DEVELOPMENT PRESSURES AND HERITAGE IN THE PERTH CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT, 1950–90

This article examines the remaking of Perth's Central Business District (CBD) during the 1950–90 period. It traces the establishment of a modernist development ethos in Perth's planning, outlines the inadequacy of the City's planning regulations, and analyses the impact on St George's Terrace, the city's main commercial thoroughfare. The City Council was largely incapable of restraining excessive development and the extension of its system of plot ratios encouraged manipulation to increase the height of developments. Several important historic buildings were demolished because there were no legal means of safeguarding the city's heritage until 1990.     

Independent and joint effects of audit partner tenure and non-audit fees on audit quality

We examine the individual and joint effects of auditors’ non-audit services (NAS)/abnormal NAS fees and length of audit partner tenure on audit quality. Our results raise questions about the ‘one size fits all’ approach imposed by the current audit partner rotation requirement in Australia as a result of (1) a learning differentiation that we observe between Big 4 and non-Big 4 auditors and (2) higher discretionary accruals associated with non-Big 4 auditors. We find abnormal NAS fees to have a positive association with both absolute and positive (income-increasing) values of discretionary accruals for firms with short audit partner tenure. NAS/abnormal NAS fees are also negatively associated with the issuance of going concern opinions to financially distressed firms when partner tenure is short. In terms of policy implications, regulators are able to gauge the efficacy of the CLERP 9 reforms which currently impose a five year mandatory audit partner rotation requirement.     

Intangible capital distribution in China

This paper aims to examine the distribution dynamics of intangible capital investment across Chinese regions and hence contributes to the understanding of China’s regional development. A nonparametric approach is adopted to investigate the long-run distribution dynamics. Intertemporal dynamics and spatial conditional dynamics are analysed to explore the impacts of the global financial crisis and knowledge spill-over on intangibles’ distribution. It is shown that the formation of convergence clusters persists in the long run. High levels of investment tend to be concentrated in a few coastal regions while investment in most Chinese regions is projected to be low. External shocks exert an adverse effect: The post-global financial crisis transition dynamics indicate that most regions tend to converge towards a lower level than the pre-crisis dynamics imply. Finally, knowledge spill-over in the context of intangibles is identified to be an important factor that helps mitigate regional imbalance.