CAN THE PRESIDENT REALLY AFFECT ECONOMIC GROWTH? PRESIDENTIAL EFFORT AND THE POLITICAL BUSINESS CYCLE

Presidential elections are often seen as referendums on the health of the economy; however, little evidence exists on the president's ability to influence gross domestic product (GDP). This study examines the effect of the incentive to be reelected and the resulting increase in presidential effort on GDP growth. Growth is found to rise in reelection years for first‐term presidents after 1932 and to fall in election years before 1932, when reelection was uncommon, and for second‐term presidents generally. This effect is largest for high‐quality presidents—who probably have the highest return to effort—and is spread across multiple sectors of the economy. (JEL D78, D72, E32, J24)     

Hidden Resources and Barriers in Career Learning Assessment With Adolescents Vulnerable to Discrimination

The authors maintain that the social learning theory of career development and counseling has not been applied to diverse populations. To address this gap in the literature, the authors conducted a qualitative analysis of interviews with 21 middle school students in a low‐income, culturally diverse, inner‐city public school. Four themes emerged, reflecting the influence of discrimination on participants' career learning: contextual barriers and resources for learning, and psychological barriers and resources for learning. The authors provide a conceptual framework for assessing resources and barriers and a rationale for why these aspects often remain hidden or unexamined in career assessment with clients who are vulnerable to discrimination.     

改善开发所致移民安置项目的后果——牛津大学难民研究中心研究成果报告

论文在讨论四个移民典型案例的基础上 ,讨论在项目中与政策相关的教训     

Don't mention Stonehenge!

It rises massive and magnificent above Salisbury Plain. The extraordinary monoliths of Stonehenge leave us as impressed today as ever—and as baffled. Archaeologists argue about how it was made. Can statisticians tell the answer? Chris Jones thinks they can be of considerable assistance.     

Naivety and Family Therapy An Interview with John Carpenter

Family therapists have been naive about families, the pressures on them and the contexts of therapy. Therapists should be clear about their roles, sensitive to families' experience of therapy, and resist the temptation to mystify therapy. John Carpenter is Senior Lecturer in Mental Health, University of Kent, Canterbury, England and Co-Editor of Journal of Family Therapy. He was a guest keynote speaker at the 1991 Australian Family Therapy Conference in Brisbane, and this interview took place shortly afterwards in Melbourne.     

What to Do at Low Doses: A Bounding Approach for Economic Analysis

To quantify the health benefits of environmental policies, economists generally require estimates of the reduced probability of illness or death. For policies that reduce exposure to carcinogenic substances, these estimates traditionally have been obtained through the linear extrapolation of experimental dose-response data to low-exposure scenarios as described in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment (1986). In response to evolving scientific knowledge, EPA proposed revisions to the guidelines in 1996. Under the proposed revisions, dose-response relationships would not be estimated for carcinogens thought to exhibit nonlinear modes of action. Such a change in cancer-risk assessment methods and outputs will likely have serious consequences for how benefit-cost analyses of policies aimed at reducing cancer risks are conducted. Any tendency for reduced quantification of effects in environmental risk assessments, such as those contemplated in the revisions to EPA's cancer-risk assessment guidelines, impedes the ability of economic analysts to respond to increasing calls for benefit-cost analysis. This article examines the implications for benefit-cost analysis of carcinogenic exposures of the proposed changes to the 1986 Guidelines and proposes an approach for bounding dose-response relationships when no biologically based models are available. In spite of the more limited quantitative information provided in a carcinogen risk assessment under the proposed revisions to the guidelines, we argue that reasonable bounds on dose-response relationships can be estimated for low-level exposures to nonlinear carcinogens. This approach yields estimates of reduced illness for use in a benefit-cost analysis while incorporating evidence of nonlinearities in the dose-response relationship. As an illustration, the bounding approach is applied to the case of chloroform exposure.     

An Exploratory Study of the Managerial Implications of Valuing Brands

This paper reports the results of interdisciplinary research extending the work of Mather and Peasnell (1991) reported in an earlier issue of this journal. Mather and Peasnell conducted an empirical analysis of the economic circumstances surrounding decisions to capitalize brands. This study investigates the managerial implications of periodically assessing and capitalizing the value of brands. Exploratory interviews were conducted with the key players in brand valuation activity, namely marketing and finance officials in brand-valuing companies and two senior personnel in the leading international brand-valuing agency. The recent inception of brand valuation in the accounts of several strong branded British companies provides an excellent research opportunity to explore a relatively novel managerial activity and its internal implications. These implications are reviewed under the headings: planning and control, the accounting/marketing interface, authorization of brand-related expenditure and brand-related decision making. An important finding of the study is that, while the original impetus for brand valuation came from balance sheet considerations, other unforseen managerial advantages are now widely perceived to accrue from brand valuation. The majority of current brand valuation activity appears to be driven more by management information needs, which are served by the evaluation phase of the exercise, than by a desire to capitalize brands in the published statements.