Prospects for Personalization on the Internet

Personalization is a key component of an interactive marketing strategy. Its purpose is to adapt a standardized product or service to an individual customer's needs. The goal is to create profit for the producer and increased value for the consumer. This goal fits nicely into traditional notions of segmentation. Applications of personalization have advanced greatly in conjunction with the Internet, since it provides an environment that is information rich and well suited to interactivity. This article reviews past research on personalization and considers some examples of personalization in practice. We discuss what we believe are key problems and directions for personalization in the future.     

Cost control for computers: Applying bread-and-butter principles

During the 1960s, when it became clear that computers would establish a foothold in business, executives were urged to ensure that the new machines were used effectively. Applying EDP to critical decision and problem areas is still important. However, because of skyrocketing EDP costs and staggering investments in equipment and systems, it now pays to become equally concerned about EDP productivity. Unfortunately, many executives shy away because they lack technical expertise. This is not justified because familiar approaches to cost control that work in other functional areas can be successfully applied to EDP. The author describes how the executive can begin to cope with improving EDP efficiency without getting bogged down in a morass of technical details.     

Don't Tax the Net

Electronic commerce has the potential to reduce transaction costs drastically. It is the most dynamic sector of the world economy. Governments should restrain themselves from extending taxes to electronic commerce or they will reduce the gains from innovation.     

The mixing ratio in the Indonesian dairy industry

The Indonesian dairy industry has been viewed by the Indonesian government as an industry that has the potential to improve the welfare of low income and landless farmers through providing them with an additional source of farm income. As well, the government sees the industry as a vehicle for providing opportunities for employment in rural areas. From an economy wide viewpoint, its development is viewed as a way Indonesia might save foreign exchange since a large share of its dairy requirements have to be imported. A variety of measures have been used to assist the industry. This paper investigates one of the measures, the BUSEP scheme or mixing ratio regulation which requires domestic processors to use Indonesian produced milk before imported milk.     

The Effect of Marriage on Education of Immigrants: Evidence from a Policy Reform Restricting Marriage Migration*

We investigate the effect of immigrants’ marriage behavior on dropout from education. To identify the causal effect, we exploit a recent Danish policy reform that generated exogenous variation in marriage behavior by a complete abolishment of marriage migration for immigrants below 24 years. The reform influenced immigrants from countries with a high historical rate of marriage migration more than immigrants from country groups with a low rate. We find that the dropout rate for males increases by 25 percentage points as a consequence of marriage to a marriage migrant, whereas the effect for females is small and mostly insignificant.     

Keynes,investment, unemployment and expectations

In Keynes’ General Theory, investment determines effective demand, which determines unemployment and the labour market plays a negligible role. In New Keynesian models, labour market institutions determine the natural rate of unemployment and the speed at which unemployment adjusts to it. Investment is mostly ignored as a key variable behind the problem of high unemployment, despite a strong empirical association between investment and unemployment. We discuss the evolution of the ‘Keynesian’ model, and how in the process of domesticating the General Theory, the central relationship between unemployment and investment and the role of the state of confidence was bred out of the model. We then present some evidence of the centrality of investment and expectations to the long‐term evolution of unemployment in OECD countries. We also argue that recent results in finance, which find that individuals do not behave rationally and, moreover, that there may be no basis for rational calculation, provides support for Keynes’s notion that animal spirits play a central role in investment.     

THE DECISIONS OF THE SHADOW MONETARY POLICY COMMITTEE AND MONETARY POLICY COMMITTEE SINCE 2002: A REJOINDER

Koo, Paya and Peel make some very worthwhile points regarding the operation of the SMPC. Their analysis is interesting and helpful. However, the particular structure of the SMPC and the way it operates is, to some extent, determined by practicalities but also, more importantly, by the fact that it tries to operate as a discussion forum bringing together academics, bankers and financial experts rather than simply providing opinions on what the MPC should do.