Employer-Provided Training and Tenure-Earnings

This article examines the tenure-earnings profiles and suggests that the more training is provided to the individual by the employer, the steeper is the tenure profile of earnings. The provision of training by the employer is modelled as endogenous and subject to choice decisions using an ordered probit model corresponding to three levels of training. The earnings equations of three groups of employees are then adjusted for potential effects of bias due to selectivity by using Lee's procedure, and heterogeneity bias using the Altonji and Shakotko instrumental variable procedure.     

The State of Charity Accounting – Developments, Improvements and Continuing Problems

This paper is based on a survey of charity accounts undertaken for the Office for National Statistics during the period 1995–1996, and reviews current charity accounting practices of some of these charities in 1994/5 prior to the inception of the new accounting regime from 1996. We look at the accounting practices identified by Bird and provide a comparison between the original Bird analysis in 1981 and current practices in 1994/5. We also consider smaller surveys undertaken in 1989 and 1990. The paper concludes that whilst there has been some progress – particularly among larger charities – since the Bird study there are still major accounting anomalies and examples of poor practice. The paper calls upon auditing firms to be less tolerant of inadequate sets of accounts and points to their pivotal role in improving charity accounting pratices.     

Technical efficiency and region The U.S. manufacturing sector 1972–1977

In this paper we estimate the extent of technological bias in an interregional context for U.S. manufacturing during the period 1972–1977 using a factor augmenting production function approach. We present estimates of the elasticity of factor substitution for each of the 48 states in the sample using a variable elasticity of substitution production function. Next, we use these estimates to generate estimates of the rates of change in the efficiencies of capital and labor inputs and compare these estimates across states and census regions. We also examine and compare estimates of total factor productivity across states and regions. We ,find that the average annual rates of growth of capital efficiency during the period are 5.5 percent in the Northeast, 5.3 percent in the Northcentral, 5.6 percent in the West and 3.1 percent in the South. The rates of change of the efficiencies of labor are found to be negative across all regions except the South. The rates of change of total factor productivity are found to be 1.7 percent in the Northeast, 2.3 percent in the Northcentral, 2.4 percent in the West and 1.7 percent in the South. We also find that between 33 percent and 56 percent of the growth of output across regions is due to technical progress.     

Cash balance pension plans: A case of standard-setting inadequacy

Accounting for and ownership of U.S. private employee pensions has long been a controversial and politically contested terrain. The uniqueness in the U.S. of using employers as the principal provider of pensions makes the reporting of pensions more problematic since the corporate employers providing pensions are not strictly accountable to only the pensioners. Over the last quarter century there has been a marked swing in power toward management and away from employees making it possible for increasing numbers of U.S. companies to switch from conventional defined benefit plans to cash balance plans. This paper provides a “case” study of how accounting standard-setters framed the pension reporting problem vis-à-vis how they frame the “reporting problem” in general. Utilizing various sources of commentary about the phenomenon of cash-balance conversions, we triangulate on the pension problem to demonstrate how current FASB disclosure rules fail to satisfy the condition of neutrality and how those rules have facilitated the shifting of economic risk from shareholders to employees.     

Problem based learning: application to technology education in three countries

An increasing variety of professional educational and training disciplines are now problem based (eg, medicine, nursing, engineering, community health), and they may have a corresponding variety of educational objectives. However, they all have in common the use of problems in the instructional sequence. The problems may be as diverse as a mechanical predicament, an unexplained phenomena, or patient symptoms. Technology education in secondary schools is undergoing a period of significant change in many countries. It is therefore imperative that technology teacher education adopt not only the technologies that have been identified as being important, but also incorporate appropriate methodologies for the instruction of these technologies. PBL offers a number of relevant features to technology education and it is because of these that the project outlined in this paper has been developed.     

Factors Determining Net Interest Margins in Australia: Domestic and Foreign Banks

This study tests the application of the Ho and Saunders (1981) model of bank net interest margins (NIMs), and its subsequent developments, using Australian data. The core elements of this model apply in Australia. Bank market power is found to increase NIMs, consistent with McShane and Sharpe (1985) , with evidence of bank buying market share and mispricing for risk. Operating costs also have an important role in determining NIMs, together with implied payments and management quality. Bank NIMs are found to have fallen over the study period.     

迪士尼逆势抢“赛点”

说迪士尼仅仅是像嘉年华那样的游乐企业，一定没有看到游乐园在香港、东京的巨亏，在巴黎的那家分店还因为经营不善倒闭了。迪士尼本质上，还是一家媒体公司，每年从《玩具总动员》这样的影视产品大获其利，顺带还卖点同品牌的童装。