Road infrastructure and economic development in the periphery: the case of A55 improvements in North Wales

This paper examines the impact of a major road improvement programme on the economic development of North Wales. The paper identifies the economic impacts of the road on a selection of firms and organisations in North Wales, and provides a modelling framework to examine the static and dynamic effects of road improvements. Road improvements across North Wales are found to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for economic development in this peripheral area.     

Information,market power,and price volatility

We consider demand function competition with a finite number of agents and private information. We show that any degree of market power can arise in the unique equilibrium under an information structure that is arbitrarily close to complete information. Regardless of the number of agents and the correlation of payoff shocks, market power may be arbitrarily close to zero (the competitive outcome) or arbitrarily large (so there is no trade). By contrast, price volatility is always lower than the variance of the aggregate shock across all information structures. Alternative trading mechanisms lead to very distinct bounds as a comparison with Cournot competition establishes.     

Targeting in advertising markets: implications for offline versus online media

We develop a model with many advertisers (products) and many advertising markets (media). Each advertiser sells to a different segment of consumers, and each medium is targeting a different audience. We characterize the competitive equilibrium in the advertising markets and evaluate the implications of targeting. An increase in targeting leads to an increase in the total number of consumer‐product matches, and hence in the social value of advertising. Yet, targeting also increases the concentration of firms advertising in each market. Surprisingly, we then find that the equilibrium price of advertisements is first increasing, then decreasing, in the targeting capacity. We trace out the implications of targeting for competing media. We distinguish offline and online media by their targeting ability: low versus high. As consumers’ relative exposure to online media increases, the revenues of offline media decrease, even though the price of advertising might increase.     

Does buffet choice architecture affect intake? The effect of relocating butter at a breakfast buffet on food intake

The aim of this study was to investigate if a changed default reduces the intake of butter among students at a breakfast buffet. Students were divided into two groups and served themselves from a breakfast buffet. The control group was offered a buffet where the butter was easily accessible, whereas the intervention group was offered a buffet where a request had to be made for butter. Single packed portions of butter taken from each part of the buffet, the number of students, and the number of habitual users in each group were recorded. At the regular buffet, 67 of 115 students were habitual butter users and 81 packs of butter were taken. At the buffet with the changed default, 16 of the 56 students were habitual butter users. Seventeen packs of butter were taken from the buffet. Slightly displacing butter at a breakfast buffet and forcing students to ask for that option significantly reduced uptake.     

Gendering and Gender in Public Service Organizations: Changing Professional Identities Under New Public Management

This article examines the enactment of new public management (NPM) in public service professional organizations, the nature of professional/managerial subjectivities promoted within the NPM discourse, and the implications for male and female professionals/managers. The article has two aims. First, taking a gender ing organization perspective, it explores the gendered meanings of NPM and the promotion of new professional/managerial subjectivities. Second, focusing on gender in organizations, the article then considers the implications of the enactment of NPM for male and female professionals/managers. The article illustrates the complex, manifold and fluid nature of both the meanings ascribed to NPM and individual responses. It is argued that a gender lens offers a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of NPM enactment and the implications of this for public service professionals/managers are considered.     

Employee involvement and participation: developing the concept of institutional embeddedness using WERS2004

It is widely accepted that employee involvement and participation (EIP) is a key component of the high commitment bundle of HRM, but that it can take a range of forms in practice. Much of the analysis to date has either treated different forms of EIP as a single construct or has measured EIP by virtue of its presence or absence alone. Drawing on earlier work based on the data from WERS1998 examining the link between various forms of EIP and employee outcomes such as job satisfaction and organisational commitment, the authors re-apply and extend these ideas to data from WERS2004. In particular they develop the concept of institutional embeddedness, in order argue that both the depth and breadth of EIP have important associations with commitment though not with satisfaction.

This association held for workplaces employing 25 or more workers, and here it was apparent that the more that employees are involved at workplace level – through a wider number of EIP practices that are held more frequently and include opportunities for workers to have their say – the more likely it is that investments in EIP will reap the reward of organisational commitment. For smaller establishments, given that they tend to operate with relatively few formal schemes, it is likely that managers in these workplaces find alternative ways in which to engage the workforce, and that informal EIP offer similar levels of embeddedness in these situations. A clear implication to be drawn from the findings is that, in a context of lower levels of formality within organisations (large and small), line managers are more than ever the key link between HR policy and the embodiment of actual practice at the workplace.