Financial Market Variables do not Predict Real Activity: Further Evidence

Previous studies argue that financial variables do not help forecast U.S. output growth. F statistics for excluding financial variables from output growth equations depend on the sample period and the inclusion of 1974:12 in the sample. Also, an autoregressive model of output growth often provides better forecasts than models with lagged financial variables included. I decompose output into permanent and cyclical components and ask whether financial variables help forecast either component in isolation. The paper‐bill spread does improve in‐sample forecasts of cyclical output, but no financial variable helps forecast either cyclical output or permanent output growth out of sample.     

Vocational aspects of life care planning for people with spinal cord injury

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a catastrophic event with profound, long-term consequences in all aspects of an individual's life, including employment. The life care plan (LCP) is a methodology that is used to document the continuum of care needs that an individual with SCI will have across his or her life span. The LCP also highlights the critical stages of development necessary to maximize the person's functional potential and productivity. This article provides a brief overview, with a case study example, of how the LCP can be used in addressing an individual's post-injury employability needs.     

Planning corporate growth with inverted product life cycles

The boomtime periods of growth enjoyed by U.S. corporations during the 1950s and 1960s are not likely to return. Firms desiring to realize consistent and continuous sales volume growth in the years ahead will need new perspectives and tools to actively and systematically plan that growth.Traditional approaches to planning growth are too unsophisticated for today's complex and competitive marketplace. Computerized simulations and other advanced techniques available today are, on the other hand, a step too far into the future for most business planners.This article presents a new framework and new perspectives for viewing and considering alternative growth opportunities. The framework—the “Inverted Product Life Cycle”—takes something with which most managers are very familiar (the product life cycle concept) and expands it into an analytical yet intuitive and useful tool for planning future growth.     

Global Female Homelessness: A Multi-Faceted Problem

International female homelessness is a difficult subject to address for a number of reasons. First, understanding what defines homelessness poses a problem because female homelessness often takes on a different form than that of male homelessness. Also, homelessness in industrialized countries looks different from that of developing nations where women are more likely to have inadequate housing in temporary shelters or live as squatters. Both of these factors affect the visibility of female homelessness as well as the ability to garner an accurate account of the number of homeless women around the world. Understanding the causes of female homelessness from a global perspective is no less difficult to comprehend because it encompasses so many other multifaceted issues. Women in developing nations face a different set of issues than their counterparts in the industrialized world because of differences in property rights, women’s rights generally, access to education, and access to social services. Finally, immigrant women face a unique set of circumstances of being a foreigner without an adequate social support network.

Characterizing complexity in socio-technical systems: a case study of a SAMU Medical Regulation Center

Complexity theory has been adopted by a number of studies as a benchmark to investigate the performance of socio-technical systems, especially those that are characterized by relevant cognitive work. However, there is little guidance on how to assess, systematically, the extent to which a system is complex. The main objective of this study is to carry out a systematic analysis of a SAMU (Mobile Emergency Medical Service) Medical Regulation Center in Brazil, based on the core characteristics of complex systems presented by previous studies. The assessment was based on direct observations and nine interviews: three of them with regulator of emergencies medical doctor, three with radio operators and three with telephone attendants. The results indicated that, to a great extent, the core characteristics of complexity are magnified) due to basic shortcomings in the design of the work system. Thus, some recommendations are put forward with a view to reducing unnecessary complexity that hinders the performance of the socio-technical system.     

INEQUALITY AND TRUST: NEW EVIDENCE FROM PANEL DATA

We estimate the causal link from income inequality to generalized trust by reconsidering the country‐level evidence on this issue. First, we exploit the panel dimension of the data, thus controlling for any country unobservable time‐invariant variables, and find a negative relationship between the two variables that holds only for developed countries. Second, we focus on these advanced economies and provide instrumental variable estimates using the predicted exposure to technological change as an exogenous driver of inequality. According to our findings, the negative causal effect of inequality on trust is even larger than that coming from ordinary least squares estimation. We also provide new insights on the effects of different dimensions of inequality, exploiting measures of both static inequality—such as the Gini index and top income shares—and dynamic inequality—proxied by intergenerational income mobility. (JEL D31, O15, Z13)