Role transitions in older adults: A marketing opportunity

Consumers act out roles throughout their lives. Marketers assist in this role playing by providing the wardrobes, props, and sets in the form of products and services. They also help people understand acceptable role behavior by portraying roles in their communication programs. Consumers assume new roles as they age. This article is designed to enhance understanding of the often-ignored roles that accompany aging and provides examples of and suggestions for effective marketing for these role transitions.     

Marriage Settlements

French couples may choose between two types of marriage settlements governing asset ownership after a divorce or inheritance: common property or separate property. A cooperative model considers the marriage contract as a means of providing for widowhood of the less endowed spouse. A second model addresses the probability of divorce and the production of a marriage good. The common property contract then becomes a means of inducing the wife to invest in the marriage good. Choice of contract, labor supply and fertility are simultaneous. Empirically we find that characteristics of the spouses such as relative age or differences in endowments influence the choice. So do the expected number of children and the wife's labor supply decision. This last decision is also shown to be influenced by the chosen settlement, while fertility is not.
JEL classification : J 12; J 4; K 12     

Reviews

'New technology a health and safety report'

APEX, London and Home Counties Area Sub-Committee; New Technology; a Health and Safety Report, February 1985. (Available from APEX, 3 Parkview Road, Welling, Kent, 0A16 1SZ, tel. 01-303 3407/8.)     

Job change and workplace learning in the public sector: the significance of new technology for unskilled work

Focussing here on local authorities and health services, this paper examines the significance of new technology to unskilled work in the public sector as it is developing and the implications for workplace learning. An argument is developed that new technology is central to a minority of examples of job change, although, significantly, it is more important to staff–initiated change and to workers' ability to fully participate in life beyond the workplace.     

Information–driven trading at the Prague Stock Exchange: Evidence from Intra–Day Data

Many observers argue that informed and insider trading is widespread in the emerging financial markets of transition countries, yet rigorous treatment of this issue has been virtually non–existent. The current paper estimates the extent of informed trading on the Prague Stock Exchange (PSE) using intra–day transaction data. Our estimates confirm that the average share of informed trading is equal to 0.32, which is high relative to developed markets and varies considerably among stocks. Using the Easley et al. (1996) approach on the very best segment of the PSE we obtained a high average probability of informed trading. Since data used in this study cover the period after the major attempts to improve market regulations, our results indicate that the PSE needs further strengthening to recover credibility and to become a real source of corporate financing. JEL classification: G14, G15.     

The Virtues of Green Strategies: Some Empirical Support from the Alliance Context

Whilst strategic alliance performance has been extensively researched through the resource-based lens, it has yet to be examined under the natural-resource-based view (NRBV) of the firm. Building on the NRBV, this article argues that a firm’s level of environmental proactiveness affects its level of alliance satisfaction. The argument is tested by surveying Norwegian CEOs, and the results confirm a positive relationship. Moreover, the partner’s environmental proactiveness equally influences the focal firm’s satisfaction with the alliance, in consistent with related studies. In addition to providing new empirical evidence in support of the NRBV, and extending the alliance performance literature, the findings add to the corporate environmentalism literature by offering insights on the virtues of green strategies in an underexplored context.     

Book production and the onset of modern economic growth

We provide a new data set on per capita book production as a proxy for advanced literacy skills, and assess this relative to other measures. While literacy proxies very basic skills, book production per capita is an indicator for more advanced capabilities. Growth theory suggests that human capital formation plays a significant role in creating the ‘wealth of nations.’ This study tests whether human capital formation has an impact on early-modern growth disparities. In contrast to some previous studies which denied the role of human capital as a crucial determinant of long-term growth, we confirm its importance.      

Budget surpluses and social security reform: U.S. fiscal policy issues in 1998

In 1997 the US President and Congress concluded an agreement that imposed caps on discretionary government spending and which was expected to balance the budget by the year 2002. Just one year later the tide has turned: the fiscal year 1998 resulted in a US budget surplus for the first time since 1969. This article discusses the causes for this surprising development and the link between budget surpluses and Social Security's finances. It also relates some recent proposals on how to preserve the budget surplus for Social Security to the sustainability of fiscal policy.