Cultural futures for thailand: An ethnographic enquiry

The author outlines an ethnographic and cultural approach developed during a study of Thailand's future-a study which necessitated different approaches from those commonly used in futures research in dealing with the developed world. The study was based on interviews with Thais currently living in California and shows widespread agreement among the interviewees, particularly on the possibility of large-scale violence in Thailand in the 1980s.     

Inherent risk: An investigation of auditors' judgments

The assessment of inherent risk is a judgment required of auditors by Statement on Auditing Standards 47 (Auditing Standards Board, AICPA, New York, 1983) that normatively affects the scope of work performed on audit engagements. This study explores the judgments of auditors concerning inherent risk in inventory. Four inherent risk factors were examined: turnover of the controller, financing pressure, the amount of complexity of overhead in inventory, and the quality of the personnel responsible for the inventory calculation. A human information processing approach employing ANOVA was utilized to determine the relative reliance on these factors in the inherent risk judgments of 65 practicing auditors. Correlation techniques were used to measure consensus, reliability, and self-insight.The results suggest that although all four inherent risk factors were important to auditors, quality of personnel was the most significant. Reliability was slightly lower than in previous research, but was still fairly high. Self-insight was moderate.     

Municipal Bond Demand Premiums and Bond Price Volatility: A Note

The behavior of different components of municipal bond yields may have a significant impact upon bond price behavior. Specifically, demand premiums created by banks may stabilize bond yields in some maturity ranges but not in others; for example, short-term municipals may be stabilized but not long-term. This research implies that bank demand behavior may create demand premiums that stabilize prices of short-term municipal bonds relative to those of Treasury bonds of like maturity. While this implication is inconsistent with the residual theory of bank demand, it is consistent with the tax-shield theory attributed to Hendershott and Koch [3, 4].     

Simulating alternative social security responses to the demographic transition

"This paper uses a perfect foresight life cycle simulation model to examine the dynamic economic effects of baby 'booms' and baby 'busts' as well as the interaction of such demographic changes with social security policy. Demographic change can have sizeable short and long-run effects on saving rates and factors returns." The geographic focus is on the United States. "The model predicts long-run improvement in welfare associated with a prolonged baby bust. This improvement holds even in the absence of accommodating social security policy. It reflects a long-run decline in the dependency ratio, with the reduction in dependent children per worker more than offsetting the increase in retirees per worker."     

Market structure and the pass-through of the federal funds rate

We study the effect of local market bank concentration on business loan originations and on the pass-through of the federal funds rate to business loan originations. Economic theory on the relationship between concentration and the pass-through of input prices to quantity (or price) is ambiguous. We find that more concentrated markets have lower business loan originations and experience smaller changes in business loan originations in response to changes in the federal funds rate. Our results support the idea that market concentration dampens quantity reactions to input price changes.     

Output and employment in a macro model with discrete transaction costs

The paper develops a macro model for determining output and employment when discrete transaction costs exist for paying wages and for purchasing commodities. Household labor supply is a function of an effective real wage, which modifies the apparent real wage to take account of the length of the payment period and the costs associated with buying and holding commodities. Firm labor demand is derived in a model where there are lumpy payroll costs associated with making wage payments. The behavior of households and firms is brought together in a market-clearing framework to determine the values of the real wage, employment and output, as well as the time intervals between wage payments and purchases of commodities. The effects of changes in the transaction and holding cost parameters are then examined by comparative-static techniques. An increase in any of these cost parameters turns out to reduce output and the amount of labor employed in production, but also tends to raise the amount of labor absorbed by the process of transacting. The tendency of transaction labor to move in the opposite direction from production labor implies that the net effects on total work are ambiguous.     

Recent developments in monetary theory

This paper surveys recent work in monetary theory, with primary emphasis on material that has appeared since the writing of Harry Johnson's 1962 survey. The discussion deals with the following topics: (1) the theory of money demand, with special attention to inventory approaches; (2) money, inflation and growth; (3) the welfare cost of inflation, the optimum quantity of money, and inflationary finance; (4) disequilibrium theory; (5) the general equilibrium approach to monetary theory; (6) the new microfoundations of money; and (7) rational expectations and the Phillips Curve.     

A simple template for pitching research

In this article, I propose a simple new research tool – a template designed for pitching research. The two‐page pitching template begins with four ‘preliminaries’: working title, research question, key papers and motivation. Following this is the core of the template based on a ‘3‐2‐1 countdown’, namely THREE elements – idea, data and tools; TWO questions – What's new? and So what?; and ONE bottom line – contribution. The template ends with ‘other’ considerations. Finance and accounting examples are given to illustrate application of the template.