Study on the Customer Perception of the Tropical Fruit Vinegar in Kelantan and Kuala Lumpur

This research will be focus on the differences of perception of customers in Kelantan and Kuala Lumpur toward tropical fruits vinegar. Tropical fruit vinegar was used in this research with Rambutan and Dokong vinegar as the choice. Dokong and Rambutan are tropical seasonal fruits. The production quantity is getting higher these few years, and it results that farmers have to face all negative impact. Next, this study also reduces the import of vinegar product. Furthermore, this study also helps in fulfilling the national agenda in National Agro Food Policies 2011–2020. The amount of respondents are 108 in Kelantan and 69 in Kuala Lumpur. The major finding is Customers in Kuala Lumpur and Kelantan both accepts Natural Fruits Vinegar products. The result also shows that consumers are concern about the quality, safety, and nutritional content of products and prefer glass material for packaging than plastic material.     

The value of multiple reviews

Expert opinion aids consumers purchasing a good they have no personal experience with. Previous research has found little to no impact of expert opinion on price. Evidence from panels of cigar reviewers shows that the explanatory power of the experts’ rating improves as more reviews are used.     

Controlling shareholders’ opportunistic use of share repurchases

This study examines how share repurchase and dividend policies are influenced by controlling shareholders in an emerging market. We maintain that the controlling shareholders can utilize share repurchase opportunistically, particularly when they exercise voting rights in excess of cash-flow rights. The evidence of Korean firms suggests that the wedge between the voting rights and cash-flow rights positively affects share repurchases but negatively affects cash dividends. We also find that share repurchases are not always supported by operating performances. The results indicate that firms may utilize share repurchases as a means to pursue private benefits of the controlling shareholders. We also document that share repurchases do not substitute for cash dividends, suggesting that share repurchases are not genuine distributions. Furthermore, we find that the wedge of share repurchases reduces firm value. Overall, our results indicate that the controlling shareholders of Korean firms use share repurchases opportunistically rather than strategically.     

Lockup and Voluntary Earnings Forecast Disclosure in IPOs

We examine the relation between lockup length and voluntary earnings forecast disclosures for IPOs in Singapore. Unlike firms in the United States, companies in Singapore are allowed to provide earnings forecasts in their IPO prospectuses. We find that forecasters are more likely to accept longer lockup periods, so that the lockup expires after the first post-IPO earnings announcement. Our study also shows that because the lockup agreement removes personal incentives to issue aggressive forecasts, IPO firms tend to issue conservative forecasts. Overall, our results suggest that the lockup mechanism adds credibility to the earnings forecast given in the IPO prospectus.     

Nontariff measures and product differentiation: Hormone-treated beef trade from the United States and Canada to the European Union

We investigate how a combination of the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measure and product differentiation affects beef trade and the consequences for the United States (US)–European Union (EU) hormone-treated beef trade dispute. We develop a partial equilibrium model to represent the global beef markets and product differentiation between non-hormone-treated beef, hormone-treated beef, and other beef. The results show that removing the SPS measure increases EU hormone-treated beef imports from the US and Canada and decrease beef consumption. In addition, EU hormone-treated beef consumption and imports can be related to a few key indicators of product differentiation. The framework we develop can estimate EU hormone-treated beef consumption and imports based on a minimum of parameters relating to product differentiation, thereby providing useful applied economic analysis of a key trade measure.     

Validity of climate change forecasting for public policy decision making

Policymakers need to know whether prediction is possible and, if so, whether any proposed forecasting method will provide forecasts that are substantially more accurate than those from the relevant benchmark method. An inspection of global temperature data suggests that temperature is subject to irregular variations on all relevant time scales, and that variations during the late 1900s were not unusual. In such a situation, a “no change” extrapolation is an appropriate benchmark forecasting method. We used the UK Met Office Hadley Centre’s annual average thermometer data from 1850 through 2007 to examine the performance of the benchmark method. The accuracy of forecasts from the benchmark is such that even perfect forecasts would be unlikely to help policymakers. For example, mean absolute errors for the 20- and 50-year horizons were 0.18  C and 0.24  C respectively. We nevertheless demonstrate the use of benchmarking with the example of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 1992 linear projection of long-term warming at a rate of 0.03  C per year. The small sample of errors from ex ante projections at 0.03  C per year for 1992 through 2008 was practically indistinguishable from the benchmark errors. Validation for long-term forecasting, however, requires a much longer horizon. Again using the IPCC warming rate for our demonstration, we projected the rate successively over a period analogous to that envisaged in their scenario of exponential CO₂ growth—the years 1851 to 1975. The errors from the projections were more than seven times greater than the errors from the benchmark method. Relative errors were larger for longer forecast horizons. Our validation exercise illustrates the importance of determining whether it is possible to obtain forecasts that are more useful than those from a simple benchmark before making expensive policy decisions.     

Family characteristics and convenience food expenditure in urban Korea

This study uses a sample of 39 025 urban families from the 1996 Korean Family Income and Expenditures Survey to examine the relationship between family characteristics and expenditure on convenience foods. Results indicate that age and education of the family's head, number of children, presence of children under the age of six, the wife's labour force participation, and area of residence were significant in predicting the level of expenditure on convenience foods. The present study points to and gives a rationale to differences in some of the effects as compared with those found in Western countries.     

Modernity, Modernization and the Deinstitutionalization of Incremental Budgeting in Local Government

Governmental reform programs in the UK have a long history of failed attempts to end incrementalism in local government budgeting. Drawing on structuration theory, incrementalism is presented as institutionalized organizational behaviour. From this perspective, the recent New Labour reform agenda may be interpreted via a theory of de‐institutionalization. The approach is illustrated through an analysis of recent developments in a large UK metropolitan authority where new political structures, inspection regimes and regulatory pressures are beginning to challenge incrementalism. A new belief in the measurability of public sector performance seems to be legitimized by a post‐bureaucratic modernity rather than any significant technical innovations.     

The Ethics of Downsizing: Perceptions of Rights and Responsibilities

Within the context of employee rights and management social responsibility, this paper identifies and explores three ethical dimensions of downsizing. Using ANOVA and Scheffe post-hoc statistical techniques, groups involved in the downsizing decision making process were compared with groups affected by the process on each ethical dimension. Results indicated that those affected by the process attached greater ethical significance to these dimensions than those who were involved in formulating and implementing/communicating downsizing decisions.     

Explaining Variability in External Audit Fees

This study examines the effect of several factors on the level of external audit fees using a multiple regression model. Audit fee data were provided by 95 US publicly held companies for the years 1983 to 1985. Variables measuring client industry membership and auditor involvement in the security registration process were proxies for client regulatory aspects. These variables were significant and provide support for the hypothesis that scale economies and/or specialization effects accrue to audit firms in dealing with the regulatory complexities faced by clients. Variables measuring auditee size and complexity, auditee/auditor loss sharing risk, and audit firm size were also significant in explaining variability in external audit fees.