The Opportunity Cost of a Mean-Variance Efficient Choice

The mean-variance criterion is one of the most frequently used methods for selecting investment portfolios. Yet, because it is an approximation of an investor's maximum expected utility choice, some theoreticians and practitioners have criticized the approach. This paper examines the investment loss that different investors experience by accepting a mean-variance efficient portfolio. Simulated security returns with extreme distributional characteristics are used to determine the extent of an investor's loss. The results indicate that even under very unreasonable investment distributional assumptions, an investor's loss by accepting a mean-variance efficient choice rarely exceeds a small fraction of one percent per invested dollar.     

Trade unions and total rewards

In an attempt to develop a comprehensive understanding of the remuneration of hotel employees, Mars and Mitchell have used the concept of a ‘total payment system’. This article gives details of research which has been conducted into certain elements of this remuneration package. In particular, the influence of trade unionism upon these elements is examined. Three distinct types of additional reward are constructed and the suggestion is made that trade unionism influences one particular type of reward. The implications of this suggestion for two categories of hotel workers are outlined.     

THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF ESOPS

The purpose of this paper is to assess the economic consequences of Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) by developing a general analytical model. The model is used to compare ESOPs with attempts to replicate the effects of ESOPs via alternative arrangements. The general conclusion of the paper is that in the absence of improved employee motivation, ESOP implementation has no particular economic consequence. However, an important exception to this finding may be the inexpensive access to the equity markets for the smaller, non-public firm provided by the ESOP.     

Measuring teamwork and patient safety attitudes of high-risk areas

Patient care leaders recognize that substantial reductions in health care errors will not come until more attention is given to human solutions, such as improving teamwork in health care teams. The authors introduce a short, valid, and reliable instrument to measure teamwork and patient safety attitudes in hospital high-risk areas, namely the emergency department, the operating room, and the intensive care unit. The instrument was tested among nurses in four hospitals and the results showed that the nurses favored the team approach, while recognizing that teamwork in their departments is not very advanced and that communication with some key team members is problematic. This situation seems ideal for the design of a team training intervention in these settings.     

Mechanical Refrigeration and the Integration of Perishable Commodity Markets

In this paper, we provide a history of the economic impact of mechanical refrigeration in the United States. We also examine spatial and temporal aspects of market integration. Specifically, we examine seasonal fluctuations in prices and analyze regional integration of markets for butter. We test the null hypothesis of no integration before and after the advent and adoption of refrigerated shipping and warehousing using 31 years of monthly data. We find strong evidence of spatially integrated markets after adoption. Our results indicate that the adoption of mechanical refrigeration brought about a significant dampening of seasonal fluctuations of butter prices and a tightening of spatial price linkages. We conclude that the adoption of mechanical refrigeration had a significant impact on both temporal and spatial butter price relationships.