Using a dual-frame design to improve phone surveys on political attitudes: developing a weighting strategy for limited external information in Hong Kong

Quality & Quantity - In recent years, rapid increases in mobile phone ownership and decreases in landline users have led to potential biases in landline phone survey estimations. Mobile-only...     

Using the Pack‐and‐a‐Half Rule to Eliminate Backroom Inventories in Retail Operations

In the retail industry, backroom inventories are typically associated with higher labor costs and greater operational complexity. Thus, retailers look for ways to eliminate backroom inventories. A heuristic used for this purpose is the pack‐and‐a‐half rule which suggests that the shelf space allocated for a product should be at least 50% larger than the case pack quantity in which the product is delivered. Despite its popularity among retailers, the pack‐and‐a‐half rule has been ignored in the academic literature. We introduce the pack‐and‐a‐half rule, assess its impact on a retailer's profits, identify cost, demand, and product characteristics driving this impact, and propose a modification. Based on an analysis of data obtained from a retailer on 1,986 SKUs in 20 categories, we find that the pack‐and‐a‐half rule decreases a retailer's profits, on average, by 10% when applied uniformly across all SKUs. Further, this decrease is significantly affected by product depth, product width, demand elasticity, case pack quantity, and inventory carrying cost. Finally, we develop a set of modifications based on these variables where the pack‐and‐a‐half rule is applied selectively and in a stepwise fashion. These modifications limit the decrease in a retailer's profits to a range between 6% and 7%.     

Should the Pre‐Notification of Mergers Be Compulsory in Australia?

Australia is unusual among the world's antitrust jurisdictions in not making the pre‐notification of mergers compulsory. However, if the parties are concerned that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is likely to object to the merger, there are strong incentives for them to notify the ACCC as the regulator has developed a strong reputation for imposing heavy costs on parties that fail to notify such mergers. The result is a system of quasi‐compulsory notification that creates the strongest incentives for parties to notify the ACCC of those proposals to which it is most likely to object. This study analyses data extracted from the ACCC's merger database and the empirical results are consistent with this characterisation. Mergers reported voluntarily by the parties are found to experience longer delays to completion, and are more likely to be challenged by the ACCC, when compared with a sample of all other mergers assessed by the regulator. The results suggest that non‐compulsory notification allows the parties themselves to pre‐sort the proposed merger vis‐à‐vis its interest to the ACCC.     

The Prophecy of Place: A Labor Market Study of Young Women and Education

This study demonstrates that place—defined in this article as labor market area (LMA)— provides a useful context for examining how youth manage gendered situations. Places vary by conditions in which gender is more, less or differently salient, and a particular mix of factors accommodates different individual outcomes. This study utilizes multi–level modeling to examine influence of LMA characteristics on over–time educational measures for young women (Center for Human Resource Research 1994). Hierarchical models determine place–level effects on both average outcomes (within and between LMAs) and attainment processes. A major finding of this study is that aggregate place effects channel personal decisions and outcomes of young women. Young women's educational aspirations are dependent on gender– specific variables such as the number of women in college or the number of young women married in a local area. Attainment depends on the percentage of women in higher education and a local labor market's average age at first marriage. Further, what are assumed to be positive environmental effects (e.g., manufacturing dominance) are based on structural advantages for men and actually depress outcomes for women. Notably, the influence of place is independent of strong individual–level determinants, including social class.     

Survivor Bonds: A Comment on Blake and Burrows

This article offers a critical assessment of the “survivor bonds” (SBs) proposal recently put forward by Blake and Burrows, which calls for the government to issue bonds whose coupon payments are contingent on the proportions of retirees surviving to particular ages. It suggests that the proposal has considerable merit and discusses the circumstances in which SBs would be useful risk management tools for insurance companies. It also discusses alternatives such as reinsurance, hedging with life contracts, dynamic hedging, and other forms of survivor derivative. Finally, it evaluates and rejects the argument that SBs should be issued by the state.     

The 1986 U.K. Insolvency and Company Directors' Disqualification Acts: An evaluation of their impacts upon small firm financing decisions

This paper examines the potential impact of the 1986 U.K. Insolvency and Company Directors' Disqualification Acts on small firm financing decisions. With the aid of a simplified Black and Scholes (1973) option model of financing decisions, the paper illustrates how the 1986 legislation reduces the incentives for owner-managers to gamble with creditor claims, particularly in situations of financial distress, by making them personally liable for unmet claims and/or by disqualifying them from holding office for a fixed period. For instance, example 3 in the paper shows the conflict that could result from the owner-manager reducing his/her opening equity position and it further argues how the legislation should act to alleviate the situation. It remains, however, an empirical question as to whether this reduction in creditors' exposure to the risk of uncompensated wealth transfers will ultimately result in a significantly greater number of company liquidations and disqualifications, particularly during a prolonged economic downturn, or an improved/less costly supply of finance to small firms.     

Monopoly Rents and Price Fixing in Betting Markets

Betting markets provide an ideal environment in which to examinemonopoly power due to the availability of detailed information on product pricing. In this paper we argue that the pricing strategies of companies in the U.K. betting industry are likely to be an important source of monopoly rents, particularly in the market for forecast bets. Pricing in these markets are shown to be explicitly coordinated. Further, price information is asymmetrically biased in favor of producers. We find evidence, based on U.K. data, that pricing of CSF bets is characterized by a significantly higher markup than pricing of single bets. Although this differential can in part be explained by the preferences of bettors, it is reasonable to attribute a significant part of the differential as being due to monopoly power.