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The downloading of music from the internet has been proliferating over the past three years. The recording industry believes that this phenomenon is responsible for the decline in recorded music sales since the year 2000, and to a certain extent this is supported by consumer surveys and previous studies that have used panel or cross-sectional data. In this analysis, an econometric, time-series model of consumer spending on tapes, LPs, and CDs is estimated which takes into account factors that are posited as effecting the consumption of recorded music, but not used in previous studies. The most significant finding is that music downloading, subsequent to 2000, affects consumer spending on tapes, LPs, and CDs through the price elasticity of demand. Falling DVD prices have also served to reduce the demand of recorded music during this same period. Copyright Springer 2005

The need for cultural sensitivity in global marketing is recognized widely. Using content analysis of 543 advertisements from four East Asian countries, determines the marketing factors which lead to the use of two advertising strategies that might be perceived as culturally insensitive. Indicates that, while foreign languages are used widely, a substantial number of advertisements also employ western models. Shows the use of western models to be influenced by five factors: use of a foreign language, target audience, product′s country of origin, product type and customer country. Shows the use of foreign language words, on the other hand, to be influenced by just two factors: customer country and product type.

This paper examines the differences in an index of standardized test performance of urban private/public school seniors by race, using a sample of 4172 students from the 1992 US National Education Longitudinal Survey. In addition to using 257 exogenous variables to control for individual traits, family background, etc., we treat both student performance and school choice as jointly endogenous in the context of a simultaneous equations model with a latent variable: school choice. We find that while White students perform marginally better in private relative to public schools, a performance gain for private school minority students was not realized. Given the additional finding that school characteristics/quality do not affect minority student performance, we conclude that 'school choice' is mostly taken advantage of by White urban residents.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey, Youth Cohort, logistic regression models are estimated to show the impact of various sociodemographic and economic factors on the abortion decision for 1867 pregnancies occurring between 1983 and 1985 in the data set. The results suggest a profile of a woman choosing the abortion decision as being White, unmarried, residing in the Northeast or West, relatively well-educated, and either in-school or working. Additionally, the female is likely to have a relatively high person income and, if present, a relatively low spousal income. Being Baptist or Catholic appears to have no significant influence on the abortion decision, and the same is true for Baptists and Catholics who are religious (attend church more than two times per month). The degree of religiosity is a predictor of abortion outcome, irrespective of religious affiliation. Finally, it is found that for low income women, access to Medicaid funding does significantly increase the probability of choosing the abortion option.

In this study, the statistical bias in the most widely used estimator of labor market discrimination is investigated. An algebraic expression for the bias is derived and then simulated for a selected set of explanatory variables and model parameters. The results for a large national dataset seem to indicate that when the variables years of schooling and labor market experience are used in earnings functions, the estimator tends to underestimate the actual or 'true' amount of labor market discrimination.

The need for cultural sensitivity in global marketing is recognized widely. Using content analysis of 543 advertisements from four East Asian countries, determines the marketing factors which lead to the use of two advertising strategies that might be perceived as culturally insensitive. Indicates that, while foreign languages are used widely, a substantial number of advertisements also employ western models. Shows the use of western models to be influenced by five factors: use of a foreign language, target audience, product′s country of origin, product type and customer country. Shows the use of foreign language words, on the other hand, to be influenced by just two factors: customer country and product type.

The need for cultural sensitivity in global marketing is recognized widely. Using content analysis of 543 advertisements from four East Asian countries, determines the marketing factors which lead to the use of two advertising strategies that might be perceived as culturally insensitive. Indicates that, while foreign languages are used widely, a substantial number of advertisements also employ western models. Shows the use of western models to be influenced by five factors use of a foreign language, target audience, products country of origin, product type and customer country. Shows the use of foreign language words, on the other hand, to be influenced by just two factors customer country and product type.

Six optimal and 4 ad hoc recursive combination methods are evaluated over 5 actual data sets. The optimal methods are: 1. recursive least squares, 2. Kalman filter, 3. normal discount Bayesian Model, 4. Snyder's model, 5. Snyder's model with maximum likelihood estimate, and 6. alternate estimation of alpha. The ad hoc methods are: 1. the bias-adjusted mean, 2. the bias-adjusted ranks, 3. the recursive bias-adjusted mean, and 4. the recursive bias-adjusted ranks. All of the methods are compared to the mean and recursive least squares methods. The recursive methods are found to be very effective from start-up on 2 of the data sets. Where the optimal methods work well, so do the ad hoc ones, suggesting that often combination methods permitting local bias adjustment may be preferable to the mean forecast and comparable to the optimal methods.