中国经济增长及其对全球大宗商品市场的影响

中国对大宗商品快速、持续的需求增长一直被认为是这十年大宗商品价格上涨的主要拉动因素。然而,与全球经济休戚相关的中国经济2008年不可能不受全球冲击而独善其身。预期中国GDP增长率在2008年下半年和2009年继续放缓。不确定的通胀前景、股价和房价下跌以及政策失误等宏观风险可能会相互作用并彼此增强。因此,中国需求增长放缓在近期可能会让过去五年全球大宗商品价格的猛涨态势稍作休整。     

Equal pay for equal work in the third world

If the principle of equal pay for work of equal value is valid, then the practice of paying workers in third-world countries at a lower rate than workers doing the same jobs in industrialized nations is unjust. Recently Henry Shue argued that the principle is not valid. In this paper I criticize Shue's arguments and offer additional arguments in support of his conclusion. Hugh Lehman is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph. His most important publications are Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics, Basil Blackwell, 1979, Mathematical Proofs, Gaps and Postulationism, The Monist 67, and Intuitionism and Platonism on Infinite Totalities, Idealistic Studies XIII. He also edited a special issue of Animal Regulation Studies 2 that contained papers from the conference: Ethical Issues Concerning the Use of Animals in Agriculture and Scientific Research.     

Privatization,Restructuring, and Regulation of Network Utilities,David M. Newbery.

Review of Industrial Organization -     

The Political Economy of Price Cap Regulation

The last decade has witnessed a dramatic substitutionof price cap regulation for rate-of-return regulationin the telecommunications industry. The 1996Telecommunications Act empowers state regulators toset the terms of competitive entry in local telephonemarkets. We investigate whether the form of regulationendogenously affects the regulator's behavior withrespect to competitive entry. The evidence revealsthat regulators in price cap jurisdictions tend to setmore liberal terms of entry in comparison withregulators in rate-of-return jurisdictions. Thissuggests that price cap regulation suffers fromincomplete contracting, undermining the potentiallysuperior incentive properties of this importantregulatory reform.     

Negotiating Technology Implementation: An Empirical Investigation of a Website Introduction

Negotiated implementation is suggested as a cogent approach to meeting user and implementer needs, and thus, to increasing technology implementation. Negotiated implementation is expected to have its effect through three wellknown dimensions: ease of use, usefulness, and commitment. The efficacy of negotiated implementation is tested in the context of a universitybased field study of World Wide Web site use. Empirical support is found for the negotiated implementation approach. Implications and future research related to both theory and application are provided.     

A Common Pitch and The Management of Corporate Relations: Interpretation, Ethics and Managerialism

This paper examines how good management can repair fractured relationships within organisations, addressing problems that if left unattended will threaten the future existence of many of these companies. It analyses why there is a mood for change in management thinking, and what direction that change can take. Part of the challenge is how managers can best satisfy the objectives of corporate social responsibility initiatives, and repair organisational and fractured community relationships. A possible role for management is to examine alternative ways of thinking about the potential benefits for the organisation that can be achieved by enhancing employee relationships. In this regard, this paper offers strategies to examine management’s adverse affects on workers’ life-plans. The art of interpretation is used to expose how bureaucratic logic ignores workers’ rights and potentially damages the corporation’s longevity. Interpretation, as opposed to procedure, suggests that organisations are not simply profit mechanisms, but active and dynamic civil societies. By better understanding the facilitating processes of administrative and management thinking, it is possible that we can develop alternative strategies that empower individuals to circumvent the negative consequences of instrumental rationality and enable them to act more responsibly in the public interest. Glen Lehman is Associate Professor, School of Commerce University of South Australia. He has published articles in Philosophy and Social Criticism Accounting, organization and society as well as Critical Perspective on Accounting.     

The union response to employer-initiated drug testing programs

The testing of employees for drugs has become a major workplace issue in the late 1980s. By all accounts, many firms have implemented, or at least considered, some sort of drug screening program. While various experts have debated the importance and necessity of initiating such programs, there has been only limited investigation of the differences between union and nonunion workplaces in how such programs are initiated and administered. This article investigates some questions related to those differences. The first part examines the differences between union and nonunion workplaces and their implementation of drug screening programs. We present differences derived primarily from the fact that nonunion employers are constrained only by constitutional and statutory law in their introduction and implementation of drug screening programs. Unionized employers, on the other hand, are constrained by collective bargaining and the grievance resolution process. The second part of the article examines union responses to employer-initiated drug testing programs. The third part examines arbitration decisions on drug testing provisions in unionized workplaces. We outline the major areas in which arbitrators have rendered decisions, including definitions of behavior that could trigger reasonable suspicion testing and whether the employer has the right to unilaterally institute or expand drug testing programs.     

Reclaiming the public sphere: problems and prospects for corporate social and environmental accounting

This article encourages accountants to consider their role in the debates concerning social and environmental accounting. It outlines a placement ethic which provides a framework to explore various schools of thought on social and environmental accounting. A placement ethic uses ideas central to Habermas and Rawls to provide a continuum model to explore whether an arbitrated political consensus concerning social and environmental accounting is a possibility. It also advances some ideas to overcome the procedural limitations of the Rawls–Habermas debate that have been used by accounting reformers. In this context, it is possible to move beyond the usual deadlock between procedure and critique to combine insights from different traditions to construct new critical and democratic social and environmental pathways.     

Critical reflections on Laughlin's middle range research approach: Language not mysterious?

Professor Richard Laughlin is renowned for applying critical insights from the German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas. His middle range research approach has explored many accounting problems such as public–private partnerships, health care reforms and how accounting impacts cultural issues. Laughlin's work re-conceptualises accountability in terms of cultural analysis, language and systems theory. Users of his work may encounter issues associated with: (1) understanding how to judge assertoric statements concerning various truth claims; (2) exploring the dichotomy between the secular and sacred; and (3) examining whether language simply designates meaning or opens us to interpretive new pathways.