BURR CRITICAL VALUE APPROXIMATIONS FOR TESTS OF AUTOCORRELATION AND HETEROSCEDASTICITY

The paper evaluates the accuracy of Burr approximations of critical values and p-values for test a of autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity in the linear regression model.     

FINITE HORIZONS, INFINITE HORIZONS, and THE REAL INTEREST RATE

Using an overlapping-generations model in which households may have either finite or infinite horizons, I derive the implications of each horizon for the steady-state real interest rate. I then formulate an econometric model of the steady-state real interest rate and devise tests that can distinguish between finite and infinite horizons. These tests are applied to annual and quarterly U.S. data, which span the period 1875–1988. The results are inconsistent with finite horizons, and broadly consistent with infinite horizons.     

How Welfare Policies Affect Adolescents' School Outcomes: A Synthesis of Evidence From Experimental Studies

Using data from 8 random assignment studies and employing meta‐analytic techniques, this article provides systematic evidence that welfare and work policies targeted at low‐income parents have small adverse effects on some school outcomes among adolescents ages 12 to 18 years at follow‐up. These adverse effects were observed mostly for school performance outcomes and occurred in programs that required mothers to work or participate in employment‐related activities and those that encouraged mothers to work voluntarily. The most pronounced negative effects on school outcomes occurred for the group of adolescents who had a younger sibling, possibly because of the increased home and sibling care responsibilities they assumed as their mothers increased their employment.     

The Sociology of Expertise: The Distribution of Social Fluency

Expert knowledge is an essential component of modern society. It is also a potentially difficult topic for sociology because of the importance sociology attaches to culture and context. The sociology of science has emphasised the continuity between scientific expertise and more traditional forms of knowledge. Whilst this suggests an increasing 'democratisation of expertise' is desirable, it also risks erasing the idea of expertise itself. This might be particularly detrimental for sociology as it restricts the role of sociological inquiry to examining how expert status is attributed rather than understanding what expertise is. This paper describes these developments and contrasts them with other approaches in which expertise appears less important. It concludes by setting out a new approach to expertise that respects the role of culture in generating knowledge but, by stressing the importance of socialisation and experience, argues for a more nuanced conception of expertise as both real and unequally distributed.     

Stochastic Modelling of Times to Temperature for Furnaces Supplying Titanium Blooms to a Rolling Mill at TIMET

In conjunction with TIMET at Waunarlwydd (Swansea, UK) a model has been developed that will optimise the scheduling of various blooms to their eight furnaces so as to minimise the time taken to roll these blooms into the finished mill products. This production scheduling model requires reliable data on times taken for the various furnaces that heat the slabs and blooms to reach the temperatures required for rolling. These times to temperature are stochastic in nature and this paper identifies the distributional form for these times using the generalised F distribution as a modelling framework. The times to temperature were found to be similarly distributed over all furnaces. The identified distributional forms were incorporated into the scheduling model to optimise a particular campaign that was run at TIMET Swansea. Amongst other conclusion it was found that, compared to the actual campaign, the model produced a schedule that reduced the makespan by some 35%.     

Formalization of grievance procedures: A multi-firm and industry study

This study examines how two aspects of formalization of grievance procedures affect grievance procedure effectiveness: written versus oral presentation of grievance and the level of union and management authorized to resolve grievances at the first step. Several demographic variables were controlled for: size of bargaining unit, percentage of organization represented, number of grievances filed, and industry. A sample of 46 firms, representing a broad cross-section of unionized companies in the private sector, was obtained with the help of the American Arbitration Association. Results indicate that more formal grievance procedures (e.g., written presentation) are positively related to resolution rates at the first step. The number of grievances field and the size of the bargaining unit were positively related to total resolution rates prior to arbitration. We thank the American Arbitration Association for making this study possible.     

Worldviews or Social Groups as the Source of Moral Value Attitudes: Implications for the Culture Wars Thesis

Individual moral value attitudes are typically explained by reference to social experiences as indicated by social group variables. Contrary to this view, the emergent culture wars perspective claims that two worldviews that transcend social groups are ultimately and fundamentally responsible for moral value attitudes. Although this relationship has been claimed for the general population, it has not been investigated with national representative data. This paper contrasts the worldview and social group explanations by examining the relative importance of the worldviews implicated in the culture wars literature and the social groups found to be important in previous research. I find social groups to be more important than worldviews, but that worldviews also have explanatory power. I conclude with a discussion about possible clarifications of the culture wars thesis.     

Codes of Ethics: What Are They Really and What Should They Be?

Codes of ethics are prevalent in major corporations around the world. They are seen as the first tangible commitment to being ethical. This paper examines codes of ethics and tries to establish what they are, how they are developed and their net utility. We then proffer the idea of codes as the first part of a five-stage process that leads to an overall corporate commitment to being ethical in one's business dealings.