Book Reviews

Water is a human right and it is essential to sustain life and livelihoods, as well as the health and happiness of tourists. This paper examines a destination with ample rain, but rapid and unchecked tourism development: Bali, Indonesia. The mismanagement of water resources means underground supplies are polluted and local people suffer from water scarcity. A multi-method approach with the various stakeholders was used to develop a stakeholder map that identifies duty bearers and rights holders. The government is the primary legal duty bearer to provide communities with water, but companies also have unique responsibilities. This paper examines why tourism businesses need to conduct human rights impact assessments. Taking due diligence for human rights can be seen as a business opportunity, leading to reduced operating costs and increased reputational strength. The benefits and challenges for business are explored.     

Sovereign risk assessment and agency credit ratings

Sovereign ratings are gaining importance as more governments with greater default risk borrow in international bond markets. However, while the ratings have proved useful to governments seeking market access, the difficulty of assessing sovereign risk has led to agency disagreements and public controversy over specific rating assignments. Recognising this difficulty, the financial markets have shown some scepticism toward sovereign ratings when pricing issues.     

Payoff Assessments without Probabilities: A Simple Dynamic Model of Choice

We develop a model which reflects the tendency of people to simplify the decision problems they face. The decision maker chooses among alternate strategies only on the basis of the payoff she assesses she would obtain from them, and these assessments do not explicitly take into account her subjective judgements regarding the likelihood of alternate states of the world. At each stage, the decision maker chooses the strategy that she assesses to give the highest payoff. She updates her assessments adaptively. We show that such behavior leads to maxmin choices. We also consider the decision maker who experiences shocks. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C7, D8.     

“发展——跟踪——反馈”三位一体的大学生党员质量保障机制

根据新形势下大学生党员发展的实际情况,通过对影响大学生党员质量因素的分析,全面推进大学生党员质量工程,把好大学生入党的三个关口,构建"发展——跟踪——反馈"三位一体的大学生党员发展质量保障机制,充分发挥大学生党员的先锋模范作用,确保达到党中央提出的"控制总量、优化结构、提高质量、发挥作用"的总要求。     

Price assessments by consumers: influence of purchase context and price structure

Among the numerous factors that influence decisions on prices, consumer behaviour has special significance. This paper reviews and analyses relevant studies conducted during the last few decades. On the basis of our analysis, four categories of factors that determine consumer behaviour have been identified. Additionally, we have developed an experimental research design to analyse the influence that the following factors have on price perception: price structure (i.e. price level, order of presentation and price differences), purchase context (i.e. reason for purchase or product use) and demographic characteristics (i.e. gender). Results reveal a significant influence of these variables on consumer behaviour.     

A Model of Elitist Qualification

This paper deals with the collective qualification of members of society as belonging to a certain category or group based on a fixed attribute. Our model contains three main features: the existence of individual gradual opinions, the notion of elitism (only the opinions of certain individuals are taken into account to delineate the reference group), and the idea of sequentiality (elites are successively created by using the previous elites’ opinions on a social decision scheme). The main results of the paper characterize when this sequential procedure converges for some intuitive ways of aggregating individual opinions. Finally, we analyze the role of convergence for two extra basic properties (symmetry and contractiveness) that elitist rules should possess.     

The Effectiveness of Alternative Risk Assessment and Program Planning Tools in a Fraud Setting*

This study examines the impact of alternative risk assessment (standard risk checklist versus no checklist) and program development (standard program versus no program) tools on two facets of fraud planning effectiveness: (1) the quality of audit procedures relative to a benchmark validated by a panel of experts, and (2) the propensity to consult fraud experts. A between‐subjects experiment, using an SEC enforcement fraud case, was conducted to examine these relationships. Sixty‐nine auditors made risk assessments and designed an audit program. We found that auditors who used a standard risk checklist, structured by SAS No. 82 risk categories, made lower risk assessments than those without a checklist. This suggests that the use of the checklist was associated with a less effective diagnosis of the fraud. We also found that auditors with a standard audit program designed a relatively less effective fraud program than those without this tool but were not more willing to seek consultation with fraud experts. This suggests that standard programs may impair auditors' ability to respond to fraud risk. Finally, our results show that fraud risk assessment (FRASK) was not associated with the planning of more effective fraud procedures but was directly associated with the desire to consult with fraud specialists. This suggests that one benefit of improved FRASK is its relation with consultation. Overall, the findings call into question the effectiveness of standard audit tools in a fraud setting and highlight the need for a more strategic reasoning approach in an elevated risk situation.     

CAUSAL INFERENCE ON EDUCATION POLICIES: A SURVEY OF EMPIRICAL STUDIES USING PISA,TIMSS AND PIRLS

The identification of the causal effects of educational policies is the top priority in recent education economics literature. As a result, a shift can be observed in the strategies of empirical studies. They have moved from the use of standard multivariate statistical methods, which identify correlations or associations between variables only, to more complex econometric strategies, which can help to identify causal relationships. However, exogenous variations in databases have to be identified in order to apply causal inference techniques. This is a far from straightforward task. For this reason, this paper provides an extensive and comprehensive overview of the literature using quasi‐experimental techniques applied to three well‐known international large‐scale comparative assessments, such as PISA, PIRLS or TIMSS, over the period 2004–2016. In particular, we review empirical studies employing instrumental variables, regression discontinuity designs, difference in differences and propensity score matching to the above databases. Additionally, we provide a detailed summary of estimation strategies, issues treated and profitability in terms of the quality of publications to encourage further potential evaluations. The paper concludes with some operational recommendations for prospective researchers in the field.     

Cue usage in financial statement fraud risk assessments: effects of technical knowledge and decision aid use

This paper investigates the effects of technical knowledge and decision aid use on financial statement fraud risk assessments made by directors and students. More extreme fraud risk assessments are made when participants identify and process larger (smaller) numbers of diagnostic (non‐diagnostic) factors, with technical knowledge driving diagnostic factor identification. Significant decision aid‐technical knowledge effects are also found; decision aid use has a detrimental effect on high‐knowledge directors while improving performance in inexperienced, low‐knowledge students. These results suggest that although decision aids can afford gains in performance in inexperienced users, they can have unintended and/or paradoxical behavioural effects on experienced users.     

Book Review

This research examines two modes of assessment of environmental health risks and the transformation of these risks into public health issues while relying on the specific case of well‐water toxicity and mega dose of electromagnetic radiation found in one prosperous town in the center of Israel – Ramat ha‐Sharon. Based on official and scientific documentation and interviews conducted at three time periods with randomly selected town residents from contaminated neighborhoods (N = 169), this study shows the discrepancy between the ‘objective’ experts’ standards for assessing environmental health risks and the public’s subjective perception and evaluation of the impact of these risks on their health and well‐being. Even though, by experts’ standards, the well‐water toxicity remained constant over the three interview sessions, Ramat ha‐Sharon town residents’ subjective levels of concern and perception of risk fluctuated as a function of news media and municipality announcements and residents’ perceived ability to minimize the risk. This study also shows the complex and multidisciplinary nature of environmental health risk assessments and the need to relocate them into the broader socioeconomic and political context in which they are embedded.