Five hypotheses concerning the fate of the Singapore issues in the Doha Round

At the Cancún Ministerial Conference, the members ofthe World Trade Organization (WTO) disagreed on whether to launchnegotiations on multilateral disciplines concerning the fourareas of government policy collectively known as the ‘Singaporeissues’. This amounted to a decision not to expand theWTO's boundaries along these dimensions. In this paper, fivehypotheses concerning the treatment of the Singapore issuesby the WTO's membership are described and assessed. The implicationsof this assessment for the likelihood that, at some future date,similar proposals can be successfully advanced in the multilateraltrade arena are also discussed.     

Business Development in Colonial Australia

We know little about business enterprises in colonial Australia. Existing case studies are analysed within the context of the established theoretical and international comparative literature on business history. Emphasis is placed upon the uncertainties caused by smallness and remoteness in the early decades, the opportunities of expansion in the middle of the century, and the challenges of economic crisis in the years leading up to Federation. Each period produced different types of strategies and structures from initial vertical integration, diversification, and networking, through to economies of scale, innovation, and internal hierarchies, and finally to collusion and incorporation.     

Negotiating contested visions and place-specific expectations of the hydrogen economy

This paper explores the role of the 'hydrogen economy' as a guiding vision encompassing multiple contested technological futures, value judgements and problem framings. Hydrogen visions draw upon six overarching and competing narrative themes: power and independence; community empowerment and democratisation; ecotopia; hydrogen as technical fix; inevitability and technical progress; and 'staying in the race'. In other words the hydrogen economy possesses great interpretive flexibility. This, it is argued, is the key to hydrogen's rhetorical power, allowing it to become a space in which divergent interests and agendas are promoted. Turning to issues of scale and place, the case of London is used to document the dynamics of expectations: how the open flexible guiding vision of a hydrogen economy must inevitably be re-invented and grounded in local agendas and contexts if its promise is to become realised.     

Some thoughts about referendums, representative democracy, and separation of powers

Referendums have experienced some sort of a comeback. Citizen involvement in political decisions is seen increasingly as a healthy add-on in democratic polities. While earlier writers on democratic theory often saw a danger in increased participation of citizens, more recently several authors suggest that this participation should be fostered. I argue in this paper that both sides in the debate neglect important aspects of referendums. Discussing whether direct participation by the citizens is a good or bad thing addresses only half the story. More precisely, we have to get a better idea about how referendums interact with the traditional institutions of representative democracy.     

The Consequences of Globalisation: India's Software Industry and Cross‐border Labour Mobility1

The Indian software industry is a prime example of globalisation. The industry has been characterised by large cross‐border mobility of its skilled labour force. Using a unique survey of Indian software firms, our paper quantifies the extent and impact of mobility on firm behaviour and performance. Cross‐border labour mobility in the paper refers to both temporary and permanent labour flows by Indian software professionals. The picture that emerges is of a highly mobile world in which temporary mobility has been an important characteristic of the industry. A significant number of workers have work experience abroad in a developed country. Moreover, the share of skilled workers with such experience has been positively associated with the incidence of skilled migration from the firm. This suggests network effects are at work. In terms of the impact on performance – as measured by the change in turnover per worker and the change in the employment size of the firm – the paper finds little evidence of a robust adverse effect. Further, the evidence suggests that there have been important external effects at work, as through changes in the willingness of workers to acquire skills, as well as through increased provision of educational services. These have further abated the risk of a brain drain. However, the software industry may be rather different from other industries. Our results need to be interpreted as the outcome of a particular case of skilled migration and not one necessarily representative of all types of skilled migration and source sectors.     

Accounting Information and CEO Compensation: The Role of Cash Flow from Operations in the Presence of Earnings*

We examine the role of cash flow from operations (CFO) in chief executive officer (CEO) cash compensation. We predict that CFO is contract‐relevant in the presence of earnings, and more so when (1) the quality of earnings relative to the quality of CFO as a measure of performance is low and (2) the need for CFO as a financing source is high. Our analysis is motivated principally by normative arguments and anecdotes from financial disclosures linking CFO to managerial effort and contracts, notwithstanding the traditional role of earnings in performance measurement. We find that the weight of CFO in the compensation model is positive and significant in the presence of earnings and stock returns. We also find that the relative quality of CFO compared with that of earnings has a positive (negative) impact on the weight of CFO (earnings). We further find that the relative weight of CFO is enhanced substantially when enterprise activities crucially depend on internally generated cash flow. These findings are unaltered when we include CEO age, firm size, and risk in the model and allow the coefficients to vary across industries.     

Capital Stock and Economic Development in Hungary

This paper introduces a method of calculating physical capital stock figures in transition countries and derives data for Hungary. On the basis of international experience, we set investment and saving paths for future income levels. Confrontation of savings prospects of different sectors with investments needs leads to an economic policy analysis of the fiscal policy needed to catch up to 70 per cent of Austrian per capita income by 2030.     

Exchange Rates, Nominal Inertia and Inflation

This paper examines the use of the nominal exchange rate in achieving disinflation under managed exchange rate regimes. Most previous empirical studies have not explicitly identified expectations in the wage and price setting behaviour of their econometric models, despite the importance of expectations both during a disinflation and in correcting misalignments. This has meant that costs due to nominal inertia and non-neutralities have not been addressed separately from questions of credibility. We present results for the UK economy using both a theoretical and empirical model in which firms and workers form rational expectations, but where there is also nominal inertia. We identify costs in using the exchange rate to change the inflation rate, and also the costs involved in correcting any disequilibria in the real exchange rate.