Understanding the perpetration of employee computer crime in the organisational context

While hackers and viruses fuel the IS security concerns for organisations, the problems posed by employee computer crime should not be underestimated. Indeed, a number of IS security researchers have turned their attention to the ‘insider’ threat. Of this group, several focus on the offender, either in terms of a series of attributes required for perpetration, or with reference to forms of safeguards aimed at negating such behaviour. These studies are complemented by those texts which examine the organisational context in which rogue employees commit computer crime. Currently, however, there has been a lack of insight into the relationship between the offender and the context, during the commission process. To address this deficiency, two criminological theories are advanced. This paper illustrates how the theories, entitled the Rational Choice Perspective and Situational Crime Prevention, can be applied to the IS domain, thereby offering a theoretical basis by which to analyse the offender/context relationship during perpetration. By so doing, practitioners may use these insights to inform and enhance the selection of safeguards in a bid to improve prevention programmes. Furthermore, the importation of the Rational Choice Perspective and Situational Crime Prevention into the IS field opens up potentially new areas for future research.     

Measures of brand attitude: Are cognitive structure approaches really needed?

Recent research on attitude toward the advertisement provides a theoretical base that questions the usefulness of multiattribute attitude measures. Arguments for global measures of brand attitude in affect-referral choice situations are presented. The two types of measures are tested as predictors of purchase intentions for ten supermarket brands. Global brand attitudes demonstrated greater predictive value for nine of the ten test brands.     

Rational choice and the taxation of sin

The traditional literature on sumptuary taxation indicates that these taxes are the results of a majority of individuals imposing their moral code upon consumers of goods that are thought to be undesirable. Undoubtedly, this explanation is not trivial, and accounts for the existence of some of the present sumptuary taxes. This paper has developed a choice model of sumptuary taxes based on a wealth-maximization assumption that illustrates the possibility that an individual could approve of an excise tax on a good that he consumes.     

DURATION,IMMUNIZATION, AND HEDGING WITH INTEREST RATE FUTURES

The recent advent of the interest rate futures markets has greatly enriched the hedging opportunities of market participants faced with undesired interest rate risk. The variety of futures contracts presently spans a number of instruments with different risk, maturity, and coupon characteristics. This paper modifies the concept of duration and extends the duration hedging approach to cases where futures contracts are used as the hedging instrument. The derived hedge ratios take into account differences in coupon, maturity, and risk for three different regimes. Usage of these hedge ratios should lead to more efficient hedging of interest rate risk.     

An example of multiple minima in a Cochrane-Orcutt procedure with multiple autocorrelation

We provide an example, based on an equation of the Canadian-US exchange rate, of multiple minima in a generalized Cochrane-Orcutt procedure. Our experiments suggest the need for search procedures in order to correctly identify autocorrelation structures.