Studying (Small) businesses with the Michigan Employment Security Commission longitudinal data base

This paper addresses the usefulness of a longitudinal data file constructed from records on employers from the Michigan Employment Security Commission. We describe the main features of the data file, which includes quarterly (and in some cases, monthly) data from the third quarter of 1978 through the first quarter of 1983, plus the fourth quarters of 1983–87. We then illustrate the uses of the data with two examples: (1) studying changes in the Michigan economy, in particular the early growth and survival of new units of different sizes; and (2) studying the behavior of wages and employment following changes in ownership.Judith Connor and Steven Heeringa are primarily responsible for Section II and the Appendix, John Jackson for Section III, and Charles Brown for Section IV.     

Accurate environmental bioindication in floodplains in spite of an extreme flood event

The ecological reaction of species on environmental factors can differ both, temporally and geographically. Therefore, bioindicator systems must be shown to remain accurate at different places and points of time. Extreme events pose challenges for testing this robustness, which has not yet been explored systematically. The unique opportunity of the extreme flooding of the river Elbe in August 2002 was used for such a test. The bioindicator system for mean groundwater depth during the vegetation period and annual duration of inundation in floodplains studied here was developed with data collected in 1999. Data from 2003 were used to analyse the dependence of the bioindication results on the humidity of the study plots and taxonomic group (plants, molluscs and carabid beetles). For the duration of inundation, the accuracy of bioindication in 2003 was similar to that in 1999, except for the medium‐humid and dry plots using molluscs as indicators. For groundwater depth, the accuracy of bioindication in 2003 was similar to that of the reference year except in the dry plots with significantly lower accuracy for all species groups. With a few exceptions, the bioindicator system is shown to be robust and to remain accurate in spite of an extreme flood event. In conclusion, the relevance of extreme events for the robustness of bioindicator systems differs between the indicated parameters and taxonomic groups. The results stress the need to take into account the limits of the working range and the occurrence of extreme events, when testing and applying bioindicator systems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Youth on the road: Reflections on the history of tramping

Tourism is conventionally traced to the eighteenth century Grand Tour of aristocratic youth which, it is then suggested, was gradually democratized and adopted in modified form by the middle classes. In such a perspective, the road culture of contemporary youth travelers would simply represent one form of this democratized elite tradition. This paper argues instead that contemporary road culture is better seen as an upwardly rather than downwardly mobile cultural form. Tramping originated as a well-institutionalized travel pattern of working class youth. Despite its instrumental functions, it always had touristic components, serving as the young workingman's Grand Tour. When, in the course of the nineteenth century, it declined as a labor institution, it was romanticized and adopted by middle class youth for exclusively tourist purposes.     

The coming of age of major giving

The beginning of the 21st century may well usher in a golden age of major gifts. Not only are those donors born at the beginning of the twentieth century distributing their wealth, but ‘Baby boomers’ and ‘Generation X’ are accumulating significant assets at much younger ages. Each generation appears able and willing to make larger donations to charities. By rethinking major gifts strategy charities can benefit from the increasing wealth and affluence.Copyright © 2000 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Incrementality of SME Loan Guarantees

In many countries, loan guarantee programs are important elements of government policy with respect to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). If loan guarantee schemes are to be effective, a majority of firms obtaining assistance through such a scheme ought not to be able to obtain financing from existing sources: a property known as incrementality or additionality. This paper describes a new approach to measuring incrementality. This work uses a two-stage process to estimate the incrementality of loans made under the terms of the Canada Small Business Financing (CSBF) program. First, a logistic regression-based model of loan outcomes (essentially a credit-scoring model) is estimated based on a large representative sample of SMEs. The resulting model was consistent with prior expectations and exhibited high levels of goodness-of-fit. The model was then employed to classify a sample of firms that had received loans under the terms of the loan guarantee scheme. Incremental loans ought to be classified as “turndowns” by the model; hence the proportion of loan guarantee recipients that the model classified as turndowns is a direct measure of incrementality. For the CSBF loan guarantee program incrementality was estimated (with 95% confidence) as 74.8±9.0%.     

The effect of experience with a brand imitator on the original brand

Imitating the look of an existing successful brand is a common occurrence in today's crowded marketplace. It was found that a negative experience with an imitator brand increased the evaluations of the original brand. A positive experience with the imitator was shown to have the opposite effect, and there was a decrease in the evaluations of the original brand. Subjects also indicated they would be likely to purchase the positive imitator over the original at only a 10 percent price reduction.