government's attempt to privatize nuclear power and for the curtailment of the PWR programme. This paper examines a hitherto neglected factor: the institutional changes proposed by privatization, which both fragmented and alienated the political support for the nuclear industry at this crucial juncture. The history of nuclear policy is analysed in terms of corporatist theory. It is concluded that a fully developed corporatist policy sector, its authority unchallenged by other systems of representation, will usually be a necessaly condition for a successful nuclear programme.     

Social choice rules and real-valued representations

Under commonplace assumptions, it is shown that social choice rules can be given real-valued representations. The usefulness of this characterization is that the general structure of abstract choice rules can be analyzed by investigating the form of their representation and the particular structure of rules can be analyzed by examining the properties of functions that represent them. After the possibilities of representation have been fully analyzed, this is demonstrated with the use of several examples. The analysis suggests a useful technique for studying social choice rules.     

The impact of monetary expansion with terms of trade effects and trade in securities

This paper analyzes the role of monetary expansion in a two-country, two-sector model of accumulation. In addition, the model permits trade in securities and allows for feedback effects due to the variability of the terms of trade, and the world interest rate. It is shown that many of the results in small-country or other simpler models no longer hold. For instance, the neutrality of the saving rate implied by the small-country assumption no longer exists. It is now possible to choose combinations of the saving rate and the rate of monetary expansion to attain certain goals.     

Tourism as a cultural domain the case of Taos,New Mexico

This paper offers an analysis of tourism as a cultural domain through a combination of hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling procedures not previously used together in touristic studies. The data for the study were gathered from interviews with 89 tourists who completed a card-sorting task for fifty items selected as representative of the range of real behavioral choices available to visitors to the Taos region. The two solutions presented, based on the U-statistic and the KYST program, are in reasonably good agreement and also correlate well with an earlier analysis reported in this journal (Kemper 1979). The approach used here not only enhances ethnographic understanding of tourism as a cultural domain and complements field research carried out using more traditional participant-observation and survey interview methodologies, but also offers a number of valuable applications for conceptualizing and marketing tourism.     

The U.S. deficit: Whose Fault?

The US budget deficit, and the higher interest rates it is said to cause, is blamed for depressing the economies of Europe. A former Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, now Professor of Economics at Georgetown University, challenges the view that it is the result of President Reagan's tax cuts and defence build-up. In a broadly 'supply-side' analysis, he criticises Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Professor Martin Feldstein, Chairman (until June) of Council of Economic Advisors.     

Corporate reputation and sustained superior financial performance

Good corporate reputations are critical because of their potential for value creation, but also because their intangible character makes replication by competing firms considerably more difficult. Existing empirical research confirms that there is a positive relationship between reputation and financial performance. This paper complements these findings by showing that firms with relatively good reputations are better able to sustain superior profit outcomes over time. In particular, we undertake an analysis of the relationship between corporate reputation and the dynamics of financial performance using two complementary dynamic models. We also decompose overall reputation into a component that is predicted by previous financial performance, and that which is ‘left over’, and find that each (orthogonal) element supports the persistence of above‐average profits over time. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.