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The article highlights the Panama-Pacific International Exposition which was held in San Francisco, California in 1915. The record-breaking attendance of more than 18 million visitors made for a revenue-generating enterprise that accelerated the recovery of San Francisco from fire and earthquake of 1906. There were three lantern slides from a collection of eighty-nine slides taken during the exposition. The images showed artists at work and crowds viewing the "Nations of the East." The decorative effects of the lighting scheme at the exposition were wonderful that a number of postcards were made showing the view of the whole fairground.

This paper examines long-term recovery outcomes of businesses impacted by major natural disasters. Data were collected via two large-scale mail surveys—one administered to Santa Cruz County, California businesses 8 years after the Loma Prieta earthquake and the other administered to businesses in South Dade County, Florida, 6 years after Hurricane Andrew. Based on the results of OLS regression models, we argue that long-term recovery experiences of businesses are affected by various factors, including the economic sector in which a business operates, its age and financial condition, and the scope of its primary market; direct and indirect disaster impacts, including physical damage, forced closure, and disruption of operations; and owner perceptions of the broader economic climate. Previous disaster experience, level of disaster preparedness, and use of external sources of aid were not found to significantly affect the long-term economic viability of businesses in the two study communities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper explores California Assembly Bill No. 5 and its effect on the "gig economy." Notably, this paper takes an in-depth look at companies providing cheap services to California residents and the detrimental effects on California business models by labeling independent contractors as employees. I will contrast the Bill with previous California court decisions on independent contracts and the joint ballot initiatives being jointly proposed by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and other gig companies. Within this paper I will refer to workers as "drivers" for the sake of simplicity; however, it should be noted that these companies refer to them as "independent service providers" in an attempt to distance themselves from an employee classification.1 Additionally, I will outline the current legal attempts taken by Uber to prevent the Bill from going into effect. Lastly, I will speculate as to AB5's future implications on the gig economy for California residents and the services they previously took for granted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emissions trading has been established as an important instrument of pollution control in many world regions. However concerns have been raised whether or not emission-trading schemes may distort competition either on the permit market itself or on related output markets. In this paper we review tradable emission-allowance schemes with special reference to anti-competitive effects. Such distortions may be caused by large firms exercising market power on the allowance market by holding down supply or suppressing demand in order to manipulate prices to their advantage. Firms may also try to abuse the allowance market to put other firms, with whom they compete on the output market, at a competitive disadvantage. Further distortions and abuses may be caused by special or ill-defined rules on the allowance market or other markets. In this paper we survey theoretical insights on potential anti-comptitive effects of emissions trading and also provide some empirical evidence for market power abuses on auctioned and grandfathered allowance markets with a particular focus on the (alleged) allowance market abuse by power utilities in Germany and California. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I document that highway construction firms in California, particularly those owned by blacks and Asians, exhibit considerable racial segregation in that they are disproportionately located in zip codes with the greatest concentration of own-race residents. I find that segregated firms serve a larger market than minority-owned firms that are not segregated and that this effect is concentrated in black-owned firms. I next exploit the segregation of firms to examine the effect of affirmative action on the success of minority-owned firms. Following the significant curtailment of affirmative action in California due to a direct statewide ballot initiative, the number of highway construction establishments located in zip codes with the highest concentrations of black and Asian residents fell relative to the rest of the state, even conditional on the number of non-construction establishments. This suggests that affirmative action policies may play a role in the net survival rates of minority-owned firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- This paper aims to examine an unwinding of a lease obligation, where the in-place rental rate exceeds current market. Design/methodology/approach -- The paper examines some of the critical variables in mitigating lease obligations, and uses a case study of a 2003 transaction near San Jose, California to elaborate. Findings -- After a 3 year period of vacancy increases and rental declines, the lease is a liability to a company with no projected need for the premises. The passive Landlord has little incentive to settle the lease in these market conditions, but is eager to avoid potential further credit erosion, and tests the market in a sales process. Originality/value -- The paper provides information of value to all parties interested or involved in property leasing decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT There are many emerging corporate strategies designed to make large, complex business enterprises more responsive to environmental concerns. One major corporate innovation that has a direct environmental impact is the increased use of telework options for employees. These programmes significantly reduce the amount of employee travel, thereby reducing air pollution. However, adoption of telework programmes requires a change in organizational management strategies. The prevailing attitude of "If I can't see them, how do I know they are working" must be changed. This attitudinal change, coupled with the structural move towards the "virtual corporation' can be managed using existing organizational development strategies and tactics. The paper reports the results of several field studies in California which examined the phenomenon of telework. The studies consistently report increases in worker productivity of 16 per cent and a significant reduction of personal automobile travel of between 20-40 per cent while engaged in telework. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for a management strategy for managing this change and highlights areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section offers updates related to civic affairs in the U.S. as of June 1994. There has been a civic journalism boom in the country as evidenced by an increase in the number of papers and broadcasters that have adopted community debates. A formal organization is being established by Los Angeles County, California to support money-making ventures. A decision was made by the Massachusetts Department of Social Services (DSS) to privatize its revenue-generating operation to recover lost federal reimbursement dollars.

This paper examines the retail gasoline price fluctuations known as "gas wars " Weekly prices for the Los Angeles area were examined for the period from 1/2/68 through 12/23/75. The observed fluctuations were remarkably regular and, apparently, largely predictable. The data appear consistent with the recent game theory model of Maskin and Tirole, in which competing firms produce Edge-worth cycles by undercutting each other and eventually relenting.

