Bank Growth Choices and Changes in Market Performance

Changes in bank market performance are compared for banks that choose not to grow, to branch, bank acquire, product expand, or some combination. Using the change in market value‐to‐book value ratios, banks that include acquiring other banks as part of their growth strategy have significant positive changes in performance. Positive performance by bank acquirers is in contrast to many studies, but prior research has not reviewed other growth activities in a single model, nor used market‐based measures to review performance over longer time periods following bank expansion.     

Fallacies in the Stakeholding Debate

This paper reviews the logic underlying the fashionable stakeholding literature and finds it at variance with received economic theory. It concludes that many stakeholding views are flawed, particularly in regard to the rôle of profit which is seen as a constraint rather than an objective.     

Jointism and the Role of the Workplace Union in the auto-components Industry

This article is part of a case study history, from the British auto-components industry involving a changing workplace regime from the late 1970s through to the 1990s. Employing the concepts of 'dual commitment' and 'incorporation' we explore, partly through the voices of participants, the process of involvement in that regime. We consider the implications for how trade unions might respond to policies on 'jointism', and for management vis-a-vis the choices on union involvement or anti union strategies.     

Wage protection systems, segregation and gender pay inequalities: West Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain

This paper provides an empirical test of Rubery and Fagan's(1995) hypothesis that gender inequalities are influenced primarilyby the comprehensiveness of the overall wage protection systemin a country and by the extent of gender segregation. Genderdiscrimination in earnings is compared in West Germany, theNetherlands and Great Britain using 1989 ISSP data. Human capitalearnings functions for married males and married females areestimated. Discrimination is measured using standard decompositiontechniques. Earnings discrimination against females in the morecomprehensive systems was 37% in West Germany and 39% in theNetherlands, much less than the 61% found for the less comprehensivelyregulated Great Britain, the latter figure being higher thanprevious estimates using earlier data. Gender segregation isdemonstrated to have contributed to the relative magnitude ofdiscrimination in Great Britain.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Determinants of Interest Rates in Ghana

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the determinants of the bank lending rate in Ghana using annual time series data from 1970 to 2013. We found evidence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between the average lending rate charged by commercial banks and its determining factors. In the long run, bank lending rates in Ghana are positively influenced by nominal exchange rates and Bank of Ghana’s monetary policy rate but negatively with fiscal deficit, real GDP and inflation. We also find positive dependence of the bank lending rate on exchange rates, and the monetary policy rate both in the short and long run. Specifically, our findings reveal that the Bank of Ghana’s monetary policy rate and the exchange rate, by far, show strong contemporaneous effects on the average bank lending rate in Ghana.     

Gordon Tullock and Richard McKenzie. The New World of Economics.

The authors extend the literature on the efficacy of high school economics instruction in two directions. First, they assess how much economic knowledge that California students acquired in their compulsory high school course is retained on their entering college. Second, using as a control group some college students from the state of Washington, where there is no mandate for high school economics instruction, the authors evaluate the impact of California's high school economics mandate on students’ economic literacy when they enter college. The testing instrument is the Test of Economic Literacy (TEL).