Equipements collectifs et consommation sociale

Collective consumption has become a major issue in recent developments in urban research, as a focal point in the analysis of the aspect of urbanization concerned with social conditions of reproduction of the labour force. A survey of traditional approaches shows that they adopt a conception of the state as promoter of increasing welfare. The limitations of econometric measures of ‘social welfare’ and the associated theories of consumer choice are also discussed. Recent radical studies consider collective means of consumption as means of domination and repression by the state, either by way of an Althusserian analysis of ideological state apparatus, or by an extension of the critique of psychiatric institutions elaborated by M. Foucault. The concrete analysis of collective consumption must go beyond this useful but unilateral perspective, also beyond the recurrent empiricist temptation to use concepts as ‘boxes’ for direct classification of empirical objects, and try to link together theoretically the various and contradictory aspects of socialized consumption processes. Various concepts must be developed regarding the nature of social relations of consumption: relations of production and circulation, ownership and real appropriation of the means of consumption, forms of socialization transforming these relations, nature of the use value of the means of consumption and relation with the concrete process of its realization, forms of the division of labour, ideological processes inside the consumption process. The movements and results of class struggle in the reproduction sphere can be followed through the analysis of the contradictions in collective consumption—between state domination and repression and development of the labour force, between socialization of consumption, also considering precisely its social distribution, and capitalist interests.     

深化改革 规范发展 推进稳步转型——以西乡街道为视角浅析社区股份合作公司的改革与发展

随着深圳城市化进程的加速,社区股份合作公司作为一种新生力量,在为原居民提供就业岗位、增加收入、改善生产和生活条件,促进经济社会发展等方面发挥了不可替代的作用,其改革与发展也越来越受到社会各界的关注。本文以深圳市宝安区西乡街道为视角,深入分析了当前影响和制约社区股份合作公司发展的原因,并提出了相应的对策建议。     

East—West joint ventures and buyback contracts

Contractual joint ventures (CJVs) and the buyback form of countertrade are popular methods that Socialist countries use to attract foreign investment. In this paper we explore some reasons why this is so and also explain two predominant characteristics of these contracts: the existence of sharing rules and minimum standard requirements on inputs. The model stresses the incentive problems involved when a (Socialist) host country, which does not allow foreign direct investment, uses a CJV to obtain the fruits of some knowledge-based production process from a multinational enterprise.     

A conceptual and analytical framework for business process reengineering

BPR has become a hot buzzword in management and information systems disciplines. However, there is a lacuna in recognizing the characteristics and the way of performing BPR. In this paper, we categorize the reasons for BPR failure as the lack of understanding of and the inability to perform BPR, and we reviewed BPR based on the four key concepts: fundamental, radical, dramatic, and process. We argue that SSM can be applied in performing BPR in the following ways:

1. (1) SSM can be a general methodology for BPR,

2. (2) SSM can be an analytical framework for BPR, and

3. (3) SSM is able to deal with the ill-defined and complex business situation in a BPR effort.

To illustrate the applicability of SSM in the context of BPR, we describe a live case of a BPR effort in developing and implementing an image processing system for hospital ward ordering. Finally, in order to demonstrate the power of SSM, by extending SSM considerations of What/How, we elaborate further on the What's and How's conceptual framework of an analysis and redesign effort. Based on this framework, we review the roles of information technologies in BPR.     

How FTAs Affect Income Levels of Member Countries

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether FTAs cause the income levels of member economies to converge or diverge. Although existing studies predict the possibility of convergence among FTA members to a certain degree, they fail to provide definitive evidence. By using the concept of accelerating convergence, this study aims to estimate the pure convergence effects of FTAs, separate from the conventional notion of income convergence, so‐called β‐convergence. The neoclassical model of economic growth has been extended to incorporate varying steady states for an open‐economy framework. Applying the system GMM method to a dynamic panel of data consisting of major FTAs – comprising the European Union, NAFTA, Mercosur and AFTA, and encompassing the cases of launching an FTA, expanding membership or deepening FTA integration – we find considerable evidence for the income convergence effect of FTAs.     

Qualified audit reports and costly contracting

This paper investigates the financial characteristics of the population of listed Singaporean companies receiving first-time qualified audit reports. It develops and tests hypotheses which take into account the costly contracting implications of a qualification for both the auditor and client. A matched pair design is used as a control. Results show that firms receiving qualified reports are significantly less profitable and liquid and have significantly more debt than the control in the year of qualification. Profitability and liquidity are shown to have declined in the four-year period up to the qualification, while debt levels have increased. These results may partially explain why the general (overseas) no-effect result from share market announcement date studies exists; the qualification per se is a dated signal of financial deterioration that has existed for at least the previous four years. Qualification is also significantly associated with auditor type and ownership of the firm, and is also dependent upon whether or not the firm has revalued its assets or changed accounting methods. It is more likely that a qualified report will be issued by a non Big 8 auditor in Singapore to a firm which has a higher proportion of the equity owned by the management. Qualified firms are more likely to have revalued assets and changed accounting methods to increase income than the control group. The strength of the results is also shown to depend on the nature of the qualification. Companies receiving severe qualifications (ie going concern, not true and fair, and unable to form an opinion) have far more significant differences than their pairs compared with those firms receiving moderate or other qualifications.The authors are Senior Lecturer, School of Accountancy and Business, Nanyang Technological University and Professor, Department of Accounting, University of Sydney, respectively. All correspondence should be addressed to Yoke-Kai Chan, School of Accountancy and Business, Nayang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798.This paper has benefited from the comments of an anonymous referee, participants at the Australasian Banking and Finance Conference, the 15th Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association, and at workshops at the Australian Graduate School of Management, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the Nanyang Technological University and the University of Southern Queensland, and in particular those of Greg Whittred, Steve Taylor, Roger Simnett, Kim Sawyer and Don Stokes. Financial support from the National University of Singapore is gratefully acknowledge. The usual caveats apply.     

Risk measures for derivatives with Markov-modulated pure jump processes

We consider a regime-switching HJB approach to evaluate risk measures for derivative securities when the price process of the underlying risky asset is governed by the exponential of a pure jump process with drift and a Markov switching compensator. The pure jump process is flexible enough to incorporate both the infinite, (small), jump activity and the finite, (large), jump activity. The drift and the compensator of the pure jump process switch over time according to the state of a continuous-time hidden Markov chain representing the state of an economy. The market described by our model is incomplete. Hence, there is more than one pricing kernel and there is no perfect hedging strategy for a derivative security. We derive the regime-switching HJB equations for coherent risk measures for the unhedged position of derivative securities, including standard European options and barrier options. For measuring risk inherent in the unhedged option position, we first need to mark the position into the market by valuing the option. We employ a well-known tool in actuarial science, namely, the Esscher transform to select a pricing kernel for valuation of an option and to generate a family of real-world probabilities for risk measurement. We also derive the regime-switching HJB-variational inequalities for coherent risk measures for American-style options.