Differences in the Cost of Mortgage Credit Implications for Discrimination

This paper estimates the mortgage interest rate differences paid by Asian, Hispanic, and African–American borrowers to a national home mortgage lender in the years 1988–1989. Controlling for differences in market rates, rate lock protection, and borrower risk factors, conventional loan interest rates are almost perfectly race-neutral. The single deviation from race-neutrality is that when interest rates fall during the borrower's rate-lock period, only African–American borrowers are unable to capture a share of this decline. Government (FHA and VA) credit models show small premia paid by African–American borrowers of about $1.80 per month on average. In government lending, Hispanic borrowers alone are unable to capture rate declines occurring during the borrower's rate-lock period.     

Day-of-the-Week Autocorrelations, Cross-Autocorrelations, and the Weekend Phenomenon

This study examines whether autocorrelations or cross-autocorrelations are more closely associated with the weekend phenomenon. Our results show a significant day-of-the-week pattern in autocorrelations associated with the weekend phenomenon. However, we find no marginal influence of a day-of-the-week pattern in cross-autocorrelations on the weekend phenomenon.     

Causality effects in return volatility measures with random times

We provide a structural approach to identify instantaneous causality effects between durations and stock price volatility. So far, in the literature, instantaneous causality effects have either been excluded or cannot be identified separately from Granger type causality effects. By giving explicit moment conditions for observed returns over (random) duration intervals, we are able to identify an instantaneous causality effect. The documented causality effect has significant impact on inference for tick-by-tick data. We find that instantaneous volatility forecasts for, e.g., IBM stock returns must be decreased by as much as 40% when not having seen the next quote change before its (conditionally) median time. Also, instantaneous volatilities are found to be much higher than indicated by standard volatility assessment procedures using tick-by-tick data. For IBM, a naive assessment of spot volatility based on observed returns between quote changes would only account for 60% of the actual volatility. For less liquidly traded stocks at NYSE this effect is even stronger.     

Efficiency Gains Under Exchange-Rate Emission Trading

In the case of emission of non-uniformly dispersed pollutants such as SO2 the negative effects depend on the location of the sources. A unit increase at one source must be compensated by either a larger or smaller reduction at another source to keep the negative effects at the same level. Emission trading between countries is possible under the Second Sulphur Protocol. Exchange rate trading and third party problems are studied within a simultaneous model facilitating impositions of various environmental constraints. Simulations based on the negotiated emission quotas are offered. Results indicate potential cost savings of 19%.     

Firm and Industry Effects of Advertising Accountancy Services

This article takes up the theme of the growing importance of the need to market financial and professional services by an examination of the case of accountancy services. Recent relaxations on the advertising of accountancy service call for an examitration of the appropriate marketing strategy for accounting firms. Discussion in the article indicates that firm size will have an important influence on the appropriateness of advertising and the form that it fakes. Advertising should form part of an integrated marketing strategy and not be seduced by the relaxation of the controls into focusing attention solely on this one aspect of marketing. As regards industry effects, advertising may be seen to reinforce concentration in the provision of both audit and particrtlarly non-audit services. There are benefits to smaller firms, however, through the use of advertising to emphasise specialist skills. In terms of conduct, advertising may help build up a barrier to entry into the provision of certain services, but is unlikely to replace price competition for the capture of audit clients as a key to the provision of non-audit services.     

The Impact of Regulation on the Strategy and Structure of Building Societies

A new Building Societies Act was passed in July 1986, radically changing the regulatory framework governing societies which had remained in force since 1962. The provisions of the Act allow societies to move into areas of activity from which they have previously been prohibited. At the same time that legislation was being passed specifically relating to building societies, the whole of the personal financial services market was experiencing what is generally seen as a revolution. Hence societies find themselves at a development crossroads at a time of great uncertainty. Although there has been much informed and some speculative comment, there has hitherto been little attempt at quantifying the likely future directions that building societies will take. This article seeks to remedy this situation by drawing upon the results of two surveys in which senior building society executives and their counterparts in other financial institutions were invited to give their views on the trends in personal financial services provision over the next five years.     

Cow-calf profitability and leptin genotyping

Profitability of cow-calf production is determined largely by market prices, calf weaning weights, and cow productive life. While producers individually have no effect on prices, weaning weights and productive life have genetic influences and hence can be altered by selection programs implemented by producers. We investigate the impact of a mutation in the leptin gene (exon 2; single nucleotide polymorphism [SNP] 305) on cow-calf profitability. Prior research shows that this mutation has effects on performance and traits of fed cattle and milk production in dairy cows. Using data from a teaching-research herd, we find that it is also associated with calf weaning weights and cow productive life. A bio-economic stochastic simulation demonstrates that the mutation has statistically positive impacts on profits, suggesting that producers can profitably make use of this information.     

Accounting for Foucault

Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality has been central to critical accounting research for two decades, a centrality that has placed systems of calculation as the starting point of discussions of the state, the firm and the market. We begin by outlining the development of governmentality in Foucault's own work. Despite the rich, productive nature of the concept, Foucault was careful to define governmentality as broadly and loosely as possible, the better to convey its open-endedness. The second section considers the introduction of Foucault to accounting research. The combination of Foucault and accounting history is not at all obvious, but became possible because a series of important contextual studies demonstrated that accounting history had to consider both the historicity of the profession and that its practices were vital in constructing measures of organisational performance, not simply uncovering previously obscure or hidden social realities. Moreover, accounting history studies the production of targets and measures of progress towards utility and welfare, processes that are not reducible to the firm or even to economic calculation. Our third section outlines the genesis of the ‘London School of governmentality’ and the main strands of their theoretical contribution. Finally, we examine the governmentalists’ analysis of corporate restructuring and the introduction of new production organisation by Caterpillar. Our aim is to use the Caterpillar case as the vehicle for a broader consideration of governmentality, strategy and the enterprise.