The rise of corporate governance in corporate control research

This article has two related tasks. First, we review the articles published in this Special Issue on Corporate Control, Mergers, and Acquisitions. These articles provide new evidence on several aspects of corporate control and governance including the value and performance effects of various ownership groups, the impact of internal governance structures, the effects of regulatory changes on specific industries and evidence on bidding strategies in takeovers. This analysis leads us to our second task – to examine the evolution of corporate control research, broadly defined. Our analysis shows a movement in research from mergers and acquisitions to a broader analysis of corporate governance, especially internal governance features. We suggest that there is a trend toward an increase in the relative importance of internal governance compared to discipline from the market from corporate control. This trend reflects an important change over the past several decades in the means through which the market disciplines corporate behavior.     

A Comparison of PIM Estimates with Direct Stock Information for Dwellings

One of the major sources of uncertainty in capital stock estimates stems from the use of the perpetual inventory method (PIM) in all the cases where direct stock information is not available. In the Danish capital stock estimates, it has been possible to dispense with the PIM as far as buildings are concerned. Instead, an administrative register of buildings is used together with a property register and the business register to produce an exhaustive enumeration of practically all buildings in the economy broken down by industry and sector. For the most important type of buildings, namely dwellings, the paper compares direct stock estimates derived by multiplying physical quantities (square meters) by the replacement prices per square meter with those that would result from applying the PIM to historical investment series. Dwellings are by far the most important non-financial assets in most developed economies.     

Determinants of Teenage Birth Rates as an Unpooled Sample

ABSTRACT Illinois teenage birth rates are estimated both as a pooled sample and also as an unpooled sample (under eighteen years old and eighteen to nineteen years old). The younger teens'are statistically significantly affected by the number of two-parent families in the county. The older teens'birth rates have statistically significant coefficients for three additional predictors–county education and income levels and the percent of children living in poverty. Variables that do not have a statistically significant relationship with either group's birth rates are population density and the unemployment rate. The proportion of white population was a statistically significant determinant for the younger teens'birth rate.     

Building for the future: housing-related sectors and the welsh economy

Since the establishment of the Welsh Assembly Government there has been more emphasis on indigenous enterprises in relation to economic development policy. However, the housing-related sector has received little attention. This paper¹ presents the results of research that has investigated this sector and its significance to the local economy. Whilst acknowledging the considerable data-related difficulties in this exercise, analysis of housing and housing-related functions (including construction, finance, legal services, management of housing stock) showed that the sector accounted for around 4.5% of Welsh employment, and had considerable potential for assisting in the future development of the regional economy.     

构建全国性市场体系的承诺

SEC(美国证券交易委员会)正在考虑关于市场架构的问题,我很高兴能够在这里与大家分享自己对这些重要问题的看法.如往常一样,我的发言仅仅代表个人观点,并不必然反映SEC或我的其他同事的意见.     

Reshaping internal labour markets in the National Health Service: new prospects for pay and training for lower skilled service workers?

This article considers how two new strategies for improving pay and skills development have been used in the UK National Health Service (NHS) to develop labour capacity and capability by stimulating the development of relatively coherent internal labour markets for workers at the lower end of the occupational hierarchy. Drawing on data from 13 NHS trusts, we scrutinise the implications of the new national pay system, Agenda for Change, for healthcare assistants and cleaners and find substantial one‐off improvements in pay for these groups as a direct result of the new national pay framework. However, the detailed case‐study data reveal there is considerable uncertainty regarding the extent, depth and durability of pay improvements. In particular, opportunities for pay progression in reward for acquisition of new skills and qualifications were more variable as a result of the stronger role of management choice and strategy at the organisational level in implementing the new national strategy for skills development, the Skills Escalator. Moreover, management strategy shaped the demand for, and distribution of, intermediate‐level skills (through new job design, for example), which was critical to the effectiveness of trusts in pulling lower grade employees up through an internal career trajectory.     

Clothes without an Emperor: Analysis of the preferential tariffs in ASEAN

This paper examines the current state of intra-ASEAN trade under the preferential regime of the AFTA. It partly addresses some data problems and employs a gravity model to arrive at alternative ways of gauging the importance of preferences in the absence of data on the actual utilisation of AFTA preferential tariffs. Our results show that although the range of products where AFTA might have an influence is limited, preferences seem to matter when the differential margin between the MFN and preferential tariff rates reaches a critical amount, allowing regional exporters to cover the costs of requesting preferences. However, at very high differential margins, the significance of AFTA preferences seems to wane. This indicates either the presence of non-tariff measures which prevent traders from exploiting the huge tariff discounts offered by the AFTA, and or, the propensity of ASEAN to extend high preferences on products where little or no intra-ASEAN trade takes place.     

VALUATIONS AND DYNAMIC CONVEX RISK MEASURES

This paper approaches the definition and properties of dynamic convex risk measures through the notion of a family of concave valuation operators satisfying certain simple and credible axioms. Exploring these in the simplest context of a finite time set and finite sample space, we find natural risk-transfer and time-consistency properties for a firm seeking to spread its risk across a group of subsidiaries.     

Why isn't Wales Richer? Economic change and GDP per capita

This paper examines the extent to which economic changes in Wales during the 1980s and early 1990s have impacted upon the main indicator of regional prosperity (GDP per head). The paper shows that the economic “successes” of Wales, in terms of inward investment attraction, infrastructure development and manufacturing growth, are yet to be translated into sustained improvements in relative GDP per capita. The general implications of the Welsh case for regional development strategy are examined in the conclusions.     

ADOPTING JAPANESE-STYLE MANUFACTURING METHODS: A TALE OF TWO (UK) FACTORIES*

Japanese manufacturing methods such as just-in-time production and total quality control are serving as a model of manufacturing organization which many UK manufacturers are currently emulating. This article describes the implementation of just-in-time production and its supporting practices in two factories owned by the same company. Empirical evidence demonstrates a profoundly political dimension to these innovations, requiring a significant rewriting of organizations’ political and cultural maps.