bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Auditor Concentration: A Replication and Extension for the UK Audit Market 1991–1995
Authors: Pong Christopher K.M.
Published: March 2003

This paper examines the issue of auditor concentration in the UK during the period from 1991 to 1995. It shows that in 1995 the Big Six held 75% of the total number of audits and collectively earned 92% of the total audit fees. There was only a small increase in auditor concentration during the five year period, resulting from companies switching from small audit firms to Big Six and newly listed companies choosing a Big Six firm. The paper also examines auditor concentration within industries. Finally, the study assesses the measurement methods most commonly used in auditor concentration studies.
Further Evidence on Insider Selling Prior to Seasoned Equity Offering Announcements: The Role of Growth Opportunities
Authors: Gombola Michael J. , Lee Hei Wai , Liu Feng‐Ying
Published: March 2003

Previous research documents significant abnormal net selling by insiders prior to seasoned equity offering announcements. This study documents that the abnormal net selling is significantly greater for growth firms than for mature firms. It also shows that growth firms experience poorer post‐issue long‐term price performance, which suggests greater overpricing for growth firms. Further analysis shows that greater insider selling prior to the offering announcement is associated with a greater price run‐up prior to the announcement and is not associated with a more negative market reaction to the announcement. Overall, the results suggest that investors may be overly optimistic about future prospects of growth firms.
Junp‐Diffusion Interest Rate Process: An Empirical Examination
Authors: Lin Bing‐Huei , Yeh Shih‐Kuo
Published: March 2003

We investigate a jump‐diffusion process, which is a mixture of an O‐U process used by Vasicek (1977) and a compound Poisson jump process, for the term structure of interest rates. We develop a methodology for estimating the jump‐diffusion model and complete an empirical study in comparing the model with the Vasicek model, for the US money market interest rates. The results show that when the short‐term interest rate is low, both models predict an upward sloping term structure, with the jump‐diffusion model fitting the actual term structure quite well and the Vasicek model overestimating significantly. When the short‐term interest rate is high, both models predict a downward sloping term structure, with the jump‐diffusion model underestimating the actual term structure more significantly than the Vasicek model.
Is Beta Dead or Alive?
Authors: Hsia Chi‐Cheng , Fuller Beverly R. , Chen Brian Y.J.
Published: March 2003

The debate about whether beta is dead or alive has heated up once again. We believe the empirical work supporting either side of the argument is limited because market frictions are not adequately addressed. This study clarifies the controversy about the issue by creating a new moving‐average beta and analyzing two market anomalies: the turn‐of‐the‐year and the Monday effects. What is discovered in this research is (1) that a fundamental source of the problem underlying the two types of market anomalies is the persistence of market frictions that retard the arbitrage process; (2) that beta is seriously ill if the effects of market frictions are ignored; and (3) that beta is alive and well if the effects of market frictions are accommodated. Also, we show, by using an optimal lead/lag structure, the moving‐average beta provides significantly higher explanatory power for the turn‐of the‐year and the Monday effects than betas created from ordinary least squares regression and Scholes‐Williams and Fama‐French methods because the moving‐average beta accommodates the effects of market frictions into the body of beta itself. This new type of beta, a moving‐average beta, is demonstrated to be robust.
The Distributional Characteristics of a Selection of Contracts Traded on the London International Financial Futures Exchange
Authors: Cotter John , McKillop Donal G.
Published: March 2003

This study examines the distributional properties of futures prices for contracts traded on LIFFE. A filtering process is employed to remove day of the week and holiday effects, a maturity effect, moving average effects and the influence of an asset’s conditional variance from the raw returns series. Alternative distributional models from the stable paretian and ARCH families are examined for their applicability to futures data using a stability under additions. The results conclusively reject the hypothesis that futures returns are normally distributed with findings in favour of two related hypotheses – the mixtures of stable distribution and the ordinary stable distribution.
Stock Price Behavior over Trading and Non‐trading Periods: Evidence from the Taiwan Stock Exchange
Authors: Huang Yen‐Sheng , Liu Dih‐Young , Fu Tze‐Wei
Published: March 2003

This paper examines the stock price behavior in the trading and non‐trading periods for stocks listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange over 1971‐96. The results indicate that the trading‐time return variances are higher than the non‐trading‐time return variances especially for the larger trading‐volume quintiles. This result is consistent with the private information hypothesis. Moreover, open‐to‐open return variances are higher than close‐to‐close return variances. Since both the opening and the closing transactions are conducted by the call auction procedure, the results are consistent with the trading halt hypothesis but not with the trading mechanism hypothesis.
Volatility Implied by Option Prices: The Case of Takeover Bids
Authors: Acker Daniella , Attfield Cliff
Published: March 2003

