Segmental Disclosure Practice: Thirteen Years On

In an age of financial disclosure directed by professional standards, the changes in practice voluntarily undertaken by companies are sometimes difficult to detect. By focusing on a period prior to the introduction of SSAP 25, the segmental disclosure issue offers an opportunity to consider whether practice has voluntarily changed. An examination of the extent and quality of segmental disclosure, for a specific group of companies over an extended period, offers an indication of the need for a standard or further regulation. If it can be demonstrated that disclosure practice has improved under a primarily self-regulatory framework, the need for a standard like SSAP 25 may be questioned. The segmental disclosure practices of the same group of seventy companies are compared for the reporting years 1975–6 and 1988–9. Whilst an underlying improvement in respect to business activity disclosure is revealed, the same cannot be claimed for geographic segmental disclosure. Not only has the number of companies reporting profit by geographic segment declined but also the consistency with other aspects of the annual report has reduced.     

The adoption and use of information technology: a longitudinal study of a mature family firm

Through a longitudinal study of a mature family firm, this paper investigates the adoption and use of information technology in a family business. It is argued that the adoption and use of information technology is influenced by five key factors. These factors are discussed, leading to a presentation of a series of implications and conclusions.     

British Ethnic Minorities and Employment Training: Redressing or Extending Disadvantage?

The reasons which have been offered to explain the low labour market success encountered by ethnic minorities in Britain include their possible lack of motivation, lack of qualification and training opportunities, and discrimination in the labour market. Whilst discrimination as a contributory factor to labour market exclusion has been widely discussed in the literature, the efficacy of Government sponsored training schemes designed to equip ethnic minorities with skills which may improve their competitiveness and reduce their disadvantage has been subjected to less scrutiny. This article provides an evaluation of the role of Government sponsored employment training programmes in reducing ethnic minorities’ disadvantaged position in the labour market. It argues that training programmes designed to improve employment opportunities are failing members of the ethnic minority communities and are in some cases helping to extend their disadvantage. It identifies the reasons for the failure as (1) the constant changes in Government policies with the development of sometimes contradictory policies, and (2) the inefficiency and prejudice of the training and employing organisations which are involved in the process. The article concludes with an assessment of the consequences of continuing discrimination against ethnic minority communities.     

Co-integration and error-correction modelling of agricultural export supply in Cameroon

Estimates of factors influencing Cameroon^,s exports of cocoa, coffee and cotton are derived in a system of equations using the Engle-Granger and Johansen co-integration and error-correction representation procedures. Two co-integrating vectors involving cocoa and coffee exports as endogenous variables are identified in the system while tests for exogeneily of cotton exports are consistent with the independence of cotton from the other two commodities. These findings are corroborated by estimates of a restricted error-correction model which lead to acceptance of the hypothesis that cocoa and coffee exports are-indeed determined endogenously to the system and not linked to cotton exports. Statistical significance of the error-correction terms for cocoa and coffee validates the existence of an equilibrium relationship among the variables in each of these co-integrating vectors. The combined short run dynamic effect of lagged quantities of cocoa and coffee, export/domestic price ratio and GDP jointly explain changes in exports of cocoa whereas lagged quantities exported do not seem to have a significant short-run dynamic effect on changes in coffee exports.     

Ill‐Defined versus Precise Pre‐Play Communication in the Traveler's Dilemma

This article reports results from an experiment comparing the effects of vague versus precise pre‐play communication in a highly competitive two‐player game with conflicting interests. In the classic Traveler's Dilemma, non‐binding precise messages about intent of play are pure cheap talk. We conjecture that a form of imprecise pre‐play communication whereby subjects can submit ill‐defined messages may help foster cooperation because of their vagueness. Comparing behavior both across modes of communication and to a baseline case without communication, we find that cooperation is highest when players can communicate using precise numerical messages. When communication with ill‐defined messages is allowed, then conditional on receiving a message, subjects act more cooperatively than when no message is received. However, overall, the ability to exchange ill‐defined messages does not substantially improve cooperation.     

Consistent price systems and arbitrage opportunities of?the?second kind in models with transaction costs

In contrast with the classical models of frictionless financial markets, market models with proportional transaction costs, even satisfying usual no-arbitrage properties, may admit arbitrage opportunities of the second kind. This means that there are self-financing portfolios with initial endowments lying outside the solvency region but ending inside. Such a phenomenon was discovered by M. Rásonyi in the discrete-time framework. In this note, we consider a rather abstract continuous-time setting and prove necessary and sufficient conditions for a property which we call no free lunch of the second kind, NFL2. We provide a number of equivalent conditions elucidating, in particular, the financial meaning of the property B which appeared as an indispensable “technical” hypothesis in previous papers on hedging (superreplication) of contingent claims under transaction costs. We show that it is equivalent to another condition on the “richness” of the set of consistent price systems, close to the condition PCE introduced by Rásonyi. In the last section, we deduce the Rásonyi theorem from our general result by using specific features of discrete-time models.     

WAGNER'S LAW: AN ECONOMETRIC TEST FOR SOUTH AFRICA, 1960‐2006

The main objective for this paper is to test Wagner's law by analysing the causal relationships between real government expenditure and real income for South Africa for the period 1960‐2006. The paper tests the long‐run relationship between the two variables using the autoregressive distributive lag approach to cointegration suggested by Pesaran et al. We use the Granger non‐causality test procedure developed by Toda and Yamamoto, which uses a vector autoregression model to test for the causal link between the two. Evidence of cointegration is sufficient to establish a long‐run relationship between government expenditure and income. However, support for Wagner's law would require unidirectional causality from income to government expenditure. Therefore, cointegration should be seen as a necessary condition for Wagner's law, but not sufficient. This research does find a long‐run relationship between real per capita government expenditure and real per capita income. Results for the short‐run causality find bidirectional causality. On the basis of empirical results in this paper, one may tentatively conclude that Wagner's law finds no support in South Africa.     

French Cultural Decentralization and International Expansion.Towards a Geometrically Variable Interculturalism?

For a long time French local and regional authorities were largely excluded from debates on cultural policy, and even more so from international cultural exchanges. Their intervention in this second area, in its most conventional forms to its contemporary networks, occupies a special place in the present issues. Being sustained by large increases in local and national budgets for culture, such an evolution necessarily raised certain strategic issues and debates, which are discussed in the paper. The international element of local cultural policies has only recently appeared as a potential area for local strategy development. It can be seen as the result of the cultural generation of the 1980s, from the point of view of actors in both the public and professional domain. This paper examines the three following aspects: the forms taken by cultural decentralization in its main stages, through the conferral of negotiated powers; the modifications in centre-periphery relations brought about by this decentralization; and the emergence of an international exchange dynamic as a result of these first two processes.