Disaggregate spatio-temporal assessments of population exposure to aircraft noise

Estimates of exposure to aircraft noise are generally based on an average day of operations and residential population figures. While providing a convenient way to condense information, this does not reflect noise experiences across the day. This paper details an approach to inject more reality into exposure assessments, using disaggregate geographic information systems-based flight movement data and a procedure to track the population over the day. Using empirical evidence from Sydney, this leads to markedly different insights about noise impacts, which in turn has ramifications for policy-makers planning flight operations and residential settlement patterns in impacted areas.     

‘It was doing my head in’: Low-paid multiple employment and zero hours work

This article explores the lived experiences and working time complexities of low-paid workers in legitimate multiple employment and zero hours work. Based on detailed qualitative research, these workers have 2, 3, 4, 5 and even 7 different jobs out of necessity due to low-pay, unpredictable working hours and employment precarity. The research reveals that workers need to be available for (potential) work at any point but may not actually be offered any hours, which we argue constitutes unremunerated labour time. The findings highlight a densification of working time with zero hours work as employers maximize productive effort into specifically numbered, demarcated and minimized working hours, which tightens the porosity of labour. There is a dual fragmentation and individualization of employment, as these workers traverse multiple, expansive, complex and dynamic temporalities of work. This study identifies new economic and temporal indeterminacies of labour, which fundamentally transform the employment relationship and wage-effort bargain.     

Attitudes of food entrepreneurs towards two grant schemes under the first England Rural Development Programme, 2000–2006

Grant schemes introduced under the first England Rural Development Programme (ERDP) (2000–2006) have been subjected to limited academic research and this paper aims to fill this gap by examining the attitudes of food entrepreneurs in two contiguous English regions to two key elements of the ERDP: the Processing and Marketing Grant (PMG) and the Rural Enterprise Scheme (RES). It does this through a qualitative analysis of data gathered from interviews with 20 ‘adopters’ and 20 ‘non-adopters’ of the two schemes in the South West and West Midlands regions of England. The analysis reveals that, despite the rural development rhetoric, neither the PMG nor the RES was particularly effective at funding enterprises beyond the farm gate; both schemes also appeared to attract what can be described as ‘serial adopters’ and to discriminate against those without experience of applying for government grants. Nevertheless, indirectly they did provide opportunities to safeguard and expand local and regional food production, processing and retailing in the two regions.     

Risk assessment in internal auditing: a neural network approach

Risk assessment is a systematic process for integrating professional judgments about relevant risk factors, their relative significance and probable adverse conditions and/or events leading to identification of auditable activities (IIA, 1995, SIAS No. 9). Internal auditors utilize risk measures to allocate critical audit resources to compliance, operational, or financial activities within the organization (Colbert, 1995). In information rich environments, risk assessment involves recognizing patterns in the data, such as complex data anomalies and discrepancies, that perhaps conceal one or more error or hazard conditions (e.g. Coakley and Brown, 1996; Bedard and Biggs, 1991; Libby, 1985). This research investigates whether neural networks can help enhance auditors’ risk assessments. Neural networks, an emerging artificial intelligence technology, are a powerful non‐linear optimization and pattern recognition tool (Haykin, 1994; Bishop, 1995). Several successful, real‐world business neural network application decision aids have already been built (Burger and Traver, 1996). Neural network modeling may prove invaluable in directing internal auditor attention to those aspects of financial, operating, and compliance data most informative of high‐risk audit areas, thus enhancing audit efficiency and effectiveness. This paper defines risk in an internal auditing context, describes contemporary approaches to performing risk assessments, provides an overview of the backpropagation neural network architecture, outlines the methodology adopted for conducting this research project including a Delphi study and comparison with statistical approaches, and presents preliminary results, which indicate that internal auditors could benefit from using neural network technology for assessing risk. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Geographic scope,product diversification,and the corporate performance of Japanese firms

The study extends research on the geographic scope, product diversification, and performance relationship by exploring both the antecedents and consequences of geographic scope. In so doing, it addresses a fundamental criticism of the geographic scope–performance relationship; namely, that the observed positive relationship between geographic scope and performance is spurious because it is the possession of proprietary assets that is the foundation of superior performance, not expansion into international markets per se. We tested the research model with data on the corporate performance of 399 Japanese manufacturing firms. In the partial least squares analyses used to examine the study’s six main hypotheses, we demonstrate that geographic scope was positively associated with firm profitability, even when the competing effect of proprietary assets on firm performance was considered. Further, we find that performance was not related to the extent of product diversification, although investment levels in rent‐generating, proprietary assets were related to the extent of product diversification. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

In search of a theory of debt management

The complete market approach to government debt management argues that a portfolio of non-contingent bonds at different maturities should be chosen so that fluctuations in market value offset changes in expected future deficits. However, this approach recommends huge fluctuations in positions, enormous changes in portfolios for minor changes in maturities and no presumption it is always optimal to issue long and invest short term in a wide array of model specifications. These extreme, volatile and unstable features are undesirable for two reasons. Firstly fragility of portfolios to small changes in assumptions means that it is often better to follow a balanced budget rather than issue the optimal debt portfolio under some possibly misspecified model. Secondly for even miniscule transaction costs, governments prefer a balanced budget rather than the large positions complete markets recommends. The complete market recommendations conflict with a number of features we believe are integral to bond market incompleteness, e.g. transaction costs, liquidity effects, robustness, etc. and which need to be explicitly incorporated into the portfolio problem.     

Trend-following trading strategies in commodity futures: A re-examination

This paper examines the performance of trend-following trading strategies in commodity futures markets using a monthly dataset spanning 48 years and 28 markets. We find that all parameterizations of the dual moving average crossover and channel strategies that we implement yield positive mean excess returns net of transactions costs in at least 22 of the 28 markets. When we pool our results across markets, we show that all of the trading rules earn hugely significant positive returns that prevail over most subperiods of the data as well. These results are robust with respect to the set of commodities the trading rules are implemented with, distributional assumptions, data-mining adjustments and transactions costs, and help resolve divergent evidence in the extant literature regarding the performance of momentum and pure trend-following strategies that is otherwise difficult to explain.     

TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY IN A REGULATION-DRIVEN MARKET: LESSONS FROM THE US SUPERFUND PROGRAM

Estimates by the US Office of Technology Assessment of the costs to clean up the 1246 EPA National Priority List sites stand at more than $500 billion over the next 50 years. This cost estimate is based on existing technologies which are neither as technically advanced nor economically efficient as is necessary to realistically complete the job. However, despite the potential profits for remediation technology vendors, new and innovative technologies are not entering the market as rapidly as is needed. This is the result of major flaws in the US regulatory program, the Superfund, for dealing with the issue. Using neoclassical economic theories of technological change, the two primary obstacles to remediation technology research are identified: appropriability and market uncertainty. The conclusions reached offer valuable lessons for US policy-makers in revamping the present system. These lessons can also be applied to policy-makers in other countries as an example of how government intervention in the market can be not only inefficient, but also a hindrance for technological development.