An economic evaluation of bushfire prevention and suppression

The Fire Management Program (FMP) of the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment is responsible for the prevention and suppression of fires on public land in the State of Victoria. This article reports on an economic evaluation of the net benefits of these fire management activities for a representative year. The FMP is calculated to yield high net benefits to Victoria from its investment in fire suppression and prevention, through a reduction in the value of agricultural, capital and forest assets which would otherwise be lost to bushfires.     

Agency costs,ownership structure and corporate governance compliance: A private contracting perspective

This paper examines whether the adoption of specific corporate governance practices, and, in particular, adherence to an overall code of governance practice, is associated with agency cost benefits for companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). Using a private and voluntary contracting setting, the adoption of individual corporate governance attributes is found to have no influence on firm-level agency costs, whereas greater compliance with an overall governance index variable representative of the ASX Corporate Governance Council requirements now in force results in significantly lower agency costs. The beneficial influence of voluntary governance compliance on agency costs is also found to be independent of firm ownership structure, with these findings having a range of implications for firms both in Australia and globally.     

Electronic Monitoring and Privacy Issues in Business-Marketing: The Ethics of the DoubleClick Experience

The paper examines the ethics of electronic monitoring for advertising purposes and the implications for Internet user privacy using as a backdrop DoubleClick Incs recent controversy over matching previously anonymous user profiles with personally identifiable information. It explores various ethical theories that are applicable to understand privacy issues in electronic monitoring. It is argued that, despite the fact that electronic monitoring always constitutes an invasion of privacy, it can still be ethically justified on both Utilitarian and Kantian grounds. From a Utilitarian perspective the emphasis must be on minimizing potential harms. From a Kantian perspective the emphasis must be on giving users complete information so that they can make informed decisions as to whether they are willing to be monitored. Considering the Internet advertising industrys current actions, computer users and government regulators would be well advised, both practically and ethically, to move to a user control model in electronic monitoring.     

‘The Business of Ethics and Gender’

Unethical decision-making behavior within organizations has received increasing attention over the past ten years. As a result, a plethora of studies have examined the relationship between gender and business ethics. However, these studies report conflicting results as to whether or not men and women differ with regards to business ethics. In this article, we propose that gender identity theory [Spence: 1993, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, 624–635], provides both the theory and empirical measures to explore the influence of psychological gender traits and gender-role attitudes on ethical perceptions of workplace behaviors. Statistical analyses of the data reveal that based on sex alone, no differences occur between men and women in their ethical perceptions. Yet, when a multidimensional approach to gender is applied, results show that expressive traits and egalitarian gender-role attitudes contribute to both men’s and women’s propensity to perceive unethical workplace behaviors as unethical. The implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are presented.     

Understanding the benefits of social tourism: Linking participation to subjective well‐being and quality of life

This paper aims to explore the relationship between well‐being, quality of life and holiday participation among low‐income families in the UK. There have been very studies that have examined quality of life (QOL) and subjective well‐being in relation to tourism and none that have attempted to apply measures to assess the benefits of holidays for those people who are generally excluded from participation. This is important in relation to social tourism because of the fundamental need to develop mechanisms to evaluate the impact of charitable funding for supporting low‐income families' participation in holidaymaking. This study evaluates the types of reasons given for financial assistance in applications to the Family Holiday Association including follow‐up research with a sample of successful applicants on the perceived benefits of the holiday, including questions on QOL factors. The findings are limited in scope but do indicate that increases in QOL were reported among low‐income families. The paper concludes by arguing that further research on adapted well‐being and QOL measures be applied to tourism consumption. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Impact of Exchange Context on the Activation of Equity in Ultimatum Games

In this paper we report the results of additional exchange ultimatum game experiments conducted at the same time as the exchange ultimatum game experiments reported in Hoffman et al. (Games and Economic Behavior, 7(3), pp. 346–380, 1994). In these additional experiments, we use instructions to change an impersonal exchange situation to a personal exchange situation. To do this, we prompt sellers to consider what choices their buyers will make. Game theory would predict that thinking about the situation would lead sellers to make smaller offers to buyers. In contrast, we find a significant increase in seller offers to buyers. This result suggests that encouraging sellers to thinking about buyer choices focuses their attention on the strategic interaction with humans who think they way they do in personal exchange situations, and who may punish them for unacceptable behavior, and not on the logic of the game theoretic structure of the problem.     

Export taxes and sectoral economic growth: evidence from cotton and yarn markets in Pakistan

Pakistan used an export tax on raw cotton from 1988-1995 in order to suppress the internal price of cotton to benefit the domestic yarn industry. An analysis was conducted to estimate the impact of this policy on both the cotton and yarn sectors. These effects were simulated using the results ol a structural econometric model of these sectors of Pakistan's economy Results indicated that the export tax had a negative impact on the growth rale in the cotton sector, while having little or no impact on the yarn sector. Thus, the export lax did not achieve its objective of increasing the growth rate of value-added (yarn) production above what would have occurred naturally.     

Sunk costs and sunk benefits: A re-examination of re-investment decisions

Prior experimental studies supporting the prospect theory explanation of the sunk-cost effect manipulate the framing of the initial investment, describing it either in neutral terms or as a prior loss. This paper subjects the prospect theory explanation to further examination, but takes an alternative experimental approach based on the differential risk taking behaviour predicted by prospect theory’s S-shaped value function. The experiments manipulate whether an initial investment produces a sunk cost (prior loss) or a sunk benefit (prior gain) and investigate the impact of this on the likelihood of authorising an incremental investment held constant across treatment conditions. To ensure the results are robust to the type of incremental investment, two experiments are conducted across which the outcomes of the incremental investment are manipulated to produce poor or good investment opportunities. In all cases the results fail to support a higher likelihood of authorising the incremental investment following a sunk cost than a sunk benefit. In isolation, therefore, prospect theory is unable to explain fully the sunk-cost effect.     

The Development of Hybrid East and West Organizations in Malaysia

The current research investigates how successful Chinese business groups in Malaysia integrate Chinese management ideas with selected techniques from the West to form a hybrid model of management. The case research methodology was a rigorous, in-depth analysis of large successful Chinese family organizations in Malaysia. We find that management techniques from different cultures are combined in efficient Malaysian organizations, so East and West cross cultural boundaries around a continuing core of flexibility, networks, and family control. From our findings, entrepreneurs will be able to gain an understanding of how to enhance competitiveness in East Asia in general and Malaysia in particular.     

Strategic innovation and technology adoption in an evolving industry

We introduce a racing model with multiple product generations, product innovation, spin-outs, and licensing. Industry conditions and innovation characteristics affect who wins the race and who markets the resulting product. Small firms market their innovations when they pioneer a new generation or improve quality in a young generation and license their innovations in mature generations. If old generation leaders ever market improvements in young generation goods, they do so early on. Leadership in mature generations persists. Tests on the rigid disk drive industry (1977-1997) provide empirical support. The results have implications for antitrust policies and policies governing employee non-compete agreements.