Sraffa's legacy

This review essay of Critical Essays on Piero Sraffa's Legacyin economics situates Sraffa's work in relation to the Marshalliantradition and neo-Walrasian general equilibrium theory, andreviews the current state of debate between adherents of thesetraditions on the role of demand, returns to scale, capitaltheory and policy analysis. Other issues considered includethe corn model, Sraffa's critique of Hayek, and the extensionof the capital theory critique to the intertemporal equilibriummodel.     

Evidence, What Evidence? The Foundations for Housing Policy

Developments in housing policy and practice have been marked by strong ideological stances and a persistent unwillingness to clarify ends and means, so that key policy questions remain unresolved. Evidence can, and does, impact on policy, but only under certain conditions; for example, if it relates to a specific policy question, is restricted to the interests of a single government department and, especially, if it implies reductions in public spending. Moreover, housing's complexity and relationship with a range of policy areas requires a linked perspective, at a local scale. A predominance of sector-specific, cross-sectional and qualitative research, allied to inadequate data impede the production of evidence to meet this challenge.     

Standardized Multinational Advertising: The Influencing Factors

Abstract

Advertising for multinational products uses standardization most often in strategy, less often in executions, and least often in language. This study's international sample of advertising agency executives considers creative impact the most important and pressure (from time, client, etc.) the least important reason to use some form of standardized advertising. Despite this, it is views on client pressure which explain most of the variance in views on future use of standardization. That is, those respondents who believe that client pressure is increasing also believe that overall use of standardization will increase. A separate sample of agency executives reinforced some of these findings, particularly the role of the successful, big idea and client pressure in making the decision to standardize. Copy research also plays a role in standardization recommendations, but it is not used as extensively as might be necessary.     

Always Leave Home Without It: A Further Investigation of the Credit-Card Effect on Willingness to Pay

In studies involving genuine transactions of potentially high value we show that willingness-to-pay can be increased when customers are instructed to use a credit card rather than cash. The effect may be large (up to 100%) and it appears unlikely that it arises due solely to liquidity constraints. In addition to demonstrating the effect, we provide a methodology for detecting it, and our findings suggest a source of variance to test alternative explanations.     

Knowledge acquisition by computer induction

The generation of Expert Systems requires that the specialized knowledge of an expert be transferred to a computer system in a form suitable for machine interpretation. In many knowledge domains it is difficult for experts to describe their knowledge in an appropriate form. Where such expert knowledge is difficult to describe it is often possible to obtain good examples of the expert's decisions. Newly emerging computing techniques allow the induction of decision rules from examples; rules which can often effectively model the decision making behaviour of the expert in such situations. The use of such techniques provides a powerful new tool for the construction of Expert Systems.     

PLANNERS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PROCESS[1]

This paper discusses the foundations of the normative model of strategic management and reports the results of empirical research that examined the validity of the model from the perspective of practising planners. It was concluded, on the basis of the responses, that the normative model of strategic management is an accurate representation of what planners believe to be the steps in the process at both the corporate and business-levels. While the steps were all included, there was significant variation among the relative importance of the various steps.     

THE PLACE OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN THE TRAINING OF ACCOUNTANTS IN NEW ZEALAND

The purpose of this study was to identify those communication skills most needed by accountants, so providing information which could be useful for accounting educators when designing programmes. The survey showed that practising accountants perceived wide differences between the desired and demonstrated communication skills of their new graduates. Academics, too, perceived serious deficiencies in their students. The conclusion is that academics, for the sake of their students and the accounting profession, should endeavour to increase the amount of time and expert effort put into communication skills in their university programmes.     

Non‐Standard “Contingent” Employment and Job Satisfaction: A Panel Data Analysis

Contingent forms of employment are usually associated with low‐quality jobs and, by inference, jobs that workers find relatively unsatisfying. This assumption is tested using data from a representative household panel survey covering a country (Australia) with a high incidence of nonstandard employment. Results from the estimation of ordered logit regression models reveal that among males, both casual employees and labor‐hire (agency) workers (but not fixed‐term contract workers) report noticeably lower levels of job satisfaction, though this association diminishes with job tenure. Negative effects for women are mainly restricted to labor‐hire workers.