Technological experience and the technology adoption decisions in small manufacturing firms

This paper investigates changes in factors bearing on technology adoption decisions in small manufacturing firms. It is hypothesized that, as a firm's experience with technology increases and its technological capabilities grow, the decision process is gradually modified and puts more weight on those factors which are more closely related to the true potential of the technology. An empirical study shows the more innovative firms to have an outward orientation dominated by clients and suppliers, and to pay more attention to the added flexibility brought about by new technology. It is also shown that functional groups within the company play a more important role in the decision-making process.     

The Risk Exposure of Emerging Equity Markets

The low correlation between returns in emerging equity marketsand industrial equity markets implies that the global investorwould benefit from diversification in emerging markets. Thisarticle explores the sensitivity of the emerging-market returnsto measures of global economic risk. When these traditionalmeasures of risk are used, the emerging markets have littleor no sensitivity. This finding is consistent with these markets'being segmented from world capital markets. However, the correlationbetween the emerging-market returns and the risk factors appearsto be changing over time.     

The EU Budget and the CAP: An Agenda for the Review?

The promised review of the EU Budget in 2008 offers an opportunity to bring CAP financing into line with logic, justice and the rest of EU policy. Currently, the CAP is unique amongst European policies in being both mandatory and requiring 100 per cent financing by the EU budget. While this made good sense at the policy's inception, it is now an obsolete anachronism. A sensible and defensible agenda for financial reform, which is all that is on the reform agenda at present, is to make the EU budget responsible for only a fraction (say 25 per cent) of the costs of the current CAP, instead of the present 100 per cent. This would bring CAP financing into line with other EU policies, and make member states separately responsible for the balance for their own farmers, as they so wish, up to the CAP budgetary ceiling already agreed. Any resulting competition between member states in the extent and means by which they continue (or not) to support farmers through direct payments would be controlled through EU Competition and single market policies. Such competition would also provide a good opportunity for experiments with policy development, to the advantage of all, since different policies are required for the different stages of development and different local conditions now evident within the EU.     

Smuggling and Bhagwati's Nonequivalence Between Tariffs and Quotas

The authors extend Professor Bhagwati's analysis about the nonequivalence between trade policy instruments when domestic production is monopolized and the terms of trade are endogenous, by allowing for smuggling. They show that the dominance of the ad valorem tariff over the quota is not robust. Tariffication can lower welfare even when the level of illegal imports is quite small. However, tariffication with a specific tariff is always beneficial because the specific tariff dominates the ad valorem tariff and the quota with or without smuggling. Smuggling (or the threat) also tends to lower the second–best tariff/quota, and increases welfare when imports are restricted by a quota, but lowers it under a tariff.     

Accounting aggregation: User preferences and decision making

This experiment tests the effects of alternative aggregations of accounting data in a simulated portfolio task. Certain entropy-based aggregation criteria were used to prepare differentially aggregated financial statements for use in the task. Subjects made allocations of initial edowments between hypothetical firms, disclosed confidence in their allocation decisions and reported on specific characteristics of the financial statements. Differences in reported usefulness of statement sets furnished were found to be associated strongly with measured information content. The results also provide limited evidence that decisions and judgments of subjects were affected by the information content of the accounting aggregations provided.     

Influence of the guaranteed annual wage upon labor relations and productivity: National sugar refinery's experience

The guaranteed annual wage is not in itself a source of motivation, but is more what Herzberg would call a maintenance factor, something that will dissatisfy if removed. The authors conclude that National Sugar has been unable to reap any lasting benefits since the guarantee has been taken for granted by its employees.     

An algebraic theory of portfolio allocation

Summary. Using group and majorization theory, we explore what can be established about allocation of funds among assets when asymmetries in the returns vector are carefully controlled. The key insight is that preferences over allocations can be partially ordered via majorized convex hulls that have been generated by a permutation group. Group transitivity suffices to ensure complete portfolio diversification. Point-wise stabilizer subgroups admit sectoral separability in fund allocations. We also bound the admissible allocation vector by a set of linear constraints the coefficients of which are determined by group operations on location and scale asymmetries in the rate of returns vector. For a distribution that is symmetric under a reflection group, the linear constraints may be further strengthened whenever there exists an hyperplane that separates convex sets. Received: May 15, 2001; revised version: March 20, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" Journal paper No. J-19797 of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Ames, Iowa. Project No. 3463, and supported by Hatch Act and State of Iowa funds. Correspondence to: D. A. Hennessy     

Report of the Editor‐in‐Chief

Submissions to the Journal continue to increase steadily, with a strong international pattern, while our response times are also improving. The JAE's citation impact factor has declined from the record highs of 2011 & 2012 (1.55 & 1.5) to 0.97. Current data suggest that 2014's score will be little better. Wiley‐Blackwell continue to provide a strong publishing platform with our full archive generating a continuing increase in the number of downloads.