Politics of Trade in the USA and in the Obama Administration: Implications for Asian Regionalism

Over the next four years, the Obama administration will face a series of strategic choices in forging policies to respond to a growing momentum for advances in Asian regional structures. Though faced with domestic political challenges; not least from within his own Democratic party – President Obama and his advisers will need to set a course for the reassertion of US leadership in constructing a trans-Pacific vision, through new US-based free trade agreements, signing on to existing agreements such as the P-4 (Singapore, New Zealand, Brunei, the Philippines), or consolidating existing free trade agreements among Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) nations. In pursuing this vision, the US should take advantage of the fact that the next three APEC leaders meetings are in Singapore (2009), Japan (2010), and the USA (2011); a sequence ripe for synergistic teamwork.     

Analysis of deviance and of social classes — the impact of methodological research

In an analysis of deviance and social classes, an original methodology is used as a means of progress in the theoretical domain, which seeks a resolution of the now traditional consensus vs. conflict debate by introducing two hitherto ignored aspects: (1) this debate cannot be clarified by reference to norms or values that are abstractly described, but only in relation to the legitimacy of the intervention of a particular social institution as the result of a particular problematic behavior; and (2) the comprehension of these phenomena and their social interpretation necessitates an understanding of their meaning and of the ideological configurations that are the framework in which these judgements of institutional legitimacy are made. Indeed, this second aspect constitutes the working hypothesis of the analysis, using multiple-choice questionnaire data (N=804) concerning the social representation of deviance which are analyzed by an original method of hierarchically ascending classification analysis, called cross-classification. This method, which crosses an automatic classification analysis of the individuals with a similar analysis of the variables, produces significant nodes within the data that determine and describe the five archetypes of social representation of deviance. These significant nodes or archetypes are then analyzed further with the application of a factorial correspondence analysis.     

Rewrites of an Expert System—Lessons Learned

One component of the 1986 Tax Law was to require taxpayers to file information returns on magnetic media if the quantity to be filed was sufficiently large. A waiver from this filing requirement was possible under hardship and other criteria, and could be obtained by filing a form with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Initially, the processing of waiver requests was accomplished manually by several relatively high-level analytical personnel. The IRS's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab) created an Expert System to automate the process. An initial prototype was developed in OPS5+, an AI language, and the system was used on all waiver requests for Forms 1099 for Tax Year 1987, demonstrating feasibility and capability. The system was expanded in the following year, and used on waiver requests for all form types. For Tax Year 1989 the system was rewritten in LEVEL5, so that it could be more easily maintained by in-house personnel. However, implementation problems forced a rapid rewrite, using CLIPPER, a dBase III+ compiler language. This version was subsequently used for all waiver requests for Tax Years 1989 and 1990. Presently, one clerical person can handle all of the waivers. This paper deals with the reasons and ramifications of this language-shell-language transition.     

On finite-time ruin probabilities for classical risk models

Abstract

Generally, the return of premiums without interest or with simple interest is provided for. It might, however, be worth while to notice that less complicated formulre are needed for the return of premiums with compound interest.     

Causality Between Corporate Social Performance and Financial Performance: Evidence from Canadian Firms

This study assesses the causal relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and financial performance (FP). We perform our empirical analyses on a sample of 179 publicly held Canadian firms and use the measures of CSP provided by Canadian Social Investment Database for the years 2004 and 2005. Using the “Granger causality” approach, we find no significant relationship between a composite measure of a firm’s CSP and FP, except for market returns. However, using individual measures of CSP, we find a robust significant negative impact of the environmental dimension of CSP and three measures of FP, namely return on assets, return on equity, and market returns. This latter finding is consistent, at least in the short run, with the trade-off hypothesis and, in part, with the negative synergy hypothesis which states that socially responsible firms experience lower profits and reduced shareholder wealth, which in turn limits the socially responsible investments.     

Two copy testing techniques: The cloze procedure and the cognitive complexity test

The theory behind two copy testing techniques—the cloze procedure and the cognitive complexity text—is reviewed; and three hypotheses are developed for testing. These two techniques work especially well when used together as they provide a way to match message properties with the audience's abilities. In a discriminant analysis setting, support is found for all three hypotheses, and a substantial portion of the variance in the criterion variable—advertising recall—is taken into account. The results of predictions to a validation sample are also encouraging.     

The regulation of audiovisual content: quotas and conflicting objectives

Governments use a range of instruments to influence television content. The paper finds that under plausible conditions, content measures ostensibly designed to increase the production of certain programs may, paradoxically, reduce the size of the audience watching them. As well, quotas seemingly intended to boost the audience of certain programs, may in fact reduce their production and lower the number of viewers of these programs.      

Budgetary governance and accountability in public sector organisations: An institutional and critical realism approach

This paper analyses the impact of the institutionalisation of governance and budgetary policies on the accountability of organisational actors from an institutional and critical realism perspective. The study extends the framework by Burns and Scapens (2000) to critical realism. Findings from field studies conducted in two public hospital districts in Finland show two institutions of budgetary governance: the political and the technical. Accountability practices depend on how the institutionalised policies have reduced or increased the gaps between the real, the actual and the empirical domains of reality of the organisational actors involved and the governance policy that prevails at a given domain of reality. The use of budgetary information as a tool of governance and accountability in the empirical field of the study cannot be taken for granted.     

Incentives and incomplete information

The problem of incentives for correct revelation in a collective decision model is presented as a game with incomplete information. Two approaches to incomplete information are used, a first where the individual beliefs are not introduced and a second where they are. In the first approach it is recalled that the mechanisms for which the solution to the incentive problem is in dominant strategies lead in general to a budgetary problem for the central agency. For these mechanisms a uniqueness property is demonstrated. In the second approach it is shown that if a compatibility condition is imposed on the individual beliefs and if a Bayesian solution is given to the incentive problem, then it is possible to avoid the budgetary problem.     

AN ASSESSMENT OF THE RISK AND RETURN OF FRENCH COMMON STOCKS

In this paper the relationship is examined between the average return and the risk of a sample of 144 French common stocks which traded continuously over the decade 1969–1979. Although it was found that a negative relationship existed between average return and systematic risk, sufficient evidence could not be gathered to reject the hypothesis that the pricing of French common stocks conforms to the Capital Asset Pricing Model. The nature and implications of the observed negative risk-return trade-off are discussed.