Optimal strategies for regional cultivar testing

In undertaking cultivar trials, the variability of the response of the cultivars to the different environments in which they are grown introduces the possibility of release errors and non-release errors in the decisions made on the basis of the trial results. In this article a model is developed that accounts for the economic costs of those errors as well as the costs of operating the trials, and enables the features of the optimal cultivar testing program to be identified. The model is illustrated by application to wheat cultivar trials in central and southern NSW.     

Resonance tropes in corporate philanthropy discourse

This paper explores corporate charitable giving disclosures in order to question the extent to which corporations can claim that their philanthropy activities are charitable at all. Exploration of these issues is carried out by means of a tropological analysis that focuses on the different linguistic tropes within the philanthropy disclosures of 52 companies, namely metaphor and synecdoche. The results reveal a number of complex and contradictory things. Primarily, the master metaphor of 'altruism' projected by the corporate disclosures is ideologically at odds with the more business case-oriented discourse that shapes the disclosures. This contradiction is put into starker contrast by the existence of a root metaphor, whereby the recipients of corporate philanthropy are presented as the 'deserving poor'. Synecdochal devices are present within the corporate disclosures, whereby employee initiatives that are independent of corporate strategies are used to confer attributes onto the disclosures that bolster the master metaphor of 'altruism'. As such, corporate philanthropy is presented by the paper as a structurally incoherent discourse and yet one that has implications for both extracting greater value from various societal groups and in defining, on behalf of civil society, what is a worthy cause.     

Corporate Financing Decisions: UK Survey Evidence

Abstract:  Despite theoretical developments in recent years, our understanding of corporate capital structure remains incomplete. Prior empirical research has been dominated by archival regression studies which are limited in their ability to fully reflect the diversity found in practice. The present paper reports on a comprehensive survey of corporate financing decision-making in UK listed companies. A key finding is that firms are heterogeneous in their capital structure policies. About half of the firms seek to maintain a target debt level, consistent with trade-off theory , but 60% claim to follow a financing hierarchy, consistent with pecking order theory . These two theories are not viewed by respondents as either mutually exclusive or exhaustive. Many of the theoretical determinants of debt levels are widely accepted by respondents, in particular the importance of interest tax shield, financial distress, agency costs and also, at least implicitly, information asymmetry. Results also indicate that cross-country institutional differences have a significant impact on financial decisions.     

Implementation of solutions to the problem of fair division when preferences are single-peaked

We consider the problem of fairly allocating an infinitely divisible commodity among a group of agents with single-peaked preferences. We address the issue of (Nash)-implementability of solutions to this problem. As the lack of monotonicity of preferences often causes solutions to violate no veto power, the classic Maskin-type theorems cannot be invoked. Instead, we show that more powerful theorems due to Danilov-Yamato and Sjöström can help settle implementation questions for most of the central fairness concepts, generally in the positive.     

Consistency and its converse: an introduction

This essay is a didactic introduction to the literature on the “consistency principle” and its “converse”. An allocation rule is consistent if for each problem in its domain of definition and each alternative that it chooses for it, then for the “reduced problem” obtained by imagining the departure of an arbitrary subgroup of the agents with their “components of the alternative” and reassessing the options open to the remaining agents, it chooses the restriction of the alternative to that subgroup. Converse consistency pertains to the opposite operation. It allows us to deduce that a rule chooses an alternative for a problem from the knowledge that for each two-agent subgroup, it chooses its restriction to the subgroup for the associated reduced problem this subgroup faces. We present two lemmas that have played a critical role in helping understand the implications of these properties in a great variety of models, the Elevator Lemma and the Bracing Lemma. We describe several applications. Finally, we illustrate the versatility of consistency and of its converse by means of a sample of characterizations based on them.     

An Information-Based Approach to Labeling Biotechnology Consumer Products

Using an economic framework this paper explores the need for labeling of biotechnological consumer products. In particular, we assess the impact of labeling on information problems faced by consumers and regulators. Using information analysis, we propose an approach to labeling biotechnology products that attempts to respect both the real nature of consumer information-processing capacities and approaches and the environment of uncertainty in which any regulatory policy for biotechnology will operate. We conclude that the fact of uncertainty on the scientific front and the nature of consumer concerns in this area gives rise to a need for some type of labeling. Using labels to convey substantive information, however, is likely to be of limited value to consumers. A comprehensive approach to information policy for consumers in this field should aim instead to use labeling requirements to harness the incentives of producers and other private entities to effectively convey to consumers what they want and need to know. We therefore recommend that governments require a simple alert label on biotechnology consumer goods that will prompt consumers to assess their information needs and producers or others to supply those needs. Government regulation in this scheme would consist of basic health and safety regulation and direct or indirect monitoring and regulation of the content of the information ultimately conveyed to consumers by producers and others.     

拥抱风险管理

尊敬的中国CFO们:首先祝大家新年快乐!目前,中国已经充分认识到管理会计的重要性,其范畴不仅包括财务会计,同时还包括公司财务管理、运营、技术、战略和领导力。它能使企业成为整合、竞争和商品化浪潮中的常青树,实现可持续价值创造和企业发展。当今世界经济快速变化,CFO们需要在战略和可持续发展领域发挥更多的作用。过去我们只是懂得精打细算的"数豆者",如今我们摇身一变成为助企业增值提效的"豆芽生