We model the effect of an impending share price jump on the implied standard deviation (ISD) of a company’s options, testing the model by investigating its predictive ability for ISDs of companies subject to a takeover bid. Our model fits the observed ISDs well for all but certain deep in‐the‐money options. However, the model demonstrates that a discontinuity in the relationship between moneyness and the ISD both explains the combination of high and zero ISDs exhibited by these options, and impairs the predictive power of the model at these levels of moneyness.
Restructuring and Firm Value: The Effects of Profitability and Restructuring Purpose
Authors: Khurana Inder K. , Lippincott Barbara
Published: March 2003

This study extends prior research on the information content of restructuring charges. We find that the relationship between restructuring activities and returns during the restructuring charge year is different for loss firms than for profit firms. Restructurings that are primarily intended to either eliminate personnel or exit a line of business are positively associated with returns of the loss firms, suggesting that investors view these activities as value‐increasing. In contrast, common stock returns of profit firms exhibit a nonpositive association with restructuring charges. Overall, our results point to the role of the context and the content of the restructuring announcement in the market's assessment of the value relevance of restructuring charges reported in the financial statements.
The Pricing of Relative Performance Based Incentives for Executive Compensation
Authors: Câmara António
Published: March 2003

Since 1995, more than 50 percent of the firms in the FTSE‐100 have granted rewards to their senior executives, the payoffs of which are contingent on the firm’s stock return relative to a bench mark return over a given period (hereafter, relative performance incentives). This paper investigates and derives closed‐form solutions for a class of relative performance incentives that have a positive payoff if, in addition to the traditional contingencies, the firm’s stock return is higher than the market return times a threshold. Results suggest that UK firms, in practice, when relative performance incentives (RPI’s) substitute absolute performance incentives (API’s) tend to (i) decrease the cost of their compensation packages; (ii) undertake more risky capital‐investment projects; and (iii) avoid providing so high‐powered incentives to increase shareholder wealth.
Insider Ownership and Risk–taking Behaviour at Bank Holding Companies
Authors: Lee Seok Weon
Published: March 2003

This paper investigates the relationship between bank ownership structure and risk–taking. We find robust evidence that the greater risk taking incentives of stockholder controlled banks (compared to managerially controlled banks) are more pronounced for the set of banks with larger asset size, lower stock–return volatility, and lower balance–sheet–risk characteristics. Considering that the probability of failure for these banks is relatively low, these results may suggest that the efficacy of insider ownership in mitigating the agency problem could be affected by the costs perceived by the managers associated with aligning their interests with outside stockholders (i.e., the expected loss of benefits from control of the firm in the event of failure).
The Effect of Earnings–Announcement Timing on Earnings Management
Authors: Chai Mary L. , Tung Samuel
Published: March 2003

This paper examines whether firms which delay earnings announcements engage in earnings management. The cross–sectional version of the modified Jones 1995 model is used to estimate ‘normal’ accruals. Prior research has documented that, on average, delayed earnings announcements are associated with negative earnings surprises. Our evidence suggests that the market anticipates unfavorable earnings news when it observes reporting delays. As a consequence, late reporters appear to make the most of a bad situation by employing income–decreasing accruals in big–bath–type earnings management and in contractual renegotiations. We find that the magnitude of income–reducing abnormal accruals is related to the reporting lag.
From Hierarchy to Networks? Sub‐central Government and EU Urban Environment Policy
Authors: Ward Stephen , Williams Richard
Published: March 2003

This article examines the role of networking as a mode of interaction between sub‐central government and the EU, and as a medium for policy development. Evidence from research into EU urban environmental policy‐making is analysed to argue that a shift in the policy‐making style is being adopted by DG XI, moving away from top‐down legislating, to a more responsive and participatory style, and that networking provides the non‐tangible infrastructure for this process. Conclusions are drawn about the evolving nature of European policy and lobby networks, their contribution to EU policy‐making, and the European role of sub‐central government.
The Emerging European Immigration Regime: Some Reflections on Implications for Southern Europe
Authors: Baldwin‐Edwards Martin
Published: March 2003

