Right answers and right-wrong answers: Sources of information influencing knowledge of nuclear-related information

Surveys in 2008 and 2009 asked almost 6000 United States residents to indicate their knowledge about the use of nuclear and other sources of energy, and the disposition of nuclear waste. Less than 10% of respondents knew where spent commercial nuclear fuel is stored. With regard to knowledge about fuel for electrical energy, respondents overestimated solar and wind use and underestimated coal use. These responses are consistent with mass media coverage of these issues. The mass media were the source of information for the vast majority of respondents. However, the likelihood of right answers to our questions increased as reliance on the mass media decreased, and it increased with use of books, magazines, personal contacts and the web. Educated affluent white males with strong preferences for nuclear energy disproportionately were knowledgeable. These observations demonstrate the daunting challenge of providing information about subjects that are largely distant and disconnected from the public’s lives. The Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, state and local health, environmental and energy agencies, and facility owners and operators have huge domestic political, national security and economic stakes in improving the factual grounding of public reactions to energy production and waste management choices.     

A project management approach to the implementation of development programmes within the local government sphere: An empirical analysis

Local government constitutes that part of the public sector that is closest to the inhabitants and is therefore indispensable in its role of promoting their general welfare through, inter alia, undertaking various development initiatives. Furthermore, legislation imposes upon local authorities the obligation to promote the social and economic development of local communities and to participate in implementing national and provincial development programmes. The efficiency and effectiveness with which local government fulfils its developmental role will largely depend on the ability of local authorities to manage development projects. The purpose of this article is to investigate the application of a project management approach as a tool for implementing development programmes in the local government sphere. This is done by means of a comprehensive study of the relevant literature and empirical research based on a research questionnaire that was distributed among selected municipal officials in leadership posts throughout South Africa. The findings of the empirical study are utilised to make specific recommendations with respect to the application of a project management approach to service delivery and local government development initiatives.     

Repetitive disclosures in the MD&A

This study is the first to empirically analyze repetitive disclosures in the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) section of the 10‐K filing. Repetitive disclosures refer to the extent that content in the MD&A is repeated from the audited financial statement notes. I empirically analyze repetitive disclosures in the MD&A section of the 10‐K filing, and find that firms tend to use more repetitive disclosures when firms have a new CEO, a high level of new disclosures in the notes, issued equity, and have missed the prior year's earnings benchmark. These findings suggest that not all managers use repetitive disclosures to simply obfuscate disclosures. Rather, some managers use repetitive disclosures to emphasize firm‐specific events, consistent with the succession hypothesis. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) states that repetitive disclosures are uninformative and that such disclosures decrease the informativeness of other disclosures in the MD&A. Casting doubt on the SEC's comments, in my primary analyses, I find that repetitive disclosures are informative to investors; this result is stronger for individual investors. Overall, my results suggest that repetitive disclosures are informative, and such disclosures may be effective tools for providing information to investors.     

The Greek financial crisis: Growing imbalances and sovereign spreads

We discuss the origins of the Greek financial crisis as manifested in the growing fiscal and current-account deficits since euro-area entry in 2001. We then extend a model typically used to explain risk premia to assess the extent to which credit ratings captured these premia. Next, we estimate a cointegrating relationship between spreads and their long-term fundamental determinants and compare the spreads predicted by this estimated relationship with actual spreads. We find that spreads were significantly below what would be predicted by fundamentals from end-2004 up to the middle of 2005; by contrast, since May 2010, actual spreads have exceeded predicted spreads by some 400 basis points.     

Is attack the best form of defence? A competing risks analysis of acquisition activity in the UK

The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate whethercompanies can use acquisition as a strategy to reduce theirlikelihood of take-over. The determinants of making an acquisitionand being taken over are modelled for the first time withina competing risks framework using two large samples of UK manufacturingcompanies which together cover most of the post-World War IIperiod up to 1990. Our results indicate that, ceteris paribus,companies which make acquisitions can significantly reduce theirconditional probability of being taken over by around one-third,largely through the impact that acquisition has on corporatesize. In this sense, attack, through acquisition, is the bestform of defence against take-over.     

The effect of non-rural hospital mergers and acquisitions: An examination of cost and price outcomes

This paper examines the direct impact of urban horizontal hospital consolidations on hospital efficiency and prices. Specifically, we measure the extent of cost savings resulting from these consolidations and the extent to which these gains are passed on to consumers. A fixed effects model is tested with data consisting of 4160 unique hospitals, 125 of which were involved in mergers and 1040 in system acquisitions, for over a 10-year time period. We find that hospital consolidation may generate efficiency in some circumstances and some of these gains may be passed on to consumers, but the results are very sensitive to hospital ownership and governance and the structure of the market following the consolidation.