Marketing versus public relations in selling nuclear power

All too often, the terminology and practices of public relations are used when marketing is what is really needed. This misapplication appears most often when a concept, an idea, or an intangible product is involved. Webster defines public relations as: relations with the general public through publicity; those functions of a corporation, organization, branch of military service, etc., concerned with informing the public of its activities, policies, etc., and attempting to create favorable public opinion.This definition implies a general, ongoing effort to supply information supporting the image of an organization. There is, however, a considerable difference between this kind of activity and the specific, overt process of marketing. This difference has been particularly apparent in attempts of public utilities to “sell” nuclear power plants. Utilities, of course, are monopoly suppliers and, as such, must seek a favorable image in the community. Thus, when public opposition to nuclear power plants mounted, many utilities responded with stepped-up public relations programs; the method they knew best. This article examines the experience of several utilities in locating nuclear plants and suggests how marketing techniques might be used in selling this intangible product.     

Optimizing the credit term decisions in supply chain finance

We study a credit term determination problem in the context of a supplier-buyer supply chain. The supplier's credit term decision is simultaneously made with its production and inventory decisions, and most importantly, it is impacted by the buyer's order quantity. We present a new game-theoretic framework to model this problem, which captures the interaction between the supplier's credit term decision and the buyer's order decision in a multi-period setting. An exact method based on nonlinear programming is implemented to obtain the optimal solutions. We apply our methodologies on a real world case. The computational results show that our approach significantly outperforms the heuristics with fixed credit terms, and either a short or a long credit term can be sub-optimal for the supplier in profitability. Our work offers the first data-driven model and solution approach that assists purchasing and supply managers to make optimal dynamic credit term decision in conjunction with production, ordering and inventory decisions in a game-theoretic setting.     

Reconstructing Urban Politics with a Bourdieusian Framework: The Case of Local Low‐Income Housing Policy

This research aimed to reconstruct a local urban politics and develop a meso–micro‐level model of urban politics through a case study, drawing on a Bourdieusian relational framework. To this end, it investigated the case of local low‐income housing policy — inclusionary zoning — in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. It historicized the path of the local low‐income policy issue through document analysis and qualitative media content analysis. Through multiple analyses, the study revealed that urban politics consists of complex interlinkages among stakeholders with shared values or interests from different social domains, created in order to dominate the policy issue. The study further investigated, on the basis of Bourdieu's concepts of capital and habitus, what elicited different political strategies from key community leaders.     

Creating an Environment for Economic Growth: Creativity,Entrepreneurship or Human Capital?

Scholars and policymakers interested in the growth and prosperity of regions have long recognized that talent and knowledge are fundamental. Yet the question is what types of talent are needed in a growing twenty‐first‐century economy: human capital, creativity and innovation, or entrepreneurship? The latter we define broadly to include any type of risk taking, and not only radical innovation. The literature does not clearly point to one factor as being the most essential. This study assesses this question separately for rural and urban United States (US) counties. We find that human capital––measured by educational attainment––is considerably more conducive to employment growth than the share of creative occupations. Likewise, the share of small and medium businesses is also very conducive to local growth, although this does not apply to the self‐employment share. Rural and urban areas experience similar patterns, although the magnitude thereof tends to be larger for urban counties, whereas high‐technology employment share has had a positive effect in rural areas. Policy conclusions suggest that enhancing small business development and increasing educational attainment are the two strategies that are most likely to succeed.     

Evaluation of the long-term cost-effectiveness of IDegLira versus liraglutide added to basal insulin for patients with type 2 diabetes failing to achieve glycemic control on basal insulin in the USA

Background and aims: IDegLira, a fixed ratio combination of insulin degludec and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist liraglutide, utilizes the complementary mechanisms of action of these two agents to improve glycemic control with low risk of hypoglycemia and avoidance of weight gain. The aim of the present analysis was to assess the long-term cost-effectiveness of IDegLira vs liraglutide added to basal insulin, for patients with type 2 diabetes not achieving glycemic control on basal insulin in the US setting.

Methods: Projections of lifetime costs and clinical outcomes were made using the IMS CORE Diabetes Model. Treatment effect data for patients receiving IDegLira and liraglutide added to basal insulin were modeled based on the outcomes of a published indirect comparison, as no head-to-head clinical trial data is currently available. Costs were accounted in 2015?US dollars ($) from a healthcare payer perspective.

