New venture development at Du Pont

New Products are the life blood of a growing company, but traditional methods of introducing new products are no longer adequate. Du Pont is using a new approach called Venture Management. A New Venture Development provides an ideal environment for making and carrying out decisions involved in introducing new technological developments. It combines the advantages in mobility and communications enjoyed by a small venture-orientated company with the strong technical and financial advantages of a large company.     

Fertility incentives and participation in localities with limited means: a dynamic model of per capita resources

Several countries have attempted to change human fertility through economic incentives. This paper presents simple mathematical models of the participation of couples in a locally funded program of economic incentives. The models take as a springboard China's one-child program. Localities with low per capita incentives attract few couples to the program, while localities with high incentives attract many couples at first, but the value of the benefits is then watered down. The models show that participation in the program may persistently oscillate or may decay to a stationary level. Which behavior occurs is determined by whether there are decreasing, constant, or increasing returns in the rates of participation in response to successive equal increments in the incentive offered, and by the extent to which prospective parents learn from experience with past oscillations in the incentives. The models raise many empirical questions about the dynamics of incentive programs.     

The aftereffects of stress: An attentional interpretation

Two studies were conducted in order to test the hypothesis that the aftereffects of stress on both performance and social behavior are attributable to a depletion of attentional capacity. This depletion, or cognitive fatigue, was predicted to increase with both the attentional load and duration of an activity. A laboratory study demonstrated that aftereffects can be induced (without a stressor such as noise, crowding, or shock) by the performance of an attention-demanding task. Deficits on an aftereffects task increased as principal task demand and task duration increased. A second study, conducted in a field setting, found that after performing a high-load task, subjects were less likely to help a woman search for a contact lens than were their counterparts who performed a low-load task. Similarly, subjects who had been crowded were less likely to help than were those who had not been crowded. The data are interpreted as providing support for the cognitive-fatigue explanation of the aftereffects of stress.The research reported in this article was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SOC 75-09224). Study II was part of the second author's Master's thesis.The authors are indebted to Art Ellsworth, manager of Valley River Center; to Ann Lezak and George Hochstetler for serving as experimenters; to Caroline Gredvig and Valerie Kimble for serving as confederates; to Lita Furby for statistical counsel; to Mike Kemp, Al Murphy, and Nick Garshnek for technical assistance; and to David Krantz, Myron Rothbart, and David Mandel for comments on an earlier draft.     

Approximations of rational criteria under complete ignorance and the independence axiom

Rational decision making under complete ignorance, a limit case of uncertainty, is defined. Through a concept of approximation, a meaning is given to a criterion almost possessing a property. Rational criteria depend almost on the sole bounds of the outcome range of each decision, they are almost continuous, they can almost possess a transitive indifference relation; however, under Savage's Independence Axiom, this last property restricts possible criteria to those which can be approximated, at least partly, by either the Maximin or the Maximax criterion.     

GM Foods and the Misperception of Risk Perception

Public opposition to genetically modified (GM) food and crops is widely interpreted as the result of the public's misperception of the risks. With scientific assessment pointing to no unique risks from GM crops and foods, a strategy of accurate risk communication from trusted sources has been advocated. This is based on the assumption that the benefits of GM crops and foods are self-evident. Informed by the interpretation of some qualitative interviews with lay people, we use data from the Eurobarometer survey on biotechnology to explore the hypothesis that it is not so much the perception of risks as the absence of benefits that is the basis of the widespread rejection of GM foods and crops by the European public. Some respondents perceive both risks and benefits, and may be trading off these attributes along the lines of a rational choice model. However, for others, one attribute-benefit-appears to dominate their judgments: the lexicographic heuristic. For these respondents, their perception of risk is of limited importance in the formation of attitudes toward GM food and crops. The implication is that the absence of perceived benefits from GM foods and crops calls into question the relevance of risk communication strategies for bringing about change in public opinion.     

Benchmarking airports from a managerial perspective

Benchmarking airports is currently popular both in the academic literature and in practice but has proved rather problematic due to the heterogeneity inherent in any reasonably sized dataset. Most studies either treat the airport production technology as a black box, or separate the terminal and airside activities, assessing them individually. In this article we analyze airports as a single unit due to the direct complementarities, thus avoiding the artificial separation of inputs. Using data envelopment analysis (DEA), we open the black box in which a network describes the production process, thus demonstrating the sequential effects that separate final from intermediate outputs, including those under partial managerial control and those that are known to be non-discretionary. To further improve the benchmarking process, we identify appropriate peers for a case study of 43 European airports over 10 years, through a restricted reference mechanism according to pre-defined characteristics. Compared to basic DEA models, the results of the proposed structure provide more meaningful benchmarks with comparable peer units and target values that are potentially achievable in the medium term. By identifying each unit's individual reference set, unique outliers influence the performance measurement less severely than occurs under basic DEA. In addition, the formulations produce an implementation path that moves the airport towards the Pareto frontier gradually, taking into account the regulatory and business environment in which the unit is located.     

Gambling Among Prison Inmates: Patterns and Implications

There is an absence of research on gambling among prison inmates during their incarceration. Little is known about how prisoners organize gambling activities or the potential risks they face from gambling. Similarly, no empirical attention has been given to how correctional institutions respond to inmate gambling. This study employed interviews with 55 male prisoners and self-administered surveys with 159 correctional officers and staff, at two medium security prisons in Ohio. Data were gathered on prevalence and patterns of inmate gambling, perceived hazards of gambling, and perceived institutional responses to prisoner gambling. Findings suggest that inmate gambling is common and constitutes an important feature of the underground economy of prisons, yet little is done to deter or prevent this activity. Suggestions are made for more effective institutional responses.     

Incomes after Job‐loss in the United States: From Programme Rules to Panel Data

Welfare state studies are usually motivated by one or both of two concerns: programme effects on the incidence of poverty, and the possibility of perverse incentive effects. Most research has been comparative, using cross‐national indicators from the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development and other international organizations. That research often contrasts the generosity of programmes in a number of European countries and the lack of it in the USA. Focusing on income transfers after job‐loss, in this article we critically examine the comparative evidence on US welfare state generosity and then use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to estimate what happens to job‐losers' incomes. The comparative analysis suggests conclusions more nuanced than found in much of the literature. The PSID analysis shows how the income effects of job‐loss vary across job‐losers and suggests that the role of unemployment compensation programmes in supporting incomes may be overstated.