Gender and performance of world-class athletes

SUMMARY The athletic performances of men and women are compared based on worldrecord times for various distance events in swimming, running and skating. The ratio of the times of women to those of men against years is modelled through a modified exponential distribution. The rate of improvement is found to be higher for women in the three sports. Law-like relationships are observed for world-record times against distance. Although men's absolute performance is generally superior, the disparity diminishes with increasing distance.     

ENTRY AND EXIT,PRODUCT VARIETY,AND THE BUSINESS CYCLE

We study the stochastic behavior of a dynamic general equilibrium model with monopolistic competition. Each seller sells his product in the consumption goods as well as the investment goods market and has market power in both. Consumers derive utility from a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) aggregate of all the consumption goods and augment their capital stock by a CES aggregate of all the investment goods. We analyze the equilibrium of this economy allowing for an endogenous determination of the number of firms and therefore of products. The principal effect we wish to highlight is the endogenous propagation and magnification of technology and preference disturbances through product space variations. (JEL E32, D43, L16)     

Ampleur et modalités du non‐respect de la loi sur le travail dans l'industrie en Inde

S'il est notoire que le non‐respect du droit du travail est monnaie courante dans les pays en développement, on n'a guère d'éléments précis sur son ampleur. Les auteurs ont quantifé les violations de la loi indienne sur les établissements industriels: les entreprises contrevenantes sont le double de celles qui respectent la législation, mais aussi bien plus nombreuses que celles qui l'évitent. Ainsi ce non‐respect est‐il une caractéristique du «segment intermédiaire manquant» en Inde. Les auteurs explorent les grandes tendances et les modalités de ces violations et montrent les pistes à suivre par la recherche et pour l'action.     

DELIVERY GUARANTEES AND THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF MARKETING AND OPERATIONS

Delivery guarantees are an important element in a customer satisfaction program. When setting delivery guarantees, a firm must consider customer expectations as well as operational constraints. We develop a profit‐maximization model in which a firm's sales organization, with incomplete information on operations' status, solicits orders and quotes delivery dates. If obtained, orders are processed in a make‐to‐order facility, after which revenue is received, minus tardiness penalty if the delivery was later than quoted. We specify conditions for an optimal log‐linear decision rule and provide exact expressions for its effect on arrival rate, mean processing time, and mean cycle time.     

Non‐compliance with India's Factories Act: Magnitude and patterns

While non‐compliance with legislation and regulations is said to be rife in developing countries, there is limited systematic evidence of the magnitude of non‐compliance. The authors quantify non‐compliance with India's Factories Act in 2010 and find that the number of non‐compliant firms is nearly twice that of compliant firms, and much larger than the number of firms “adjusting out” of the legislation. Thus, non‐compliance with the Factories Act is a key feature of India's “missing middle”. The main trends and patterns of non‐compliance are explored, and a number of key issues highlighted for further analytical and policy research.