Book Reviews

Leon A. Mears, The New Rice Economy of Indonesia, Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 1981, pp. xxiii + 605. Price US$15.

Alfian, Mely G. Tan, Selo Soemardjan (eds). Kemirkinan Struktural: Suatu Bunga Rampai (Structural Poverty: A Collection). Jakarta: Yayasan Ilmu-Ilmu Sosial (YIIS), 1980. pp. 189. Rp 2000.

Thee Kian Wie, Pemerataan- Kemiskinan- Ketimpangan (Equalization-Poverty-Uneven Distribution), Jakarta: Sinar Harapan. 1981, pp. 152. Rp 1750.

Bulletin Leknns, Year 1 No. 2, Feb. 1982, Special Edition on Employment Opportunity, Poverty and Population Mobility in Rural Areas, pp. 146.

Mubyarto (ed.), Growth and Equity in Indonesian Agricultural Development, Jakarta: Yayasan Agro Ekonomika, 1982. pp. xv + 258.

Muriel Charras, De la forêt malefique à I'herbe divine [From Malign Jungle to Divine Grain]: La transmigration en Indonesie: Les Balinais a Sulawesi, Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de I'homme 1982, pp, viii + 341. Price Fr. 90.00.

Yujiro Hayami and Masao Kikuchi. Asian Village Economy at the Crossroads: An Economic Approach to Institutional Change, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1981, pp. xvi + 275. Yen 4000. Geoffrey B. Hainsworth (ed.), Village-level Modernization in Southeast Asia: The Political Economy of Rice and Water. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. 1982. pp. ix + 411. Can$34.00.

Colin MacAndrews and Chia Lin-Sien (eds.). Too Rapid Rural Development: Perceptions and Perspectives from Southeast Asia, Athens: University of Ohio Press, pp. xiv + 369. Cloth $19.95, paper $10.95.

Gary E. Hansen (ed.), Agricultural and Rural Development in Indonesia, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981, pp. xiv + 312.

William L. Collier, Declining Labour Absorption (1878 to 1980) in Javanese Rice Production, Bogor: Agro-economic Survey, Rural Dynamics Study, Publication No. 2, 1980, pp. 120.     

Universal service and public access in the networked society

Concern about access to the new services and facilities emerging from the technologically dynamic telecommunications industry and its ‘convergence’ with broadcasting and information technology has resulted in calls for a reconsideration of the nature and scope of Universal Service Obligations (USOs) so that they are more adequate and relevant in an era of technological acceleration towards a networked information society. This paper assesses approaches to upgrading USOs and to developing policies for public access to the networked society undertaken thus far in various OECD countries, and proposes frameworks for conducting the tasks in a systematic manner.     

Pricing default swaps: Empirical evidence

In this paper we compare market prices of credit default swaps with model prices. We show that a simple reduced form model outperforms directly comparing bonds' credit spreads to default swap premiums. We find that the model yields unbiased premium estimates for default swaps on investment grade issuers, but only if we use swap or repo rates as proxy for default-free interest rates. This indicates that the government curve is no longer seen as the reference default-free curve. We also show that the model is relatively insensitive to the value of the assumed recovery rate.     

Corporate Governance,Social Responsibility,and Data Breaches

We study whether corporate governance and social responsibility are related to data breaches. We find that socially responsible companies with smaller boards and greater financial expertise are less likely to be breached. The financial impact of a breach is visible in the long term. Specifically, data‐breach firms have –3.5% one‐year buy‐and‐hold abnormal returns. Additionally, banks with breaches have significant declines in deposits and nonbanks have significant declines in sales in the long run. Finally, we find that following a data breach, companies are more likely to replace their chief executive officer and chief technology officer as well as improve their governance and social responsibility.     

Creating compassion: How volunteering websites encourage prosocial behaviour

Organisations increasingly use websites to promote prosocial behaviour such as volunteering, philanthropy, and activism. However, these websites often fail to encourage prosocial behaviours effectively. To address the lack of relevant research, we develop, then refine, a design model that identifies the user experience factors that create intention to engage in prosocial behaviour on websites. We test an initial model developed from the literature, by interviewing forty participants, each of whom visited and compared six volunteering websites. Our analysis of the participants' user experience reveals eighteen elements that interplay to create intention to engage in prosocial behaviour. Our refined design model comprises ten website features (interaction, factual, anecdata, external recognition, organisational expression, value suggestion, explanatory content, visual media, written media and, website design), seven perceptions (ease of use, aesthetics, information quality, trust, negative affect, positive affect, and argument strength), and one motivation (egoism). These findings provide novel insights into how to design Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to encourage prosocial behaviour.     

Contextual Innovation Management Using a Stage‐Gate Platform: The Case of Philips Shaving and Beauty

To improve its innovation process, Philips Shaving and Beauty (S&B) designed a blueprint for its innovation process. Although it has proved to be quite effective, it has experienced a lack of efficiency, in terms of frequent cost and time overruns, in the fuzzy front end of this process. We suggest a contextual innovation management approach to set up a stage‐gate‐based innovation process platform and thus improve the efficiency in the fuzzy front end, which means that, for different contexts, stage‐gate process variants will be designed from which unnecessary activities are removed and important activities are emphasized. The design is based on the identification of relevant contextual factors to develop variations of the common innovation process within Philips S&B. We distinguished different variants of the innovation processes within Philips S&B that can increase the efficiency in the fuzzy front end. Based on interviews within and outside Philips S&B, we identified problems and potential solutions with regard to efficiency in eight recently finished innovation processes. The results indicate that the most important contextual factors are the distinction between incremental and radical innovations, and between market and technology‐based innovations. We used these factors to design three variants on the basic platform of the stage‐gate process.     

Establishing statistical foundations of a chronology for the great divergence: a survey and critique of the primary sources for the construction of relative wage levels for Ming–Qing China

This article is a survey and critique of recent endeavours to establish statistical foundations for a chronology for the great divergence based upon trends and levels in relative wages. Our reading of the bibliography in Chinese labour history, together with a preliminary investigation into other primary sources, suggests that the Kuznetsian paradigm for empirical economics may not be viable for the construction of analytical narratives for the Chinese and other premodern imperial economies in South and West Asia. Nevertheless, two datasets currently in print will continue to be quoted to lend support to numerically grounded speculations for levels and trends in real wages and welfare for the families of wage‐dependent urban workers in China over the eighteenth century. Statistical evidence for the Ming and Qing dynasties calibrated for the purposes of comparing real wage levels for wage‐dependent labour between China and western Europe can, however, be placed on a spectrum for accuracy and inferential analysis that runs from ‘unfounded guess work’ to ‘plausible conjectures’. The unwelcome contention of this article is that the data published and potentially available for China (and probably for India and the Ottoman Empire) stand close to the unfounded guess work end of that spectrum. Meanwhile, and as a speculative conclusion, we offer a conjecture that the ‘real wages’ for Qing China's tiny proletariat, whose income included high proportions of wages in kind, have remained as elusive as they were when the real wage debate began a decade ago.