Repositioning fundraising in the 21st century

Albert Einstein noted ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result’.[Einstein, A., www.brainyquote.com ] Unfortunately, too many fundraisers continue to employ the same old methods even when the outcomes are disappointing. (Direct mail not working … add another mailing. Foundations not responding … up the number of proposals going out.) Because change is inevitable, those responsible for development decisions must understand the larger trends that are fuelling the paradigm shift in advancement strategies. This paper provides the background to understand the philanthropic, economic, societal and technological trends that have an impact on fundraising today. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Wage-fixing Behaviour of Managers in Australia

Researchers have conducted surveys of firms in an attempt to test various theories of wage rigidity. The survey of Australian firms reported in this paper found strong support for the view that hiring and training costs are important reasons why employers do not reduce wages, consistent with the surveys of Blinder and Choi (1990), Bewley (1995, 1999) and Kaufman (1984). All the surveys find pervasive support for the notion of fairness as an explanation for wage rigidity. Qualified support was found for the idea that fear of unemployment motivates worker effort.     

The Reliability of Reported Profits and Asset Values, 1890–1914: Case Studies from the British Coal Industry

Considering the vital importance of coal to the British economy before 1914, it is clear that accounting practices in the coal industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have received too little attention. There is a particular need for studies comparable to the work on railways and iron and steel which has examined conventions for accounting for capital expenditure. Such conventions create serious difficulties in the interpretation of reported profits and asset values for historians of any industry and may also have misled contemporaries. Evidence for the coal industry which has been examined up till now has indicated that standard practice comprised a modified form of the replacement accounting used by railway companies. This paper examines the extent to which this supposition is justified. It concentrates on the accounting policies of five important colliery companies and on the effects of these policies on profits and the book values of fixed assets. Two principal conclusions have emerged. The first is that, although replacement accounting was certainly widespread, accounting policies were more complex and more diverse than has hitherto been suggested. The second is that it is frequently impossible for the historian to determine whether balance sheet values are indicative of capital employed. Both profits and asset values were in most cases highly unreliable.     

Generating Equality? Equal Pay,Decentralization and the Electricity Supply Industry

Despite the existence of effective equal pay legislation in the UK since 1975 aimed at eradicating pay discrimination, women are still in receipt of only 79.5 per cent of the hourly earnings received by men (EOR 1994b). Whitehouse (1992) claims that a centralized collective bargaining model is more likely to lead to equality for women in the labour market than a liberalized individualistic model. The model was tested at an aggregated level for 13 OECD countries. This article provides a case study which charts a trade union claim for equal pay over a period often years (1984–94), which may be seen as an examination of the Whitehouse proposition at a disaggregated level. The paper highlights the barriers to equality bargaining and analyses the case study to identify the criteria necessary for achieving equality.     

The gear legacy: did gear fail or move South Africa forward in development?

This article describes the economic and development policy legacy of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) programme. It considers the arguments for and against Gear, and attempts to answer the question whether or not the programme has moved us forward in development. The economic legacy is described as dismal development outcomes but excellent macroeconomic policy outcomes. The policy legacy is described as continuing with Gear in some respects, but also incorporating a shift in development strategy that takes into account critique of Gear from the left and proposes a more active and direct role for the state in employment creation. This shift is seen as positive because the key challenge in the post‐Gear period is how to use the state more effectively to create jobs and provide income for the poor. The overview of the arguments for and against Gear finds most of the former to be thin. Moreover, it highlights conceptual flaws in the strategy that explain why it failed to produce the promised employment creation and poverty reduction by the end of the programming period (1996–2000). However, there is no clear answer to the question of whether or not Gear has failed – would an alternative policy have produced better outcomes in the period? Also, Gear has improved the private investment climate and produced better resource and institutional conditions for government to play a more active role in pushing future development. Whichever way it is argued, a key point that emerges is that development prospects will remain gloomy if the government reverts back to the strategy of relying largely on the private sector to reduce poverty, and fails to do more itself via effective income support programmes for the poor.     

Comparative responses to the energy crisis in different economic systems: An extensive analysis

In this paper we present an extensive analysis of the responses of different economic systems to the quadrupling of the world price of crude oil since October 1973. The results of government energy policies are determined by comparing the actual responses to the energy crisis in each country with those that would have occurred given market-clearing actions on the part of suppliers and demanders. The analysis indicates that the responses to the energy crisis were affected less by the type of economic system than by the magnitude of domestic crude-oil productive capacity.     

Implications of Stratified Sampling for Fair Lending Binary Logit Models

We examine the effect of sample design on estimation and inference for disparate treatment in binary logistic models used to assess for fair lending. Our Monte Carlo experiments provide information on how sample design affects efficiency (in terms of mean squared error) of estimation of the disparate treatment parameter and power of a test for statistical insignificance of this parameter. The sample design requires two decision levels: first, the degree of stratification of the loan applicants (Level I Decision) and secondly, given a Level I Decision, how to allocate the sample across strata (Level II Decision). We examine four Level I stratification strategies: no stratification (simple random sampling), exogenously stratifying loan cases by race, endogenously stratifying cases by loan outcome (denied or approved), and stratifying exogenously by race and endogenously by outcome. Then, we consider five Level II methods: proportional, balanced, and three designs based on applied studies. Our results strongly support the use of stratifying by both race and loan outcome coupled with a balanced sample design when interest is in estimation of, or testing for statistical significance of, the disparate treatment parameter.     

Creditor rights and the outcome model of dividends

Using a sample of 22,374 firms from 35 countries, we examine the role of creditor rights, shareholder rights, and corporate governance in determining corporate dividend policy. We find that, while all three variables play a significant role in determining both the likelihood and the dividend amount, the effect of country-level creditor rights dominate. In subsequent analysis, we show that the outcome model is most effective in countries with strong creditor rights. When creditor rights are weak, creditors demand, and firms consent to lower dividends. These findings show that creditors, and not shareholders, exert the greatest influence over corporate dividend policy.