The Intertemporal Relation Between the U.S. and Japanese Stock Markets

This paper finds a high correlation between the open to close returns for U.S. stocks in the previous trading day and the Japanese equity market performance in the current period. In contrast, the Japanese market has only a small impact on the U.S. return in the current period. High correlations among open to close returns are a violation of the efficient market hypothesis; however, in trading simulations, the excess profits in Japan vanish when transactions costs and transfer taxes are included.     

Information society: wireless ICTs’ transformative potential

This paper sets mobile technology and services against the backdrop of existing debates on ‘information’ and ‘post-industrial’ societies. This paper posits the suggestion that mobile technology has the potential to realise the information society aspirations of states in a way that information and communication technologies more generally have failed to do in recent years. Essentially, mobile services and the devices that enable access to them are becoming constitutive of the lives of users both in a work and a social dimension. This essential nature of the technology renders it different from on-line networking that has become a part of normal working environments in the developed world.The paper starts with a discussion on the meaning of the information society and post-industrialism (The coming of post-industrial society: a venture in social forecasting, Heinemann, London, 1974; The rise of the network society, Blackwell, Oxford, 2002; The wealth of information, Methuen, London, 1983) and considers criticisms (Inf. Commun. Soc. 3(2) (2000) 139; Theories of the information society, Routledge, London, p. 30) that they are unrealised constructs (in part because economies remain defined by manufacturing) and that the advocates’ primary definitions are meaningless. Moreover, in order to address the dangers of exclusion from the benefits of the technology utilisation, the paper considers the concept of ‘social exclusion’ in a bid to challenge policy-makers’ assertions that the information society—wireless or otherwise—can and will bridge the social divide. The paper concludes with a discussion on policy implications for the achievement of inclusivity and openness.     

The effects of zoning on population and employment density

This article examines zoning's impacts on population and employment density. It develops a model to explore the effects of zoning on the density of residential and nonresidential land use. Drawing on this model, density gradients that incorporate the effects of zoning are estimated for Greensboro, North Carolina. The model is used to simulate the effects of a change in restrictive-use residential zoning. The simulation shows that a 1 percent increase in the level of restrictive-use residential zoning across all neighborhoods in the city is associated with a 0.3 percent increase in gross population density and a 0.1 percent decline in net density (intensity). It suggests that restrictive-use zoning affects both the density and the intensity of residential land use through its effects on the value of residential land.     

The world bank in Africa: Historical reflections on the African present

This paper offers a historical commentary on the World Bank's influential report, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. A very broad perspective is adopted, partly to identify the main points of connection between historians and development economists, and partly because the Report, though widely commented on, has not been addressed directly by historians of Africa. The principal aim of the paper is to show how Africa's past bears upon its present by linking the economic history of the continent to its contemporary development problems. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part deals with some of the unstated assumptions underlying the Report. The second part focuses on the World Bank's assessment of the current “crisis” in Africa, and offers a long-run interpretation of the relationship between population, resource use, institutional change, and political incorporation. The paper concludes by drawing attention to the dangers of excessive specialization among experts, and by pressing the case for reuniting history and development economics.     

The intertemporal relation between expected returns and risk

This paper explores the time-series relation between expected returns and risk for a large cross section of industry and size/book-to-market portfolios. I use a bivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model to estimate a portfolio's conditional covariance with the market and then test whether the conditional covariance predicts time–variation in the portfolio's expected return. Restricting the slope to be the same across assets, the risk-return coefficient is highly significant with a risk–aversion coefficient (slope) between one and five. The results are robust to different portfolio formations, alternative GARCH specifications, additional state variables, and small sample biases. When conditional covariances are replaced by conditional betas, the risk premium on beta is estimated to be in the range of 3% to 5% per annum and is statistically significant.     

Effects of organizational process change on responsibility accounting and managers’ revelations of private knowledge

We report the results of a nine-year field study that examines how responsibility accounting (RA) is used to manage horizontal relationships among several responsibility center (RC) managers including those who work on committees or cross-functional teams. We find theory-consistent evidence that the goal-congruent design or redesign of accounting and participation practices in general, and of RA in particular, depends on the magnitude, scope, and speed of organizational process change. When there is a change in the magnitude, scope, and speed of organizational process change, we find that the measurability of RC managers’ financial performance can change, and we also find that using RA to manage RC boundaries is an important mechanism for achieving goal-congruent behavior and avoiding dysfunctional behavior. Moreover, we show that several accounting and participation practices (e.g., activity-based costing, open book accounting, project budgeting, cross-functional teams) support RC boundary management that involves framing or reframing RC boundaries so as to influence competitive or cooperative behavior among RC managers. Finally, this study contributes by introducing a new research method to the accounting literature that is effective in structuring and interpreting longitudinal field data in relation to theoretical expectations.     

Regional sustainability: How useful are current tools of sustainability assessment at the regional scale?

Sustainability assessment methods are primarily aimed at global, national or state scales. However, modelling sustainability at finer spatial scales, such as the region, is essential for understanding and achieving sustainability. Regions are emerging as an essential focus for sustainability researchers, natural resource managers and strategic planners working to develop and implement sustainability goals. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of current sustainability assessment methods - ecological footprint, wellbeing assessment, ecosystem health assessment, quality of life and natural resource availability - at the regional scale. Each of these assessment methods are tested using South East Queensland (SEQ) as a case study. It was selected because of its ecological and demographic diversity, its combination of coastal and land management issues, and its urban metropolitan and rural farm and non-farm communities. The applicability of each of these methods to regional assessment was examined using an evaluation criteria matrix, which describes the attributes of an effective method and the characteristics that make these methods useful for regional management and building community capacity to progress sustainability. We found that the methods tested failed to effectively measure progress toward sustainability at the regional scale, demonstrating the need for a new method for assessing regional sustainability.