This paper discusses the structure and empirical estimation of the County Employment Forecasting System (CEFS), a system used to forecast employment for 32 sectors for each one of the nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Region. CEFS differs in several aspects from the majority of models which attempt to simulate employment change at the subregional level; it explicitly considers the relationships between sectors, it accounts for the interactions between counties, and can provide a set of county forecasts which are consistent with the overall regional projections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents excerpts from a publication entitled "Beyond Sprawl: New Patterns of Growth to Fit the New California." They are from a paper which Steven Moss and his associates at the consulting firm of M. Cubed and William Fulton researched and drafted. Even as the economy and the society are being reinvented daily, there has been a continuous abandonment of people and investments in older communities as development leap-frogs out to fringe areas to accommodate low-density living. Continued sprawl may seem inexpensive for a new homebuyer or a growing business on the suburban fringe, but the ultimate cost-to those homeowners, to the government, and to society at large-is potentially crippling. Within the last generation, the postwar formula for success has become overwhelmed by its own consequences. California's continuing surge in population puts pressure on both existing communities and on the remaining supply of undeveloped land, making it extremely difficult for traditional suburban patterns to accommodate more people.

Examines the organizational changes on employment relations among young, high technology firms in California. Conditions affecting high technology companies; Cause for deterioration of alignment of employment relations and business strategies; Implications for imprinting and inertia in organizations.

Affirmative action programs are commonly used as a means to level the playing field for minority- and women-owned firms in public procurement markets, and therefore may be a positive factor in business entry and survival. To the extent that affirmative action programs also apply to traditional labor markets, however, they may alter the opportunity cost of starting a business. We utilize the elimination of affirmative action in California and Washington States through voter initiatives to identify the effect of affirmative action on minority and female self-employment rates. In our base specifications, we find evidence of modest increases in self-employment among minorities and women in both California and Washington after elimination of affirmative action, consistent with the hypothesis that the opportunity cost of starting a business fell due to restricting opportunities in the traditional labor markets. The sign of the estimated effect, however, is not uniformly positive when considering specific race/gender groups, and the statistical significance of the main results is somewhat sensitive to the choice of control states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private actions to avoid and prevent criminal victimisation and assist public law enforcement are vital inputs into the crime-control process. One form of private action, the business improvement district (BID), appears particularly promising. A BID is a non-profit organisation created by property owners to provide local public goods, usually including public safety. Our analysis of 30 Los Angeles BIDs demonstrates that the social benefits of BID expenditures on security are a large multiple (about 20) of the private expenditures. Crime displacement appears minimal. Crime reduction in the BID areas has been accompanied by a reduction in arrests, suggesting further savings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital Divide among businesses is defined as disparity between effective uses of ICT for productivity gains. SMEs are for most part on the wrong side of this Divide with lack of funds and access to ICT as the most quoted reason for falling behind big corporations. Number of specific business processes supported by ICT based solutions is used here as an innovative measure of ICT advancement within a small business. We have looked in this study at over 600 SMEs of Central California and proved that number one barrier to use of ICT is lack of education and training and not lack of funds for hardware and software. Study of additional sample of over 160 SMEs shows that the culture and format of ICT training is only partially impacted by the size of business. Similarly, number of ICT supported business processes is not significantly correlated with quantity and format of training and education provided by the management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the perceived importance of three organizational preconditions (awareness of formal ethics codes, decision-making techniques, and availability of resources) theorized to be critical for ethics program effectiveness. In addition, we examine the importance of ethical leadership and congruence between formal ethics codes and informal ethical norms in influencing employee perceptions. Participants ( n=418) from a large southern California government agency completed a survey on the perceived effectiveness of the organization’s ethics program. Results suggest that employee perceptions of organizational preconditions, ethical leadership and informal ethical norms were related to perceptions of ethics program effectiveness. Based on these findings, organizations should evaluate the presence (or absence) of essential preconditions and take steps to ensure that leaders model espoused organizational values to foster perceptions of effective ethics programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the choice between arbitration and litigation regarding disputes. It is stated that arbitration is better for subcontractors and litigation is better for contractors. One should arbitrate when his case is strong on the facts, but weak on the law. In this case two cases are being discussed. One case is from New Jersey, regarding a dispute related to faults in designing of plant and the payment due, between the contractor and the owner of the firm. Another case is from New York State, regarding a dispute related to wrongful termination of contract from the owner's side resulting in a loss to the contractor. The contract in this case was not containing an arbitration clause, so it was headed to state court. Both the cases are different in their controversial amounts. The New Jersey case started with a simple demand for arbitration. while the New York case the litigation had a more tortuous beginning. The proceedings related to the cases continued for a couple of years.

The rate of return to ownership of California dairy quota is about 27% per year—well above that of typical financial assets, but in line with other measured returns to agricultural quotas. Ownership of dairy quota does not contribute positively to total variation of typical portfolios, including those of dairy farm assets, and so contributes little or no portfolio risk. A plausible alternative hypothesis for the high rate of return is that quota owners see significant risk of policy change that would reduce future quota values. That is, they face default risk in quota ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In numerous places, events are rapidly leading to the development of regional power exchanges with visible hourly prices, which are open to purchases by "direct access" customers. Currently, the vast majority of smaller customers have meters that are not capable of recording hourly usage, so that these customers are effectively precluded from power exchange purchases. Load profiling is frequently suggested as an alternative to installation of hourly usage meters. which will allow smaller customers to participate in direct access. This article describes how direct access load profiling can be implemented, discusses the technical challenges, and reports the results of a simulation study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the author's views on the similarities and dissimilarities of managing military and private-sector business organizations. Description of the differences between the students at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and students elsewhere in public and private universities; Note on the cultural differences between the students; Report that managing change in the military can be a very profound matter, which is undoubtedly similar to those major changes companies deal with; Discussion between professionals from the military sector and private sector.