Immigration is one of the more controversial areas in the history of European integration. Whilst northern European countries have been constructing elaborate compromises in the European Trade (EU) Treaties and in the Schengen group, southern European countries have been trying to construct their own immigration policies. Little attention has been paid in the literature to the relationship between these two phenomena: it is suggested here that southern countries have found it expedient to fit in with EU and Schengen arrangements, even though these appear impossible to implement. This contradiction is seen as intrinsic to the overall relations of Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece to the EU.
Britain and the Negotiation of the Maastricht Treaty: A Critique of Liberal Intergovernmentalism
Authors: Forster Anthony
Published: March 2003

This article critically examines the liberal intergovernmental (LI) approach to bargaining in the European Union. It explores its analytical and predictive power in relation to the British negotiation of three dossiers in the 1991 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) on Political Union: social policy, foreign and security policy and enhancing the powers of the European Parliament (EP). It casts doubt on the LI explanation of national preference formation and contends that there are three weaknesses of the LI approach: the notion of preference formation; the assumption that governments are purposeful and instrumental actors; and the liberal intergovernmental conception of bargaining. More generally, the article casts doubt on the value of LI claims to explanatory as well as predictive value.
Reunifying Europe in an Emerging World Economy: Economic Heterogeneity, New Industrial Options, and Political Choices
Authors: Zysman John , Schwartz Andrew
Published: March 2003

This article examines the industrial reintegration of central and eastern Europe into the broader European economy in the context of the emerging world economy. Since the Cold War, Europe’s economic heterogeneity has sharply increased, making it comparable to Asia. And Europe as a whole must adapt to a global economy of three regional centres and industrial strategies implemented through International Production Networks (IPNs). The article asks whether policies favoring IPNs that link east and west can reconcile eastern industrial development with western prosperity and employment. Thus the eastward enlargement of the European Union, which has been driven primarily by security concerns, can also improve the region’s competitiveness in global markets.
Political Legitimacy and the Invisibility of Politics: Exploring the European Union’s Communication Deficit
Authors: Meyer Christoph
Published: March 2003

The debate about the legitimacy deficit of the European Union (EU) has so far devoted little attention to the role of political communication in legitimating governance. The resignation of the Commission has highlighted the consequences of communicative failure and points to the new role of the media in EU affairs. The article analyses and evaluates the Commission’s media communicationand places it in the context of the EU’s broader institutional set‐up and decision‐making procedures. The article argues that the Commission’s public communication suffers from the fragmentation of political authority, a pervading technocratic mindset and a lack of adequate staffing. More importantly, however, the Commission is located within a system of governance which depoliticizes conflict and obfuscates political accountability. This system has been used by Member States to circumvent public scrutiny and externalize public dissatisfaction to the Commission.
Sub‐National Mobilization and European Integration: Does it Make any Difference?
Authors: Jeffery Charlie
Published: March 2003

Work on multi‐level governance has refashioned conceptions in politicalscience of EU politics and policy‐making, giving due weight for the first timeto the importance of sub‐national actors. This article builds on the pioneeringcontributions on multi‐level governance by Gary Marks and others to developa framework for analysis rooted in the functions of sub‐national authorities intheir domestic political contexts. This domestic politics approach to multi‐level governance is then developed, through consideration of a series ofvariables, to address a question which has rarely been posed hitherto: do theEU‐focused activities of sub‐national governments actually make any differencein the structure of authoritative decision‐making in the EU?
How Pervasive are Euro‐Politics? Effects of EU Membership on a New Member State
Authors: Falkner Gerda
Published: March 2003

While the consequences of becoming an EU Member State for national policies are usually the core concern of pre‐membership debates and of post‐accession assessments, studies of the effects of European integration on the political systems of the Member States have so far been less numerous. Among the new EU members, which are ideal cases for studying domestic accession effects, Austria is a particularly challenging case in terms of top‐down impact on the national political system. A number of specific precautions were taken in order to protect typical features of the national political system (notably the traditional roles of parliament, Länder and social partners) from being eroded in the multi‐level system. The basic research question of this article is whether or not these measures were actually successful. How ‘sticky’ is the EU upon closer inspection, i.e. how pervasive are its effects on adverse national structures? Can national measures, even at the constitutional level, outweigh specific consequences of participating in Euro‐politics? If not 9as the Austrian case indicates), why not? The conclusions distinguish specific Austrian variables from generalizable ones and discuss the findings in the light of the existing literature.
Monetary and Fiscal Policy Co‐operation: Institutions and Procedures in EMU
Authors: Bini Smaghi Lorenzo , Casini Claudio
Published: March 2003

