Trade Liberalisation in Developing Economies: Modest Benefits but Problems with Productivity Growth, Macro Prices, and Income Distribution

Microeconomically, the case for liberalisation is dubious under increasing returns to scale and when firms can invest directly in productivity enhancement. Distributional effects of commercial policy changes can be regressive and large, but the 'rents' they generate can serve as a basis for effective policy intervention contingent on firms' performance. Macroeconomically, the case of liberalisation rests on Say's Law, which is not always enforced. Recent combined current and capital market liberalisations have been associated with strong exchange rates and high interest rates and output and productivity growth have positive mutual feedbacks which liberalisation may well suppress.     

Explaining Individual and Task Differences in Consumer Attitudes toward Ambiguity

Consumers frequently face choices involving ambiguity, or uncertainty about the probabilities of the various possible outcomes. Past research has found that attitudes towards ambiguity vary across tasks. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest that such variation in consumer attitudes can be explained by examining the nature of the source of the uncertainty. It is suggested that consumers will have different attitudes depending upon whether the ambiguity is generated internally (by the consumer) or externally (by some outside source). Exploratory evidence and propositions for future research are presented. The results suggest that marketing strategies and de-biasing methods for ambiguous situations should consider the source of the ambiguity.     

The Cash Recovery Method of Calculating Profitability: An Application to Pharmaceutical Firms

The problems with commonly used accounting profit rates are well documented. In this paper an alternative to accounting profit rates, the cash recovery method is investigated and improved. This improved method is used as a means to estimate profitability in the pharmaceutical industry on a firm level. The profitability estimates give a similar rank order to the accounting profitability rates, but have different magnitudes.     

Load and no-load mutual fund dynamics during the 1987 market crash: A stochastic dominance analysis

Using a large sample of equity mutual fund returns, we compare performance of load and no-load funds during the 1987 crash. Differences in return distributions, particularly in the higher moments when the market was under stress, suggest a greater use of portfolio insurance by no-load fund managers. Using stochastic dominance, we find that load and no-load funds performed equally well before the crash. No-load returns dominated load fund returns during the crash. Load fund returns dominate after the crash. Over the entire month, no-load funds dominate. We attribute this to investor behavior motivated by the lack of a front-end load.     

Cartel Attributes and Cartel Performance: The Impact of Trade Associations

This paper employs a cartel policy experiment, the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, to examine whether industries that have trade associations in place prior to cartelization were better able to attain collusive outcomes than otherwise. Trade associations could potentially help industries better formulate effective cartel rules and could help with monitoring. We find that industries with trade associations were more successful in achieving collusion–proxied by either reductions in industry output or increases in industry prices–than those without. In fact, industries without trade associations were generally unable to successfully collude under the NIRA.     

Advisory board engagement: Assisting undergraduates with resume development

Resumes of students with limited work experience are by nature underdeveloped and frequently poorly designed. Although many tools and resources are available, students often underutilize them. Faculty at a northeastern university sought to address this problem by engaging members of its college of business advisory board to provide students with real-world advice. Many advisory board members are senior executives who can advise students on how to improve their resumes and make them more professional and powerful. To assess the effectiveness of this intervention, pre- and postsurveys were conducted and analyzed. The authors discuss the results and draw some conclusions. D. Kolb's (1984) model of experiential learning provides a conceptual framework.     

Using robots to reduce personnel radiation exposure at the savannah river plant

The Savannah River Laboratory is using robots to improve safety and reduce personnel radiation exposure in the nuclear process environment. This paper reviews several successful applications at this site. A detailed discussion is presented on an application to transfer materials in a line of shielded radiation work cells.     

How important are semi-annual earnings announcements? An information event perspective

Using a method that avoids the need to specify earnings expectations, we demonstrate that the period surrounding the semi-annual announcement of Australian firms' earnings is, on average, an important source of information. Although there is substantial year-to-year variation, we observe no evidence of any significant time trend, and also conclude that a shift from Australian domestic generally accepted accounting principle to International Financial Reporting Standards did not impact the association between earnings announcement windows and stock returns. We also find no evidence that the informativeness of earnings announcements varies systematically with firm size, analyst following or economic news (i.e., positive vs. negative stock returns, profits vs. losses), although we do observe significant variation across industries. Our conclusion is further supported by contrasting the earnings release date with the days immediately prior to release, or high information days other than earnings announcement windows. Using a more precise event window relative to prior studies (i.e., 3 h vs. 3 days), we confirm that earnings announcements contain significant new information about fundamentals.     

Examining the success of women of color-owned small and medium-sized enterprises in the United States: A system dynamics perspective

The objective of this study was to unravel the challenges confronting women of color (WoC)-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the United States. This is based on findings that most WoC-owned SMEs fail within the first few years of establishment. The impact of the global financial crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic on WoC-owned SMEs was also explored. System Dynamics (SD) is a computational modeling approach useful for understanding changes in a system over time and is applied in this study to illustrate WoC entrepreneurs' navigation through the startup and maturation of SMEs. The authors calibrated and validated the model with publicly available data. Findings revealed that more emphasis should be placed on failure reduction in the early years of establishment of these businesses. Also, there is the need for early intervention rather than focusing on the improvement of the successful business exit from the system. Results indicated that the creation of new businesses by WoC after the failure of existing businesses produced an increase in the number of failed enterprises. The authors assert that attention must be paid at the individual level through support to the entrepreneur. This study contributes to the extant literature by providing the first known SD model useful in depicting the SME system for WoC entrepreneurs in the US. The model serves as a potentially useful tool for informing effective policy making, education, and programmatic approaches to support the success of WoC entrepreneurs in the US.

     

A comparative analysis of the Australian and New Zealand liquidation schemes

On September 28, 2022, Australia announced an inquiry into the effectiveness of its corporate insolvency laws. The Australia and New Zealand corporate insolvency frameworks have similar objectives and operate in a similar context where, as is the case the world over, most companies are small to medium enterprises. Despite liquidation being just one of several collective and formal corporate insolvency procedures, it is the most frequently occurring procedure in both countries by a large margin. The Australian and New Zealand liquidation schemes have many similarities but also some key differences. Differences include the structure of the respective schemes; the levers prompting liquidation of companies in appropriate circumstances; the role of creditors, the court and the regulator; and the management of low-value and assetless liquidations. These differences are analysed to determine what, if anything, the New Zealand scheme might contribute to development and/or reform of Australian corporate insolvency law. As consistency and coordination with Australian insolvency law is a New Zealand policy aim, the lessons the Australian scheme might have for New Zealand are also considered. Many of the points on which the Australian and New Zealand liquidation schemes differ are of universal concern (such as the management of low-value liquidations), meaning that the nature and success (or otherwise) of the Australian and New Zealand responses are of wider, comparative interest.