The Future of Japanese Manufacturing in the UK

The expansion of Japanese FDI into the UK manufacturing sector during the 1980s and early 1990s gave rise to the debate on the Japanization of British industry. The paper argues that this debate was constructed from a Western perspective. It did not locate the strategies and structures of Japanese subsidiaries within the broader context of how Japanese multinational corporations were evolving in this period. The necessity to look at these issues from a more global perspective is reinforced by the changes which have occurred since the mid 1990s in the environment for Japanese multinationals. The global economy offers more choices to firms about their location as well as facing them with a more competitive environment. In the Japanese case, this is leading to a growing differentiation between standardized mass production (which can be located in Asia and Eastern Europe) and science–led sectors of industrial production (which necessitate location near to centres of research and development expertise in the USA and Europe). This means that Japanese firms are reconsidering the strategy and structure of their subsidiaries in the UK. Standardized mass production will only survive in the UK as long as costs can be pushed further down and productivity increased, both of which are difficult conditions to meet given possibilities elsewhere in the world for cheap mass production. The growing area of investment will be in science–based manufacturing, though here the UK will be competing against the USA and Germany for Japanese investment. Here, however, the organizational and management characteristics of Japanese subsidiaries will make the necessary connections with local managers and local networks of expertise difficult to achieve. Thus Japanese subsidiaries in the UK are in a period of prolonged uncertainty about their role in the future. These changes open up the necessity for a new agenda of research which goes beyond the Japanization approach and is concerned with the organization and management of Japanese multinationals in an era of global competition.     

A time series/cross section analysis of the determinants of Australian trading bank loan/deposit interest margins: 1962–1981

A theoretical model of the determination of trading bank interest margins, based on the hedging theory of interest margin determination, is tested on time series cross-section data of Australian trading banks. Generally, the results are consistent with that theory. That is, there exists a stable non-linear relationship between Australian trading bank net loan/deposit interest margins and measures of market power, degree of absolute risk aversion, and to interest rate uncertainty. Furthermore, the shift from business sector to personal sector loan and deposit business is associated with increased bank interest margins.     

Diversification,Fee Income,and Credit Union Risk

Australian credit unions (CUs) have introduced new fee generating activities, increased transaction fees on existing products, and diversified into residential mortgages. Using DeYoung and Roland’s degree of total leverage and other risk measures we find that more diversified CUs have lower risk and return. CUs that increase the revenue share of transaction fees (matched by a lower share of personal loan interest) increase risk and reduce returns while those that increase residential lending revenues reduce both risk and returns. There is also evidence of scale related economies with risk decreasing and returns increasing with CU size.JEL classification: G21Disclaimer: The views and opinions in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of APRA.     

Identifying lobbying strategies: An analysis of public responses to the Productivity Commission Inquiry into executive remuneration in Australia

This study investigates lobbying behaviour over the two phases of the 2009 Productivity Commission Inquiry into executive remuneration within Australia. Consistent with expectations, behaviours appeared related to preference for change, the costs of regulatory change relative to those of lobbying, and the need for reputational capital. Industry participants, and those from the Representative and Professional bodies emerge as key opponents. Industry presented in a conciliatory manner during the first phase, revealing a preference for the status quo, but then directly targeted specific recommendations of concern, notably the ‘two strike’ and ‘no vacancy’ rules in the second phase. Respondents from the Representative and Professional Bodies were broadly and consistently supportive of change and the Inquiry’s final recommendations. We also find that these recommendations largely align with the views of the Representative Bodies, but conflict with those expressed by Industry in their second phase submissions. Finally, we find no evidence to suggest the motivation behind Industry lobbying related to poor remuneration practices.     

