The demand for retailer-financed instalment credit: An econometric analysis

During the mid- to late 1980s the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer has attempted to reduce the volume of consumer credit extended by increasing interest rates rather than by re-introducing terms controls. This paper presents estimates of demand functions for new credit extended by retailers which was financed by them and repaid by instalments. Following earlier papers, a stock-adjustment model is presented that is extended to allow for credit rationing. The results suggest that the demand for such new credit extended is related negatively to terms control and positively to personal disposable income and expectations. Demand was not found to be related to (a proxy for) the nominal interest rate charged by retailers (although it was found to be positively related to the real rate). The former finding is consistent with questionnaire evidence that consumers are unaware of the interest rate that they pay for credit. Elasticities of demand are presented.     

PUBLIC EXPENDITURE CUTS AND JOB LOSS: A UNION RESPONSE

This article is based upon the findings of a survey which was directed at assessing the response of a public sector union to job loss amongst its members. The study was prompted by the anticipated effects on the union of cuts in public expenditure announced by Mrs. Thatcher's Government in 1979 and 1980. The purpose of the survey was, first, to investigate the processes through which job loss occurred and, secondly, to examine the ways in which the union contested those managerial decisions that affected the job security of its members. The main conclusion of the paper is that union resistance has been relatively sparse and it is suggested that this may be in part explained by the way in which job loss occurred. Of particular importance in this context is the loss of jobs through what we have called ‘job erosion’.     

Briefing Paper

The conventional post-war wisdom was that unemployment was a consequence of inadequate economic growth, and economic growth was to be secured by macro-economic policy. Inflation, by contrast, was increasingly seen as a matter to be dealt with by microeconomic policy - the panoply of controls and subsidies associated with the era of incomes policy … But the proper role of each is precisely the opposite of that assigned to it by the conventional post-war wisdom. It is the conquest of inflation, and not the pursuit of growth and employment, which is or should be the objective of macro-economic policy. And it is the creation of conditions conducive to growth and employment… which is or should be the objective of micro-economic policy.—Nigel Lawson, Fifth Mais Lecture, 1984.     

Ripping off Aunt Agatha: a decade of the Financial Services Act

The new Financial Services Authority will put the public interest first. These were the words of the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, when announcing that the Financial Services Act 1988 was to be overhauled and self regulation was to be abandoned. This paper argues that the regime put in place by the Act in 1988, has manifestly failed to deliver the protection that was promised to 'Aunt Agatha.' It argues that regulatory failure is ubiquitous and that the cause of this failure is that regulatory agencies are invariably captured by the people that they are supposed to be regulating. Finally, it presents an alternative to state regulation, by highlighting the considerable protections offered by the common law, by self regulation and, most importantly by a free, competitive and open market.     

Human resource policy in social work management: a response to enforced market orientation

This article is a contribution to the study of public service organizations converting to a market orientation. The case examined here is that of a social services department which opted for the strategy of restructuring on the lines of budget autonomy but accompanied it by an unusual focus upon managerial skills. The effect was to personalize the change. The conflict between old ways and new thinking was congealed into personal debate by the focus on skills so that changes had to be resolved internally. The rationale for this strategy is located in the antipathy between professional social work values and the practice of management.     

Technological limits to forecasts of doom: Science,technology, and the sustainable economy

In this paper some of the catastrophist literature that was prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s is surveyed. It is still being published but now seems to have a diminished following. The focus is on two major areas, on food and population and on mineral resources. To the catastrophists, the various ills that allegedly plagued the world were attributed to technology. Their solution was a new appropriate technology that would allow us to live within limits. I counter with the argument that technology is the creator of resources which it uses, and that the data on food supply show that world development has been positive. The alternate technologies that were offered are found to be, in my judgment, self-limiting and therefore selfdefeating. I argue that life in general and human life in particular has not survived by living within limits but by devising means of transcending them. Technologies that allow us to live within limits lead to stagnation and inevitable decline. The sustainable economy is one that continually evolves in the use of science and technology to create new resources.     

Methods of measuring the distribution of socio-economic conditions

A metropolitan community was faced with the problem of locating areas of the community in terms of more or less need for leisure-time services. The authors developed a set of methods and techniques to solve this problem. It was noted that these methods differed in some ways from prior efforts of this sort. The advantages of the methods were that they could use readily available data, did not require the use of a computer, and presented a relative level of need that was more than a simple ranking of planning areas. Further, the methods could be used to locate any number of conditions in which one might be interested. In addition to spelling out the details of the original effort, an attempt is made to show how factor analysis could be used as an alternate approach to the first effort. The pros and cons of factor analysis as a substitute method are discussed. The major disadvantage would be if the particular community did not have a large computer available. This is outweighed by the higher levels of accuracy, predictability and comparability provided by factor analysis.     

