Industrial Structure and Australia– UK Intra-Industry Trade

This paper tests industry-specific hypotheses of the determinants of intra-industry trade in the context of Australia-UK trade. In doing so it separates intra-industry trade (ITT) into ITT in horizontally differentiated products and ITT in vertically differentiated products. It finds that the latter is the dominant former of ITT. Further the paper investigates the robustness of empirical results on testing industry-specific hypotheses to the choice of national (UK or Australian) industrial structure characteristics. The assumption of uniform industrial structures across countries adopted in other studies is shown not to be justified.     

POWER SUPPLY EXPANSION AND THE NUCLEAR OPTION IN POLAND

This paper describes the construction of a data set of the Polish power sector for use with the Elfin capacity expansion planning model. Using Elfin, the paper derives four scenarios and some sensitivities for new generating capacity construction plans. These scenarios simulate choices among several generic generating technologies made to achieve the lowest overall net present cost of operating the power system through 2015. Key results include: (i) single-cycle natural gas-fired combustion turbines prove highly attractive for Poland because of its urgent need for peaking capacity, (ii) nuclear power cannot be excluded from consideration for Poland on economic grounds alone, (iii) the effectiveness of conservation to reduce airborne emissions is limited under scenarios in which nuclear generation is adopted, and (iv) the attractiveness of nuclear is shown to be highly sensitive to assumptions on some uncertain inputs, suggesting the need for a more detailed analysis before policy implications can be drawn.     

Do PCAOB Inspections Improve the Accuracy of Accounting Estimates?

Despite issuing extensive guidance related to the evaluation of accounting estimates, the PCAOB continues to identify deficiencies related to the audit of estimates through their inspections process. We examine whether PCAOB inspections lead to more accurate audited accounting estimates, defined as those that more closely match economic reality, by examining a significant estimate within the banking industry. We find that in contrast with the PCAOB's goal of more accurate and unbiased estimates, allowance for loan losses (ALL) estimates become less accurate and more conservative with higher levels of ALL‐related inspection findings for public company audits. We find no evidence of auditor response to PCAOB inspection findings for private‐company audits, which are not subject to PCAOB inspection. Overall, our findings cast doubt on the efficacy of PCAOB inspections in improving estimate accuracy and suggest that firms are managing inspection risk to the potential detriment of audit quality.     

What Questions Do Board Members in Public Service Organizations Ask about Executive Compensation?

The purpose of this study is to investigate the governance questions that board members in public service organizations ask as they go about fulfilling their responsibilities for the oversight of executive compensation. We investigate the usage and perceived importance by board members of the 24 questions proposed by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants that directors should ask about executive compensation. The study is based on a usable sample of 47 board members from public service organizations who attended a Canadian director training program. Our results suggest that the recommended executive compensation governance questions are not being asked with the same frequency or considered equally important by board members of public service organizations. Furthermore, the correlation between a question’s usage frequency and its perceived importance was not perfect. However, there appears to be a significantly positive relationship among the number of executive compensation governance questions asked and selected elements of a board’s governance structure.     

Compensation Policy and Quit Rates: A Multilevel Approach Using Benchmarking Data

Using unique linked employee–employer benchmarking data, the paper estimates the impact of compensation policy on quit rates using multilevel models. The analysis examines several aspects of an organization’s compensation policy with a focus on the effect of pay dispersion between employees at the same level in the firm hierarchy, as well as pay dispersion throughout the hierarchy. Overall, the results indicate that firms with egalitarian pay structures have lower quit rates, a finding that is robust to a large set of empirical specifications.     

East-West Airlines' Sydney-Melbourne Service: Market Expansion or Demand Diversion?

Data on 1278 flights on the East-West Airlines Sydney-Albury-Melbourne services, beginning when the Sydney-Melbourne excursion fare was first offered, are used to estimate three demand curves for the jointly provided services. The elasticities of demand for the Sydney-Melbourne service suggest it expanded the market as much as it attracted passengers from the trunk carriers. The econometric problem of joint estimation with censored dependent variables should be of general interest.     

Relative Incentives and Trade Strategies: Typologies and Possibilities*

The paper investigates trade strategy classification within a general equilibrium framework which includes both tradeables and non-tradeables. In a three-sector model there is apparently a wider range of trade strategies available than in the traditional two-sector model. Besides pure import-substitution (IS) and export promotion (EP) policies, mixed IS/EP policies might seek (ex ante) to create a protradeables bias rather than approximate neutrality. However, the ex-post outcome depends upon the substitution, complementarity and/or income effects of commercial policies on equilibrium relative prices. The paper demonstrates that the actual change in the incentive structure may differ from the intended strategy.     

When Does One Bad Apple Spoil the Barrel? An Evolutionary Analysis of Collective Action

This paper studies collective-action games in which the production of a public good requires teamwork. A leading example is a threshold game in which provision requires the voluntary participation of m out of n players. Quantal-response strategy revisions allow play to move between equilibria in which a team successfully provides, and an equilibrium in which the collective action fails. A full characterization of long-run play reveals the determinants of success; these include the correlation between players' costs of provision and their valuations for the good. The addition of an extra "bad apple" player can "spoil the barrel" by destabilizing successful teams and so offers a rationale for limiting the pool of possible contributors.