UK Accountants' Perceptions of Research Journal Quality

The process of research quality assessment is now firmly established in UK universities. The quality of the journals in which academic papers are published is an important input to the assessment process. The relative quality of these journals is clearly difficult to establish in an objective manner. This paper contributes to the debate about relative quality by conducting a peer review. Eighty-eight UK accounting academics reported their degree of familiarity with, and perceptions of quality of, a total of 44 journals in the accounting and finance discipline. Accounting and Business Research and theBritish Accounting Review were the two most familiar academic journals. The most highly ranked journals were generally from the US.     

Financial liberalization and bank efficiency: a comparative analysis of India and Pakistan

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the evolution of the technical efficiency of commercial banks in India and Pakistan during 1988–1998, a period characterized by far-reaching changes in the banking industry brought about by financial liberalization. Data Envelopment Analysis is applied to two alternative input–output specifications to measure technical efficiency, and to decompose technical efficiency into its two components, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency. The consistency of the estimated efficiency scores are checked by examining their relationship with three traditional non-frontier measures of bank performance. In addition, the relationship between bank size and technical efficiency is examined. It is found that the overall technical efficiency of the banking industry of both countries improved gradually over the years, especially after 1995. Unlike public sector banks in India, public sector banks in Pakistan witnessed improvement in scale efficiency only. It is also found that banks are relatively more efficient in generating earning assets than in generating income. This is attributed to the presence of high non-performing loans. In addition, it is found that the gap between the pure technical efficiency of different size groups has declined over the years.     

Explaining peak inflation rates prior to disinflationary policy adjustments or what got us into this mess?

This study investigates, using annual data from 1974–2004, whether unionization rates, trade openness and central bank independence can help explain cross-national and inter-temporal variations in level of peak inflation prior to a disinflationary policy adjustment. I find that unionization is positively associated with both peak inflation rates whereas more independent central banks and trade openness are correlated with lower inflation levels. These results are robust to controlling for the high inflation decade of the 1970s and to using average (rather than peak) inflation as the explanatory variable.     

Inhibition of Brand Integration amid Changing Agency Structures

The all‐important focus upon brands and brand success is underpinned – of necessity – by well‐designed and well‐executed integrated marketing communications (IMC). This qualitative paper explores perceptions of IMC in relation to branding within senior UK‐based advertising and public relations agencies in terms of current perceptions, implementation, coordination, evaluation, barriers, budgetary issues, decision‐making; and managerial implications for the future of IMC. The paper describes the findings from a series of depth interviews with senior executives from leading advertising and public relations agencies. While the findings do indicate the presence of ongoing barriers to the adoption and usage of integrated solutions, these barriers are as much an issue to do with clients as with the agencies themselves. Nonetheless, there seems to be an issue concerned with remodelling working practices to accommodate new and seamless ways of working creatively across all promotional mix elements. Thus, while the principles of integrated marketing communications are sound, the actual mechanisms for application still need further work –in terms of both application and measurement, and the need for in‐depth research. We also endorse and reiterate oft‐repeated calls for research with client organizations.     

New development: The UK coalition government and the future of public sector pensions

This article presents a critical analysis of the contemporary attack on public sector occupational pensions in the UK. It traces the implications of the attack for future pensions policy on this issue.     

An empirical examination of perceived retail crowding,emotions, and retail outcomes

Crowded retail shopping conditions can result from many shoppers being present during a given time and at a given place, as well as from limited customer space owing to inadequate floor layout design and allocation of fixtures and merchandise on the floor. This study investigated the effects of the perception of human crowding and spatial crowding on consumer shopping behavior through mediation of emotions of pleasure, arousal, dominance, and a feeling of satisfaction in an international market. A store intercept survey was conducted on 554 hypermarket consumers in Taipei, Taiwan. The proposed structural relationships among perceived retail crowding, emotions, and retail outcomes were analyzed by using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling with Lisrel 8.54.

The results of the study demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed model in delineating the relationships of retail crowding-emotions-satisfaction-retail outcomes under actual retail environments. The study found that while human crowding perceived during shopping at a hypermarket store positively impacted shoppers' feelings rather than negatively, spatial crowding perceived due to high spatial density negatively impacted shoppers' positive emotions. The findings supported the view that retail crowding affected various shopping activities through influencing positive emotions and summary feelings of satisfaction. Managerial implications of the study were also discussed.     

Loss given default models incorporating macroeconomic variables for credit cards

Based on UK data for major retail credit cards, we build several models of Loss Given Default based on account level data, including Tobit, a decision tree model, a Beta and fractional logit transformation. We find that Ordinary Least Squares models with macroeconomic variables perform best for forecasting Loss Given Default at the account and portfolio levels on independent hold-out data sets. The inclusion of macroeconomic conditions in the model is important, since it provides a means to model Loss Given Default in downturn conditions, as required by Basel II, and enables stress testing. We find that bank interest rates and the unemployment level significantly affect LGD.     

ICT and economic development: comparing ASEAN member states

The impact of information and communications technology (ICT) on economic performance has been an interesting issue in economics. There are at least three key points that can be learnt from the previous literatures regarding ICT and country’s economic performance. First, more developed countries are expected to benefit greater than less developed countries. Second, the impact of ICT will depend on the intensity of ICT utilization. Third, the size and structure of ICT sector of country’s economy does matter. The main contribution of this paper is to evaluate those three points by conducting comparative analysis based on Input–output (I-O) Table from four ASEAN Member States, namely Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. ASEAN is used because it is one of the regional associations that have a large income gap among its members. The results suggest that more developed countries (which are measured by income per capita) do not always benefit greater than less developed countries from ICT development. The magnitude of ICT impact on the economy depends on the intensity of ICT utilization and the structure of ICT sector.