The article analyses the effect of the move to EMU on the procedures through which co‐operation between authorities in charge of budgetary and monetary policy takes place. The first section examines the situation prior to EMU in the Member States on the basis of a questionnaire concerning the modalities of the formal or informal dialogue between the national central banks (NCBs) and the treasuries. The second section takes into consideration the current situation, based on the experience acquired in the first year of EMU and set against the provisions of the Treaty. The comparison between the two situations suggests that something has been lost in the move to EMU, and that there is scope for further improving the dialogue and co‐operation between budgetary and monetary authorities in EMU. Some suggestions are then proposed in order to bring the current euro‐zone situation closer to the one prevailing in most countries prior to EMU.
International Relations Theory and European Integration
Authors: Pollack Mark A.
Published: March 2003

The explicit effort to theorize about the process of European integration began within the field of international relations (IR), where neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism long remained the dominant schools of thought. With the relaunching of the integration process in the 1980s and 1990s, however, IR scholars have begun to approach the study of the European Union using more general, and generalizable, theoretical approaches. This article examines the recent debate among realists, liberals, rational‐choice institutionalists, and constructivists regarding the nature of the integration process and the EU as an international organization. Although originally posed as competing theories, I argue, realist, liberal and institutionalist approaches show signs of convergence around a single rationalist model, with constructivism remaining as the primary rival, but less developed, approach to the study of European integration.
Application of Theory of Action to Safety Management: Recasting the NAT/HRT Debate
Authors: Bain William A.
Published: March 2003

Two influential schools of thought that deal with the management of hazardous technology are Normal Accident Theory and High Reliability Theory. This paper presents another avenue for studying safety management by applying Argyris and Sch?n’s theory of action. Theory of action provides a detailed explanation for why well‐intentioned individuals and organizations often behave ineffectively. When applied to safety, it yields specific insights into why learning and safety performance typically fall short of desired results. This paper presents an overview of this approach and it does so by turning to the debate between the proponents of Normal Accident Theory and High Reliability Theory. Application of theory of action informs both of these dominant schools as it provides specific insights into why safety is often undermined. This approach thereby recasts the debate between these two and argues that they should be seen as complementary, not competing, perspectives.
The Developmental State, Economic Bureaucracy and Financial Crisis in Asian Societies
Authors: Liao Kun‐jung
Published: March 2003

n last the two decades, Western scholars have pointed to East Asian achievements which seem to be a kind of economic ‘miracle’. However, with the 1997 financial crisis, the conventional wisdom about economic dynamics in the region requires some rethinking. The Asian financial crisis is the first development‐related crisis caused by economic liberalisation and globalisation and reveals an institutional shortcoming of Asian capitalism. Developmental states in the region generally adopted mercantilist development policies and encouraged private businesses to over‐expand and over‐invest without considering the change of international market competition. Although political institutions effectively fostered economic development under state autonomy, their economic bureaucracies lacked the administrative capacities to regulate financial institutions and to exert financial allocations into productive industrial sectors. Most importantly, the developmental model has fundamentally undermined the risk management capability of bureaucracies dealing with financial turmoil. This paper argues that Asian countries should build a financial governance regime that can effectively control, regulate and manage capital formation mechanisms and, most importantly, lead domestic and foreign capital to competitive sectors rather than to speculative ones, particularly, when exposed to foreign capital.
Evolution of Emergency Management in Malaysia
Authors: Aini Mat Said , Fakhru’l‐Razi Ahmadun , Daud Mohamed
Published: March 2003

Various types of disaster ranging from biological, structural collapse, fire and explosion, landslides and meteorological incidents have struck Malaysia. Safety and emergency laws and regulations in Malaysia had evolved in pace with the development and industrialisation of the country. Some of these disasters were land‐marked disasters whereby various safety and emergency acts and regulations were amended or introduced. In this article, the history of the evolution of various Safety and Emergency Laws, Regulations and Acts in the country since independence in 1957 until the establishment of the Permanent Guidelines for Disaster Management and Relief Operations in 1997 is presented.

