A LABORATORY STUDY OF AUCTIONS WITH A BUY PRICE

We present a series of laboratory experiments that examine auctions with buy prices, which are prices that allow a bidder to stop the auction and buy the item immediately. Two types of buy prices are considered, one that is available throughout the auction and one that disappears with an initial bid. Both are evaluated with and without proxy bidding. We find that the use of a buy price increases revenue, early bidding, and auction efficiency. Differences between outcomes in auctions with permanent and temporary buy prices are consistent with the observed choices in auction design made by online auction sites. (JEL C90, D44, C70, L81)     

RIDING THE WAVE AND CLAIMING OWNERSHIP OVER ISSUES: THE JOINT EFFECTS OF ADVERTISING AND NEWS COVERAGE IN CAMPAIGNS

Using a realistic experimental design, this article tests twohypotheses concerning the relative effectiveness of campaignadvertising. The first (issue-ownership) hypothesis predictsthat candidates gain the most from advertising on issues overwhich they can claim "ownership." The second (riding-the-wave)hypothesis predicts that candidates are better off when theysynchronize their advertising with news coverage. Our two studiesyield support for the issue-ownership hypothesis, but no evidenceof interactive effects between advertising and news.     

MANUFACTURING PROCESS TECHNOLOGY and SUPPORT STAFF COMPOSITION: AN EMPIRICAL VIEW OF INDUSTRY EVIDENCE

Despite the attention given to restructuring and trimming down manufacturing firms during the 198Os, little attention has been paid to the mix of skills they needed under different circumstances. We examined the patterns of employment by occupation in manufacturing industries utilizing different production technologies and the effect of establishment size on nonproduction employment. We found that a relationship exists between production technology and nonproduction employment per 100 production workers. Establishment size is found to be a moderator between nonproduction employment and production technology. Our findings imply two clear messages for managers. First, when considering major changes in production technology, managers should be aware that the supporting skills they will need from their nonproduction work force are likely to change greatly. Further, these changes involve technical and managerial workers as well as clerical and production support people. Second, they should restructure the functional or occupational mix of an organization in the context of the process technologies in place. Different process technologies require different structures.     

Creole Materialities: Archaeological Explorations of Hybridized Realities on a North American Plantation

This paper explores the hybridized realities of European, Native American and Afro-Caribbean/Afro-American residents of Sylvester Manor, New York and Constant Plantation, Barbados during the seventeenth century. It draws on archaeological and landscape evidence from two plantations that were owned and operated by different members of the same family during the seventeenth century. One of plantations, known as Sylvester Manor, encompassed all 8,000 acres of Shelter Island, New York. It was established in 1652 primarily to help in the provisioning of two large sugar plantations on Barbados, Constant and Carmichael plantations. Sylvester Manor was operated by Nathaniel Sylvester; an Englishman who spent the first twenty years of life living in Amsterdam where his father was a merchant. Constant and Carmichael plantations were operated by his brother Constant Sylvester. Both the Barbados and New York plantations relied upon a labor force of enslaved Afro-Caribbean's. Archaeological evidence from Sylvester Manor has also revealed that Native American laborers played a prominent role in the daily activities of this northern plantation. Material and landscape evidence reveal the construction of hybridized identities that in the case of Barbados, are still part of the fabric of a postcolonial reality. Evidence from Sylvester Manor provides detailed insights into the construction of hybridized identities under the exigencies of a plantation economy whose global connections are dramatically visible in the archaeological record.     

Advocacy networks,choice and private schooling of the poor in India

This article is about the flows of rhetorics and discourses, particularly those that advocate choice and private schooling, and the role that transnational advocacy networks play in managing and driving these flows. We explore a set of network relations between advocacy groups in the UK and the USA and local ‘choice’ advocates in India, and some of the emerging impacts of local and transnational advocacy on the politics of education and education policy in India. The network advocates school choice and private schooling as solutions to the problem of achieving universal, high‐quality primary education. Individual policy entrepreneurs are active in making these connections and circulating ideas. A complex of funding, exchange, cross‐referencing, dissemination and mutual sponsorship links the Indian choice and privatization advocacy network, and connects it to other countries in a global network for neoliberalism.     

THE DEMAND FOR HIGHER EDUCATION AND INSTITUTIONAL ENROLLMENT FORECASTING

This paper presents a university enrollment forecasting model and evaluates the model's performance in a case application. The model includes (1) enrollment demand equations with both tuition and labor market variables; (2) equations to forecast values of the labor market variables which influence demand; and (3) procedures to calculate the statistical confidence interval in an enrollment forecast .     

Schooling and the gendered subject: an exercise in planned social change

S'appuyant sur létude de cas ďune école primaire ďOttawa, ce texte fait le point sur les efforts effectués pour changer la conception traditionnelle du sexe. Les dessins ďétudiants, recueillis immédiatement avant et après ľapplication ďun programme de sensibilisation de sept ans, ont été utilisés pour faire le point sur leur subjectivité. Les résultats obtenus indiquent une accentuation de la différentiation sexuelle pendant cette période, soulevant ainsi la place centrale de ľécole dans la promotion des changements relatifs à la perception de cette différentiation chez les jeunes.
The paper examines the impact, in an Ottawa elementary school of attempts to change traditional conceptions of gender. Student drawings, secured before and after a seven year consciousness-raising program, were utilized as indicators of children's gendered subjectivity. The results point to a strengthening of gender differentiation over the seven years, raising the question of the school's efficacy in promoting gender-related change.