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Points out that changing management information systems (MIS) is a dangerous and complex process, for which business executives are not qualified. Adds that not changing is just as bad. Discusses the differences between a fundamental change of architecture and conventional systems development. Recommends consideration of three questions: is it really necessary to reconfigure core systems architecture? How can flexibility be built in? What approach to implementation? Observes that to date (1989) few firms have satisfactorily addressed the problems raised by antiquated core architectures. Concludes that reconfiguration efforts must be congruent with company strategy.

This paper simplifies and extends the literature on habit‐forming consumption. When addictive and nonaddictive goods are consumed, complements may become substitutes and normal nonaddictive goods may become inferior. Alternatively, when all goods are equally addictive, consumers favor goods with stable prices. Implications for product promotion and public policy are discussed.

One of the biggest obstacles facing wine producers today is attracting entry level drinkers. The wine industry has attempted to gain access to this market with a variety of fruit flavoured products appealing to a younger palate. Ostensibly, one of the goals of wine producers is to produce some brand loyalty which they hope will carry over to the main product line. This article tests the hypothesis that appealing to consumers with entry level products will result in consumption of the main product line. The article begins with an overview of wine consumption in the US. They then present a theoretical model of consumer behaviour in which the consumption of entry level products leads to consumption of main product lines. Using data on wine and wine cooler consumption for fifty states and the District of Columbia for the years 1980–2001, the results show that wine coolers did not act as a gateway to wine consumption.

The paper empirically investigates the impact of financial inclusion on food security. Subsequently, it examines the overall effect of various dimensions of financial inclusion on food security of developing countries using the panel data for the time period of 2004–2019.

To overcome the problem of endogeneity, the study has used a fixed-effect model, two-stage least-square and system generalized method of moments estimation techniques. Secondary data was collected from various websites such as WDI, FAO, UNICEF and UNESCO.

It was found in the study that there is a significant effect of financial inclusion on food security. The evidence shows that if there is more financial inclusion in the country, it will help poor people to cope with difficult situations they face and provide them food security. Financial development, per capita income, agriculture growth and education positively affect food security, while militarization and urbanization have a negative impact on food security. The crux of the analysis is that any country's financial sector is an integral part of any country that supports food security.

The literature does not clearly show the impact of financial inclusion dimensions on developing countries' food security. Therefore, there is a need to use all the dimensions of financial inclusion to check the overall impact on food security. For this purpose, the financial inclusion index is developed. A new dimension of non-life insurance is introduced that has not been used previously by any researcher to check financial inclusion impact.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

To advance the learning of professional practices in teacher education and medical education, this conceptual paper aims to introduce the idea of representational scaffolding for digital simulations in higher education.

This study outlines the ideas of core practices in two important fields of higher education, namely, teacher and medical education. To facilitate future professionals’ learning of relevant practices, using digital simulations for the approximation of practice offers multiple options for selecting and adjusting representations of practice situations. Adjusting the demands of the learning task in simulations by selecting and modifying representations of practice to match relevant learner characteristics can be characterized as representational scaffolding. Building on research on problem-solving and scientific reasoning, this article identifies leverage points for employing representational scaffolding.

The four suggested sets of representational scaffolds that target relevant features of practice situations in simulations are: informational complexity, typicality, required agency and situation dynamics. Representational scaffolds might be implemented in a strategy for approximating practice that involves the media design, sequencing and adaptation of representational scaffolding.

The outlined conceptualization of representational scaffolding can systematize the design and adaptation of digital simulations in higher education and might contribute to the advancement of future professionals’ learning to further engage in professional practices. This conceptual paper offers a necessary foundation and terminology for approaching related future research.

In both elementary schools and elementary teacher education programs, social studies is marginalized while standards require increasingly more ambitious reasoning, reading, and writing in social studies than has historically been documented in American elementary schools. The purpose of this paper is to explain the challenges that elementary social studies teacher educators face in preparing elementary school teachers to facilitate the kind of ambitious social studies envisioned in the NCSS’s C3 Framework and advocate an approach to successfully address these challenges.

This paper articulates a targeted and ambitious approach to elementary social studies teacher education. The authors describe five recommendations from the teacher education literature for supporting preservice teachers in learning disciplinary-oriented social studies teaching, recommendations that guided the redesign of the social studies methods course. The authors then highlight key aspects of the redesigned methods course and demonstrate how the authors engaged the challenges inherent in the work of elementary social studies teacher education.

Although this paper is not arranged in such a way as to substantiate empirical findings, the purpose of the paper is to demonstrate an approach to elementary social studies education aligned with extant literature on preparing teachers to engage in reform teaching practices, specifically those disciplinary oriented practices suggested in NCSS’s C3 Framework. As such, the paper should be read as a perspective on practice.

