Annuity Values in Defined Contribution Retirement Systems: Australia and Singapore Compared

Annuities promise to play an increasingly important role in countries with national defined contribution retirement systems. In this article we examine life annuities in two countries, Singapore and Australia, each of which has a national mandatory pension program. Exploiting data on annuity pricing and purchase behaviour, we compare the money's worth of life annuity products across these two nations. Our results indicate that, after controlling on administrative loadings, there are important differences in measured adverse selection. Part of the explanation may be due to the different structures of the two countries’retirement systems.     

Linking Ethics and Risk Management in Taxation: Evidence from an Exploratory Study in Ireland and the UK

Ethical dilemmas involving tax issues were identified by members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants as posing the most difficult ethical problem for them (Finn et al., Journal of Business Ethics 7(8), pp. 607–609, 1988). The KPMG tax shelter fraud case proves that the tax profession has not gone untainted in the age of numerous accounting and corporate scandals, such as the Enron débacle (Sikka and Hampton, Accounting Forum 29(3), 325–343, 2005). High-profile scandals serve to highlight the problems caused by differences in ethical judgement among accountants and tax practitioners and the issue of ethics has been brought publicly to the forefront of the profession. Nevertheless, the nature and dimension of ethical issues in tax practice have been largely unexplored (Erard, Journal of Public Economics 52(2), 163–197, 1993; Marshall et al., Journal of Business Ethics 17(12), 1265–1279, 1998; Frecknall Hughes, Unpublished PhD Thesis, The University of Leeds, 2002). This research aims to contribute to the debate on ethics in tax practice by reporting interview data on tax practitioners’ perceptions of ethics in the jurisdictions of Ireland and the United Kingdom and exploring the link or equation of ethics with risk management.     

Marketing and the British chief executive

British chief executives increasingly recognise the need to make their companies more marketing orientated. But boards of directors are still dominated by a financial outlook and most lack a professional approach to strategy and market innovation. Chief executives need to supplement their generally inadequate base with education and development programmes on strategic marketing and to add non‐executive directors with substantial expertise in marketing.     

Incorporating choice dynamics in models of consumer behavior

This paper presents a framework for organizing and discussing factors influencing consumer choice dynamics, how these factors may be incorporated into models of buyer behavior and problems that may arise in estimating such models. The paper identifies research issues and delineates possible approaches. Proceedings of Session on Choice Dynamics at the Banff Symposium on Consumer Decision-Making and Choice Behavior. All authors share equally in content and remaining errors.     

Cellular clouds

This paper progresses an analysis of what it means to be a cellular network operator and what form the ownership and control of future cellular networks may take. Alternative modes of ownership may allow for the creation of more flexible cellular networking environments in which competition for packages of resources, that is, the licenced spectrum, the RAN and core network, ensures that the most efficient and innovative architectures, services and applications are delivered to the consumer. This paper develops the concept of the Cellular Network Cloud and Utility Cellular Networking as a means to explore the possibilities for such revolution in the way in which cellular networks are owned and operated. Changes to current industry practices which would help to meet the objectives of more flexible and competitive network ownership and control are proposed.