book reviews

WHITE-COLLAR PROLETARIAT: DESKILLING AND GENDER IN CLERICAL WORK: Rosemary Crompton and Gareth Jones NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF WORK AND SKILLS : Edited by Pauline Marstrand THE FUTURE OF WORK: A GUIDE TO A CHANGING SOCIETY : Charles Handy THE WEALTH OF INFORMATION: A PROFILE OF THE POST-INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY : Tom Stonier TOWARDS THE FLEXIBLE CRAFTSMAN : Michael Cross MICROPROCESSORS, MANPOWER AND SOCIETY : Edited by Malcolm Warner WORK, EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT: PERSPECTIVES ON WORK AND SOCIETY : Edited by K. Thompson     

Accounting in its social context: Towards a history of value added in the United Kingdom

Although the relationship between accounting and society has been posited frequently, it has been subjected to little systematic analysis. This paper reviews some existing theories of the social nature of accounting practice and, by so doing, identifies a number of significant conceptual problems. Using the case of the rise of interest in value added accounting in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, the paper conducts a social analysis of this particular event and then seeks to draw out the theoretical issues and problems which emerge from this exercise. Finally, the implications of these for the social analysis of accounting are discussed.     

Training In the Printing Industry: an Investigation Into the Recruitment,Training and Retraining Agreement.

Mark Stuart, who is a Research Fellow in the School of Business and Economic Studies at the University of Leeds, discusses the issues and problems of formulating and implementing training policy within specific industries. He presents an investigation of the Recruitment, Training and Retraining Agreement covering the UK printing industry and, as well as identifying the intrinsic strengths and weaknesses of such joint managementtrade union initiatives, considers the detailed impact at workplace level.     

THE STOCK RETURN PERFORMANCE OF CORPORATIONS THAT ARE PARTIALLY OWNED BY OTHER CORPORATIONS

A corporation may acquire minority ownership in another corporation and then attempt to exert control, either by monitoring management or by coopting management and transferring wealth to itself. A sample of fifty-one corporations that have had a corporate partial owner for at least five years is matched against a nonpartially owned control group. Risk-adjusted monthly stock returns of partially owned firms are significantly lower than those of control group firms, supporting the wealth transfer hypothesis. Firms with Victor Posner-controlled partial owners perform worse than other partially owned firms.     

Duration of Residence in the Rental Housing Market

This paper estimates a proportional hazard model of duration of residence in rental housing over 1987–1998 based on a unique dataset from the BLS-CPI housing sample together with American Housing Survey and other metropolitan economic data. The paper employs an innovative semi-parametric estimation approach for group duration analysis of the proportional hazard model. Results of the analysis indicate that the duration of residence in rental housing varies significantly across individual units and market segments, and is effected by tenant, dwelling, and market characteristics. An improved understanding of duration of residence offers new insights as regards fluctuations in tenant turnover, building occupancy, and rent flows, as well as new confidence in pro forma assumptions critical to rental housing development.     

Econometric models of the Eleventh District Cost of Funds Index

The Eleventh District Cost of Funds Index (COFI) is a popular index for pricing adjustable-rate mortgages. COFI is calculated from the interest expenses incurred by thrifts when raising funds. It is a mixture of current and past interest rates on many different financial instruments. COFI can be modelled well with simple econometric models. Commonly used, simple COFI models are compared using a method developed by Hendry (1989). Some of these models, which appear to fit the data well, have nonrobust parameters, significant serial correlation, and heteroscedastic errors. These poorly specified models may lead to systematic mispricing of COFI mortgages. Once a robust econometric model is chose, the lagged adjustment of COFI to movements in interest rates can be incorporated into mortgage pricing models.