THE COST OF WASHING CLOTHES: SOURCES OF VARIATION

This paper develops the national average cost of washing clothes by examining consumer research data on the frequencies of using various water temperature settings and laundry additives and by utilizing national surveys of laundry product prices. Variations in these costs are shown to be significantly affected by three variables: (1) costs increase with family size due to the higher number of loads washed, (2) costs increase in areas where phosphate detergents are not available due to an increased use of hot water and laundry additives and (3) costs increase in harder water areas due to an increased use of hot water and fabric softener. The average increased cost for energy and laundry additives per family due to the nonavailability of phosphate detergents exceeds $11.00 per year. In addition to this amount, increased wear on washing machine parts and fabrics from the use of carbonate-built detergents significantly increases the costs to consumers in nonphosphate areas.     

Effects of Multiple Clients on the Reliability of Audit Reports

This paper demonstrates the existence of two different kinds of externalities induced by an auditor servicing multiple clients at the same time. First, we show that the capital market price for a client can increase in the number of qualified reports that his auditor issues to his other clients, thus producing a stock price externality. Second, when the audit firm has limited wealth, an additional client can actually decrease the audit quality and increase the average likelihood of audit failure relative to a single‐client setting because of reporting externalities. Our analysis also demonstrates how requiring a more effective audit oversight mechanism can actually produce unintended consequences such as an increased likelihood of audit failures.     

Night watchman,extractive, or developmental states? Some evidence from late colonial south‐east Asia1

The article examines aspects of government policy in different parts of colonial south‐east Asia, and in nominally independent Siam (Thailand) in the first four decades of the twentieth century. The emphasis is on taxation and expenditure policies, and their implications for the development of infrastructure and also for the welfare of indigenous populations. Attention is also given to the impact of government regulation of both factor and product markets. On the basis of the empirical evidence, the article argues that the traditional view of the colonial state as a ‘night watchman’ was not applicable to most parts of south‐east Asia after 1900. Governments were increasingly involved in implementing policies that today would be considered developmental, including building infrastructure and improving access to secular education and modern health care for the indigenous populations. But given the resources that they had, or had the potential to mobilize, more could have been achieved.     

Abstracts/Résumés

We investigate how private information and monitoring affect the role of accounting quality in reducing the investment–cash flow sensitivity. We argue that access to private information and direct restrictions on investments are likely to affect the extent to which accounting quality reduces financing constraints. Our results suggest that, for financially constrained firms, banks’ access to private information decreases the value of accounting quality. We further find that, for both financially constrained and unconstrained firms, covenants directly restricting capital expenditures also mitigate the importance of accounting quality. Our results suggest that, when information asymmetry problems are likely to be the largest, accounting quality is most important. However, the importance of accounting quality is mitigated if outside capital suppliers have access to private information and is eliminated if they impose contractual restrictions on investment. We also provide evidence that banks’ access to private information reduces the cash flow sensitivity of cash and mitigates the importance of accounting quality in reducing this sensitivity. This additional evidence suggests that our investment–cash flow sensitivity results are not driven by measurement error of the investment opportunity set.     

Factors influencing the use of microwave ovens and video cassette recorders

The purpose of this study was to examine ownership of microwave ovens and video cassette recorders (VCRs) and factors influencing their use. Data were collected from 148 consumers who participated in an in-depth personal interview. For both microwave ovens and VCRs, ownership rates of the sample exceeded that of the general population. Five categories of microwave oven use were examined: use of the oven to heat water or leftovers, prepare convenience foods, prepare foods from scratch, use of alternative power levels and use of programmable features. Three categories of VCR use were examined: watch movies, tape shows to watch later and programming the VCR to record while no one is present. As the complexity of use increased, fewer respondents performed that task often. Use of microwave ovens was influenced by the innovation index score, presence of children, gender, age and education. Use of VCRs was associated with the innovation index score and age.     

The emergence of a private clientele for banks in the early eighteenth century: Hoare's Bank and some women customers1

The records of Hoare's Bank and the correspondence of six of its women customers show how these women started to use the new banking services both for transferring money and for trading in the stock market. It is clear that alongside their use of the new facilities, older systems of money transfer remained important for customers. Much of the business of the bank and its customers, including their ventures into the stock market, took place within groups of people united by kinship, religion, and politics.     

Deliveries on Commodity Futures Contracts

Deliveries on futures contracts are widely thought to be relatively insignificant in amount; indeed sizeable deliveries are taken to indicate problems in a futures market. In fact, deliveries on five of the largest, physical delivery, futures markets in the US average approximately 10 per cent of the maximum open interest in each delivery month. Analysis also demonstrated the value of the timing and location options often provided by contract specifications. One implication is that measures of market performance like hedging effectiveness are sensitive to the imbedded options' effects on prices