Labour–management relationships in transitional economies: convergence or divergence in Vietnam and Indonesia?

Western labour–management relationships (both formal and informal), their respective rights, obligations and negotiating frameworks, have been well- established, understood, and supported by a complex set of associated legislation for decades. However, in many developing countries, including Vietnam and Indonesia, historical, socio-cultural, ideological or political factors constrained the development of such formalized employee relations until very recent times. This paper explores the different paths taken by Vietnam and Indonesia towards a modern employee relations system, with its concomitant positive and adverse consequences.     

Exploration of the Dimensionality of the Consumer Ethnocentric Tendencies Scale in Mozambique

The objective of the study is to validate the Consumer Ethnocentric Tendencies (CET) scale in Mozambique and to explore its dimensionality. The study was carried out using a questionnaire-based survey to collect data from 273 respondents in Mozambique. A back-translation technique was applied in combination with a pilot study to verify the quality of the instrument in the Portuguese language. The study results showed that Mozambican consumers surveyed were moderately ethnocentric and that the CET scale demonstrated a four-dimensional structure.     

Can buy me love: the effect of child welfare expenditures on maltreatment outcomes

I consider the effect of state level child welfare expenditures on child abuse victimization and fatality rates. The main result is that these expenditures are strongly associated with improved child maltreatment outcomes. Further, the well known negative association between income and child abuse is overstated if one fails to control for relevant policy differences that are correlated with economic circumstances. The effect of income diminishes further upon controlling for social attitudes correlated with income. The source of identification is a set of large and explicitly exogenous changes in child welfare expenditures induced by the circa 2000 recession. I show that endogeneity problems are small and tend to work against the result.     

What Monetary Policy after the Crisis?

The objective of this paper is to reflect on some of the implications that recent economic experience has for monetary and financial stability policies. We contend that the financial crisis and the upsurge in inflation 2007–08 have shown that the policy model based on the new consensus in macroeconomics, which largely held sway over the past decade or more, is broken. It is argued that inflation targeting cannot deliver low inflation. We argue that fine-tuning through interest rates should not be attempted, but rather a constant real interest rate target based on the output growth rate should be adopted. The key objective of monetary policy should be shifted to financial stability, the independence of central banks should be brought to an end, and their decision making should be coordinated with other macroeconomic policy initiatives.     

Changing Perceptions of the Role of the Company Auditor, 1840–1940

One advantage of studying history is to explain present practice or at least to help place current phenomena in perspective. This paper seeks to explore two related themes which have proved problematic from the earliest times of company auditing in the UK: the nature of the auditor's responsibility; and the public's perception of his role. The conventional view is that auditors were initially concerned mainly with fraud detection, and that it was not until the 1930s that greater emphasis was devoted to the verification of financial statements. This study suggests that statement verification was the primary audit concern in relation to public companies as early as the 1830s, though we acknowledge that later in the century more emphasis was placed on fraud detection. We therefore see the current debate over the auditor's responsibility as merely the latest movement in a continuing and fluctuating theme. We also show that the profession has encountered great difficulty in reconciling public expectations with the practicalities of auditing. General confusion over the role of the auditor has existed to such an extent that it has been difficult even for the profession to reach agreement on the main purpose of company auditing, and the message to be sent to the investing public. In these endeavours, the accounting profession was at the same time both helped and hindered by legal developments.     

Alumina plc: A case study of the post-audit of capital investment expenditure

The case examines investment expenditures made by a major Australian manufacturer involved in the mining of bauxite ore and its refinement into alumina. The expenditures, around which the case revolves, are intended to increase the efficiency of operations of one West Australian refinery, consistent with corporate goals of cost reduction and profit improvement. The investment evaluation processes then in place at Alumina plc permitted the joint evaluation of multiple projects, even where the relationship between the projects might be tenuous. The case details one such multi-project investment and facilitates an evaluation of the components in a way that suggests that the appraisal process might be flawed, or at least sub-optimal.     

Multinationals as Arbitrageurs: The Effect of Stock Market Valuations on Foreign Direct Investment

Empirical evidence of imperfect integration across world capitalmarkets suggests a role for cross-border arbitrage by multinationals.Consistent with multinational arbitrage as a determinant offoreign direct investment (FDI) patterns, we find that FDI flowsincrease sharply with source-country stock market valuations—particularlythe component of valuations that is predicted to revert thenext year, and particularly in the presence of capital accountrestrictions that limit other mechanisms of cross-country arbitrage.The results suggest the existence of a cheap financial capitalchannel in which FDI flows reflect, in part, the use of relativelylow-cost capital available to overvalued parents in the sourcecountry.