TRENDS IN POLITICAL TOLERANCE

Some researchers find a substantial increase in political tolerancesince the 1950s, while others find the increase to be "illusory"—thepublic is more tolerant now of leftists, but has simply foundother targets on which to vent its intolerance. Reanalysis andthe addition of more extensive trend data from 1940 to 1985suggest that the shift does seem primarily to reflect increasedtolerance of leftists, but that the public has not found othergroups to be intolerant of. Measured tolerance has fluctuatedgreatly over the period, reflecting mainly changes in perceptionsof threat from putatively subversive groups, especially domesticCommunists. Also, the public's grasp of, and selfinterestedconcern about, civil liberties seems so minimal that one mightargue not that the public is substantially tolerant or intolerant,but that it has no really tangibly measurable "attitude" onthe subject one way or the other.     

PAID- VERSUS DONATED-MEDIA STRATEGIES FOR PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT CAMPAIGNS

Public service announcement (PSA) campaigns have traditionallyrelied on donated rather than paid advertising media. Recently,however, both government agencies and charitable or ganizationshave questioned whether donated-media strategies should be abandonedfor paid-media PSA campaigns. The present research examinesthis issue in a three-market field experiment comparing theeffectiveness of "paid versus donated" PSA cam paigns in decreasingyouthful male drinking and driving. Depen dent variables include(1) self-reports of behaviors from sample surveys and (2) officialcounts of incapacitating and fatal highway accidents. Resultsshow that both campaigns were equally effec tive and both werecost efficient. Thus, in light of these results, it is recommendedthat social marketers not abandon donated-media PSA campaignsfor paid-media PSA campaigns.     

Reducing delivery times for OKP products

The management of the manufacture of ‘one-of-a-kind’ products (OKP) is a neglected field in production management. The key to an improvement in productivity and profitability in this field appears to depend mainly on a reduction in the delivery times for products, which in turn requires a reduction in material throughput times, and in design and production planning lead times. This paper looks at some of the ways which can be used to reduce OKP delivery times.     

THE HUMAN SIDE OF MISTAKE‐PROOFING

Poka‐yoke (mistake‐proofing) is a powerful quality improvement approach, which usually employs relatively simple devices to achieve marked improvements. Inexpensive jigs, fixtures, switches, and gauges act as obvious environmental cues to signal mistake detection. Poka‐yoke has been largely ignored as an avenue for serious academic research. This paper provides scientific underpinning to the largely anecdotal mistake‐proofing literature, by drawing upon research from psychology and cognitive science concerning human error. We delineate areas where additional research would be worthwhile, and guide practitioners in understanding what they are trying to accomplish and how poka‐yoke devices attain this end.     

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY REFORM

An import competing industry hires lobbyists to obtain protection, where binding quotas may be utilized in the trade regime. Rent seekers compete with one another to obtain valuable import licenses. Rent seeking and lobbying are assumed to involve similar skills, so that a reform of the rent-seeking sector will have feedback effects on lobbying and vice versa. We show that the feedback effects from reform targeting the lobbying activity (primary reform) often tend to reinforce the original reform, while reforms targeting the rent-seeking sector (secondary reform) tend to have negative feedback effects on the reform process. ( JEL D72, F13)     

Risk Premiums and Benefit Measures for Generalized-Expected-Utility Theories

Standard tools for the analysis of economic problems involving uncertainty, including risk premiums, certainty equivalents and the notions of absolute and relative risk aversion, are developed without making specific assumptions on functional form beyond the basic requirements of monotonicity, transitivity, continuity, and the presumption that individuals prefer certainty to risk. Individuals are not required to display probabilistic sophistication. The approach relies on the distance and benefit functions to characterize preferences relative to a given state-contingent vector of outcomes. The distance and benefit functions are used to derive absolute and relative risk premiums and to characterize preferences exhibiting constant absolute risk aversion (CARA) and constant relative risk aversion (CRRA). A generalization of the notion of Schur-concavity is presented. If preferences are generalized Schur concave, the absolute and relative risk premiums are generalized Schur convex, and the certainty equivalents are generalized Schur concave.     

COMPARING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF REGULATION AND PRO‐SOCIAL EMOTIONS TO ENHANCE COOPERATION: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM FISHING COMMUNITIES IN COLOMBIA

This paper presents the results from a series of framed field experiments conducted in fishing communities off the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The goal is to investigate the relative effectiveness of exogenous regulatory pressure and pro‐social emotions in promoting cooperative behavior in a public goods context. The random public revelation of an individual's contribution and its consequences for the rest of the group leads to significantly higher public good contributions and social welfare than regulatory pressure, even under regulations that are designed to motivate fully efficient contributions. (JEL C93, H41, Q20, Q28)     

THE IMPACT OF GENDER ON VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY EXECUTIVE DEPARTURE

We examine the frequency and conditions of executive departure from S&P 1500 firms. Based upon published news reports, we find that female executives are more likely than male executives to depart their positions voluntarily and involuntarily in the presence of controls for firm performance, firm governance, and human capital. We also find that women are less likely than men to depart voluntarily as firm size increases or board size decreases but more likely to be dismissed as the board becomes more male dominated. (JEL G30, G32, G34, J44)     

Exact tests for two-way symmetriccontingency tables

A two-way contingency table in which both variables have the same categories is termed a symmetric table. In many applications, because of the social processes involved, most of the observations lie on the main diagonal and the off-diagonal counts are small. For these tables, the model of independence is implausible and interest is then focussed on the off-diagonal cells and the models of quasi-independence and quasi-symmetry. For ordinal variables, a linear-by-linear association model can be used to model the interaction structure. For sparse tables, large-sample goodness-of-fit tests are often unreliable and one should use an exact test. In this paper, we review exact tests and the computing problems involved. We propose new recursive algorithms for exact goodness-of-fit tests of quasi-independence, quasi-symmetry, linear-by-linear association and some related models. We propose that all computations be carried out using symbolic computation and rational arithmetic in order to calculate the exact p-values accurately and describe how we implemented our proposals. Two examples are presented.     

The use of period batch control (PBC) in the implosive industries

Period batch control (PBC) is a just-in-time (JIT) production control system of the flow control, single cycle type. It was developed in the UK before the Second World War, by the late R. J. Gigli, who installed it in 30 different factories and used it to regulate the manufacture of Spitfire fighter aircraft for the Battle of Britain. Implosive industries are those—such as foundries, glass works, spinning mills and potteries, among others—which produce a wide variety of different products from a very small number of material items. The paper shows how PBC is used in implosive industries, and explains why it is normally the best method to adopt in such factories.