Results: IDegLira was associated with small improvements in quality-adjusted life expectancy compared with liraglutide added to basal insulin (8.94 vs 8.91 discounted quality-adjusted life years [QALYs]). The key driver of improved clinical outcomes was the greater reduction in glycated hemoglobin associated with IDegLira. IDegLira was associated with mean costs savings of $17,687 over patient lifetimes vs liraglutide added to basal insulin, resulting from lower treatment costs and cost savings as a result of complications avoided.

Conclusions: The present long-term modeling analysis found that IDegLira was dominant vs liraglutide added to basal insulin for patients with type 2 diabetes failing to achieve glycemic control on basal insulin in the US, improving clinical outcomes and reducing direct costs.     

‘I didn't feel like I was alone anymore’: evaluating self‐organised employee coping practices conducted via Facebook

The long‐term fracturing of the labour movement has led to increased attention to employee coping practices under new management practices and labour processes. However, the literature caters little for the recent rise of employees taking to social networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook, to find ways to cope with the pressures of contemporary employment. To explore the self‐organised coping qualities of SNSs, interviews were conducted with front line workers, employed by a large anti‐trade union US retailer, who contribute to a self‐organised Facebook group set up as a place for fellow employees to deal with collective employment‐related problems. The main findings suggest employee self‐organised Facebook groups represent an important development and extension to the coping practices available to individual and groups of employees. The main implication of the findings is that Facebook groups appear to strengthen and widen the options for employee resilience in an age of continuing trade union retreat.     

Contradictions of the Climate-Friendly City: New Perspectives on Eco-Gentrification and Housing Justice

As local governments and corporations promote ‘climate friendliness’, and a low-carbon lifestyle becomes increasingly desirable, more middle- and upper-income urban residents are choosing to live near public transit, on bike- and pedestrian-friendly streets, and in higher-density mixed-use areas. This rejection of classical forms of suburbanization has, in part, increased property values in neighborhoods offering these amenities, displacing lower-income, often non-white, residents. Increased prevalence of creative and technology workers appears to accelerate this trend. We argue that a significant and understudied socio-environmental contradiction also occurs where the actual environmental outcomes of neighborhood transformation may not be what we expect. New research on greenhouse gas emissions shows that more affluent residents have much larger carbon footprints because of their consumption, even when reductions in transportation or building energy emissions are included. We describe an area in Seattle, Washington, the location of Amazon's headquarters, experiencing this contradiction and show a distinct convergence of city investments in low-carbon infrastructure, significant rises in housing prices and decreases in lower-income and non-white residents. We conclude with a discussion of a range of issues that require more attention by scholars interested in housing justice and/or urban sustainability.     

Tent City: Patterns of Informality and the Partitioning of Sacramento

Unsanctioned tent cities are increasing in number in cities throughout the western United States. Scholars explain the phenomenon as homeless people asserting their ‘right to the city’ or as ‘managed marginality’. These explanations capture much of the socio-political relationship between local government and homeless populations, but do not explain the long-term persistence of tent cities and the fluctuating nature of their visibility. A spatial history of informal encampments in Sacramento at three key moments—the founding of the city, the Great Depression and the Great Recession—reveals a long-term ebb and flow of tent cities occupying close-to-the-center, urban vacancies. Urban vacancies arise from the partitioning of the city into specific purposes, places and people, a taken-for-granted perception of how cities should be. The visibility of tent cities disrupts this aesthetic notion of stability and growth as homeless people use the tent to protest their isolation and exclusion.     

Rental housing for a French taxpayer: are there tax arbitrage opportunities in the USA?

The aim of this paper is to identify tax arbitrage opportunities in the field of rental housing in France and the USA. We conducted tax simulations for investments made in the USA or France. We compared total net rental incomes, capital gains and present investment values based on different tax regimes. Our results show that rental housing in the USA under the Effectively Connected Income classification serves as the best option, as it generates the highest present investment value. We performed several robustness exercises and we showed that our results are strengthened in cases of stronger price appreciation in the USA than in France and in cases of high landlord tax brackets.