Fisher ideal output,input, and productivity indexes revisited

A productivity index for a firm is generally defined as an output index divided by an input index. The first part of the paper uses the test or axiomatic approach to index number theory in order to determine the appropriate functional form for the output and input indexes. It is found that the Fisher ideal index satisfies 21 reasonable tests and is uniquely characterized by a subset of these tests. In the remainder of the paper, the economic approach to productivity indexes introduced by Caves, Christensen, and Diewert is adopted and, again, a strong justification for the Fisher productivity index is provided.The editor of this paper was N.R. Adam.This research was supported by a Strategic Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The author is indebted to Shelley Hey for typing assistance.     

The eventization of faith as a marketing strategy: World Youth Day as an innovative response of the Catholic Church to pluralization

• The declared objective of World Youth Day (WYD), a Catholic Church event staged in a major world city every 2–3 years, is to evangelize youth – including those on the fringes of, and outside, the Church. The 20th WYD, which was held in Cologne, Germany in 2005, was the subject of a project conducted by a research consortium funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The preliminary hypothesis that WYD combines elements of traditionalistic festivals and modernistic events and that this combination yields a new event form – the “hybrid event” – was confirmed.
• This paper presents some of the findings gained from an ethnographic investigation of the organization of WYD that was informed by an action-theory perspective in the tradition of Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann's sociology of knowledge. From this perspective, which focuses on the goals, strategies, and personal relevancies of the organizing team (German) WYD can be unequivocally reconstructed as a Catholic Church marketing event. The “product” – the Catholic faith, uniquely personified by the Pope – is presented by an elite organizing team in an atmosphere of fun and mystery that especially appeals to young people. Hence, the Catholic Church succeeds in shedding its sometimes fuddy-duddy image and in bringing young people to perceive it as a vibrant, modern religious institution. This should prove to be a competitive advantage in an age of religious pluralism.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of accounting reform on accounting quality: Evidence from Nigeria

The effectiveness of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is dependent on the strength of enforcement of accounting standards in a given country. This study explores the implications of the adoption of IFRS in Nigeria after the enforcement of accounting standards was strengthened. The strengthening of accounting standards enforcement, and the subsequent adoption of IFRS in Nigeria, was recommended by the World Bank to improve the country's regulatory outlook after a capital market crisis in 2007/2008 that was triggered by widespread accounting irregularities. Results indicate that accounting quality declined in Nigeria following the adoption of IFRS; while earnings management increased, timely loss recognition and earnings persistence reduced. Our study contributes to the burgeoning literature on IFRS adoption and concludes that the effect of IFRS adoption is contextual. Therefore, accounting regulatory institutions operating in a similar context to Nigeria should localize IFRS.     

Did Mises Err? Was He a Utilitarian?

A bstract .   Walter Block's critique of my paper fails to address the main argument: that Ludwig von Mises's support for laissez faire comes from a comparison of the systems recommended by the ideologies of socialism, interventionism, and liberalism. Mises compares these systems according to the criterion of their capacity to achieve the goal of satisfying material wants. This goal is either explicit or implicit in the arguments made by those who subscribe to the above ideologies. He uses value-free economic reasoning to determine whether the systems recommended by the three ideologies will achieve the goal. In this reply, I reaffirm the argument in the face of Block's critique. In addition, I address two other arguments. The first is the implicit argument in Murray Rothbard and in Block that Mises erred because he failed to take account of all the goals that policy advocates might have in recommending a policy. I argue that he did not err. The second is that Mises is a utilitarian, an argument also advanced by Leland Yeager. I argue not only that Mises was not but also that he repudiated the idea that his support for laissez faire was based on utilitarian welfare principles. The reply also answers some of Block's more specific criticisms of my paper.     

The Historical Roots of CIA‐Hollywood Propaganda

The ability to use movies that tell persuasive stories is a powerful tool, particularly if it is consciously used to legitimize war, assassination, and illegal activities and to undermine the core principles of democracy. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. military have made use of that tool for almost a century, starting with the War Department's quiet support for the movie Birth of a Nation in 1915 and continuing for a century, including such recent CIA‐supported products as Homeland, The Agency, The Recruit, and many less likely movies and television shows. During World War II, this sort of propaganda was openly distributed, since there was a widespread consensus in support of that war. However, state‐sponsored propaganda in the form of Hollywood movies continued throughout the Cold War up to the present. The production of movies that completely distorted the political meaning of George Orwell's and Graham Greene's novels were important examples of this practice. CIA involvement was covert, since the target audience was the American public and the ideological perspective being propagated often ran counter to democratic ideals. This article recounts the history of the process by which Americans came to accept the ideas continuously promoted by the government, often without knowing that their favorite movies and television shows had been vetted or even altered by agents of the CIA or the Pentagon. Since these practices violate federal laws, the public at least has a right to know that we are being subjected to this sort of propaganda and how much tax money is spent to produce entertaining forms of disinformation.     

Audit policy making in the UK

In accounting discourses, the going concern concept is considered to be ‘fundamental’ yet in auditing it is considered to be ‘material but not fundamental’. Like all other social concepts and practices, ‘going concern’ is multi-accented and its meanings cannot be stabilized. Against such a background, the UK accountancy bodies formulated and issued the auditing guideline The Auditor's Considerations in Respect of Going Concern in 1985. The purpose of this paper is to explore audit policy making in the UK by examining the formulation of the auditing guideline. The evidence suggests that the auditing guideline was an attempt by the professional bodies to manage a crisis of auditor responsibility. It suggests that a major aim of the guideline was to minimize audit effort in order to give maximum protection from litigation to major auditing firms.     

