Corruption and local democratization in Indonesia: The role of Islamic parties

Indonesia has a tradition of corruption among local officials who harass and collect bribes from firms. This paper examines whether corruption is affected by local democratization and by the party composition of local assemblies. Democratization occurred in 1999 and decentralization in 2001. We have firm-level data for 2001 and 2004. The 2001 data benchmark corruption at the time of decentralization. We find that corruption declines between 2001 and 2004 overall, but much less so in districts with more secular party as opposed to Islamic party representatives in district assemblies. For a larger sample of districts, correspondingly, we find that corruption in 2004 is more in districts which voted more in favor of secular party representatives in the first elections in 1999. We argue that the effects seem to be causal, over above any effects of changing religiosity and economic circumstances across districts.     

United States - The Downgrade Scenario

Summary The US debt-ceiling negotiations in Washington are showing little progress as the 2 August deadline approaches.Based on the latest proposals under discussion, the chances of a debt-ceiling hike which also incorporates USD 4trn worth of deficit cuts over the next decade are slim.This is important, as it means that S&P is likely to downgrade the US sovereign rating from AAA to AA, even if the debt ceiling is raised.Note that in an interview with Dow Jones, one of S&P's credit analysts said that to avoid a downgrade, the US needs to agree to reduce the fiscal deficit by over USD 4tm over the next ten years.This is what S&P sees as the required amount to prevent the total government debt-to-GDP ratio from rising.Therefore, a debt-ceiling deal with deficit cuts falling short of this could mean a downgrade by at least one of the three key rating agencies.     

Offshore CNY Trading - Where Next？

<正>Singapore and Australia could be the next places for offshore CNY trading CNY-KRW and CNY-TWD trading may take longer to occur due to offshore trading issues...     

Leisure and Active Lifestyles: Research Reflections

Leisure researchers have been studying active living for many years. The research, however, has focused more on individual factors than social and environmental determinants that enable physical activity and health. The focus of the introduction to this special issue on “leisure and active lifestyles” is to highlight leisure literature that can be directly tied to active living. These dimensions include outdoor recreation, community recreation areas and facilities, time usage, barriers and constraints, and social interdependence. We provide an overview of the significance of the papers in this special issue and offer some reflections regarding future research related to active living, physical activity, health, and leisure. We underline the value of the holistic approach evident in leisure research and call for broader methods and more collaborative transdisciplinary research.     

Spatial organization of firms: the decision to split production and administration

A firm's production activities are often supported by nonproduction activities, such as administrative units including headquarters, which process information both within and between firms. Firms may physically separate such administrative units from their production activities and create stand‐alone central administrative offices (CAOs). However, activities in multiple locations may cause internal communication costs. What types of firms are more likely to separate such functions? If firms separate administration and production, where do they locate CAOs? This paper examines firms' spatial organization using microlevel data from the US Census Bureau.     

A Note on the Public Interest and Ethical Behaviour

The Joint Code of Professional Conduct of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia has made the protection of the public interest the primary responsibility of chartered accountants. We argue that the traditional accounting practices to safeguard the interests of clients and employers are likely to be contrary to the public interest and represent unethical behaviour in terms of the code. We also argue that although there may be breaches of the code they are unlikely to result in disciplinary action as there is a low probability of complaints against members of the Institute.     

ANALYTICAL COMPARISONS OF OPTION PRICES IN STOCHASTIC VOLATILITY MODELS

This paper gives an ordering on option prices under various well-known martingale measures in an incomplete stochastic volatility model. Our central result is a comparison theorem that proves convex option prices are decreasing in the market price of volatility risk, the parameter governing the choice of pricing measure. The theorem is applied to order option prices under q -optimal pricing measures. In doing so, we correct orderings demonstrated numerically in Heath, Platen, and Schweizer ( Mathematical Finance , 11(4), 2001) in the special case of the Heston model.     

THE NATURE AND MEASUREMENT OF COST SAVINGS IN CURRENT VALUE ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS*

The paper considers the nature and measurement of cost savings in current value (cost) accounting systems. In general, current cost accounting proposals have interpreted cost savings in an unnecessarily restrictive way. For example, current cost accounting does not allow for the possibility that a company which borrows at a fixed rate of interest may derive significant cost savings if interest rates increase during the term of the loan. The measurement of cost savings on debt is considered in this paper. In addition, it draws attention to the concentration of current cost accounting proposals on cost savings at the expense of the analogous losses which may arise in relation to revenue.