The type of disciplinary-oriented approach described here is increasingly under investigation in secondary teacher education research and similar approaches are under investigation in elementary math and science education research. To the authors’ knowledge, the approach is novel in elementary social studies education. Furthermore, the authors believe it offers a direction for researchers interested in gaps in the literature related to practice based teacher education and disciplinary-oriented social studies teacher education.

The approach described here offers specific guidance and resources for teacher educators who are struggling with the challenges of the contemporary social studies education landscape and/or who wish to focus methods courses in disciplinary ways.

Research in social studied education has demonstrated that when students are exposed to disciplinary practices in social studies, their literacy skills improve and they learn analytical skills that support their development as citizens (consumption of media, participation in public discourse, ability to discern arguments).

As noted above, the approach described here is novel in elementary social studies education. Combining a disciplinary approach with a practice-based frame in elementary social studies represents an opportunity for empirical research and offers new approaches to the practice of teacher education and early career professional development.

Blues music is in the midst of its second revival in popularity in roughly thirty years. The year 1960 can be identified, with some qualification, as a reference point for the first rise in international awareness and appreciation of the blues. This first period of wide‐spread white interest in the blues continued until the early seventies, while the current revival began in the middle 1980s. During both periods a sizeable literature on the blues has appeared. This article provides a thumbnail sketch of the popularity of the blues, followed by a description of scholarly and critical literature devoted to the music. Documentary and instructional materials in audio and video formats are also discussed. Recommendations are made for library collections and a list of selected sources is included at the end of the article.

Overseas Chinese business networks have had a profound effect on the economic development of mainland China and on the global economy as a whole. Such networks are based predominantly on familial, language and cultural factors and provide a foundation on which business is conducted, often with reduced transaction costs and with resilience to major shifts in the financial markets. This paper aims to explore business networks in the US Chinese diaspora.

The paper begins with a brief introduction to the concept of ethnic business networks. Subsequent sections provide historical background on the Chinese diaspora and the role Chinese business networks have played around the world. An examination of how such networks have evolved in the US context follows. Finally, implications are discussed and a research agenda is suggested.

It is suggested that a different type of business networking pattern has evolved in the US context, one that is less reliant on the traditional pillars of family, language and culture and more on intellectual capital.

No empirical evidence is presented here. However, a research agenda is specified.

Relatively little has been written that specifically addresses the US Chinese business experience, which differs in several important ways from other groups in the Chinese diaspora. This paper examines this branch of the Chinese diaspora, focusing on the networking behaviors among professionals, including those that have most recently emerged in the high tech sector.

The purpose of this paper is to develop new tools to interpret changes in risk neutral probability distributions (RNPDs). It distinguishes between changes attributable to upside potential and those attributable to downside risk, and shows that the distinction is supported empirically.

This paper estimates pricing kernels and RNPDs from option price data, then studies the expected excess returns on a fixed‐strategy reference portfolio composed of the claims defined by the RNPDs. The portfolio is disaggregated so that realized returns can be expressed as a value‐weighted average of returns to upside (investment) and downside (insurance) sub‐portfolios, respectively. An upside sub‐portfolio can be interpreted as defining payoffs to a call option, a downside sub‐portfolio as payoffs to a short put position.

Empirical results indicate that the realized excess returns on the reference portfolios are significantly and negatively related to both S&P index growth and volatility (measured by the Chicago Board Options Exchanges (CBOEs) volatility index (VIX)) in the original data, but neither variable is significant in regressions on data first differences. However, in regressions on both the original data and first differences, realized excess returns on the investment sub‐portfolios are significantly and negatively related to both S&P index growth and volatility, whereas the realized excess returns to insurance sub‐portfolios are significantly and positively related only to the VIX. In regressions on both original data and its first differences the ratio of realized insurance excess return to total return is positively and significantly related only to the VIX. Constant terms are significant in about half of all the regressions, suggesting the presence of additional explanatory factors not captured in currently available data.

The paper shows that upside and downside sub‐portfolios have different return distributions in different market regimes, and that while returns to upside claims depend significantly on both S&P index growth and volatility, returns to downside claims depend significantly on just S&P index volatility. Thus realized excess returns to sub‐portfolios convey more nearly precise information about changes in market attitudes than do realized excess returns to entire portfolios. Although concepts of aggregating and disaggregating information have been investigated in the context of annual earnings announcements in other research, they have not previously been applied to realized portfolio returns in the manner used here. If the paper's findings are sustained in further empirical analyses, they can potentially provide information regarding both the Grossman‐Zhou and Holmstrom‐Tirole theories of claim pricing. Overall, because they distinguish between upside potential and downside risk, these methods contribute to more discriminating ways of understanding reference portfolio returns. In contrast, the CAPM measures of return variance do not distinguish between the risks of returns fluctuating on the upside from the risk of returns fluctuating on the downside.