通胀难题席卷全球

几年的相对稳定期过后,价格上涨风潮现已横扫全球。它来得很不是时候。一段时间以来美国联邦储备委员会（Fed）连续大幅下调利率,Fed之所以与治理通货膨胀的常规策略背道而驰,为的是防范房产市场崩溃和信贷危机演化成为经济的长时间严重衰退。这就使得这场针对通货膨胀的全球战役变得更加艰难和复杂。     

Britain and the euro

Britain's possible entry into the Eurozone has proved highly controversial, both on economic and political grounds. The British government has set up a series of tests to be satisfied before entry. Besides being vaguely defined, these tests are time dependent. This paper attempts to evaluate the case for British entry on more general Optimal Currency Area criteria, and argues that the failure of some of these criteria would provide a logical explanation of the British reluctance to join.     

Your Governance or Mine?

In response to criticism directed at the resource sector's corporate governance, this paper examines the corporate governance and underlying firm characteristics of resource development stage entities (DSEs) relative to a size‐matched sample of non‐resource firms. We find that resource DSEs have different governance characteristics in the measures of board independence, chair/CEO duality and CEO cash bonuses. Furthermore, there are differences in the information environment measures of analyst following, debt levels, stock market return and stock turnover. Considering we document substantial differences in underlying firm characteristics, corporate governance differences are likely appropriate to the mining industry and should not be uniformly labelled as ‘bad’. Our results suggest that media rankings based on corporate governance scores may not accurately portray the resource sector. Overall, our results are of interest to Australian investors and regulators and contribute to a broader understanding of contextually contingent corporate governance.     

Predicting the Failure of Developmental Gold Mining Projects

This paper investigates firm‐level financial and non‐financial information and their association with project failure for a sample of pre‐production gold development firms. Pre‐revenue generating ‘single project’ mining companies are chosen, since project failure is synonymous with company failure for these firms. The setting is interesting due to the high information asymmetry and limitations of the GAAP‐based Altman Z‐score in this context. A definition of project failure is applied and both financial and non‐financial predictors are compared. Failure is driven by whether the deposit is open pit or underground, and whether the cash cost of production is disclosed at feasibility completion.     

Activity-Based Costing and Central Overhead Cost Allocation in Universities: A Case Study

This article examines the development of ABC in university accounting and assesses the contribution it might make to solving the problems associated with central overhead cost allocation systems. A case study using an ABC methodology was developed and applied to library services at the University of Southampton. The results showed substantial differences in the allocation of the central overhead costs as between academic faculties using the model and the existing system. The authors argue that although the ABC approach may overcome some of the problems of overhead allocation and improve the economic efficiency of organizations, there are significant problems with its practical application.     

Predispositions as determinants of the future

Futures studies has been dominated by the concerns of forecasting and control. This paper suggests that predispositions held by people, especially attitudes and assumptions, have a significant impact on the future and thus constitute an important field of research in futures studies. It discusses three major types of predisposition, and outlines two mechanisms by which they affect the future, especially as it relates to technology. Three examples drawn from real life are then analysed to illustrate the variety of impacts that predispositions have on the future. It is not the intention of this paper to provide a full treatment of the topic, but rather to make an initial proposal. So, finally, the simplifications made in the paper are discussed, and suggestions made about fruitful avenues of further research.