UK Executive Bonuses and Transparency — A Research Note

High levels of executive pay in the USA and the UK have attracted journalistic and academic criticism to the effect that they constitute rent extraction by self‐interested executives rather than rewards for raising shareholder returns. The focus of most criticism has been on salary, severance payments and various long‐term incentives (particularly share options). However, executive bonuses have attracted little attention and have been only lightly regulated. This raises important questions. Has lighter regulation been associated with significant levels of rent extraction through bonuses, that is, a weak relation between bonus pay and shareholder returns? Have more transparent performance conditions attached to bonuses strengthened the relation, making rent extraction more difficult, or have they acted as camouflage for rent extraction, associated with higher bonus pay but lower pay‐performance responsiveness? Are measures of CEO power associated with larger bonuses? This empirical note provides the first, preliminary answers to these questions.     

Ethnic-immigrants in founding teams: Effects on prospector strategy and performance in new Internet ventures

We investigated differences in strategy and performance between new Internet ventures with ethnic-immigrant members in the founding team and a matched set of Internet ventures with non-ethnic-non-immigrant team members. Results showed that new ventures with an ethnic-immigrant presence in the founding teams tended to pursue a more aggressive prospector strategy than those with non-ethnic-non-immigrant founding team members. Still, performance of the two groups of ventures was comparable. However, the positive effects of ethnic-immigrant presence on founding teams depended on team size and average age of the founding team members.     

Hospitality education in Greece: the supply of training on Rhodes

Education and training systems in Greece as a source of supply of skilled labour to the hotel industry over the years are causing some concern. With particular reference to the island of Rhodes, this article attempts to identify problems related to the programmes available and measures that might be taken to solve them. The involvement of government as a formulator of policy and its liaison with educational bodies, local and national, extant and proposed, is discussed with a view to improving and widening the system for the future benefit of the hospitality industry in Greece in general and the island in particular.     

Developing a performance measurement framework to enhance the impact orientation of the Food Research Institute, Ghana

Research institutions in Ghana are facing various challenges. It is the contention that viable research and development institutions are needed for achieving sustainable change in areas of national importance. A key aspect of institutional viability is strong performance management. This implies clear and workable approaches to performance measurement. This paper looks at the initial experiences in a collaborative effort to develop a performance measurement framework for the Food Research Institute (FRI) and the application of the Balanced Score Card (BSC) at institutional level. The process of diagnosing and analysing institutional monitoring and evaluation capacity and systems is described using a mix of diagnostic tools. Stages in applying the BSC approach are documented and the added value of the scorecard perspectives in highlighting focal areas for performance measurement and management within FRI. These are placed in the context of ongoing changes in the external environment posing both threats and opportunities. Changes implied by the introduction of the concept are discussed in the context of current constraints and the way forward is mapped out in terms of enhancing FRIs' impact orientation through the application of improved performance measurement and management.     

Uncertainty,Learning and International Environmental Policy Coordination

In this paper we construct a simple model of global warming which captures a number of key features of the global warming problem: (i) environmental damages are related to the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; (ii) the global commons nature of the problem means that these are strategic interactions between the emissions policies of the governments of individual nation states; (iii) there is uncertainty about the extent of the future damages that will be incurred by each country from any given level of concentration of greenhouse gases but there is the possibility that at a future date better information about the true extent of environmental damages may become available; an important aspect of the problem is the extent to which damages in different countries may be correlated. In the first part of the paper we consider a simple model with two symmetric countries and show that the value of perfect information is an increasing function of the correlation between damages in the two countries in both the cooperative and non-cooperative equilibria. However, while the value of perfect information is always non-negative in the cooperative equilibrium, in the non-cooperative equilibrium there is a critical value of the correlation coefficient below which the value of perfect information will be negative. In the second part of the paper we construct an empirical model of global warming distinguishing between OECD and non-OECD countries and show that in the non-cooperative equilibrium the value of perfect information for OECD countries is negative when the correlation coefficient between environmental damages for OECD and non-OECD countries is negative. The implications of these results for international agreements are discussed.     

HOUSE PRICES AND THE ECONOMY

UK house prices more than doubled from 1985 until 1989, with house price inflation over the previous year peaking at 34 per cent in the fourth quarter of 1988. The ratio of house prices to average incomes reached levels which surpassed even those experienced during the 1972-73 house price boom. This sharp increase in housing wealth has been a major factor in the fall in the savings ratio over the past three years. This forecast release examines the prospects for future house price movements, discusses the sources of the recent house price boom and finally considers the possible impact on consumer expenditure.     

State promotion of high-definition television

Governments have used a number of mechanisms to support research and production in domestic industries that are considered strategic. In recent years the Japanese system of administrative guidance and support for pre-competitive research joint ventures has arguabh proved the most successul High-dgfnition teleuislon ( H D V provides an interesting new case study in government support for high-tech industries. Wzile the failure of the EC's venture in this jeld is perhaps unsurprising, the MUSE pryect in Japan has suffered a similar fate. Success in HDTV har been achieved by the US government's novel use ofpre-competitive contests in which domestic and overseas companies are free to form consortia and to arrange side-payments which share out the winning 'prize'. This innovation in the state's promotion of innovation may haue wider applications, though its repeated use could inhibit research by individual companies able tojee-ride on the contest winners.     

An Exploration of the Conditional Timing Performance of UK Unit Trusts

Abstract:  We examine the conditional market timing performance of UK unit trusts between January 1988 and December 2002. We find no evidence of superior conditional market timing performance by UK unit trusts either across different portfolios of trusts or by individual trusts. We also find that benchmark investing is significant for UK unit trusts and trusts have high numerical risk aversion to deviations from the benchmark. Our findings suggest that UK trusts act like benchmark investors.