Allocations and Common Costs in Long-Run Investing and Pricing Decisions: An Historical Analysis

The extent to which allocated common costs should influence business decisions remains controversial in management accounting. In the finance and investment literature this issue is generally ignored or dismissed by appeals to the'incremental' principle. This article presents an historical analysis of allocations in long-run investing and pricing decisions. It is demonstrated that seminal figures in the development of both investment and price theory were conscious of the need for firms to cover common costs and generally favoured some form of allocation. The anti-allocationist position is shown to be of relatively recent origin and to have caused an inconsistency in the management accounting literature in the treatment of common costs. European costing theory is shown to have been consistently allocationist. Evidence of a return in the recent U.S. literature to the older Anglo-American, and continuing European, allocations tradition is presented.     

Extensification of agriculture and deforestation: empirical evidence from Sudan

Extensification of agriculture is one of the major factors contributing to the destruction of forests in Africa. In Sudan, such horizontal expansion comes at the expense of land devoted to trees and other vegetation, thereby inducing conditions that are inimical to sustainable agricultural production. Different factors have contributed to extensification. Although high economic returns from crop (mainly sorghum) production was an important factor encouraging extensification of rainfed mechanized farming, other factors outside agriculture have also contributed to that expansion. This paper uses data from eastern Sudan and an acreage response model, to identify the most important factors influencing acreage expansion. Different measures and forms of risk were used in the acreage response model. The paper shows how policies in the energy sector can indirectly influence acreage expansion in the agricultural sector.     

Educating business schools about safety & health is no accident

This paper summarizes the consequences of safety and health inattentiveness, and reviews four primary dangers in the workplace. In addition, perspectives of employee health and safety are presented from industry and academia which provide the basis for a strong recommendation to include safety and health issues in business school curricula. Wayne H. Stewart's areas of research and teaching interest include Social Responsibility in Management, Entrepreneurship, and International Business. Wayne is currently on the editorial board of the International Journal of Case Studies, and has published in the Journal of Management Learning, as well as participating in several academic conferences. Donna E. Ledgerwood is currently the Secretary for the Southern Management Association. Donna was President of the Southwest Academy of Management in 1993 and served as the Academy of Management's Director of Exhibits/Publisher Relations and Director of Advertising from 1983–1991. Having written one of the first articles on sexual harassment in 1980, Donna serves on the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Business Strategies and has published in the Labor Law Journal, the Monthly Labor Review, and the Personnel Administrator. Ruth C. May's areas of expertise are International Business, Business Policy and Strategy and International Human Resource Management. Specializing in the transfer of Western management practices to the former Soviet Union, Ruth is currently involved in the development of training programs and privatization processes in central Russia. She has published in the Academy of Management Executive, Multinational Business Review, and Socialist Labor (Russia).     

Managerial Strategies, Labour and Employment Relations and the State: the Canadian Case and Beyond

This paper addresses: (1) the extent to which changes appear to have occurred in managerial strategies and labour and employment relations in Canadian firms, and (2) the role of the state relative to anonymous economic forces in accounting for Canadian developments. The general findings are that, while there have been a number of significant changes, these have been more moderate than expected by 'transformation' theory; furthermore, the Canadian case is consistent with the argument that state actions play a major role relative to more anonymous economic 'forces' in accounting for developments in labour and employment relations. It also suggests an alternative model to that typically assumed by transformation theory, one in which state policies and economic conditions are considered to be important not only for their direct effects on employer policies, but also for their indirect effects, through their implications for worker expectations and union militancy. Although these conclusions are tentative and call for more systematic, comparative research, they are consistent with arguments by Burawoy and others that state actions can serve as an important source of labour regulation at the level of the firm.     

DISCOUNT RATES AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Empirical studies provide compelling evidence that economic agents do not adopt the complete range of energy-efficient technologies that are cost-effective under prevailing prices and market conditions. Analysts commonly attribute this anomaly to the use of high discount rates in energy-related decisions-an interpretation that is difficult to reconcile with standard models of rational choice. This paper recasts the controversy from the perspective of economic theory and finds that market failures related to asymmetric information, bounded rationality, and transaction costs are major contributors to the so-called "efficiency gap."     

An Analysis of Occupational Outcomes for Indigenous and Asian Employees in Australia

This paper examines occupational performance in Australia across three racial groups in Australia: Indigenous Australians; Asian people, defined as all those whose language spoken at home was either Chinese, Vietnamese or other forms of a South-east or East Asian language; and white people, defined as the residual category. The paper has as its starting point, observed differences in occupational attainment among the three groups in Australia and sets out to account for these observed differences on the basis of both race and non-racial attributes such as, age, education and area of residence.     

Technological and financial approaches to risk management in agriculture: an integrated approach*

In the present paper, risk‐management problems where farmers manage risk both through production decisions and through the use of market‐based and informal risk‐management mechanisms are considered. It is shown that many of these problems share a common structure, and that a unified and informative treatment of a broad spectrum of risk‐management tools is possible within a cost‐minimisation framework, under minimal conditions on their objective functions. Fundamental results are derived that apply regardless of the producer's preference towards risks, using only the no‐arbitrage condition that agricultural producers never forego any opportunity to lower costs without lowering returns.