农户层次氮素投入影响因素实证分析——以华北平原冬小麦为例

本文以华北平原冬小麦为倒，利用中德合作教育项目一华北平原集约化作物生产体系中资源可持续利用的农户调查数据，构建双对数模型对农户层次氮肥投入的影响因素进行了研究。结果表明氮素价格、土壤潜在生产能力、种植业收入比重、农业劳动力年龄、种植规模和是否施用有机肥料等因素显著影响着农户冬小麦氮素投入量。在分析和讨论的基础上，提出了合理施用氮肥的政策建议。     

Audit Committee Regulation in Australia: How Far Have We Come?

This paper presents a synopsis of the major developments in corporate governance regulations and recommendations for Australian audit committees, categorised into three distinct periods of regulation from 1976 to 2004. Earlier Australian research on audit committee formation, composition and diligence is summarised and compared. The research is then extended by presenting the results of an empirical study of 188 of the top 300 ASX listed companies with a financial year end of 30 June 2004, the first year of the third period of regulation. The results indicate that compliance with corporate governance regulations and recommendations had improved substantially with respect to: audit committee formation; the number of audit committee members, non‐executive directors on the audit committee; financial expertise of audit committee members; and the frequency of audit committee meetings. However, the number of independent directors on audit committees was well below ASX best practice guidelines.     

In difficult times: influences of attitudes and expectations on training and redeployment opportunities in a hospital contraction programme

This article explores reasons behind the low take–up of training and redeployment opportunities in a three–year downsizing programme in a National Health Service (NHS) mental health hospital. It examines these from an interpretive paradigm, identifying social–psychological effects on barriers and motivation to training and redeployment. In reporting factors that inhibit the movement of staff from the hospital the findings indicate that the direction of even a well–planned and positively intentioned programme can be confounded by the responses of employees faced with an uncertain future. When drawing up restructuring programmes involving retraining and redeployment, managers need to take into account the anticipated profound reactions of those affected.     

Experiments on lotteries for shrouded and bundled goods: Investigating the economics of fukubukuro

Fukubukuro (or lucky bag) is a familiar institution in Japan and elsewhere in which the exact contents of a New Year sales item are hidden from the consumer before purchase. Motivated by the fukubukuro example and the lack of evidence on risk attitudes in lotteries involving goods, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which the outcomes are bundled or unbundled goods. The implied gains to a monopoly seller for marketing goods in lottery form rather than separately are only clearly positive for lotteries where there is a higher probability of obtaining the more highly valued good.     

Not for turning? Power,institutional ethos and the ethics of irreversibility

Adoption of an ‘ethics of reversibility’ can seem fashionably enlightened, even democratic, but appears less radical when issues of power are opened up. Adopting the motif of keeping, this paper sets its questioning of an on-going individuation of ethics within the context of an insidious reduction of institutional mores to business parlance. Keeping Derrida's ‘philosophy of reversals’ in view, the discussion resists the double bind of attempts to make higher-level decisions ever more ‘irreversible’ on the one hand, while devolving ethical responsibilities for outcomes downwards on the other. In criss-crossing, back and forth, on variations of these themes, the aim of the paper is to contest a division of moral labour in which the more powerful style themselves as ‘not for turning’, while those dispossessed of authority are left to vacillate within the market agendas of flexibility and transparency.     

Commonalities Between Added Value Ratios and Traditional Return on Capital Employed

This paper provides an empirical comparison between two versions of a new accounting ratio devised by Kay and Davis (1990a, 1990b) and Kay (1993) and the traditional capital employed (ROCE) ratio. The new measures, ‘added value on inputs employed’ (AVIE) and ‘added value on net output’ (AVNO), are both based on a version of residual income they label ‘added value’, but differ in choice of scaling variable. Empirical evidence is provided in this paper on AVIE and AVNO, including cross-sectional patterns, distributional properties, sensitivity to alternative specifications, and rank-ordering and serial-correlation performance compared with ROCE. AVIE and AVNO differ markedly from ROCE in terms of absolute levels and account for at most half of the latter's cross-sectional variation. On the other hand, the results indicate that both the rank orderings and rank predictions of the different measures are very similar. The distributional properties of the added value ratios are sensitive to choice of scaling variable, suggesting that considerable care has to be exercised in drawing conclusions from the absolute rankings of these measures. The new added value ratios provide signals about firm rankings that differ only to a limited degree from those rendered by the traditional ROCE ratio.     

Children in Zimbabwe after the long crisis: Situation analysis and policy issues

Children in Zimbabwe suffered badly during the long crisis from circa 1990 to 2008 as the economy and social services collapsed, under-five mortality, maternal mortality and malnutrition rose, the number of orphans increased 20-fold and thousands of children experienced psychosocial trauma. Recent household surveys in Zimbabwe show that most indicators of child welfare remain at or below where they were 25 years ago. Many effects of the crisis on children are long term, even permanent, including prenatal and early childhood malnutrition, orphanhood, traumas from witnessing or being victims of violence, and disrupted education. This article analyses the Government of Zimbabwe's two most recent national development plans in relation to children's needs and rights as expressed in major international declarations. Suggestions are made for focusing on re-establishing basic services to break the cycle of harm to children, build children's capacities and deal with past traumas.