Welfare Loss from Inaccurate Information: An Economic Model with Application to Food Labels

This study develops an economic framework which explains the welfare loss to consumers from imperfect information and provides a mechanism for analyzing the benefits from improved information. The model is applied to imperfect net weight information for packaged chicken and empirical estimates of the resulting welfare loss are obtained.     

PROTECTION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT DECISIONS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

Determining the appropriate degree of protection to provide intellectual property in the United States and abroad is an important public policy issue. This paper addresses the role of intellectual property protection in the firm's decision on the level of investment in research and development. It also focuses on the stimulus that such protection provides for economic growth in both developed and developing countries. The main conclusion is that the benefits of designing and enforcing a mechanism for strong protection of intellectual property generally exceed the costs.     

Industrial Relations in Western Europe: An Era of Ambiguity?

In western Europe, as in the United States, the 1980s saw major challenges to established institutions of industrial relations. Managements, faced with intensified competitive pressure, have taken the initiative; union have been on the defensive. Deregulation and decentralization have been the recurrent themes of both practitioners and academic analysts. For some commentators, national distinctiveness is giving way to convergence, encouraged in part by moves toward the Single European Market. This article develops a more skeptical perspective on recent trends.     

Textile marketing: a status report

This exploratory study investigated the status of textile marketing in the United States by (a) examining the textile industry's use of effective marketing techniques, and (b) identifying common problems and needed improvements in textile marketing. The procedure followed these steps: (a) effective marketing techniques were identified, (b) interviews were conducted with nine textile executives and four individuals representing the United States textile industry at large, and (c) the respondents' statements about textile marketing practices were analysed for evidence of effective marketing techniques, common textile marketing problems and needed inprovements in textile marketing. The results indicated that only five of the thirteen respondents described textile firms that were using effective marketing techniques, but some textile firms were using effective marketing techniques and this should be an incentive for other textile firms. Several common problems and needed improvements in textile marketing were also identified. Because of the small sample size, the open-ended questions, and the subjective analysis of the respondents' statements, this study must be regarded as exploratory. However, representative statements from the respondents are presented and these statements are informative about textile marketing practices.