Rural traffic management: The Burrator Reservoir experiment

The introduction of traffic management schemes has been one response of the National Parks to the problem of ever-increasing car-borne visitors and the consequent damage caused to the rural environment. By reviewing these schemes and by determining and explaining attitudes towards one particular traffic management experiment, the paper aims to deduce lessons for future policy. The analysis, based on two visitor surveys, suggests that the likelihood of success is improved when schemes are integrated, containing both ‘carrot’ and ‘stick’ elements. Since public perceptions are also found to be pivotal to its success, appropriate marketing of a scheme is vital. The paper concludes, however, that to achieve the fundamental objective of greater accessibility with less mobility, a more wide-ranging marketing effort is required intended to engender a sea change in attitude towards both the car and public transport.     

Social Comparisons in Ultimatum Bargaining

Experiments are used to examine the effects of social comparisons in ultimatum bargaining. We inform responders about the average offer before they decide whether to accept or reject their specific offer. This significantly increases offers and offer‐specific rejection probabilities. For comparison, we consider another change in informational conditions: telling responders the total pie is $30—ex ante it was either $15 or $30—affects offers and rejection probabilities roughly as much. Our results are consistent with people’s dislike for deviations from the norm of equity but inconsistent with fairness theories, where people dislike income disparity between themselves and their referents.     

Relationship of Planning and Control Systems with Strategic Choices: A Closer Look

The study finds that relative to others, firms pursuing the Prospector-like strategy (high innovation) have lower financial results uncertainty, a more long-term orientation for decision making, and more decentralized control. As well, the tightness of budgetary control is found to be negatively correlated with financial results uncertainty. Thus, we are able to reproduce in our study the result that Prospector type firms have tighter budgetary control, which many have found puzzling previously, and point to the relation between strategy and financial results uncertainty as an explanation for the result.Based on a sample of large firms in Singapore, the study also finds the impact of the 1997–1998 Asian crisis is correlated with the intensity with which the Prospector-like strategy was pursued.     

Lies,damned lies and statistics: the accuracy of survey responses

That survey research is error prone is not a new idea and different varieties of non-sampling error have been investigated in the literature as well as consideration being given in many statistics textbooks to the issue of sampling error. The paper here considers research upon corporate environmental reporting. It compares information provided by corporate environmental reports with information that survey respondents claim their organization’s environmental report contains. This enables the accuracy of the claims to be assessed. Consideration is given to two different industries the Water industry and the Energy industry. Errors due to inaccurate reporting by survey respondents are shown to be relatively infrequent and respondents appear just about as likely to claim they report information that they do not, in fact, report as to fail to indicate that they report information that is, in fact, actually reported.     

今年中国贸易顺差增速料将放缓

2007年中国贸易顺差上升近50％，达到创纪录的2620亿美元，但在去年最后3个月，进口增速均超过了出口增速，表明存在争议的外汇储备大幅上升期可能正渐近结束。     

Debtor-in-possession financing

Several recent papers have documented the benefits of debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing in the restructuring of firms in Chapter 11. However, the view on benefits is not unanimous and some legal scholars have raised doubts about DIP financing's effects on debt-holders and the possibility of expropriative wealth transfers. In this paper we address this issue by analyzing both stock and bond price data for a comprehensive sample of DIP loans and find significant positive abnormal stock and bond returns at the announcement of DIP loans. Also, we do not find evidence of wealth transfers from junior to senior debt-holders. Further, we examine the DIP loan process in detail and we document important institutional features of DIP loans such as maturity, covenants, fees and interest charges. We find evidence of intense monitoring using covenants. We also find higher fees and charges associated with DIP loans. We argue that overall the results are consistent with the information processing role of financial intermediaries.