Consumer Responses to Product Placement in Television Sitcoms: Genre,Sex, and Consumption

The paper presents a study of consumer responses to products placed in a sitcom, “Ads R’ Us,” created as a stimulus to ascertain the influence of a television program’s genre and male/female respondents’ sex on responses. Textual analysis is used to analyze sitcoms, a category of programs created in accordance with genre conventions, the structural framework that influences responses to media vehicles. First‐generation feminist reading theory, which challenged the patriarchal assumptions mostly unquestioned in the US until the early 1960s, is used to analyze responses produced by second‐generation respondents, who came of age a generation later, after the women’s liberation movement led to socio‐cultural changes. The study draws from multidisciplinary theory and integrates stimulus‐side/response‐side research to enhance understanding of the text‐context‐consumer relationship. Findings indicate that second‐generation responses to placed products are problematized by the coexistence of patriarchal and feminist perspectives that color male/female readings of sitcoms.     

Stochastic modelling and industrial networks—complementary views of organisational buyer behavior

This paper investigates the common ground between two apparently contrasting approaches to the understanding of organizational purchasing behavior; stochastic modelling and the IMP (or “markets as networks”) approach. These two schools of inquiry have travelled along parallel tracks for many years but there has never been a systematic attempt to analyse the ontological, epistemological and methodological similarities between them. We present a coherent theoretical framework to investigate the common ground between stochastic modelling and IMP and demonstrate that the two approaches offer complementary insights that can and should be exploited in the context of research into organizational purchasing behavior.     

Endogenous time preference and optimal growth

We adapt the classic one-sector optimal growth model to include an endogenous rate of time preference along the lines of Becker and Mulligan (1997). The resulting model is both time-consistent and analytically tractable. Capital sequences are shown to be globally monotone and stable under very general circumstances using lattice programming techniques and value orders. We analyze a series of examples that exhibit a variety of behaviors, including closed-form solutions, unique steady-states, multiple steady-states, and conditionally sustained growth. The endogenous rate of discount preserves monotonicity and stability while allowing for the possibility of non-global convergence.I would like to thank Robert Becker, Leonard Mirman, Michael Kaganovich, Itzhak Zilcha, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and discussions.     

Protecting employee safety rights: OSHA or arbitration?

This paper analyzes the protection of employees against employer retatliation for seeking a safe and healthy workplace. It discusses the exercise of rights guaranteed by the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970 and compares the legal protection of Section 11(c) of that Act with the grievance arbitration mechanism found in most union contracts. It also considers the importance of union representation in the ability and protection of employees seeking to exercise their OSHA rights. Administrative and legislative recommendations are made to improve the OSHA procedures, and questions are raised regarding adapting arbitration procedures to the OSHA mechanism.