Test of the MBA knowledge and skills transfer

In view of the growing popularity of the MBA degree as a management development tool, there is a need to examine knowledge and skills transfer among MBA graduates. This study then developed and tested a parsimonious model of perceived transfer of knowledge and skills of MBA graduates to the job. Respondents were those who had completed part-time MBA programmes in Hong Kong for at least one year but not more than five years. LISREL results revealed a modest fit of the model to the data. The path coefficients further revealed that seven of the fifteen predicted relationships were statistically significant and in the predicted direction. Specifically, self-efficacy, Type A personality, transfer climate, and transfer rewards were positively related to motivation to learn, while organizational commitment was negatively related to motivation to learn. The results also indicated that motivation to learn, continuous-learning culture, and utility of MBA programme were positively related to perceived knowledge and skills transfer.     

Conflict,food price shocks,and food insecurity: The experience of Afghan households

Using nationally-representative household survey data and confidential geo-coded data on violent incidents, we examine the relationship between conflict and food insecurity in Afghanistan. Spatial mappings of the raw data reveal large variations in levels of food insecurity and conflict across the country; surprisingly, high conflict provinces are not the most food insecure. Using a simple bivariate regression model of conflict (violent incidents and persons killed or injured) on food security (calorie intake and the real value of food consumed), we find mixed associations. But once we move to a multivariate framework, accounting for household characteristics and key commodity prices, we find robust evidence that in Afghanistan levels of conflict and food security are negatively correlated. We also find that households in provinces with higher levels of conflict experience muted declines in food security due to staple food price increases relative tohouseholds in provinces with lower levels of conflict, perhaps because the former are more disconnected from markets. Gaining a better understanding of linkages between conflict and food insecurity and knowing their spatial distributions can serve to inform policymakers interested in targeting scarce resources to vulnerable populations, for example, through the placement of strategic grain reserves or targeted food assistance programs.     

The expectations hypothesis and decoupling of short- and long-term US interest rates: A pairwise approach

The link between short-term policy rates and long-term rates elucidate the potential effectiveness of monetary policy. We examine the US term structure of interest rates using a pairwise econometric approach advocated by Pesaran (2007). Our empirical modelling strategy employs a probabilistic test statistic for the expectations hypothesis of the term structure based on the percentage of unit root rejections among all interest rate differentials. We find support for the expectations hypothesis and provide new insights into the nature of interest rate decoupling which are of value to policymakers. The maturity gap associated with interest rate pairs negatively impacts on the probability of stationarity, and also on the speed of adjustment towards long-run equilibrium. We further show that the speed of adjustment has become more sensitive to the maturity gap over time.     

我国金字塔型控股结构下的大股东利益侵害行为研究

我国上市公司普遍存在"大股东"现象。大股东通过金字塔型的控股结构获得超额控制权,并"挖空"上市公司的资源,损害了广大中小股东的利益。本文在考虑我国上市公司金字塔型控股结构的基础上,构建大股东利益侵害行为模型,系统探讨了影响利益侵害行为的因素,并提出了制约大股东"隧道挖空"行为的对策。     

Checkmating the Consumer: Passive Consumption and the Economic Devaluation of Culture

Early neoclassical economics embodied a gendered symbolic system that devalued consumption and enabled economists to ignore a basic contradiction underlying their treatment of consumption. According to consumer-sovereignty dogma, the consumer determined which firms would survive by actively pursuing maximum individual utility. While this consumer retained the culturally masculine attributes of initiative and agency, consumption itself was devalued because, from a systemic point of view, it is not important which firms survive. At the macro level, consumption was marginalized through Say's law, which holds that excessive acquisition of commodities for consumption is potentially dangerous, because saving and investment drive the economy. The rise of mass consumption and Keynesian macroeconomics threw into question the cultural gendering of consumption – which had acquired feminine attributes like passivity and frivolity – and rendered the neoclassical devaluing of it increasingly untenable. The postwar, neoclassical synthesis and subsequent developments have reinstated the pre-Keynesian gendering of consumption and devaluation of culture.     

基于决策树技术的信息化项目文化冲突研究

企业在信息化项目实施的各个环节中普遍存在各种各样的冲突．对冲突进行有效识别，依据冲突类型选择合适的对策．是降低项目风险、实现项目效益的关键。信息化项目的高复杂性、高风险性对项目的冲突管理提出了较高的要求．目前对信息化项目中的冲突管理研究较多集中于管理理念和理论分析层面。结合文化冲突特点的实证研究较少。决策树方法是数据挖掘及数据分析中广泛应用的技术。具有清晰直观、易于解释的优点。本文通过决策树C5．0算法，尝试运用数据挖掘技术进行文化冲突研究。通过对项目中6种冲突管理决策类型的分析，提供了依据冲突情景选择应对策略的分类决策方法。实验证明，该方法可行。本研究为我国企业在信息化项目中遇到的冲突问题。提供了应对方法，同时也扩展了数据挖掘决策树技术的应用领域。     

An interest rate peg might be better than you think

Active interest rate policy is frequently recommended based on its merits in reducing macroeconomic volatility and being a simple device. Yet, it might be outperformed by an even simpler policy. A peg can be welfare-enhancing and can uniquely be implemented.     

利率互换与我国商业银行利率风险管理

随着我国金融改革的深化,金融市场的不断开放,市场化利率逐渐形成,利率风险越来越受到金融机构从业者的关注。在我国开展利率互换交易的条件基本成熟的情况下,引入的利率互换为我国商业银行的利率风险管理展开了新的一页。由于仍存在阻碍利率互换交易发展的定价、风险、制度及供需问题,所以需要从加快利率市场化;加快相关制度建设;加快市场培育,增加参与主体;完善信用风险防范等方面来推进商业银行的利率风险管理。     

Book Review

Following review of definitions of New Public Management (NPM), the paper assesses whether Canada has adopted the NPM, organized by Kernaghan and Charih's (1997) categories and using Loeffler's (1997) definition. Canada has reorganized the machinery of government, changed management methods and reduced the federal public sector substantially. Despite high debt, Canada's federal government reduced its expenditures and/or public service as much or more than the UK and New Zealand. Its expenditures as a proportion of GDP are now similar to those of the UK and New Zealand, the major proponents of NPM.     

Public participation and local environmental planning: Testing factors influencing decision quality and implementation in four case studies from Germany

Public and stakeholder participation in environmental planning is often assumed to enhance effectiveness through improving the environmental quality of decisions and enhancing implementation. We draw on the literature on participatory environmental governance in order to derive key participation-related factors that are hypothesized to impact on decision quality and implementation. We then outline four cases of decision-making processes in local environmental planning in Germany, representing a variety of forms of public participation, and what we suggest can be seen as four different pathways to ‘success’ in participatory planning. The case studies, recounted on the basis of stakeholder interviews and secondary research, are subjected to a cross-case analysis in order to examine the influence of participation in each case. We consider how key participation-related factors played out across the cases, and assess both decision quality and implementation against counterfactual non-participatory, or less-participatory, scenarios. In moving beyond accounts of ‘what happened’, and considering how participation changed the order of things relative to ‘what would have happened’ under different scenarios, the research highlights how very different pathways may lead to ‘success’ in participatory environmental planning from the viewpoint of process organizers and planners sympathetic to environmental issues. We conclude that, given the significance of context and surprises, planners and process organizers must be open to different pathways to the successful conclusion of participatory planning processes.