Progress: Poverty or Prosperity?

A bstract . Henry George and Alfred Marshall agreed that prosperity —growth in national income —was necessary but not sufficient to eliminate the poverty both believed impeded the mental and moral development of mankind. This inherent optimism in the potential benefits of economic growth was , however, their only common ground. George asserted that as long as land was privately owned, prosperity would increase poverty; and called for the fiscal remedy of a "single tax" to appropriate land rent. Marshall argued that increased poverty was only a temporary concomitant of growth caused by a population that was too big in numbers but too Low in skills; and advocated "taming" competition by education, charity, thrift , and breeding restraint. This study constructs a joined debate on progress and poverty by aligning the arguments of these two influential authors whose different personalities and personal histories precluded any true communication during their lifetimes.     

Institutional ownership,cross-shareholdings and corporate cash reserves in Japan

Cross-country studies document a negative relation between corporate governance and cash holdings. In contrast, this relation is found to be positive in the United States. In this paper, we examine the case of Japanese firms. Using institutional ownership and cross-shareholdings as the main governance variables, we show that better governance is associated with higher cash balances as in the United States. The reason is that better-governed firms make better investment decisions. Their investments are not driven by excess liquidity and result in higher profitability and higher firm valuation. Overall, our findings indicate that management profligacy is a bigger concern to shareholders than management propensity to hoard cash because of risk aversion.     

Immigration and the unemployment benefit programme in Australia

A widely held view is that immigrants contribute to public debt through their over representation in the unemployment benefit programme. An empirical investigation, based on the 1990 Income Distribution Survey, finds support for this view. In contrast to the US and Canadian studies, this paper observes that the probability of receiving unemployment benefits is higher for immigrants than the native-born population and immigrants, who participate in the unemployment benefit programme, also receive a greater amount of unemployment benefits.     

Examining rural income and employment in Bangladesh: A case of structural changes in the rural nonfarm sector in a developing country

This study uncovers some important stylised facts about the structural changes in the rural nonfarm (RNF) economy in Bangladesh for the period 2000–2016 and identifies some broad determinants. Our work uses household-level, secondary sources such as Household Income and Expenditure Survey, Labour Force Survey and Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey. We find that the positive relationship between landownership and rural income has become weaker in recent years, indicating the increasing role of nonland inputs in generating rural income. The share of RNF income in total rural income has increased substantially over the years. The increase in nonfarm income is largely driven by the nonfarm wage income of the richer households, indicating adverse distributional consequences. There are also indications for specialisation in nonfarm activities—the share of income from the ‘mixed’ sources of farm and nonfarm has decreased, and the ‘only nonfarm’ source has increased. Households tend to move away from agriculture and specialise in RNF occupations as the education level increases. Our results offer important insights into rural development strategies and contribute to the broader questions of the development discourse on the structural changes in developing countries.     

The Asian Crisis,Gender, and the International Financial Architecture

This paper begins with an account of the Asian crisis, its creation and management by international financial institutions (the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank), and the gender impact of their stabilization and structural adjustment programs. Next we consider the new debate on reforming the IMF and the World Bank and restructuring the international financial architecture to prevent crises and manage them more effectively. Finally, we consider the gender ramifications of these changes. Since feminists have been absent from this debate, we examine issues essential to the formation of a gender-conscious international financial structure.     

Bias and backwardation in natural gas futures prices

This paper tests the fair‐game efficient‐markets hypothesis for the natural gas futures prices over the period 1990 through 2003. We find evidence consistent with the Keynesian notion of normal backwardation. Regressing the future spot prices on the lagged futures prices and using the Stock‐Watson (1993) procedure to correct for the correlation between the error terms and the futures prices, we find that natural gas futures are biased predictors of the corresponding future spot prices for contracts ranging from 3 to 12 months. These results cast a serious doubt on the commonly held view that natural gas futures sell at a premium over the expected future spot prices, and that this bias is due to the systematic risk of the futures price movements represented by a negative “beta.” We also find evidence for the Samuelson effect. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 25:281–308, 2005     

Components of CEO Remuneration and Non‐GAAP Disclosure

This paper provides evidence of the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) remuneration on decisions to disclose voluntary non‐generally accepted accounting principles (non‐GAAP) financial measures. We investigate profit announcements that focus on the most emphasised part, which includes mandatorily identified information (results for the announcement to the market) and the least emphasised part, which incorporates other sections. By reading the profit announcements and manually collecting non‐GAAP financial measures (NGFM) data, there is no reliance on keyword search strings and as such we uncover the pervasiveness of the use of NGFM. Results show that the base component of CEOs’ remuneration plays a significant role in reporting NGFM in the most emphasised part of the profit announcement. Conversely, all three (base, short‐term and long‐term incentives) components of the remuneration package have a significant relationship with the reporting decisions in the least emphasised part of the statement. We find that, depending on the regulatory imposition and the emphasis assigned to the section of the profit announcement, the motive for voluntary disclosure of NGFM can be explained as altruistic (informative) or opportunistic (misleading). We contribute evidence on ‘pay–action’ rather than ‘pay–performance’ by incorporating all three components simultaneously into the framework to maintain the assumption of correspondence and internal consistency among those components.     

Richard Kahn's fellowship dissertation: The fate of ‘The Economics of the Short Period’

Abstract

In 1930, Richard Kahn became a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, on the basis of his book-length dissertation ‘The Economics of the Short Period.’ It was finally published in the 1980s. Why did he not publish his thesis in the 1930s, when it would have made a substantial impact? We present two arguments. In 1932/33, Joan Robinson published many of Kahn's main ideas, rendering subsequent publication by him derivative. And by the mid-1930s, Kahn discovered that parts of his dissertation left untouched by Robinson were no longer new or distinctive because of rapid progress in research on imperfect and monopolistic competition.     

Mother–child interaction: a qualitative investigation of imprisoned mothers

In many countries, babies born to women in prison stay in prison with their mother and very young children may accompany their mothers in prison. Among these countries, Iran is one of those we do not have enough information about its prisoners especially mothers who have child(ren). This study aims to investigate imprisoned mother–child interaction by a qualitative method, Grounded Theory, in Iran. Two main questions of this research are: how is the interaction of mother–child in prison? What are the consequences of this interaction? Participants of this study comprised of 14 imprisoned mothers who were on leave, Iran. Being a mother and living with a child was the criterion of selecting the participants. All of the participants were in a separated unit. Data analysis yielded six categories and a core category. The categories are: “child as an emotional support of the mother; child as centre, prison as periphery; hope and will to favored future; mother unit as a family; rehabilitation; the other side of the coin: perceived risk for children.” Core category of the study is “imprisoned mother–child interactions: learning to live by hope and fear.”