The Impact of Regulation on the Strategy and Structure of Building Societies

A new Building Societies Act was passed in July 1986, radically changing the regulatory framework governing societies which had remained in force since 1962. The provisions of the Act allow societies to move into areas of activity from which they have previously been prohibited. At the same time that legislation was being passed specifically relating to building societies, the whole of the personal financial services market was experiencing what is generally seen as a revolution. Hence societies find themselves at a development crossroads at a time of great uncertainty. Although there has been much informed and some speculative comment, there has hitherto been little attempt at quantifying the likely future directions that building societies will take. This article seeks to remedy this situation by drawing upon the results of two surveys in which senior building society executives and their counterparts in other financial institutions were invited to give their views on the trends in personal financial services provision over the next five years.     

The role of image in service promotion: focusing on the influence of film on consumer choice within tourism

This paper presents a review and discussion of the role image plays in service promotion and consumer choice in the context of film‐induced tourism. Consumers can be very sensitive to images which are important determinants of what a service customer purchases. In relation to image, the medium of film can have a very influential impact on its audience. Consumers may make purchase choices in a range of areas as a result of what they have seen in the movies. An expanding body of literature suggests that film can influence people's travel decisions and entice them to visit particular destinations they have seen on the cinema screen (reinforced through repeat viewing on video, DVD and television). Tourism is a service industry. Does the image of a destination and how it is represented help overcome some of the challenges of service marketing? Many regions throughout the British Isles have seen their consumer appeal improve because of their links with respective film and television productions. Although they have benefited tourism‐wise from this, in many cases there still has not been enough real support from tourist authorities to this growth phenomenon, and as such, the full potential of film to tap into the consumer psyche has not yet been fully realized. Academic discourse from several disciplines is examined in this communication culminating in a conceptual model of destination enhancement through film‐induced image, featuring the conscious and unconscious communication factors at work on two sets of consumers (film consumers and destination consumers). As a ‘work in progress’, the paper sets the scene for further empirical research in this interesting area of study.     

Employer-Provided Training and Tenure-Earnings

This article examines the tenure-earnings profiles and suggests that the more training is provided to the individual by the employer, the steeper is the tenure profile of earnings. The provision of training by the employer is modelled as endogenous and subject to choice decisions using an ordered probit model corresponding to three levels of training. The earnings equations of three groups of employees are then adjusted for potential effects of bias due to selectivity by using Lee's procedure, and heterogeneity bias using the Altonji and Shakotko instrumental variable procedure.     

The State of Charity Accounting – Developments, Improvements and Continuing Problems

This paper is based on a survey of charity accounts undertaken for the Office for National Statistics during the period 1995–1996, and reviews current charity accounting practices of some of these charities in 1994/5 prior to the inception of the new accounting regime from 1996. We look at the accounting practices identified by Bird and provide a comparison between the original Bird analysis in 1981 and current practices in 1994/5. We also consider smaller surveys undertaken in 1989 and 1990. The paper concludes that whilst there has been some progress – particularly among larger charities – since the Bird study there are still major accounting anomalies and examples of poor practice. The paper calls upon auditing firms to be less tolerant of inadequate sets of accounts and points to their pivotal role in improving charity accounting pratices.     

Inflation,Translation and Conflicts in Statements of Financial Accounting Standards*

This paper utilizes the concept of aggregative consistency defined in Rubinstein and Fishburn [1986], and the FASB's concept of representational faithfulness to evaluate foreign currency translation and accounting for changing prices as embodied in SFAS 70. The paper shows that SFAS 70 produces measurement errors and creates a foreign currency translation adjustment which does not reflect the effects of exchange rate changes. The conditions defined in the paper also facilitate an evaluation of the relative merits of restate/translate and translate/restate. Restate/translate can conceivably be used if there is no consolidation. In the more usual case where consolidation is required, translate/restate using the relevant shareholders' consumption index will yield aggregatively consistent values under fewer restrictive conditions.     

Technical efficiency and region The U.S. manufacturing sector 1972–1977

In this paper we estimate the extent of technological bias in an interregional context for U.S. manufacturing during the period 1972–1977 using a factor augmenting production function approach. We present estimates of the elasticity of factor substitution for each of the 48 states in the sample using a variable elasticity of substitution production function. Next, we use these estimates to generate estimates of the rates of change in the efficiencies of capital and labor inputs and compare these estimates across states and census regions. We also examine and compare estimates of total factor productivity across states and regions. We ,find that the average annual rates of growth of capital efficiency during the period are 5.5 percent in the Northeast, 5.3 percent in the Northcentral, 5.6 percent in the West and 3.1 percent in the South. The rates of change of the efficiencies of labor are found to be negative across all regions except the South. The rates of change of total factor productivity are found to be 1.7 percent in the Northeast, 2.3 percent in the Northcentral, 2.4 percent in the West and 1.7 percent in the South. We also find that between 33 percent and 56 percent of the growth of output across regions is due to technical progress.