Retailing from the margins - the re-emergence of a food co-operative movement?

The disadvantage faced by low-income food consumers has long been recognized, with such groups likely to pay more for their food products, which are commonly limited in terms of range and quality. Such disadvantage stems not only from economic constraints, but also from geographical, sociodemographic and infrastructural factors, such as low car ownership levels (which limit mobility), age, family structure and infirmity. Issues of access and mobility are especially pertinent given that the majority of U.K. food retailers have sought to achieve increased market share through the pursuit of economies of scale, the inherent benefit of high margin maintenance, large format development and the relocation to edge-of-town/out-of-town and affluent suburban sites. To date, little attention in the form of research has been directed to examining strategies adopted by those on low incomes to address such circumstances. This paper outlines the initial findings of a wider longitudinal study that examines the activities of food co-operatives and food groups within the Glasgow area, which are run by, and are for the benefit of, those on low incomes. Through semi-structured interviews with relevant local government departments and funding bodies, management committees and volunteers involved in the daily operation of food groups, the initial aim was to identify the operational and organizational characteristics of food cooperative initiatives. The next stage was to determine what those involved perceived as the contribution made to the members and wider community, and finally, future opportunities for food cooperatives were identified. The results therefore, provide an invaluable insight, not only into the workings of food co-operatives, but also into the experience of those on low incomes in respect of food shopping. The research findings, perhaps ironically, provide a possible strategic direction for food retailers who, in the face of traditional market saturation, must identify new market growth opportunities within areas that they have previously neglected.     

Warranties: Continued Readability Problems After the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act

A major thrust of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act (MMWA) passed by Congress in 1975 is to make warranties “easy to read and understand.” This study examines readability levels for 121 warranties in ten categories of consumer durables. The warranties analyzed are found to require readability levels beyond what most Americans have attained. Limited warranties require significantly higher readability levels than full warranties. Results suggest the MMWA, since passage in 1975, may have increased the number of limited warranties and the difficulty of reading level.     

Beverage Container Deposit Laws: A Survey of the Issues and Results

Much of the movement toward mandatory beverage deposit legislation has withered away in the current anti-regulation mood of the country. Even before the change in mood, the major focus of deposit laws was moving away from litter control and toward energy and resource savings. In fact, deposit laws have had a variety of repercussions on such factors as jobs, consumer prices, industry capital expenditures, energy consumption, and litter. The cooling emotions and lapse in time since most of the regulations were enacted provide a good opportunity to sort through the arguments and review the results. This paper attempts to present a balanced view of the issues surrounding this complicated topic. It find that the consequences of mandatory deposits have generally been somewhere between the initial predictions of groups favoring legislation and those opposing it.     

High School Economic Education and Access to Financial Services

This study provides a long-term assessment of economic education by examining an individual's decision to have a bank account. Using the results of a nationwide telephone survey, high school courses in economics and business reduced the probability that an adult was unbanked, ceteris paribus. In addition, adults who demonstrated a higher level of understanding of basic economic concepts were less likely to be unbanked. The results indicated that an individual's understanding of the economic system was as important as formal coursework in explaining access to basic financial services.     

The Impact of Union Political Activities on Public-Sector Pay, Employment, and Budgets

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the political power of public employee unions has been a major cause of excessive growth in municipal expenditures. Previous studies, however, have not directly measured union political activities but instead have used some type of unionization or collective bargaining proxy. This paper uses unpublished data from the International City Management Association (ICMA) to develop a more direct measure of police and fire union political activity. It is found that increased union political activity leads to greater department expenditures but not necessarily to greater municipal expenditures or revenues. The results also suggest that unions increase department spending through political activity and not through the collective bargaining process itself. Further, it appears that political activity increases department spending through higher employment and not through higher compensation.     

Uncertainty and Export Performance: Evidence from 18 Countries

We study a sample of nine developed and nine developing countries to evaluate the questions of how foreign income uncertainty and real exchange rate (RER) uncertainty impact international trade and how those impacts vary according to stage of development. RER uncertainty has a negative and significant impact on export growth for six of the nine less developed countries in our sample, while it has an insignificant effect for a majority of the developed countries. In both groups, foreign income uncertainty has a more pervasively significant (and frequently larger) influence on trade than does RER uncertainty.     

LONG-RUN GROWTH PROJECTIONS AND THE AGGREGATE PRODUCTION FUNCTION: A SURVEY OF MODELS USED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

This paper examines the theory and method behind the long-run growth projections of four prominent models used within the U.S. government. The growth models of the Congressional Budget Ofice, the Social Security Administration, the Office of Management and Budget, and the General Accounting Office are all firmly based on the neoclassical framework of an aggregate production function, but several practical dfferences exist. Most notably, the CBO and GAO models endogenize capital accumulation, while the SSA and OMB simply assume that labor productivity growth will continue at historical rates. Although recent endogenous growth theory and the expanding empirical literature on cross-sectional variation emphasize alternative factors, the US. government agencies remain appropriately committed to the traditional, neoclassical framework as a tool for projecting long-run growth.     

Auditors' legal liability,collusion with management,and investors' loss*

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to model the legal exposure of auditors and to study the extent to which limitations on this exposure affect auditors' chosen audit intensity and collusion with management. Résumé. L'article qui suit a pour but de modéliser les risques auxquels sont exposés les vérificateurs de par la loi et de voir dans quelle mesure les limites de ce risque influent sur l'intensité de la vérification dont décident les vérificateurs et sur la collusion avec la direction.