Cultural values and definitions of career success

This paper examines how national culture relates to the ways that individuals define career success. Data are drawn from interviews with 269 professional services employees in 15 countries. Interviews are content coded and linked with country‐level Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness measures of cultural values. We test our hypotheses using a multilevel multinomial logit model. The results demonstrate that the ways in which employees define career success vary across countries, due in part to differences in cultural values after controlling for gender, occupation, job level, and national economic development. We find that employees from countries high in future orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and performance orientation are more likely to define career success in terms of interpersonal outcomes, and those from countries high in collectivism (institutional and in‐group), humane orientation, and gender egalitarianism are more likely to prefer intrapersonal outcomes. We find that employees from countries that are high in assertiveness, uncertainty avoidance, and performance orientation are more likely to define career success in terms of achievement‐oriented outcomes. Finally, we find that employees from countries high in power distance report career success definitions in terms of safety and security outcomes. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of cultural differences in careers across countries.     

A welfare analysis of Canadian chartered bank mergers

An econometric model of Canada's five largest banks is estimated using time series data from 1976 to 1996. The principal findings are that chartered bank technology is characterized by increasing returns to scale. Scale efficiency is sufficiently large to offset the consequences of reduced competition that might have arisen from a merger between Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Toronto Dominion Bank, or both. The estimated model predicts that all the mergers proposed in 1998 would have led to slightly lower prices and, consequently, to an increase in consumer welfare.
Une analyse de bien–être des fusions des banques à charte canadiennes . L'auteur calibre un modèle économétrique des cinq plus grandes banques à charte au Canada à l'aide de séries chronologiques de 1976 à 1996. Les principaux résultats montrent que la technologie des banques à charte a des rendements croissants à l'échelle. Ces rendements à l'échelle sont suffisamment importants pour compenser les effets de réduction de la concurrence qui auraient pu se produire en conséquence de la fusion de la Banque de Montréal et la Banque Royale, de la Banque Impériale de Commerce et de la Banque Toronto–Dominion, ou des deux. Le modèle suggère que toutes les fusions proposées en 1998 auraient entraîné des prix légèrement plus bas, et en conséquence un accroissement dans le niveau de bien–être des consommateurs.     

Evaluating alternative price expectation models for multiproduct supply analysis

Neoclassical economic theory provides an important conceptual framework for the analysis of agricultural production. Theory provides little guidance, however, in the actual specification of empirical models. This paper applies an integrated approach for choosing between price expectation mechanisms in a multiple-equation model when the alternatives are non-nested. Nine alternative specifications of market price and policy information are developed. Price forecasting accuracy, non-nested tests of hypotheses, and out-of-sample predictive accuracy are examined for agricultural production in Iowa. The results call into question the reliability of using forecasting accuracy as the sole guide to selecting a price expectation proxy.     

Women's producer groups in rural KwaZulu: Limits and possibilities

Non‐agricultural ‘self‐help’ initiatives tend to be synonomous with handicraft activities. This paper addresses the potential of such initiatives in terms of income generation and developmental impact.

An outline of the context within which these initiatives may be understood is followed by an analysis of how rural producers respond to their conditions in an organizational sense. The paper's conclusions are derived from a discussion of the relative advantages and disadvantages of various organizational forms which includes the perceptions of the producers.     

Measuring low skills in Europe: how useful is the ISCED framework?

This paper aims to find a suitable definition of a low skilledworker, that can be applied in a consistent way across the variouscountries of the European Union. The International StandardClassification of Education (ISCED) is identified as the mostsuitable means of measuring skills over time and space, as thoseindividuals categorised as less than ISCED 3 are labelled ‘low-skilled’.The paper then uses three international surveys of educationalperformance to justify this choice. It is shown that those inthe <ISCED 3 group are likely to have a limited grasp ofthe skills needed in the modern workplace, and that this definitionalgroup captures most individuals who are categorised as low-skilledby more objective means. Thus this definition of low-skilledworkers appears to be useful and appropriate.     

A qualitative response analysis of UK firms' employment and output decisions

This paper investigates firms' employment and output decisions and presents some empirical evidence concerning the rationality of firms' expectations. The dymanic model is based on the assumptions of convex adjustment costs and monopolistic competition in the product market. The results are obtained using categorical information on individual firms contained in business surveys collected by the Confederation of British Industry. Ordered probit models are used to estimate the employment and output equations. We find that expected demand is a critical determinant of firms' decisions, the effect of changes in cost conditions is not as well determined, and the data are not consistent with the rational expectations hypothesis.