passive drinking

The threat to health from passive smoking is now well understood. Andrew Wilson, a freelance healthcare journalist, reveals the alarming results of recent research into ‘passive drinking’. Without wishing to cause alarm Economic Affairs wonders how seriously we should treat these new findings?     

Management and the Professions: How Cracked is That Glass Ceiling?

All prestigious or highly-paid occupations in Britain are dominated by men: this is as true of the public sector as it is of industry. This article examines the evidence for discrimination in the public sector. It deals with both the situation at work and the one at home. It looks at various explanations as to why this is the case, as well as the evidence on how men and women deal with the inequality. The author concludes that there are good reasons why men and women do not see or confront the issues discussed in her article. Unless men and women wake up to the fact that we live in an unequal society and wish to see the glass ceiling well and truly broken, little is likely to change.     

The Adoption of a Retail-Oriented Marketing Mix for Bank Branch Operations

This article considers the major emphasis currently being placed by the retail banks on the distribution element of the marketing mix. In particular, it demonstrates that the retail banks within the UK have recognised the importance of the branch network in achieving a competitive advantage and are currently active to a greater or lesser degree in adopting a retail-oriented marketing mix for bank branch operations. The article goes on to argue that the mix has not yet been successfully co-ordinated as a result of the limited remit of marketing personnel within the banking sector.     

Efficient delays in a stochastic model of bargaining

Summary. We consider a k-player sequential bargaining model in which both the cake size and the identity of the proposer are determined by a stochastic process. For the case where the cake is a simplex (of random size) and the players share a common discount factor, we establish the existence of a unique stationary subgame perfect payoff which is efficient and characterize the conditions under which agreement is delayed. We also investigate how the equilibrium payoffs depend on the order in which the players move and on the correlation between the identity of the proposer and the cake size.Received: November 5, 1996; revised version: December 31, 1996This revised version was published online in February 2005 with corrections to the cover date.     

Mill's ‘proof’ of Utility and the composition of causes

John Stuart Mill proposed that all policy precepts, be they in the areas of morality or prudence or aesthetics, are all subordinate to the precepts of the Art of Life. The value which he assumes in defining the Art of Life is the Principle of Utility. This principle, being normative rather than fact, can admit of no proof based solely on deductive inference. Yet Mill proposed considerations that he believed capable of rationally persuading one to accept his principle as the basic principle for the Art of Life. This paper aims to evaluate this argument. In particular, it tries to show that a crucial step, often thought to be a logical howler, is not to be so simply dismissed. It is shown that if one accepts certain theses from Mill's philosophy of science and of social science, concerning the composition of causes, then the crucial step is fully justified. It is also suggested that these theses of Mill's philosophy of science are mistaken. So Mill's proof of utility is, after all, unsound, but the reconstruction proposed shows it to be much more plausible and much more philosophically interesting than is often thought.