What Does the Minimum Wage Do?

This book attempts to make sense of the research on the minimum wage that began in the early 1990s. The authors look at who is affected by the minimum wage, both directly and indirectly; which observable, measurable variables (e.g., wages, employment, school enrollment) the minimum wage influences; how long it takes for the variables to respond to the minimum wage and the size and desirability of the effect; why the minimum wage has the results it does (and not others); and the workers most likely to be affected by changes to the minimum wage.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1245/thumbnail.jp

DATA MINING: A SEGMENTATION ANALYSIS OF U.S. GROCERY SHOPPERS

Consumers make choices about where to shop based on their preferences for a shopping environment and experience as well as the selection of products at a particular store. This study illustrates how retail firms and marketing analysts can utilize data mining techniques to better understand customer profiles and behavior. Among the key areas where data mining can produce new knowledge is the segmentation of customer data bases according to demographics, buying patterns, geographics, attitudes, and other variables. This paper builds profiles of grocery shoppers based on their preferences for 33 retail grocery store characteristics. The data are from a representative, nationwide sample of 900 supermarket shoppers collected in 1999. Six customer profiles are found to exist, including (1) "Time Pressed Meat Eaters", (2) "Back to Nature Shoppers", (3) "Discriminating Leisure Shoppers", (4) "No Nonsense Shoppers", (5) "The One Stop Socialites", and (6) "Middle of the Road Shoppers". Each of the customer profiles is described with respect to the underlying demographics and income. Consumer shopping segments cut across most demographic groups but are somewhat correlated with income. Hierarchical lists of preferences reveal that low price is not among the top five most important store characteristics. Experience and preferences for internet shopping shows that of the 44% who have access to the internet, only 3% had used it to order food.Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

THE SUPERMARKET INDUSTRY AT THE START OF THE 21st CENTURY: KEY FINDINGS FROM THE 2000 SUPERMARKET PANEL

The 2000 Supermarket Panel gathered data on store characteristics, management practices, and operating performance from a representative, nation-wide sample of supermarkets. The Panel is unique because the unit of analysis is the individual store, and the same stores will be surveyed over time. Linking information on management practices and store and market characteristics with measures for key performance measures provides useful information for both strategic and tactical decisions. Descriptive findings are presented for stores groups by ownership group size and format. Results from a multivariate analysis of relationships between store performance and key performance drivers also are presented.Agribusiness,

How Investors Can (and Can\u27t) Create Social Value

Most investors throughout the world have a single goal: to earn the highest risk- adjusted financial returns. They would not accept a lower financial return from an investment that also produced social benefits. More recently, an increasing number of socially-motivated investors have goals beyond maximizing returns. They also seek to align their investments with their social values (value alignment), and some also seek to cause the companies in which they invest to create more social value as a result of their investment (social value creation). We show in this essay that while it is relatively easy to achieve value alignment, creating social value is far more difficult

Creating a Minimum Data Set on ageing in sub-Saharan Africa

The World Health Organisation, together with representatives of four sub-Saharan African countries (Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe) and other stakeholders, launched a project in 1999 to establish a Minimum Data Set on ageing and older persons in Africa. The project focusses on identifying what data are needed to build knowledge on the situation of older Africans and forging the centralised, in-country collation and dissemination of this information. This paper summarises the current state of the project and touches on issues of data availability and quality, while exploring methods for data collection, integration, collation and dissemination

THE 2000 SUPERMARKET PANEL ANNUAL REPORT

The Retail Food Industry Center established the Supermarket Panel in 1998 as the basis for ongoing study of the supermarket industry. The Panel is comprised of individual stores that provide information annually on store characteristics, operations, and performance. The Panel has two overall objectives: 1. Provide timely, useful information for the industry through benchmark reports and annual summaries. 2. Be a ready source of longitudinal, cross-section data for research on current and emerging issues. The Panel is unique because the unit of analysis is the individual store and the same stores are tracked over time. This makes it possible to trace the impacts of new technologies and business practices as they are adopted. The 2000 Panel consists of 344 stores selected at random from the nearly 32,000 supermarkets in the U.S. It is a representative cross-section of the industry. The information these stores have provided is the basis for the in-depth view of the industry presented here. Key findings are summarized in the margins of each section in this report. In general, these findings highlight significant correlations among store characteristics, business practices, and performance. They should not be interpreted as cause and effect relationships. The remainder of this report begins with a brief description of the data collection procedures for the 2000 Supermarket Panel and a descriptive profile of the participating stores, with breakdowns by size of store group, format, and location.Agribusiness, Industrial Organization, Marketing,

Topological Field Theory and Rational Curves

We analyze the superstring propagating on a Calabi-Yau threefold. This theory naturally leads to the consideration of Witten's topological non-linear sigma-model and the structure of rational curves on the Calabi-Yau manifold. We study in detail the case of the world-sheet of the string being mapped to a multiple cover of an isolated rational curve and we show that a natural compactification of the moduli space of such a multiple cover leads to a formula in agreement with a conjecture by Candelas, de la Ossa, Green and Parkes.Comment: 20 page

The interaction of Escherichia coli O157 :H7 and Salmonella Typhimurium flagella with host cell membranes and cytoskeletal components

Bacterial flagella have many established roles beyond swimming motility. Despite clear evidence of flagella-dependent adherence, the specificity of the ligands and mechanisms of binding are still debated. In this study, the molecular basis of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium flagella binding to epithelial cell cultures was investigated. Flagella interactions with host cell surfaces were intimate and crossed cellular boundaries as demarcated by actin and membrane labelling. Scanning electron microscopy revealed flagella disappearing into cellular surfaces and transmission electron microscopy of S. Typhiumurium indicated host membrane deformation and disruption in proximity to flagella. Motor mutants of E. coli O157:H7 and S. Typhimurium caused reduced haemolysis compared to wild-type, indicating that membrane disruption was in part due to flagella rotation. Flagella from E. coli O157 (H7), EPEC O127 (H6) and S. Typhimurium (P1 and P2 flagella) were shown to bind to purified intracellular components of the actin cytoskeleton and directly increase in vitro actin polymerization rates. We propose that flagella interactions with host cell membranes and cytoskeletal components may help prime intimate attachment and invasion for E. coli O157:H7 and S. Typhimurium, respectively