Lessons from past disasters and the rapid expansion of industrialisation have greatly influenced the evolution of safety and emergency management in Malaysia. However, this intermediary phase in the pursuit of development is often accompanied by an increase in vulnerability (McEntire, 1997). This paper discusses reasons that are attributed to the increase in vulnerability as well as the challenges faced by the nation in the area of safety and emergency planning.
Was Three Mile Island a ‘Normal Accident’?
Authors: Hopkins Andrew
Published: March 2003

Perrow’s normal accident theory suggests that some major accidents are inevitable for technological reasons. An alternative approach explains major accidents as resulting from management failures, particularly in relation to the communication of information. This latter theory has been shown to be applicable to a wide variety of disasters. By contrast, Perrow’s theory seems to be applicable to relatively few accidents, the exemplar case being the Three Mile Island nuclear power station accident in the U.S. in 1979. This article re‐examines Three Mile Island. It shows that this was not a normal accident in Perrow’s sense and is readily explicable in terms of management failures. The article also notes that Perrow’s theory is motivated by a desire to shift blame away from front line operators and that the alternative approach does this equally well.
Practitioner Review: The effectiveness of systemic family therapy for children and adolescents
Authors: Cottrell David , Boston Paula
Published: March 2003

Background: Systemic family therapy has become a widely used intervention in child and adolescent mental health services over the last twenty years. Methods: This paper reviews the development of systemic family therapy, briefly describes the theory and techniques associated with the most prominent contemporary strands of systemic practice, and examines the empirical justification for using systemic family therapies with children and adolescents. Results: There is a paucity of well‐designed randomised controlled trials of systemic therapies with children and adolescents and those trials that do exist evaluate older structural and strategic therapies. Methodological limitations of existing research include the use of unrepresentative participants, small sample sizes and wide age ranges. There is a lack of credible no‐treatment or alternative treatment controls, tests of clinical as opposed to statistical significance, and conceptually relevant outcome measures that examine underlying interactional mechanisms. The term `family therapy' encompasses a wide range of interventions and it is not always clear what treatment intervention has been delivered. Nevertheless, there is good evidence for the effectiveness of systemic family therapies in the treatment of conduct disorders, substance misuse and eating disorders, and some support for their use as second‐line treatments in depression and chronic illness. Conclusions: Systemic family therapy is an effective intervention for children and adolescents but further well‐designed outcome studies are needed using clearly specified, manualised forms of treatment and conceptually relevant outcome measures.
Language and nationality: the role of policy towards Celtic languages in the consolidation of Tudor power
Authors: Brennan Gillian
Published: March 2003

This article considers the attitude of the governing elite in sixteenth‐century England to the minority languages spoken by subjects within their jurisdiction, concentrating on Cornish, Welsh and Irish. Perhaps influenced by the tendency of nineteenth‐century nationalists to equate nationality and language, historians have assumed that Tudor governments were hostile to languages other than English and wished to suppress them. An examination of a variety of sources leads to the suggestion that this was not the case. There was a certain amount of apprehension in the political sphere in the 1530s but in the second half of the century cultural perception of languages dominated as attempts to spread the Protestant faith led to an encouragement of the range of vernaculars. The conclusion points to parallels between sixteenth‐century and contemporary sympathy towards minority cultures in the context of the devolution debate.
The algorithmic complexity of multichannel EEGs is sensitive to changes in behavior
Authors: Watanabe T. A. A. , Cellucci C. J. , Kohegyi E , Bashore T. R. , Josiassen R. C. , Greenbaun N. N. , Rapp P. E.
Published: March 2003

Symbolic measures of complexity provide a quantitative characterization of the sequential structure of symbol sequences. Promising results from the application of these methods to the analysis of electroencephalographic (EEG) and event–related brain potential (ERP) activity have been reported. Symbolic measures used thus far have two limitations, however. First, because the value of complexity increases with the length of the message, it is difficult to compare signals of different epoch lengths. Second, these symbolic measures do not generalize easily to the multichannel case. We address these issues in studies in which both single and multichannel EEGs were analyzed using measures of signal complexity and algorithmic redundancy, the latter being defined as a sequence–sensitive generalization of Shannon's redundancy. Using a binary partition of EEG activity about the median, redundancy was shown to be insensitive to the size of the data set while being sensitive to changes in the subject's behavioral state (eyes open vs. eyes closed). The covariance complexity, calculated from the singular value spectrum of amultichannel signal, was also found to be sensitive to changes in behavioral state. Statistical separations between the eyes open and eyes closed conditions were found to decrease following removal of the 8– to 12–Hz content in the EEG, but still remained statistically significant. Use of symbolic measures in multivariate signal classification is described.
From Village Artisans to Industrial Clusters: Agendas and Policy Gaps in Indian Rural Industrialization
Authors: Saith Ashwani
Published: March 2003

