Organizational Learning in Cooperative Alliances: Some Case Studies in Biotechnology

Dedicated biotechnology firms (DBFs) have played an important role in commercializing biotechnology. They emerged first in the US and, after a 5-year time lag, they also appeared in Europe. Faced with long and costly product lead times, DBFs raised money by entering into research contracts, mainly with large chemical and pharmaceutical companies. These coopertive research alliances have not vanished as biotechnology has matured and are more in evidence today than they were in the early dasy of the commercialization of biotechnology. This paper investigates how and why large and small companies enter research collaborations, what they learn from working together, and the effects on European competitiveness.     

Research in managerial accounting: Learning from others' experiences

The purpose of this paper is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of three research methods employed in managerial accounting: experimental, survey and field research. We do this by drawing on the three papers published in this issue of the Journal. These three papers provide the reader with a 'behind the scenes' exposé on the problems, choices and decisions confronted by the researcher during the method phase of the empirical study. The complexities associated with method are rarely reported in published papers nor is there any explanation of why effort is devoted to particular methodological issues. It is, however, important for the novice researcher to recognise these choices and problems, both when selecting a particular method, and in designing a study. We attempt to critique these papers in terms of choice of method and also the extent to which each of the studies satisfies the three 'maxims' of scientific method, namely, construct validity, internal validity and external validity. Our review demonstrates the trade-offs that are necessarily made when designing a research study. There are, however, ways in which the effects of these trade-offs can be minimised and we provide guidance as to how the study design might be improved to achieve this.     

Audit fees and audit adjustments: evidence from Welsh local authorities

This paper exploits the availability of pre-audit financial statements to investigate the scale and incidence of audit adjustments and their impact on audit fees in Welsh local authorities. Adjustments to the politically-sensitive general fund, which represent a significant proportion of all adjustments, are associated with increased audit fees. The authors also found that audit adjustments on average result in more conservative reporting of the surplus/deficit and the balance on the general fund, with the number and value of downward adjustments exceeding those of upward movements.     

The market in freehold land, 1300–1509: the evidence of feet of fines

This article provides time series data on the medieval market in freehold land, including the changing social composition of freeholders, level of market activity, size and complexity of landholdings, and shifts in the market value of land. These are subjects hitherto largely ignored due, in part, to the disparate nature of the evidence. It argues that feet of fines, despite archival limitations, if employed with care and an understanding of the underlying changes in the common law of real property, are capable of providing quantifiable evidence spanning hundreds of years and comparable across large areas of England.     

The economic impact of a transient hazard on property values: The 1988 Pepcon explosion in Henderson,Nevada

This article investigates the effect of the May 1988 explosion of a chemical plant in Henderson, Nevada on residential property values (1) before the explosion (anticipation), (2) between the time of the explosion and an announcement of relocation, and (3) subsequent to an announcement in July 1988 that the plant would be rebuilt 100 miles away in Cedar City, Utah. This article uses the conventional hedonic model wherein the real prices of residential houses are related to the characteristics of the property (age, size, and amenities); the timing of the sale; and distance from the site of the explosion, rounded to the nearest mile. A quadratic specification of the model showed that the model was sensitive to the mean distance from the hazard. In a sample of properties throughout the Las Vegas Valley, property values decreased with distance from the explosion, indicating the presence of other hazards. The quadratic specification was stable only for properties within six miles of the explosion site, which included the communities of old Henderson (to the east) and the master planned community of Green Valley (to the west). A discontinuous specification of the model, in which distance was measured by a set of dummy variables (i.e., within two miles, within three miles, etc.) proved to be much more stable. Property within two miles of the hazard were depressed both before and after the explosion, although after the relocation announcement, property values rebounded to reflect the reduction in the number of hazardous plants. This article lends weight to the accumulating body of evidence that real estate markets do behave efficiently.     

The Policymaking Uses of Multitopic Household Survey Data: A Primer

Household surveys are a valuable tool for policymakers decidingamong policy options. This article illustrates the kinds ofissues typically addressed in these surveys and shows how detailedanalyses of the data can feed into the decisionmaking process.It outlines the general virtues and limitations of householdsurvey data and provides a brief sample of the kind of dataanalysis that is relevant to policymaking. It also discussesthe benefitcost ratios that are likely to apply to survey-basedpolicy analysis.