中国劳动力市场就业机会的户籍歧视及其变化趋势

文章首先厘清了劳动力市场分割理论与歧视经济学的区别和联系,并将中国劳动力市场上就业机会的户籍不平等现象界定为以农民工平等就业权利受侵害为本质的经济歧视.其次,使用中国家庭收入调查(CHIP)2002年和2007年数据,运用多元logit模型考察了中国劳动力市场上就业机会的户籍歧视状况和变化趋势.实证分析结果显示:(1)与城镇职工相比,农民工在职业获得、行业进入和所有制部门进入三个维度上都遭受了明显的户籍歧视;(2)与2002年相比,2007年就业机会的户籍歧视呈现恶化趋势,显示了经济发展过程中就业机会分配的“负滴漏效应”;(3)农民工人力资本的就业机会回报显著低于城镇职工,这对农民工的人力资本投资决策可能会产生负向激励并导致“前市场歧视”的发生.最后,在理论和实证分析的基础上,文章提出了缓解就业机会户籍歧视的相关政策建议.     

The death of the deal: Are withdrawn acquisition deals informative of CEO quality?

To examine the market response to positive revelations of chief executive officer (CEO) quality, this study focuses on CEOs who withdraw acquisition bids when the price becomes increasingly expensive. Firms that withdrawal for price-related reasons earn higher withdrawal returns than firms that withdraw for other reasons. This relation is stronger when CEO uncertainty and discretion is high. CEOs unwilling to increase the offer price are less likely to be replaced and more likely to advance to a larger firm than a control group of CEOs. The finding that the market attaches value to CEO-specific information suggests that unobservable manager characteristics can meaningfully impact firm outcomes.     

The social value of risk-free government debt

Can eliminating the stock of government bonds reduce welfare? When the government must raise revenue to pay interest on its bonds, the social value of government debt hinges on whether the benefits from greater portfolio diversification outweigh the costs of the revenue-raising efforts. A positive stock of debt is optimal only if interest payments are financed by an inflation tax, agents are not too risk averse, there is a government budget deficit, and the economy is on the bad side of the Laffer curve. Welfare is higher on the good side of the Laffer curve without bonds.     

Standby Letters of Credit and Bank Default Risk

This paper examines the relationship between Australian banks' use of standby letters of credit, an off-balance sheet direct credit sub stitute, and default risk on bank liabilities. We find strong support for the sub-optimal investment (or under-investment) hypothesis. Riskier banks, defined as those with higher CD premiums, and those with higher proportions of long-maturity liabilities make greater use of SLCs than less risky banks. However, there is little evidence of a feed-back effect from SLCs to bank default risk     

Beyond irrationality and the ultras: some notes on female English rugby union fans and the ‘feminised’ sports crowd

In the Academy, female fandom is often conceived of in ways which consciously exclude sport, and women are often marginalised by research on sports fandom. There is also little convincing qualitative research on the experience of mainstream female sports spectators, despite competing claims about the meaning and nature of today’s alleged ‘feminised’ sports crowds. Much of the qualitative work which does exist in this field focuses on younger male soccer fans and pathologises, the experience of female spectators. Instead, in this paper we explore the experiences of mainstream female fans from a sport which is much under‐researched, English rugby union. Drawing on qualitative data from semi‐structured interviews with female rugby union fans from Leicester, we explore these women’s fan experiences in the context of claims about the recent ‘feminisation’ of the late‐modern sports crowd. We focus empirically on three key issues: the early sports encounters of female spectators and their possible links with fandom; changes in women’s access to leisure time and to spectator sport; and women’s shifting experiences of watching rugby union in the new ‘professional’ era of the game. We end with a call for more qualitative work on the changing experience of female sports fans and for more theoretical and empirical work on the supposed ‘feminised’ sporting cultures of late‐modernity.     

SEMI‐PARAMETRIC ESTIMATION OF PROGRAM IMPACTS ON DISPERSION OF POTENTIAL WAGES

We propose the use of instrumental variables and pairwise matching to identify the average treatment effect on variance in potential outcomes. We show that identifying and estimating program impact on dispersion of potential outcomes in an endogenous‐switching model is possible, without using the identification‐at‐infinity argument, if we impose semi‐parametric conditions or shape restrictions on the error structure. In the presence of a multi‐valued or continuously distributed instrument, we recommend the pairwise‐matching method under a set of symmetry conditions. Simulations and an empirical example show that the matching method is much more precise than the instrumental‐variable approach. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.