Using modulation to green the cap: the UK case

The Agenda 2000 reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), agreed in 1999, give significant new discretion to Member States, including the scope for them to apply modulation to direct payments to farmers. Modulation means that up to 20% of payments can be redirected into the CAP's accompanying measures, including agri-environment schemes. This paper examines the rationales for applying modulation, and the potential benefits and problems associated with the measure. It examines the case of the UK in particular, and concludes that modulation currently provides a useful means of re-orienting and greening the CAP.     

UK student banking revisited: Influences and the decision-making process

This study explores the student decision-making process and in particular the criteria that influence students' choice of retail bank for their account. There has been little recent research in this area and this study updates previous research in line with the changes to the student banking industry. Students are now much more sophisticated in their choice decisions, and location convenience, which proved to be an influential factor in previous studies, is no longer given with such importance.     

External Ethics Statements: Research Recommendations and the Drip Effect

Should companies make explicit external statements of their ethical stance? If so, at what point in their ethical development? And, what form might such a statement take? The authors, MBA students at London Business School, researched these questions among the stakeholders of a large financial services organisation in the UK, and recommended what they term “the drip effect” approach. The implications of the project offer insights to other companies which may be deliberating whether and how to produce an external statement of ethics.     

The Relative and Incremental Explanatory Power of Earnings and Alternative (to Earnings) Performance Measures for Returns*

We analyze the ability of earnings and non‐earnings performance metrics to explain the variability in annual stock returns for industries where we identify, ex ante, an allegedly preferred (for valuation purposes) summary performance metric. We identify three industries where earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and cash from operations (CFO) are preferred, and three industries where specific non‐GAAP performance metrics are preferred. As a benchmark, we also examine the ability of EBITDA and CFO to explain returns for seven industries for which earnings is the preferred metric. Results for the benchmark earnings industries show that earnings dominates EBITDA and CFO in explaining returns. All other results are inconsistent with the view that perceptions of preferred metrics are reflected in actual aggregate investment behaviors.     

Workplace Practices of Japanese and Australian Multinational Corporations Operating in Singapore,Malaysia and Indonesia

This article addresses occupational health and safety and equal employment opportunity in Australian and Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs) in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. the author is concerned with how practices in these MNCs are affected by local conditions in the countries and examines the practices which occur, why different practices occur between countries and how practices interact with local political, cultural and social constraints. the article examines how MNCs adjust to prevailing workplace practices in Southeast Asia. It concludes that MNCs use some workplace practices employed in Australia as well as adapting their workplace practices to those which they either perceive to exist on a cultural and social level or are regulated by legislation in the host country.     

An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Interpretation within Dartmoor National Park in Reaching the Goals of Sustainable Tourism Development

In the face of growing pressure placed on the natural environment from increased tourism, this study considers the role of interpretation in achieving sustainable tourism development in natural areas used for tourism. Knowledge gain, attitude change and behaviour modification were used as key indicators in the assessment of the interpretive effectiveness of the High Moorland Visitor Centre in Dartmoor National Park, UK. Through comparing responses to questionnaires from pre- and post-visit samples, this study found that interpretation added to visitor's knowledge of the site. This increase in knowledge encouraged visitors to see how they could change their behaviour to be more respectful of the natural environment. This indicates that there is indeed scope for interpretation, to help modify the behaviour of tourists through increased knowledge and awareness. Attitude change did occur as a result of interpretation in the centre, but only to a limited extent. Participant observation carried out at the centre revealed that interactive material played a vital part in the effectiveness of interpretive messages. Overall results from this study suggest that interpretation, if carefully designed, is capable of contributing to the goals of sustainable tourism development by achieving knowledge restructuring and resulting behavioural intentions of visitors.     

Executive compensation and non-financial risk: An empirical examination

Executives face potentially severe (non-financial) personal risks if firm environmental performance is below industry best practice. We examine the relation between CEO compensation and the non-financial risk associated with environmental exposure, and how use of environmental performance as an explicit determinant of compensation affects this relation. We find evidence that CEOs are compensated for exposure to environmental risk, even after controlling for financial risk. We also find that this premium is reduced when the CEO has greater opportunities to improve the firm’s environmental performance.     

Classroom peer effects and academic achievement: Evidence from a Chinese middle school

This paper estimates peer effects on student achievement using a panel data set from a middle school in China. Unique features of the organization of Chinese middle schools (Grades 7 to 9) and panel data allow us to overcome difficulties that have hindered the separation of peer effects from omitted individual factors due to self-selection and from common teacher effects and to identify peer effects at the classroom level. We estimate peer effects for Math, English, and Chinese test scores separately. In a linear-in-means model controlling for both individual and teacher-by-test fixed effects, peers are found to have a positive and significant effect on math test scores, a positive but insignificant effect on Chinese test scores, but no effect on English test scores. Importantly, in Math and Chinese students at the middle of the ability distribution tend to benefit from better peers, whereas students at the ends of the ability distribution do not, suggesting that policy makers who want to exploit positive peer effects face difficult tradeoffs in classroom and school assignment.     

Optimality of workfare with heterogeneous preferences

With the standard non-linear income taxation framework with heterogeneity of preferences, in this paper the optimality of workfare as a screening tool is examined. It is assumed that workfare does not serve as a human capital investment, participation is mandatory, and administrative costs are negligible. Imposing alternative cardinalizations on individuals utilities allows for the possibility that the government optimally redistributes income to or from high disutility of labour individuals. Under either case, it is never optimal to impose workfare on these individuals. It is also shown that non-productive workfare can be an efficient policy tool, in contrast to the results found in Besley and Coate (1995), Brett (1998), and Beaudry and Blackorby (1997). JEL Classification: H21, H23
Optimalité du workfare en présence de préférences hétérogènes. L'auteur examine l'timalité du workfare en tant qu'instrument de tamisage à l'aide du cadre conceptuel traditionnel d'imposition non-linéaire des revenus en présence de préférences hétérogènes. On postule que le workfare n'est pas un processus d'investissement en capital humain, que la participatioun est obligatoire, et que les coûts d'administration sont négligeables. Quand on postule aussi des utilités cardinales différentes pour les individus, il devient possible pour le gouvernement de redistribuer optimalement les revenus en faveur ou au détriment des individus pour qui le travail a une très grande désutilité. Dans l'un et l'autre cas, on montre que le workfare n'est jamais une politique optimale. On montre aussi que le workfare dans des activités non-productives peut être un instrument de politique publique efficient, contrairement a ce qu'affirment Besley et Coate (1995), Brett (1998) et Beaudry et Blackorby (1997).