This paper offers a broad strategic assessment of the experience of rural industrialization in India. It does so from a policy perspective with the aim eventually of highlighting speci?c outstanding policy issues. Rural and small‐scale industrialization (RSSI) has held a special place in Indian development thinking and policy formulation from the outset. This privileged position, however, does not derive from a universal consensus with regard to the rationale and policy framework applicable to this sub‐sector.However, such has been the symbolic power and populist appeal of RSSI that it has retained its special status within diverse strategic and ideological frameworks. But how has the sub‐sector performed? Is the infant industry still in need of paternalistic protection at the age of ?fty? Are there any credible indications of a strategic break with longstanding policy frameworks inherited from the past? Can any crucial policy gaps be identi ?ed? How well does rural small‐scale industry satisfy the extensive developmental claims made by its proponents? These are the general questions addressed.
Comments on the Brenner–Wood Exchange on the Low Countries
Authors: Post Charles
Published: March 2003

The exchange between Brenner and Wood on the Low Countries in the early modern period raises a number of theoretical and historical issues relating to the conditions for the emergence of capitalist social‐property relations and their unique historical laws of motion. This contribution focuses on three issues raised in the Brenner‐Wood exchange: the conditions under which rural house‐hold producers become subject to ‘market coercion’, the potential for ecological crisis to restructure agricultural production, and the relative role of foreign trade and the transformation of domestic, rural class relations to capitalist industrialization.
Land Reform: Taking a Long(er) View
Authors: Bernstein Henry
Published: March 2003

The paper proposes a broad argument that the end of state–led development from the 1970s coincided with (i) the final wave of major redistributive land reform, and its place within transitions to capitalism, that lasted from about 1910 to the 1970s, and (ii) the beginnings of contemporary ‘globalization’. Self–styled ‘new wave’ agrarian reform in the age of neo–liberalism, centred on property rights, is unlikely to deliver much on its claims to both stimulate agricultural productivity and reduce rural poverty. The reasons are grounded in the basic relations and dynamics of capitalism, and how these are intensified and reshaped by and through globalization. Understanding these processes, with all their inevitable unevenness, requires (i) recognizing that the historical conditions of the ‘classic’ agrarian question no longer apply, and (ii) developing the means to investigate and understand better the changing realities facing different agrarian classes within a general tendency to the concentration of capital and fragmentation of labour, including how the latter may generate new agrarian questions of labour.
Women, Motivation, and Achievement
Authors: Hyde Janet Shibley , Kling Kristen C.
Published: March 2003

Women's educational and occupational achievements are crucial to the economic productivity and prosperity of the nation, as well as to the mental health of women and their families. In this article we review psychological research on motivation and on educational achievement, focusing on gender and the contributions that have been made by feminist researchers. Feminist psychologists noted the sex bias and methodological flaws in traditional research on achievement motivation and proposed vastly improved models, such as Eccles's expectancy x value model of achievement behavior. Contrary to stereotypes, gender similarities are typically found in areas such as mathematics performance. Policymakers should be concerned about gender bias in the SAT and about the Female Underprediction Effect. Additional threats to girls' and women's achievements include stereotype threat and peer sexual harassment in the schools.
Do You See What I See? Effects of Group Consciousness on African American Women's Attributions to Prejudice
Authors: King Kimberly R.
Published: March 2003

This study examined the effects of three types of group consciousness among African American women ( ethnic, feminist, and womanist) on prejudice attributions and appraised personal significance ( centrality) of a negative intergroup event. African American female college students ( N = 123) imagined themselves in an audiotaped scenario in which they overheard two European American male classmates make negative evaluations of them. The scenario provided no cause for the negative evaluations and no references to race or gender. Multiple regression analyses revealed that higher ethnic and womanist consciousness were related to increased prejudice attributions and greater centrality appraisals ( p < .05), while feminism had no effect. Results suggest that womanist consciousness may be more relevant than traditional feminist consciousness in predicting African American women's perceptions of prejudice.
Review: A Linguistic Anthropology of Praxis and Language Shift: Arvanitika (Albanian) and Greek in Contact
Authors: Trudgill Peter
Published: March 2003

Book reviewed in this article:

