Corporate Governance and the CEO Pay–Performance Link: Australian Evidence

We examine the influence of corporate governance mechanisms, namely blockholdings and board structure, on CEO pay–performance sensitivity in listed Australian firms. Results highlight blockholders' role in shaping observed pay–performance associations and their impact varying with their independence and relative magnitude of ownership. Monitoring blockholders increase the sensitivity of long‐term at‐risk pay to performance, better aligning manager and shareholder interests. However, consistent with a shorter investment horizon, insider blockholders increase (decrease) the responsiveness of cash bonuses (long‐term at‐risk pay). Finally, consistent with them affording less‐effective monitoring, larger boards raise (lower) the sensitivity of known pay (long‐term at‐risk pay) to performance.     

New classical and old Austrian economics: Equilibrium Business Cycle Theory in perspective

Helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper from Parth Shah, Sven Thommesen, and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged.     

The use of DRCs to evaluate indigenization programs: The case of the ivory coast

The DRC methodology is extended to evaluate education programs for purposes of indigenization. Such programs can be likened to an import-substitution activity in which local labor is produced to replace previously imported skilled foreign labor. The method is then applied to the problem of expatriate labor replacement in the Ivory Coast.     

Facing Constraints to Growth? Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurs and Traditional Business Practices in East Asia

Overseas Chinese entrepreneurs in East Asia have achieved notable success in a number of traditional, slow growth industries. This success has been ascribed to distinctive aspects of Chinese business culture that favor alacrity, adaptability, networking, and close control of firm operations. Recently, some have suggested that the same characteristics that have promoted these firms' success in slower growth sectors may hinder firm success in faster growth sectors of the economy. To explore this proposition, we conducted in-depth interviews with forty-one entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and government officials all working with fast growth entrepreneurial firms in East Asia. The results suggest that, in general, Overseas Chinese entrepreneurial firms also follow many of the traditional business practices associated with Overseas Chinese firms. Most venture capitalists and government officials in the sample expressed concern that these practices are hindering the building of firms that can be taken public and experience the high growth consistent with vibrant entrepreneurial firms. The results also showed that the Overseas Chinese entrepreneurs sampled are aware that some of these characteristics may be creating constraints to faster growth and, at the behest of venture capitalists and government officials, are sometimes making the changes thought necessary to create faster growth firms.     

Central banking,free banking,and financial crises

A Summary View In the Keynesian view, the central bank is a part of an extramarket remedy to a market malady. Investment markets are inherently unstable; government control of the economy's money supply is an important element in macroeconomic stabilization policy. The case against central banking—and for free banking—reverses the characterization of both remedy and malady. Free banking is a part of a market remedy to an extramarket malady. Even this stark reversal understates the case for free banking. It would remain valid even if we take the dramatic and chronic fiscal irresponsibility of the Treasury as given. Periodic crises that will inevitably occur in such a debt-ridden economic environment would be more ably countered by the market forces of free banking than by the policy moves of a central bank. But the extent of the Treasury's fiscal irresponsibility is itself dependent upon whether the Treasury can count on an accommodating central bank. Free banking limits the scope of this potential source of instability while at the same time enhancing the market's ability to deal with whatever instabilities that may persist.     

The life and career of John Spence Ogilvy (1805-71), the first chartered accountant to emigrate to Australia

So far as the available evidence allows, this paper examines the life and career of John Spence Ogilvy, foundation member of the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh in 1854, who emigrated to Melbourne in 1856, but did not play a part in the development of an organized accounting profession in Australia. The paper also attempts to explain the gap of thirty-two years between the formation of the first accounting bodies in Edinburgh and Melbourne.     

Integrating crop modelling and production economics to investigate multiple nutrient deficiencies and yield gaps

A method is described for integrating crop modelling and production economics to quantify optimum applications of multiple nutrients and yield gaps. The method is demonstrated for crop production in the high‐rainfall zone of southern Australia. Data from a biophysical crop model were used to overcome the persistent problem of inadequate experimental data. The Mitscherlich function was expanded to accommodate four variable inputs – nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and sulphur – and the expansion path was used to determine the economic optimum application of all four nutrients. Modelling revealed the state‐contingent yield potential and the extent to which unrealised yield could be explained by profit‐maximising behaviour and risk‐aversion by growers. If growers and their advisors were guided by the methods described, they would be better equipped to assess crop nutrient demands and limitations, predict yield potential, additional profit and the risks associated with high input systems in a variable climate. If scientists were more aware of the extra profits and the risks involved (as well as the quantitative relationships between inputs and outputs) when thinking about what to produce and how to do so, they would be more circumspect about the net benefits to be obtained from closing yield gaps.