What's New for the Canton Fair?

The Canton Fair,one of the top trade fairs in China,has a long history that goes back over 50 years.New concerns lie ahead, however,as the senior management of the Canton Fair and the general public look for ways to innovate and improve the fair atmosphere. Though it has remained the top trade fair in the country throughout its history, the Canton Fair has never made any ad- justments or reform to its product mix and exhibition layout,or any other attempts to modernize.But some major reforms in recent years have helped push the Canton Fair to the next level.The long history and influence of the Canton Fair has on     

Book Reviews

Rail privatisation was a controversial, widely unpopular policy whose implementation was not inevitable. This article employs counterfactual history methodology to examine whether the move to rail privatisation in Britain might have failed. It places the privatisation proposals in context by examining opposition within the Conservative Party and British Rail. The paper then focuses on three key counterfactual questions, including the significance of New Labour's reversal of its commitment to renationalise rail under its ‘third way’ policy and the possible consequences had the move to privatise rail failed. Based on the historical evidence available, it concludes that the move to rail privatisation could have failed, and that performance would have been better had rail remained an integrated, nationalised industry.     

北方干旱与防旱保墒技术—对灌溉农业的反思

我国北方降水不足,存在着旱灾易于发生的自然条件。近些年来,黄河年年断流。许多地区地下水位下降,给片面依赖灌溉发展农业的指导思想敲响了警钟。北方地区的农业有近万年的历史,在漫长的历史时期中,我国人民主要是依靠传统的防旱保墒技术,而不是灌溉,来发展农业生产的。     

林业类上市公司生物资产计量属性探讨——以永安林业为例

介绍了生物资产计量属性的国际惯例和中国生物资产的计量属性,在对生物资产计量属性进行比较的基础上,指出公允价值计量属性谨慎选择;阐述了中国林业类上市公司已经具备采用公允价值进行计量的条件,并以永安林业为例进行论证。     

URBAN HISTORY AND THE FUTURE OF AUSTRALIAN CITIES

Urban growth is a major theme in economic development and a policy imperative for developed countries that seek to create sustainable cities. We argue that the past weighs heavily on the ability of societies to sustainably manage urban environments. The policy implications of urban history are revealed in comparisons of cities across times and between places. The special issue presents some of the best recent work on the economic and social history of Australian cities. We aim to encourage historians to incorporate urban variables into studies of historical processes and to persuade policymakers to consider historical trends in their analysis.     

On the foundation of agricultural policy research in the United States

This paper identifies three scientific research programs in agricultural economics. The farm management approach (1870-1933), the farm problem approach (1933-1982) and the domestic and global welfare approach (1982-). In respect to agricultural policy research two competitive research programs developed out of the farm crisis of the 1920s. One program argued for government intervention in agriculture. The other argued for stability in the general economy. The former program degenerated during the 1970s because of countervailing empirical evidence and a change in the understanding of positive economics. The latter program stayed progressive by adding the international dimension and by applying welfare economic analysis. Two other important factors influenced the development of agricultural policy. First, the unique institutional set up of the land grant system in which agricultural economics was founded as an applied science with a bias to help farmers. Second, the convergence of agricultural economics towards general economics that shifted the approach from applied to basic.     

Does the law and finance hypothesis pass the test of history?

For the body of work known as the law and finance literature, the development of financial markets and the concentration of ownership across countries is to a large extent the consequence of the legal system nations created or inherited decades or hundreds of years ago. Despite the seemingly historical nature of this explanation, most of the body of work supporting the law and finance hypothesis has been ahistorical. This paper summarises the business history literature and provides evidence on investor protection and financial development over the long run that challenges the main tenets of the law and finance literature.     

Managing the paradox of unwanted efficiency: The symbolic legitimation of the hypermarket format in Finland, 1960–1975

Abstract

Occasionally, organisations are forced to adopt new practices that are inconsistent with the expectations of their stakeholders. An immediate adoption of the practices would risk the organisation’s legitimacy, but as previous research has noted, the perceptions of organisational stakeholders can be managed through symbolic actions. In this article, I examine how actors from four retail organisations symbolically legitimated the adoption of the hypermarket format within their individual contexts by means of internal professional magazines. The analysis suggests that the organisations buttressed their legitimacy by reversing Meyer and Rowan’s idea of loose coupling – adopting the new practice but maintaining their formal appearances.