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This article is a study of the distributed lag relationship between completions and starts of private dwellings in the UK and extends some results previously published in this journal. The main finding confirms that a proper study of builders' behaviour, as manifested in the distributed lag relationship between completions and starts, must allow for both disequilibrium effects and time varying lag structures. However, in examining the economic variables that modified builders' behaviour (and hence the lag structure) it was found that both the rate of house price inflation and the level of building society mortgage advances had an important influence. An increase in both caused builders, in the expectation of easier sales, to quicken their rates of completion. Additional plausible influences — like the level of construction activity in the public sector were, however, not supported by the data.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a quantitative assessment of caste-based conflict in India. The data for this paper are from the Rural Economic and Demographic Survey (REDS) of 2006 encompassing 8,659 households in 242 villages in 18 Indian states.

Using these data, the authors examine two broad issues: the sources of conflict in rural India and the degree to which these sources contribute to caste-basted, as opposed to non-caste-based conflict; the sources of conflict resolution in rural India: are some conflict-resolving agencies more effective at dealing with caste-based conflicts and others more effective with non-caste-based conflicts?

There was a rise in caste-based conflict over the (approximate) period 1996-2006. There are several reasons for the rise in caste-based conflict but, in the main, is the rise in assertiveness of persons belonging to India’s lower castes. In terms of conflict resolution, panchayats and prominent individuals were important in resolving village conflicts: 69 per cent of caste-based, and 65 per cent of non-caste based, conflicts were resolved by one or the other of these two agents.

This is the first attempt, using econometric methodology, to study caste conflict at a village level in India.

The distributed lag relationship between completions and starts of private dwellings in the U.K. has been studied by Whitehead (1971, 1974) and Hadjimatheou (1976), the typical relationship estimated by them being of the form

The purpose of the paper is to examine observed differences in China's ethnic majority and minority patterns of labor force participation and to decompose these differences into treatment and endowment effects.

Data from the three most recent population censuses of China are employed to explore differences in the labor force participation rates of a number of China's important ethnic groups. Gender‐separated urban labor force participation rates are estimated using logit regressions, controlling for educational attainment, marital status, pre‐school and school‐age children, household size, age, and measures of local economic conditions. The focus is on the experience of six minority groups (Hui, Koreans, Manchu, Mongolians, Uygurs, and Zhuang) in comparison to the majority Han. The technique developed by Borooah and Iyer is adopted to decompose the differences in labor force participation rates between pairs of ethnic groups into treatment and endowment effects.

Sizeable differences are found between the labor force participation rates of prime‐age urban women of particular ethnic groups and the majority Han. Men's participation rates are very high (above 95 percent) and exhibit little difference between Han and ethnic minorities. For almost all pairwise comparisons between Han and ethnic women, it is found that differences in coefficients account for more than 100 percent of the Han‐ethnic difference in labor force participation. Differences in endowments often have substantial effects in reducing this positive Han margin in labor force participation. Roughly speaking, treatment of women's characteristics, whether in the market or socially, tend to increase the Han advantage in labor force participation. The levels of these characteristics on average tend to reduce this Han advantage.

The paper analyses only one aspect of the economic status of China's ethnic minorities – labor force participation. It would be useful also to examine income, educational attainment, occupational attainment, and unemployment.

This paper contributes to and expands the scant literature on ethnicity in China's economic transition.

The purpose of this paper is to explore food safety attitudes among a sample of Spanish consumers and determine which variables, among those studied, most affect the probability of the consumer being attentive to food safety.

The study was conducted using a logit model. From the questionnaire 20 binary category variables were identified. Having selected the variable “Are you worried about safety food” as a dependent variable, the authors used binary logistic regression (Aldrich and Nelson, 1984; Borooah, 2002) to ascertain in what way the remaining 19 variables affect the likelihood of the consumer being particularly attentive to the healthiness and safety of food purchased.

The probability of the consumer being particularly attentive to food healthiness and safety, for the sample in question, is higher in consumers who stated that they were familiar with organic products, those who are attentive to fat contents in foods and those who value the presence of quality certification positively.

Future research into Spanish consumers with the same methodology should target a larger sample in several Spanish cities.

This paper investigates not only Spanish consumer attitudes to food safety, but also how other variables can influence the probability of the consumer being concerned about food safety. This approach may be very useful for food companies to determine what strategies to adopt to attract the category of consumers who lend special importance to the food safety variable in their purchases.

The purpose of the chapter is to integrate the understanding of diversity from different perspectives in Indian context and see how the holistic view emerges.

The methodology used is primarily the literature review of the concepts and their evolution in Indian context and the use of secondary sources to extract praxis information.

It emerged from the exploration on diversity practices at the societal as well as organizational level in India that the country demonstrates intent to mainstream the people from different wakes, but with the changing context the format of the practices has changed.

The basic premise of the chapter needs to be explored further through primary data from practice.

This chapter is novel in a way that it integrates the diversity scholarship of four different streams viz. caste, gender, disability, and generation. Most of the existing research focuses only on a thin slice/one key dimension of diversity.

The relationship between religious belief and spousal choice in Nepal is examined, looking at how the importance that individuals place on their own religious faith influences their decision either to allow their parents and other relatives to arrange a marriage for them or to initiate their own love marriage. How the importance attached to religious faith within the individual’s family and neighborhood affects this decision, and how education modifies the relationship between religion and spousal choice are also looked at.

Ordinary least squares regression models are used to examine the relationship between spousal choice and key independent variables. Interaction terms are used to examine how education may moderate the relationship between personal, family, and neighborhood religious salience and spousal choice.

It is found that the effect of one’s neighbors’ faith operates differently based on one’s own level of education. The “moral communities” thesis is used to theorize that in neighborhoods where religion is regarded as very important, individuals need to expend more effort to maintain respectability, adhering to tradition by having arranged marriages. In neighborhoods where religion is less important, the weaker demands made by the “moral community” render individuals more free to choose their own spouses. For highly educated individuals, the effect of their neighbors’ religious belief is considerably reduced.

As Nepalis become more educated, they not only move out of the sphere of family influence, as discussed in previous research, but also away from being influenced by their neighbors.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.