Spotting management fads

Business fads can change companies, for better or worse. They can introduce useful ideas but often fail to deliver on promises. So how can managers tell a fad from a tool that might endure? For one thing, beware of suspiciously simple techniques. If they seem too easy, they probably are.     

Constant per capita consumption paths with exhaustible resources and decaying produced capital

We introduce decay in produced capital and exogenous technical progress to the recent “Solow Model” of Asheim et al. with population growth and observe the possible collapse of the economy given too high a rate of decay. “Enough” technical progress can restore sustainable per capita consumption.     

Participatory appraisal approaches versus sample survey data collection: a case of smallholder farmers well-being ranking in Njombe District, Tanzania

Social scientists and rural development interventionists inTanzania and in Sub-Saharan Africa depend mainly on conventionalsample surveys; in part this is a legacy of their basic training.Participatory rural appraisal and intervention approaches offera varied range of methods. We ask ourselves whether the resultsfrom participatory, rapid appraisals are conflicting and differentto those from sample surveys? This paper compares results ofa Rapid Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) with a conventionalsample survey. These surveys were conducted at the end of 1995and mid-1996 respectively, to establish socio-economic well-beingranks in Njombe district. A comparison of results shows thatthe well-being ranks established using PRA are valid and theapproach is reliable. The three qualitatively established well-beingranks differed empirically in many socio-economic indicators.These include resource endowment, labour force size, agriculturalland, livestock ownership, forest woodlot management, perceptionof food insecurity, technological advances in agricultural productionand natural resource management systems. Results show that thelow well-being group and female-headed households are disadvantaged.The goal of the Hifadhi Ya Mazingira-Njombe project is to developenvironmentally sustainable crop and livestock husbandry practicesin the district. The well-being ranking exercise has strongimplications for the project's strategy. We discuss the adoptedmethodology and implications. The paper recommends that developmentprogrammes and workers in Tanzania and Sub-Saharan Africa oughtto extend their approaches. It is time to include more of theparticipatory, relatively rapid rural appraisal and interventiontechniques. Benefits that they may accrue are time saving, lowercosts, quality information and stakeholder involvement.     

Education and the natural rate of unemployment

We show how changes in the educational composition of the labourforce affect both the level and the behaviour over time of aggregateunemployment series. We also demonstrate that if it had notbeen for such changes, the US unemployment series would look'European' since the within-group unemployment series all havethat same appearance. We derive a natural-rate model of unemploymentfor two education groups, providing microfoundations for inter-groupdifferences in wages and unemployment, and evaluate its plausibilityin light of microeconomic evidence.     

Preference for output price uncertainty by the non-renewable resource extracting firm

We establish a general preference for price uncertainty by the price-taking, risk-neutral, non-renewable resource extracting firm with orthodox convex extraction costs. We prove that the relevant value function for profits over an interval is convex in output price.     

Welfare policy and the transformation of social security in South Africa

Social security is based on the belief that all citizens should be protected by the state against the main vicissitudes of life: old age, unemployment, disability and sickness. The success of welfare programmes internationally in improving poverty, income distribution and unemployment is appraised. Income maintenance in South Africa, which is discriminatory and ineffective in meeting real human needs, is examined. Although welfare should not promote dependence, neither should it be so hard to come by as to punish the poor.     

On the efficiency of stock-based compensation

When the market can observe the profitability of all projectswith equal precision, then with stock compensation (i) the weighton any given project in managerial compensation is independentof the marginal productivity of effort in the project; (ii)the projects that are the noisiest indicators of managerialeffort receive the most weight in compensation; and (iii) investorshave the greatest incentive to collect information about projectsthat are the noisiest indicators of managerial effort.     

Sustainability with endogenous discounting

We construct a dynamic competitive model with a stock of human‐made capital and several stocks of natural resources and ask under what conditions consumption will be constant if infinitesimal households with heterogeneous preferences and endowments discount their utility at an endogenous rate that depends on some macroeconomic variables. We show that for consumption to be constant, this function must be the marginal product of capital function. We demonstrate that Hartwick's rule holds in a modified form that takes account of natural growth of resource stocks.     

Suicide as an indicator of quality of life: evidence from dialysis patients

Quality of life has been measured in many different ways for patients with chronic medical conditions. What is unique about the approach used here is that it uses suicide rates as a relatively objective measure of quality of life within the population of dialysis patients. Using a Heckman selection model, we estimate the relative suicide rates across patients undergoing both hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. Our empirical results show that patients on hemodialysis have relatively lower suicide rates after controlling for other factors. Specifically, our results indicate that 141 fewer suicides will occur for every 1,000 patients shifted from peritoneal to hemodialysis. Prior estimates of the higher costs of the latter modality yield an estimated expenditure of $42,043 per suicide avoided.