A “Pure” long-term interest rate and the demand for money

This article presents the appropriate rate by which to discount a constant, certain, infinite stream of future payments: that is, the yield on a noncallable perpetuity or consol. The American consol series is a daily risk-free “pure” long term interest rate which is undistorted by tax effects, call premiums, and varying duration and reinvestment assumptions. If Hamburger had used the American consol series instead of the U.S. Government Long Term Bond Rate in his money demand function, he would have found more of the “missing money.” His average error (actual minus predicted money demand) as a percentage of actual money demand would have been reduced from 1.43% to 0.93% a 35% error reduction.     

Employee attitudes toward advertising

The attitudes and opinions of a group of bank employees toward a recent advertising campaign run by the bank which stressed employee service were studied via factor analysis. The analysis revealed three clearly defined dimensions underlying the attitude-opinion items: general attitude toward the campaign, relevance of the campaign to the respondent's job, and changes in the respondent's job behavior caused by the campaign. Relationships among factor scores on these three dimensions with job satisfaction, job involvement, degree of customer contact, and degree of contact with other employees were investigated using multiple regressions and canonical correlation analysis. Employee attitudes toward the campaign were significantly related to all four of the job characteristic variables, as was perceived relevance of the campaign to the employee's job. Changes in job behavior were related only to involvement and satisfaction. The relationships found here suggest that in some cases, employee attitudes should be considered in evaluating the effects of advertising campaigns. Close coordination between marketing and general managerial functions is required in situations where advertisements relate to employees as well as customers.     

Use of mathematical models in automotive transportation policy analysis: A case study

Mathematical models are used widely in automotive transportation policy analysis. The limitations, benefits, and uses of a case-study model, the Sweeney Passenger Car Gasoline Demand Model, were examined. It was found that because of users' lack of awareness of the model's characteristics, the model has sometimes been misused, although the misuse appears to have had no major negative policy impact. However, the model use has had some impact on major automotive/energy policy decisions of the 1970s. Involvement by the model author in applications of the model contributed to effective use of the model in the policy process.     

Inverted breakeven analysis for profitable marketing decisions

This article develops a modified model of breakeven analysis which provides a viable conceptual tool to the industrial marketing management to determine in actual industrial marketing situations whether a given product should be produced and marketed by the supplier firm.     

Landowner willingness to supply marginal land for bioenergy production

This study elicits willingness to supply marginal land for biomass cultivation in Southern Lower Michigan. Most of the surveyed landowners are not interested in renting land for bioenergy crop production. Those who are interested offer relatively little land for bioenergy crops, even at rental rates three times current levels. Willing landowners would prefer to grow a significant portion of these crops on cropland rather than non-crop, marginal land. Hence, the area of marginal land that owners are willing to supply for bioenergy crop production falls far short of area estimates based on remote sensing that ignore landowner preferences.     

Returns to public sector plant breeding in the presence of spill‐ins and private goods: the case of bean research in Michigan

This article illustrates a methodology for assessing economic returns to a publicly funded breeding program in the presence of private sector investments, and spill‐ins from other contemporary public institutions and past research efforts. The approach consists of determining yield gains from bean improvement research; applying these yield gain estimates to measure benefits attributable to different institutional players and time periods; and then assessing the benefit‐cost ratios of investments in a bean improvement program since 1980 by Michigan State University (MSU). The results indicate that investments in MSU's bean breeding program have yielded benefits to costs ratio in the range of 0.7 to 2.2, depending on the attribution rule used to estimate the benefits. The estimated benefit/cost ratios reported in this study are lower‐bound estimates, as they do not account for potential benefits from area planted to MSU varieties outside of Michigan (spillover effects), which was 1.5 times greater than the area planted to MSU‐bred varieties within Michigan in the period 1998–2002. The implications of the increasingly privatized bean seed markets for the role of public sector research in bean improvement research are discussed.     

Synthesis of qualitative and quantitative approaches to long-range forecasting

Integration of qualitative and quantitative forecasting approaches is usually attempted and appraised in the context of improving forecast accuracy. This paper examines the feasibility and potential merits of integrating these two approaches to produce a useful range, rather than to improve the accuracy, of long-range forecasting. Two approaches of synthesis, one beginning with qualitative future scenarios and the other beginning with quantitative econometric models, are described, illustrated, and compared.     

Impact of organizational and buyer characteristics on the buying center

A mail survey of 200 organizational buyers was conducted to determine if the number of individuals in the buying center or the amount of perceived self-influence varied by organizational and buyer characteristics or by the type of purchase decision. The results of the study indicate that the type and size of the firm, as well as the buyer's educational level, affect both the number of individuals in the buying center and the amount of perceived self-influence of the organizational buyer. The results further indicate that the size of the buying center increases and the amount of perceived self-influence decreases as the purchase decision becomes more complex.     

Two copy testing techniques: The cloze procedure and the cognitive complexity test

The theory behind two copy testing techniques—the cloze procedure and the cognitive complexity text—is reviewed; and three hypotheses are developed for testing. These two techniques work especially well when used together as they provide a way to match message properties with the audience's abilities. In a discriminant analysis setting, support is found for all three hypotheses, and a substantial portion of the variance in the criterion variable—advertising recall—is taken into account. The results of predictions to a validation sample are also encouraging.