Oppression and resistance: the powerless and the future

Relations between rich and poor (across and within countries) appeared in some questions in Images; there were clear differences between what the powerful and the powerless hoped and expected from the future. This is compared with what actually happened and a deeper analysis is made of ‘power’ as an organizing concept. It turned out that the pessimism associated with powerlessness tended to make better predictions.     

Expenditure on different categories of meat in Greece: the influence of changing tastes

This paper employs a latent variable approach to isolate the effects of changing tastes on the share of total meat expenditure on different categories of meat products in Greece during the period 1965–1995. We find that changes in the relative expenditure on different categories of meat cannot be explained by changes in the relative prices of the different meat products and increased expenditure alone. For pork products in particular, the increase in the share of expenditure has been greater than would be expected as a result of the relative fall in their price. The increase can therefore be associated with changes in taste. This finding is of general interest to those conducting empirical research into consumer behaviour both in economies where there have been significant changes in patterns of food consumption, and where, as in the case of many less industrialised economies, rapid structural changes in food consumption patterns are still to come. It is also of importance to policy makers in assessing die effectiveness of advertising or promotional campaigns in influencing longer term changes in consumer preferences for different products.     

Reporting Discretion and Private Information Communication through Earnings

We model a two-period pure exchange economy where a risk averse manager, who has private information regarding future earnings, is required to issue an earnings report to investors at the end of each period. While the manager is prohibited from directly disclosing her private information, she is allowed to bias reported earnings in the first period, subject to GAAP rules that require that a specified proportion of the bias be reversed subsequently. We show there is a minimum threshold of reversal, such that, when the proportion of required reversal is above this threshold, the manager smooths income and communicates her private information through reported earnings. Consequently, the market attaches greater weight to reported earnings than under a regime that allows no discretion. When the required reversal is below the minimum threshold, the manager increases reported earnings without limit and the equilibrium degenerates. When the manager is not endowed with any private information, the market unravels the "true" earnings and price is unaffected by earnings management. Our results underscore the importance of both allowing and restricting reporting discretion through formal mechanisms.     

Service Competitiveness – An Anglo-US Study

This article reports on the latest in a series of international comparisons of management practices and performance outcomes of industries in various countries. Here, it is the service industries in the UK and the US which come under the microscope. Among the companies surveyed, there were more world-class performers in the US than the UK, but also more low performers. The concluding part of the article is diagnostic – the authors also suggest measures which could improve performance.     

The impacts of Hong Kong’s Currency Board reforms on the interbank market

Among the economies with a Currency Board System (CBS), Hong Kong (HK) is probably the one with the largest and most developed financial sector, as well as the highest capital mobility. Hence, studying HK’s CBS is not only crucial to HK, but also important for the understanding of the modern CBS. This paper outlines the major monetary reforms in HK since the late 1980s. The impacts of these reforms and the 1997–1998 Asian Financial Crisis are then examined empirically. We focus on the differentials between the US and HK interbank interest rates. We assume the conditional-mean equation follows an autoregressive process and the conditional-variance equation follows a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity process. This model captures the time-varying level and volatility of the differential. In light of the empirical results we provide an assessment of the reforms in HK.