Managing business political activities in the USA: bridging between theory and practice

The political arena in the USA is portrayed as a marketplace in which businesses and other groups compete to influence public policy decisions. Managers can view this political market as an opportunity to shape the rules of the game by which they operate but must realise that it is a very competitive arena. Drawing on concepts from business strategy advocacy activities like lobbying, making campaign contributions, and organising grassroots efforts are analysed in terms of opportunities for gaining competitive advantage. Results from case studies indicate that many businesses miss opportunities to build support among employees for political advocacy because few firms use bottom up approaches for political action committees or grass‐roots efforts. Suggestions for managers interested in improving the effectiveness of their business advocacy efforts are discussed. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Lobbying and Concessions: Comparing Nash to Stackelberg Games

We analyze how the standardresults in lobbying theory change when one side has asecond instrument at its disposal. We look at theeffect concessions by one side have on the outcome ina Nash and a Stackelberg game.     

The Ruff Neurobehavioral Inventory: Validity Indicators and Validity

This study examined the test validity of the respondent validity scales of the Ruff neurobehavioral inventory (RNBI). In a private practice sample of motor vehicle accident pain patients (n?=?54) without neurologic injury, the scores obtained for these scales were compared with and correlated with equivalent ones on the Millon clinical multi-axial inventory III (MCMI III) and the Detailed assessment of post-traumatic stress (DAPS). Results revealed that there was a consistent pattern of convergence and divergence in response styles across the three instruments. In terms of the RNBI interscale correlations, in particular, the results suggested that premorbid positive impression management and postmorbid negative impression management are related in this type of sample. These findings add to the concurrent validity of the RNBI, suggesting that the instrument provides relevant incremental information about the type of population studied. Limitations of the study and ideas for future research were discussed.     

The Examination of Commercial Printing Defects to Assess Common Origin,Batch Variation,and Error Rate*

Abstract: The examination of printing defects, or imperfections, found on printed or copied documents has been recognized as a generally accepted approach for linking questioned documents to a common source. This research paper will highlight the results from two mutually exclusive studies. The first involved the examination and characterization of printing defects found in a controlled production run of 500,000 envelopes bearing text and images. It was concluded that printing defects are random occurrences and that morphological differences can be used to identify variations within the same production batch. The second part incorporated a blind study to assess the error rate of associating randomly selected envelopes from different retail locations to a known source. The examination was based on the comparison of printing defects in the security patterns found in some envelopes. The results demonstrated that it is possible to associate envelopes to a common origin with a 0% error rate.     

Efforts in two-sided contests

The degree of rent dissipation is studied in extended two-sided contests that involve two types of efforts. While usual contestants expend resources in trying to win the contested prize, potential recipients of the rent-seeking efforts also participate in the contest. This is due to uncertainty regarding the source of power in the contest that induces the bureaucrats to expend resources to increase their share in the rent-seeking efforts by trying to appear as the party controlling the allocation of the prize. We show that the existing theoretical and empirical studies are incomplete and may underestimate the extent of rent dissipation.     

Rules and reasons,public and private on the use and limits of simple rules 25 years later

European Journal of Law and Economics - The basic “simple rules” thesis holds that most legal relationships can be reduced to questions of autonomy, property acquisition, contract and...     

Determination of Vehicle Speed from Recorded Video Using Reverse Projection Photogrammetry and File Metadata

The prevalence of security and in‐car video has increased the number of motor vehicle accidents captured on digital video. However, inconsistencies in how to accurately determine time and distance for vehicle speed has led to examinations with varying results. A potential solution for calculating time intervals is to use frame timing contained within many digital video file's metadata, recorded with 0.000001 sec precision. This paper examines a fatal motor vehicle accident where frame timing information was used with distance measurements from reverse projection photogrammetry to calculate vehicle speed. A margin of error was then calculated based on the accuracy in performing reverse projection photogrammetry distance measurements. The resulting speed calculation was then compared to event data recorder data and found to be within an average of ±1.43538 MPH. Using specific time intervals may lead investigators to more accurate speed calculations, specifically those involving variable frame rate video.     

Performance and prize decomposition in contests

This paper focuses on the effect of additive contest decomposition on performance: winning probabilities and efforts of the contestants. Our main result provides a sufficient condition for invariance of contest performance to the decomposition of a contest, when the sum of the possibly differently valued prizes in the segmented contests is equal to the value of the prize in the original grand contest and the relative prizes in the sub-contests are equal for every contestant. It is shown that this condition is satisfied by the commonly used exponential logistic contest success functions. With these functions the contest designer does not have an incentive to split the prize and create additive, segmented sub-contests. We then prove that when the additive contest decomposition is asymmetric, contest decomposition may adversely affect the designer; that it, reduce the total efforts of the contestants.     

Health Literacy in High-Risk Youth: A Descriptive Study of Children in Residential Care

Although previous studies have demonstrated that children in out-of-home care present with elevated levels of mental and physical health, educational, and behavioral problems, little is known about youth's ability to manage health care needs or access health information and support. This study evaluates the health literacy skills of 229 youth served in a residential setting. Results revealed that the majority of youth demonstrated some level of risk, and anywhere from one-quarter to one-third demonstrated significant health literacy deficits suggesting a need for additional research and treatment intervention. Implications, study limitations, and recommendations for practice and future research are discussed.     

Government Expenditure and Quality of Life

Most of the empirical work on the optimal size of the fiscalstate has linked the level of taxation to economic growth. Inthis paper the level of government consumption expenditure thatyields the maximum physical quality of life is found, along withthose expenditures that cause equality between marginal benefitand marginal government expenditure out of GNP. Careful attentionis paid to the measurement of the physical quality of life, theweighing of the attributes in the construction of an aggregateindex of quality of life, and in the functional (parametric) formof the nonlinear equations utilized to calculate marginalbenefit. The conclusion of the paper is that governmentconsumption expenditure is considerably higher than is necessaryto maximize the physical quality of life, and that a reductionin government consumption expenditure would not lower quality oflife.