Working-time reduction and employment: experiences in Europe and economic policy recommendations

The paper seeks to evaluate the evidence on the employment effectsof the collective working-time reductions in Europe over thepast 20 years. While theoretical analyses produce contradictoryassessments, most empirical studies show positive employmenteffects but take insufficient account of these conditions underwhich the reductions in working time were implemented. Theseconditions for the success of collective working-time reductionsinclude an active training policy designed to minimise skillshortages in the labour market, the modernisation of work organisation,wage increases in conjunction with productivity gains and amore equal income distribution.     

Allocations and Common Costs in Long-Run Investing and Pricing Decisions: An Historical Analysis

The extent to which allocated common costs should influence business decisions remains controversial in management accounting. In the finance and investment literature this issue is generally ignored or dismissed by appeals to the'incremental' principle. This article presents an historical analysis of allocations in long-run investing and pricing decisions. It is demonstrated that seminal figures in the development of both investment and price theory were conscious of the need for firms to cover common costs and generally favoured some form of allocation. The anti-allocationist position is shown to be of relatively recent origin and to have caused an inconsistency in the management accounting literature in the treatment of common costs. European costing theory is shown to have been consistently allocationist. Evidence of a return in the recent U.S. literature to the older Anglo-American, and continuing European, allocations tradition is presented.     

Another Look at the Cross-section of Expected Stock Returns

Our examination of the cross-section of expected returns reveals economically and statistically significant compensation (about 6 to 9 percent per annum) for beta risk when betas are estimated from time-series regressions of annual portfolio returns on the annual return on the equally weighted market index. The relation between book-to-market equity and returns is weaker and less consistent than that in Fama and French (1992). We conjecture that past book-to-market results using COMPUS-TAT data are affected by a selection bias and provide indirect evidence.     

Philadelphia obtains useful information from its customers about taste and odour quality.

Customers are sensitive to the flavour of water. Customers evaluate drinking water based on their expectations, on experiences with their usual drinking water and on experiences with alternative waters. The Philadelphia Water Department provides one example of success in developing a better understanding of customer perceptions and attitudes about tap water taste and odour. Philadelphia found that customers do communicate in ways that water utilities can understand. Water utilities can enhance that communication and collect useful data. In addition, water utilities can characterise their tap water flavour, track it for changes and correlate changes to customer complaints.     

Technological and financial approaches to risk management in agriculture: an integrated approach*

In the present paper, risk‐management problems where farmers manage risk both through production decisions and through the use of market‐based and informal risk‐management mechanisms are considered. It is shown that many of these problems share a common structure, and that a unified and informative treatment of a broad spectrum of risk‐management tools is possible within a cost‐minimisation framework, under minimal conditions on their objective functions. Fundamental results are derived that apply regardless of the producer's preference towards risks, using only the no‐arbitrage condition that agricultural producers never forego any opportunity to lower costs without lowering returns.     

Regime Shifts in Asian Equity and Real Estate Markets

This paper applies a new statistical technology for identifying regime shifts to analyze recent data on real estate and equity markets in eight developing Far Eastern countries in the 1992–1998 time period. We find that regime shifts in volatility occur in the summer of 1997; however, most of the regime shifts in returns occur in the spring of 1998. While the clustering of regime breaks does not seem to follow any obvious pattern, the country's exposure to trade and firm leverage are important. An analysis of Granger causality suggests that, in most cases, equity returns cause real estate returns but the converse is not true. We also find two-way causality in volatility, suggesting that a common factor drives volatility in these markets. Finally, we provide evidence that the regime shifts generally imply higher relative risk for real estate securities after the estimated breaks.     

Organochlorine and Mercury Residues in Young-of-the-Year Spottail Shiners from the Detroit River,Lake St. Clair,and Lake Erie

Young-of-the-year spottail shiners (Notropis hudsonius) were used as biomonitors to determine the spatial distribution (1982/83) and assess trend data for organochlorine and mercury residues. Significantly (p < 0.01) higher PCB residues were found in Detroit River spottail shiners than in collections from southwestern Lake St. Clair and northwestern Lake Erie. The highest PCB residues were found in the west bank collections from Michigan waters (912–2,997ng/g) compared to the mid-stream (96–290 ng/g) and east bank collections (153–316 ng/g). Chlordane residues were found to be elevated in all spottail shiner samples from urbanized areas. Octachlorostyrene and ∑ DDT residues were distributed uniformly within the study area, whereas mercury concentrations were found to be lower in spottail shiners from northwestern Lake Erie than in comparable samples from the Detroit River and southwestern Lake St. Clair. Residues for BHC, heptachlor, aldrin, and chlorinated benzenes were near their detection limits; mirex and chlorinated phenols were not detectable. Recent (1982/83) PCB residue levels in spottail shiners exceeded the IJC aquatic life objective (Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1978) at all the sites sampled, except at Pike Creek in Lake St. Clair. PCB residues in spottail shiners from Pike Creek, Big Creek, and Leamington have declined significantly (p < 0.01) since the mid-seventies. Mercury and chlordane residues have decreased in spottail shiner samples from Leamington, but have remained virtually unchanged at Big Creek and Pike Creek.     

Considering Aquacultural Externality in Coastal Land Allocation Decisions in India

Commercial aquaculture in India has come under attack for having caused negative agricultural and environmental impacts. This paper formulates an interactive model of non-renewable and renewable resources to characterize land allocations between aquaculture and agriculture in ecologically and economically sustainable fashion. Through an empirical application, various economic and policy circumstances that affect the optimal land allocation mix are evaluated. The aquaculture industry must address two economic effects: off-site negative effects on renewable food and other coastal resources, and on-site self-pollution of shrimp ponds. Current regulatory and land-use policies are inadequate to address these effects.