基于熵和双基点方法的广义价值工程评价模型

建立扩展的价值工程评价模型,使评价内容更加丰富和全面。给出了一种利用基点和熵计算指标权重的方法,以被评方案距基点方案的距离和权重信息熵为优化目标。根据双基点法对方案进行排序,并与其它评价方法进行了比较,证明这种评价方法可信度高。     

The prospect for gender diversity in Japanese employment

Economic growth during the second half of the twentieth century was not accompanied by an improvement in the position of women in the Japanese labour market. The peripheral position occupied by women was due, in large part, to the substantial barriers created by the internal labour market with its employment practices such as ‘lifetime’ employment, seniority promotion, and on-the-job training. In the past decade, the use of such practices has declined and the corresponding erosion of the internal labour market, coupled with a predicted skill shortage, was seen as an opportunity for women to gain a degree of equality in the workplace. Yet, the changes to the structure of the internal labour market have not been able to overcome the discriminatory work practices are that are embedded in the way work is organized. It is this contest that is explored and analysed in this paper.     

Managers as informal third parties: The impact of supervisor-subordinate relationships on interventions

This research focuses on the distinctions between formal and informal third parties articulated by Kolb and Sheppard (1985), the most important of which is the relationship that exists between the third party and the disputants. Several hypotheses are advanced regarding the consequences of a sudden change in the relationship on the process and outcomes of the intervention. An experimental simulation of a supervisor-subordinate discussion (about a dispute among subordinates) is conducted with 62 undergraduate volunteers as participants. The supervisors in the experimental group receive negative affective information about the subordinate prior to the meeting, which is expected to influence the relationship and hence the intervention. Results indicate that in the experimental condition performance evaluations were lower, ratings of trust were lower, and the atmosphere in the discussion was rated as less friendly. Interestingly, in dyads where the negative information was discussed openly each of the ratings was higher than when the negative information was not discussed, as was the satisfaction reported by each of the participants. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

Competition in long-distance and telecommunications equipment markets: Effects of the MFJ

The Modification of Final Judgement (MJF) is now 10 years old. The MFJ was a historic change in US antitrust policy and in telecommunications policy. Pre-divestiture AT&T was divided into a single company, AT&T, which was allowed to compete in long-distance markets, telecommunications equipment markets and (with some delay) information service markets. Seven regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) were permitted to provide local service and nearby long-distance service. However, the BOCs were not permitted to enter the three markets reserved for AT&T. In 1991 the Information Services restriction was eliminated for the BOCs. However, the ban on provision of (interLATA) long distance and equipment remains. The policy experiment was quite interesting since no other nation has followed the USA, despite numerous other countries ending the formerly monopoly status of their telecommunications provider. In this paper I evaluate how competitive the remaining markets reserved for AT&T, and from which the BOCS are banned, have become. I conclude that (interLATA) long-distance market for residential and small business users, by far the largest fraction of users of long distance is currently uncompetitive. AT&Ts prices are constrained by FCC regulation, not by competition. AT&T has market power and is exercising market power. For equipment markets, I find a good deal more competition. However, I conclude that the BOCs could not impede competition in long distance and that removal of the MFJ restrictions would be pro-competitive. Thus, I conclude that removal of the MFJ estrictions on the BOCs would be pro-competitive, would increase economic efficiency, and would improve consumer welfare.     

董事高管责任保险与审计费用增加:监督、激励还是纵容?——基于中国A股经验数据的实证研究

董事高管责任保险的引入引起审计费用显著增加,既可能是监督、激励效应所致,也可能是机会主义行为所致,研究清楚到底是哪一种原因导致审计费用增加,对认识董事高管责任保险的治理职能、加强公司治理机制建设等均具有重要意义。基于沪深交易所上市公司2003—2017年的数据,实证检验了董事高管责任保险对审计费用的影响。研究发现,董事高管责任保险的引入将显著增加上市公司的审计费用支出,且审计费用支出的增加是因为保险人积极履行监督行为、追求更高的审计质量所引起的,而非是其引致的机会主义行为所导致的。进一步研究发现,董事高管责任保险与审计费用之间存在显著的正向交互效应,即在较差的外部治理环境中董事高管责任保险的监督激励效应更为显著。这一研究对董事高管责任保险与审计费用的关系有了全新的认识,也为董事高管责任保险的推广提供了经验支持。     

Antecedents and Consequences of User Coproduction in Information System Development Projects

Based on a coproduction concept highlighted by service‐dominant logic, this study attempts to understand the antecedents and consequences of user coproduction in information system development projects. As a key contribution, we posit that user coproduction is influenced by social capital between users and developers; we then postulate that user coproduction determines the project outcomes. Paired data collected from both user representatives and developers by using a survey approach was used to test proposed hypotheses. The results showed that user coproduction has a positively significant influence on project outcomes, and social capital between user representatives and developers is also associated with user coproduction.