Editorial: The long Road to Publishing: A User-friendly Exposé

This paper describes the 5 year adjustment process followed in one university when formative objective test (OT)-based assessment was introduced into a second level course in order to support the student-centred use of a proprietary CAL package. It then compares the performance and background characteristics of students on two of those years. It finds the OTs identify a different ranking among the students compared to traditional essay-based assessment, that learning styles have an impact upon performance on OTs, finds evidence to suggest that students with low levels of learning styles may be disadvantaged when faced with a need to change their approach to learning and concludes that any explanatory study of student performance should includelearning styles as an independent variable.     

An Economic and Policy Analysis of Australian Export Concession Schemes

This paper examines the relationship between the implementation of industry policy instruments known as export concession schemes and the growth in Australian value-added exports.     

Case Study: Energy Industry Economic Impacts from Ohio River Transportation Disruption

Recent history is full of water transport disruption events that have had significant economic effects on the waterside industries. Such disruptions may be either natural or man-made disasters or planned outages on the river's lock and dam structures. To assess coal-based economic impacts for the Ohio River Basin, we developed a network flow model to represent waterside coal-fired power plants situated along the Ohio River, their respective coal supplying mines, and the various transportation modes that connect them. We show that significant transportation-centric insights can be derived by using only commonly available spreadsheet-based analysis tools, open-source information systems, and web-based geographic tools.     

Deposit Insurance, Capital Regulations, and Financial Contagion in Multinational Banks

Abstract:  Banking sector globalization has caused an expansion in foreign-owned bank assets. In this paper we analyse the effects of a MNB's liability structure upon its investment in a foreign country. We develop a model in which capital adequacy requirements introduce some deliberate underinvestment which counters deposit insurance-induced overinvestment. Diversification is unattractive with fixed bank capital requirements, because it reduces the expected value of the deposit insurance net. This effect applies in multinational banks (MNBs), where shocks to the home country economy alter the value of the deposit insurance net and hence affect overseas lending incentives. Thus, MNBs act as a channel for financial contagion. We discuss the policy implications of our results.     

Motives underlying the method of payment by UK acquirers: the influence of goodwill

The treatment of goodwill in the UK has been the subject of a recent contentious Financial Reporting Standard, FRS 10. It is shown that goodwill write-off considerations appear to have an influence on the form of payment used in the acquisition, and that this influence is associated with the relative portion of the acquirer's net worth which is available for write-offs and the ratio of goodwill to target asset value. These findings are robust to controlling for factors shown to have influenced the choice of acquisition financing by Martin (1996), and to additional controls for any over-valuation of equity. The result that the accounting treatment of goodwill is associated with the financing decision in an acquisition is one that may have important policy implications for UK accounting.     

The frequency of monetary compensation for salesmen

Sales managers have recognized that money is the primary means for motivating salespeople. Although much has been written about compensation plans, the focus of these efforts has been on objectives, type of plan, and size of reward. Little emphasis, however, has been directed to the frequency with which salespeople actually receive compensation. Research from nonmanagerial disciplines suggests the use of different schedules of compensation may positively affect sales-force motivation. The article outlines alternative compensation schedules and discusses the potential implications on sales-force productivity.     

An analysis of the impact of the first phase of South Africa's motor industry development programme (midp), 1995–2000

The South African motor vehicle industry is an important branch of the local manufacturing sector, contributing significantly to manufacturing value added and employment. Over the last decade, the local industry has undergone a series of policy reforms, and in recent years has increasingly been exposed to globalisation. This article reviews the role of government policy in shaping the industry, and examines the impact of the first phase of the Motor Industry Development Programme on the industry for the period 1995–2000 in respect of domestic production, automotive industry employment, export performance and the automotive trade balance. The article concludes that even though the industry registered strong export growth that contributed to improving the automotive trade deficit, it was deficient in sustaining domestic production and employment levels. The imminent challenge for the local industry's development is to maintain its export growth trajectory in the long term in the absence of costly government protective incentive mechanisms.     

Conventional arbitration in the professional footballers’ labour market: an assessment of the FLAC experience

This article describes the operations of the Football League Appeals Committee in determining ‘compensation’ fees for disputed transfers of ‘end of contract’ football players, and examines its settlements with respect to ‘case facts’ and ‘final offers’. The FLAC system has been generally viewed as fair in principle and its retention, in a post-Bosman regime, should ensure the continuation of an interesting context in which to examine arbitration behaviour.     

Using a Bootstrap to Measure Optimum Mixed-Asset Portfolio Composition:

Liang, Myer and Webb (1996) have offered bootstrap simulation as a tool for quantifying the uncertainty in the optimum composition of portfolios. Unfortunately, the confidence intervals produced were so large, they were unable to provide any new insight to the question, “How Much in Real Estate?”. In this comment, adjustments have been made to the methodology they proposed and as a result have produced findings which lead to very different conclusions. More specifically, the results suggest that investors with a low risk preference should hold very little real estate.     

Alternative Input-Output Matrix Updating Formulations

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in biproportional adjustment methods for updating and interpreting change in matrix representations of regional structures, most commonly input-output accounts. Although the biproportional method, commonly called the RAS technique in the input-output literature, has been shown to have a number of theoretically appealing properties, various alternatives do exist. In this paper, we develop and empirically assess a number of alternatives, comparing performance and examining the attributes of these adjustment methods. Two of these are sign-preserving updating methods for use when tables contain both positive and negative entries. One of these is shown to generate less information gain than does a generalized RAS method that Junius & Oosterhaven (2003) formulated to deal with matrices with both positive and negative values. Overall, while the RAS method continues to be commonly used and its choice is often rational, alternative methods can perform as well or better along certain dimensions and in certain contexts.