The birds and the bees: interactive graphics and problem solving in the teaching of statistics

Software which allows interactive exploration of graphical displays is widely available. In addition there now exist sophisticated authoring tools which allow more general textual and graphical material to be presented in computer-based form. The role of an authoring tool in providing a graphical interface to a strategy for solving simple statistical problems in the context of teaching is discussed. This interface allows a variety of resources to be integrated. Specific examples, including the use of dynamic graphical displays in exploring data and in communicating the meaning of a model, are proposed. These ideas are illustrated by a problem involving the identification of the sex of a herring gull.     

The changing structure of food retailing in europe: the implications for strategy

European food retailers have increased their scale and scope while concentrating sales into large stores. Strategic implications include the need for scale to compete and organisational relationships to move from supply push to demand pull retailing. Consequences are different for private label and for branded manufacturers, who must respond to the demands of retail supply chains whilst retaining control of product development. Further concentration in both sectors is likely. Consumers are more mobile, but more captive to the retailer in store. Public policy makers are challenged to find new measures of retail power and both allow for innovation and ensure equitable shopping opportunities.     

The Determinants of Trust and Credibility in Environmental Risk Communication: An Empirical Study

This study examines a key component of environmental risk communication; trust and credibility. The study was conducted in two parts. In the first part, six hypotheses regarding the perceptions and determinants of trust and credibility were tested against survey data. The hypotheses were supported by the data. The most important hypothesis was that perceptions of trust and credibility are dependent on three factors: perceptions of knowledge and expertise; perceptions of openness and honesty; and perceptions of concern and care. In the second part, models were constructed with perceptions of trust and credibility as the dependent variable. The goal was to examine the data for findings with direct policy implications. One such finding was that defying a negative stereotype is key to improving perceptions of trust and credibility.     

ATSDR Science Panel on the Bioavailability of Mercury in Soils: Lessons Learned

On the basis of discussion and analysis during and following an ATSDR science panel on the bioavailability of mercury in soils, it is apparent that the default assumption of 100% relative bioavailability for mercury-contaminated soils is excessively conservative. However, current knowledge does not allow the development of default assumptions or guidelines for determining relative bioavailability of mercury in soils. Until such default assumptions or guidelines can be developed, site-specific assays of bioavailability, preferably using either animal bioassays or validated in vitro techniques, may provide the best approach for estimating soil-mercury bioavailability.     

Volatility-based Effects on Shareholder Value: Alliance Activity in the Computing Industry

We use an event-study analysis to understand how alliance activity affects firm risk. The risk measure is the implied volatility of a firm’s stock price and the events are alliance announcements to the market. We build on the previous event-studies in the alliance literature that focus on the change in shareholder value by taking the first step in delineating what part of that value arises from the changes in the firm’s risk. The analysis reveals that a number of factors within a firm’s control can be used to manipulate risk exposure in an alliance, including the similarity of the firm’s and the alliance’s core activities, the governance form of the alliance, and the function of the alliance.     

AN ANALYSIS OF THE DYNAMIC THEORY OF THE MULTI—PRODUCT FIRM USING THE CALCULUS OF VARIATIONS

The purpose of this paper is to present the theory of the multi-product firm in situations where the revenue function depends not only on the rate of output but also on changes in the rate of output, and, similarly, where the cost function depends on changes in the rate of factor utilization as well as the rate of their utilization. Since the analysis will utilize the calculus of variations, a general introduction to this technique is also presented. The model analyzed assumes perfect foresight and knowledge concerning the revenue, cost, and production functions, and the calculus of variations is used to derive the conditions for an extremum. The first section presents the mathematical model and the model of the firm, and the optimality conditions are discussed in the second section.     

GMM Estimation with persistent panel data: an application to production functions

This paper considers the estimation of Cobb-Douglas production functions using panel data covering a large sample of companies observed for a small number of time periods. GMM estimatorshave been found to produce large finite-sample biases when using the standard first-differenced estimator. These biases can be dramatically reduced by exploiting reasonable stationarity restrictions on the initial conditions process. Using data for a panel of R&Dperforming US manufacturing companies we find that the additional instruments used in our extended GMM estimator yield much more reasonable parameter estimates.