Due diligence and the demand for electricity: A cautionary tale

In 1983, the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) defaulted on tax-free revenue bonds issued to construct two of its five nuclear power plants. In subsequent litigation, the plaintiffs alleged that the bonds had been fraudulently issued because WPPSS and the other defendants should reasonably have known and disclosed that there was substantial uncertainty about the ability to meet the financial obligations created by the bonds. A model using plausible values for demand elasticities, recognized probabilities of events that would increase costs and delay construction and data used by WPPSS to construct demand forecasts for prospective bondholders suggests that such uncertainty was present at the time the bonds were issued. The values for demand elasticities and other parameters of the model were selected after a thorough review of the econometric literature on demand for electricity, beginning with the work of Fisher and Kaysen in 1962.     

Novelty and new firm performance: The case of employment systems in knowledge-intensive service organizations

This paper investigates a question at the core of entrepreneurship research: how does novelty affect new venture performance? We address this question for a type of factor-market innovation deemed critical in the contemporary economy: novelty in employment systems. Our longitudinal study of new firms in a knowledge-intensive service industry shows that the relationship between employment-system novelty and organizational productivity is curvilinear and U-shaped. We also find suggestive evidence that new firms with employment systems exhibiting discrepant degrees of novelty (i.e., combinations of highly conforming and highly novel practices) are less productive than those with coherent employment systems.     

The Endless Day: The Political Economy of Women and Work

Few critics will question that the high tide of the influence of American institutional economics was reached during the New Deal. John R. Commons, Thorstein Veblen and their disciples reached the apex of their impact on public policy as sources of doctrine, policy-making and advising. Commons remains an influential figure in the history of institutional economics and progressive social thought. And he resides in the American tradition of empirical collectivism as articulated by Currin V. Shields in 1952. The tradition as understood by Commons finds the ultimate locus of power in democratic majorities, not in hegemonic classes or corporate networks, and it is only by its refinement and replenishment that it can meet the demands thrust upon it. His mature theoretical work, published between 1924 and 1950, is the main source of his empirical collectivism as shown through textual exegesis and biographical extrapolation.     

Quantifying the impact of financial development on economic development

How important is financial development for economic development? A costly state verification model of financial intermediation is presented to address this question. The model is calibrated to match facts about the U.S. economy, such as the intermediation spreads and the firm-size distributions for 1974 and 2004. It is then used to study the international data using cross-country interest-rate spreads and per-capita GDPs. The analysis suggests a country like Uganda could increase its output by 116 percent if it could adopt the world?s best practice in the financial sector. Still, this amounts to only 29 percent of the gap between Uganda?s potential and actual output.     

The future of Scotland's international tourism markets

This paper explains the rationale behind a tourism marketing strategy prepared for Scotland, as an example of a small-nation destination. In 1985, a typical international tourist to Scotland would have been be described as ‘American, over-50 and interested in heritage’, whereas today the typical tourist is ‘European, under-35 and interested in culture’. The change can be explained within the context of global tourism trends, which provide an insightful explanation of this transformation. Looking to the future, the prospects up to 2025 are assessed in this paper, based upon future trends and UN WTO projections. Is that future to be based upon arrivals from North America, European or the Rest of the World? Whatever the scenario, a strategy is presented that captures the essence of Scotland's international tourism expectations based upon key drivers and market prospects. In a highly competitive market, Scotland should focus on markets that it can win and that can contribute towards the industry's ambition to grow the economic value of tourism by 50% by the year 2015 through strong branding and a focused marketing proposition.     

Audit fees and audit adjustments: evidence from Welsh local authorities

This paper exploits the availability of pre-audit financial statements to investigate the scale and incidence of audit adjustments and their impact on audit fees in Welsh local authorities. Adjustments to the politically-sensitive general fund, which represent a significant proportion of all adjustments, are associated with increased audit fees. The authors also found that audit adjustments on average result in more conservative reporting of the surplus/deficit and the balance on the general fund, with the number and value of downward adjustments exceeding those of upward movements.