Broadcasting and Sport

The broadcasting of sport is heavily regulated. Our main findingis that common trends, and differences, in the quality, quantity,and price of televised sport across Europe and USA cannot beadequately explained without reference to policy interventionsby national and supranational government, and by competitionand regulatory authorities. These interventions have a significantimpact on the organization and governance of sports, as wellas the structure of broadcasting markets and the conduct ofbroadcasting companies. Foreclosure of broadcasting marketsthrough exclusive, long-term contracts, bundling and verticalintegration, access of viewers to major sporting events, andcollective selling stand out as the most significant policyissues. We conclude by noting a number of policy implications.     

Means-Testing the Child Benefit

Improving the distributional impact of transfers may be costly if it reduces labor supply. In this paper we show how effects of changes in the design of the child benefit program can be examined by employing information from behavioral and non-behavioral simulations on micro data. The direct distributional effects are assessed by tax-benefit model calculations, while female labor supply responses to alternative child benefit schemes are simulated under the assumption that choices are discrete. Distributional effects after labor supply responses are also shown. The study confirms that greater targeting of the child benefit is traded against reductions in female labor supply.     

The customer is not always right

Consumers can sustain markets that are morally questionable. They can make immoral or morally suspect demands of individual businesses, especially small businesses. Even when they do not, the costs to firms of consumer protection can sometimes drive them to ruin. This paper presents cases where deference to the consumer is variously unwarranted, cases that may prompt second thoughts about some kinds of consumerism.Tom Sorell is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Essex. He was educated at McGill University and Oxford. He is on the editorial board ofBusiness Ethics: A European Review, and is the author (with John Hendry) ofBusiness Ethics (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1994).     

Making Financial Goals and Reporting Policies Serve

The main. nancial goal of Progressive Insurance, the third largest underwriter of auto insurance in the U.S., has remained the same since the late 1960s. Expressed in three words, "96 and grow," the goal tells the company's managers to pursue all growth opportunities while maintaining a "combined ratio" no higher than 96, or what amounts to a minimum 4% spread between revenues (premiums) and costs (including expected losses). Thanks in part to the clarity of mission provided by this goal, the company has produced an average 15% rate of growth in revenues and earnings, along with a remarkably stable 15% return for its shareholders, since going public in 1971.
Progressive's simplicity and clarity of mission is also partly responsible for another of the company's distinctive policies: product pricing that, while disciplined, is aggressive and highly decentralized. Having invested some $500 million per year developing statistical models for pricing individual customer risks and acquisition costs, the company was among the. rst in its industry to underwrite "non-standard" risks. And aided by sophisticated pricing models, each of Progressive's 100 or so local product managers are charged with adapting those models to come up with premiums for their own regions.
To go along with its strategic and organizational innovations, Progressive also has an innovative disclosure policy. Apart from SEC reports, the company's communications seldom mention earnings or earnings per share, and the company has never provided earnings guidance. With the passage of Reg. FD in late 2000, the company brie. y considered offering guidance. But in the spring of 2001, the board decided instead to provide monthly releases of its realized combined ratio. Since adoption of this new disclosure policy, Progressive has seen a 50% drop in the volatility of its stock price.     

In Search of Theory Development in Grounded Investigations: Doctors' Experiences of Managing as an Example of Fitted and Prospective Theorizing

This article draws on a study of doctors’ experiences of clinical managing to highlight research conventions that limit the development and use of middle range theories in grounded studies. Using sensemaking and the psychological contract as example frameworks, we illustrate how customary deductive evaluations of middle range theories turn grounded researchers away from theory building. As a correction to these conventions, we offer an inductive approach to building existing theory in grounded investigations that does not depend solely on working with frameworks under different empirical conditions. We suggest that forward theorizing is most likely to progress from a synthesis of fitted explanation and prospective thinking that presses at the limits of the data's usefulness. To illustrate this approach, trialled thinking about novel theoretical juxtapositions and alternative sources was used in conjunction with our clinical director data. The value of this approach was supported in two ways. First, a number of fitted and prospective conjectures are offered about how social identity articulates with psychological contracts and sensemaking in role change situations. Second, new light is shed on the process by which particular social conditions differentially modify employees’ social categorizations, and how these inform employee responses to the evolving experience of role change. The article concludes with some tentative proposals for promoting more discussion of theory building in grounded investigations.     

Regional innovation and small high technology firms in peripheral regions

This paper highlights the difficulty of developing HT firms in a peripheral region of Spain. Although the endogenous development of HT firms in these regions is possible, their evolution depends on more central regions. The firm's geographical location and the type of HT production are the most important endogenous factors governing the firm's success.     

The endless need for regulation in telecommunication: An explanation

Telecommunication services have existed as a legal monopoly nearly throughout its entire history. In 1998, telecom market liberalisation was achieved across the European Union (EU) through the introduction of competition among telephone services. Asymmetrical obligations were deemed necessary in order to compensate the market power of the former monopolist.As the evolution of asymmetrical regulation in Spain illustrates, obligations and the telecommunications operators subject to them increased with the regulatory framework established in 2002 in the EU. This new regulatory framework may continue to expand through the inclusion of functional separation as another possible asymmetrical obligation. In short, it seems that the regulatory pressure on the telecommunications industry is increasing, despite the lapse in time since the liberalisation of the industry.In this paper, a methodology developed by the Austrian School of Economics is applied in order to explain why the telecommunication market is subject to increasing regulation in Europe, rather than deregulation, after more than 10 years of liberalisation. In particular, Mises's theory of price control is used to explain the evolution of the regulation of local loop unbundling.     

Sunspot fluctuations in dynamics with predetermined variables

Summary. In this paper, I study the existence of Sunspot Equilibria in a general framework whose dynamics allow for the presence of predetermined variables in the system. The main motivation for this research comes from the fact that previous studies did not allow for such predetermined variables which, nevertheless, appear quite naturally in economic models. I show, for a non-negligible subset of dynamics with predetermined variables verifying usual assumptions, the existence of Stationary Sunspot Equilibria fluctuating between an arbitrary finite number of states arbitrarily close to a steady state. Received: March 1, 1995; revised version September 18, 1996