The Impact of Regulatory Reform on the Portfolio Performance of Australian Credit Unions

This paper applies a portfolio approach to examine the effectiveness of the Financial Institutions (FI) Code (1992) in achieving the twin regulatory objectives of stability and efficiency in Australian credit unions. A model is developed to examine the allocation of credit union portfolios in unregulated and regulation-constrained environments. The impact of regulatory constraints on portfolio performance prior to and following the introduction of the FI Code is thus assessed. The paper concludes that, overall, the FI Code increased both the stability and the allocative efficiency of credit unions over that of previous regulatory regimes.     

Job Security Rights: The Effects of Specific Policies and Practices on the Evaluation of Employers

The effects of specific policies and practices regarding employee job security rights on the evaluation of employers was investigated in two contexts. First, an experimental design was used to investigate the effect of explicit at-will and explicit good-cause policies on future job seekers' evaluation for a company's attractiveness and their willingness to sign up for an interview. The results support the argument that the kind of rights employers offer, or expressly deny, can significantly effect recruitment outcomes. Second, the potential role of formal employment at-will agreements as a source of inferences about the employer was investigated using open-ended questions that were responded to by currently employed managers and future job seekers. The results indicate that the use of formal at-will agreements may lead to a variety of negative inferences, giving employers reason to be concerned about the effect of such practices on employee relations.     

Money‐output Causality Revisited – A Bayesian Logistic Smooth Transition VECM Perspective*

This article proposes a Bayesian approach to examining money‐output causality within the context of a logistic smooth transition vector error correction model. Our empirical results provide substantial evidence that the postwar US money‐output relationship is nonlinear, with regime changes mainly governed by the output growth and price levels. Furthermore, we obtain strong support for nonlinear Granger causality from money to output, although there is also some evidence for models indicating that money is not Granger causal or long‐run causal to output.