Risk perception by industrial radiographers: Hungary and the UK compared

Perceptions of risks from two groups of industrial radiographers, one from Hungary, (n = 45) and from the United Kingdom, (n = 29) were compared by the psychometric method. The comparison was made because both groups were at risk for high doses of ionizing radiation. We found the groups had similar demographic profiles but poor socio-economic conditions of Hungarians were associated with higher levels of emotional distress. Correlation HU-UK for personal and general risks were at a significant level for topics that included lifestyle and radiation risks. Perceptions of risks from radiation were small except for large personal risk from East European nuclear power plants. Knowledge of radiation risk intranationally was correlated positively with personal risk for UK radiographers and negatively for Hungarians. However, average overall risk perceptions from the same topic list for all radiographers did not differ significantly from a group (n = 1461) of UK citizens, though radiographer's risks from radiation were considerably greater. As a new lifesaving intervention it was proposed that radiation risk reduction could be achieved by genetic testing.     

The Long‐Run History of Income Inequality in Denmark

We use historical publications and micro data from tax returns to construct internationally comparable estimates of the development in income inequality in Denmark over the last 140 years. The study shows that income inequality and top income shares have declined during several distinct phases in between periods of stability. Furthermore, the quality of the Danish data allows us to analyse not only the development in top income shares but also broader inequality measures such as the Gini coefficient. These analyses show that top income shares are a good proxy for the underlying development in inequality.     

A two price theory of financial equilibrium with risk management implications

Financial primitives are introduced to define acceptable loss exposures when demands and supplies are defined on differing event spaces. Acceptable loss exposures are modeled by a convex cone of random variables containing the nonnegative random variables. The resulting financial equilibrium defines in general a two price economy. Analytical procedures for identifying the two prices are described. The size of the two price economy is fundamentally determined by the financial system that determines the size of the cone of acceptable losses. There are implications for accounting and risk management as liabilities would typically be valued at ask while assets are valued at bid with no data available on bidirectional prices for anything. Marking to market in such financial economies is at best marking to two price economies.     

Taxes and the acquisition of depreciable assets: The Tax Reform Act of 1986 and the alternative minimum tax

Analysis of firm investment behavior during 1982–1993 shows that the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA 86) Public Law No. 99-514 substantially affects both purchases and leases of depreciable assets. The changes in the regular corporate income tax rules are shown to lower asset acquisition. The effect of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) is found to vary with the debt share in firms’ capital structure and with the frequency of AMT exposure during the life of the assets acquired. On average, TRA86 depresses asset purchases less for firms that are subject to the AMT: AMT somewhat mitigates the negative effects of the regular tax rules.     

I suppose you think that's funny! The role of humour in corporate learning events

This paper examines the uses of humour among participants in five bank training programmes in the UK. These programmes, run by the banks themselves, were studied using ethnographic methods and the observations reported here are based upon extensive field notes. The paper examines the ways in which participants deployed humour during these learning events and the role humour played in the management of their relations with their fellow learners and the course instructors. The course instructors' use of humour is also examined. It is argued that humour played a far from trivial role in the programmes studied. On the contrary, humour was vital to their maintenance as viable organizational practices. In conclusion it is suggested that the more systematic study of humour could make an important contribution to the understanding of the social realities of corporate training programmes.     

THE IMPACT OF INFLATION ON NEW HOUSE PRICES

It is often stated that real house prices respond to inflation in ways similar to assets infixed supply, such as gold or antiques. This paper proposes that, instead, house prices are determined primarily by the cost of producing new houses. Thus, inflation affects price mainly through input markets and through expansion in housing starts. This proposition is supported in an examination of annual changes in house prices between 1965 and 1982 in 12 sub regions of the United States     

Anomalies in green national accounting

We “extend” standard arguments for greening the product side of the national accounts to the income side of the accounts and turn up an anomaly. For an economy with oil use, no entry for oil income, a supposed primary factor, appears in the income side of the national accounts when the depletion of natural capital is accounted for on the product side of the accounts. We resolve this issue by applying an income definition developed in the theory of national accounting. This, however, leads to another anomaly on the income side of the national accounts.     

How efficient is the market for Australian firms’ earnings information?

We construct a measure of the speed with which forecasts issued by sell-side analysts accurately forecast future annual earnings. Following Marshall, we label this measure earnings information flow timeliness (EIFT). This measure avoids the aggregation problem inherent in price-based measures of information efficiency. We document large variation in EIFT across firm-years, and show that EIFT is positively associated with the extent of analyst following, consistent with increased analyst coverage improving the speed with which earnings-related information is recognised. We also find that EIFT is higher for firm-years classified as ‘bad news’ (i.e., where analysts’ forecasts at the start of the financial period exceed the reported outcome). However, when we separately consider instances where analysts appear to forecast non-GAAP (or ‘street’) earnings rather than GAAP earnings, we find that the greater timeliness of bad news is concentrated among observations where analysts forecast non-GAAP earnings, where unusual items are typically excluded. We conclude that the market for accounting information is more efficient for negative operating outcomes than for negative outcomes reflecting unusual items.     

Public Investment, Congestion, and Private Capital Accumulation

This paper analyses the impact of public investment on the dynamics of private capital formation in an intertemporal optimising market-clearing framework. The key feature characterising the analysis is that the public good is treated as a durable capital good, subject to congestion. We show how in the presence of congestion the effect of government investment on private capital formation involves a tradeoff between the degree of substitution between private and public capital in production and the degree of congestion. Both lump-sum and distortionary tax financing are considered, with this tradeoff being tightened in the latter case