The Effect of Country‐Level Investor Protection on the Voluntary Assurance of Sustainability Reports

Over the last several years, sustainable (or socially responsible) investing has experienced rapid growth around the world reflecting an increasing awareness by investors of social, environmental, ethical, and corporate governance issues. This heightened awareness among investors has resulted in a demand for sustainability reporting and a corresponding increase in demand for assurance of sustainability information to enhance its credibility. Using an investor‐based view, we examine the impact of country‐level investor protection on reporting companies’ voluntary sustainability assurance decisions. We find that both the decision to obtain voluntary sustainability report assurance and the decision to obtain higher quality assurance are more likely for firms domiciled in countries that have weaker investor protection. Our results indicate that managers in low investor protection countries use voluntary sustainability assurance as a substitute monitoring mechanism.     

The corn model, gluts and surplus value

The controversy over Ricardo's corn model has focused on theinterpretation of his early writings. Here, Ricardo's lateruse of a corn model example in his dispute with Malthus overgluts is discussed. Malthus's own use of a corn model tablein attempting to justify his use of a labour commanded measureof value is analysed; it is shown that he calculates what Marxwas to describe as surplus value from the physical conditionsof production and the real wage.     

Book notes

International Journal of Technology and Design Education -     

Prudence or Profligacy: Deficits, Debt, and Fiscal Consolidation

Over the last quarter century, public finances have been underpressure in most OECD countries as deficits and debts rose underthe pressure of relatively slow growth and high interest rates.This, in turn, has affected the welfare state, since effortsat containing deficits have often been concentrated on publicexpenditure. Much of the literature argues that this is desirable,since curbing deficits via tax increases seldom succeeds. Amedium-term survey of OECD country experience suggests a lessclear-cut conclusion. In a number of countries which were ableto curb debt/GDP ratios, the bulk of the adjustment did, indeed,come from spending cuts (but was, also, in some cases helpedby rapid growth and/or currency depreciation). In several, however,tax increases also appear to have succeeded in reducing deficitsand debt. Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: andrea.boltho{at}magd.ox.ac.uk; andrew.glyn{at}economics.oxford.ac.uk     

Colliery Closures and the Decline of the UK Coal Industry

In the 10 years after the 1984–5 miners' strike, employment by British Coal and the number of pits it operated fell by more than 90%. In this paper data for each of British Coal's collieries are used to analyse the pattern of pit closure. The pits that closed were systematically smaller, less productive and less profitable than those that survived. A model is estimated to capture the degree to which closure decisions reflect performance variables, and it is found that low productivity was the most important indicator of vulnerability to closure. However, closures were by no means exclusively concentrated on the worst performers, and many of the pits that were closed at the end of the period had achieved very large increases in productivity over the years preceding closure.     

Productivity and the crisis of Fordism

The paper examines the claim by the regulation school of French economists that the slackening of productivity growth in the advanced capitalist countries reflects the erosion of the ‘Fordist’ system of production. Productivity trends are analysed for the biggest six OECD countries for the period prior to the 1974 oil shock. There are definite indicators of slackening productivity growth, either for labour productivity or for the output-capital ratio, for most of the countries examined. But a disaggregated analysis, and assessment of the relative productivity levels in the countries concerned, does not support the idea that a whole system of technologies and work organization was reaching inherent limits. It is suggested, rather, that the productivity problems reflected the power of the boom of the 1950s and 1960s in eroding the reserves of surplus labour and increasing workers' organizational strength.     

Determinants of Recidivism in Paroled Queensland Prisoners: A Comparative Analysis of Custodial and Socioeconomic Characteristics

A multinomial ordered probit model is used to predict post-release performance in a sample of Queensland prisoners released between January 1992 and December 1994. Post-release performance is defined in terms of the seriousness of parole breaches and/or reoffences over the length of the parole period or until April 1996. The paper examines the statistical significance of a number of custodial and socioeconomic variables on the likelihood of a parole breach or re-offence. Factors analysed include family composition, age, occupation, ethnicity, the number of events in custody, the number of prison violations and the length of sentence of the most recent custodial episode. All other things being equal, the marginal effects of readmission with respect to the set of explanatory variables varies markedly according to whether readmission is through a parole breach or through actual recidivist behaviour.