Lukas D. Tsitsipis, A Linguistic Anthropology of Praxis and Language Shift: Arvanitika (Albanian) and Greek I Contact
Scheduling Part‐Families Under FMS: To Mix or Not to Mix?
Authors: Co Henry C. , Sharafali Moosa , Goh Mark
Published: March 2003

This paper considers the issue of whether to mix part‐types in one or several of the families to be produced in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). For this input control problem in an FMS, we have derived conditions that support the mixing of a part‐type, which can share the setup of other part‐types, in deterministic environment. The problem is identified as a special economic lot scheduling problem (ELSP), and is formulated as a linear programming problem. Analytical insights are derived by considering the special case with three part‐families. The results are illustrated with a numerical example.
Optimizing Blood Assignment in a Donation–Transfusion System
Authors: De Angelis V. , Ricciardi N. , Storchi G.
Published: March 2003

A multi‐product, multi‐period, multi‐objective linear programming model has been built as a contribution to good management of a blood donation–transfusion system in order to determine the best assignment of blood resources to demand, which minimizes the quantity of blood imported from outside the system and stabilizes the quantities assigned daily. The model has been applied to the Italian Red Cross (CRI) blood donation–transfusion system in Rome and to each hospital belonging to such a system, producing interesting results.
A Coloring Problem With Restrictions of Adjacent Colors
Authors: Akihiro Uejima , Hiro Ito , Hideyuki Uehara , Mitsuo Yokoyama
Published: March 2003

The coloring problem is a well‐known problem of graphs. This paper considers a new coloring problem with restrictions such that some pairs of colors cannot be used for adjacent vertices, called coloring problem with restrictions of adjacent colors. The restriction of adjacent colors can be represented by a graph H called a restriction graph, i.e., each vertex represents a color and each edge means that the two colors corresponding to the two end‐vertices of the edge cannot be used for adjacent vertices. This paper shows some properties of the new coloring problem. It also presents a necessary and sufficient condition such that a restriction graph H cannot be replaced with a more simple graph, when H is a cactus with no 3‐cycle.
Decision Support for Location Problems in Town Planning
Authors: Patz Renate , Spitzner Jan , Tammer Christiane
Published: March 2003

Urban development and town planning need an adequate decision‐making process. European cities, in particular, are compact. Urban elements and functions are in a constant state of change. Moreover, the large number of historic buildings and areas means a sensitive and responsible approach must be taken. The aim of this paper is to consider special location problems in town planning. We formulate multi‐criteria location problems, derive optimality conditions and present a geometric algorithm and an interactive procedure including a proximal point algorithm for solving multi‐criteria location problems. In this paper, we use location theory as a possible method to help determine the location of a children’s playground in a newly‐built district of Halle, Germany.
General Flowshop Models: Job Dependent Capacities, Job Overlapping and Deterioration
Authors: Finke Gerd , Espinouse Marie‐Laure , Jiang Huaguang
Published: March 2003

Several extensions of the two‐machine flowshop model that arise in industrial applications are considered. These modifications of the classical case concern buffer capacities that vary with the size of the part, and processing times that are variable and increase in situations of overlapping and long waiting periods between the different operations.
Neural Network and Genetic Algorithms for Topology Optimization of the CCS7 Network
Authors: Xin Zhan‐hong , Zhang Hai‐jun
Published: March 2003

The topology optimization of CCS7 network was formulated in Xin and Xu (1998); the A/B plane partition of HSTPs in CCS7 network is discussed here in detail. The problem is proved to be NP‐complete, so neural network and genetic algorithms are applied. With test networks generated randomly, the computing results show that the genetic algorithm is quite robust.
A Fast Approximation Algorithm for the Subset‐sum Problem
Authors: Przydatek Bartosz
Published: March 2003

The subset‐sum problem (SSP) is defined as follows: given a positive integer bound and a set of n positive integers find a subset whose sum is closest to, but not greater than, the bound. We present a randomized approximation algorithm for this problem with linear space complexity and time complexity of O(n log n). Experiments with random uniformly‐distributed instances of SSP show that our algorithm outperforms, both in running time and average error, Martello and Toth's (1984) quadratic greedy search, whose time complexity is O(n2). We propose conjectures on the expected error of our algorithm for uniformly‐distributed instances of SSP and provide some analytical arguments justifying these conjectures. We present also results of numerous tests.
On the Linear Description of the k‐cycle Polytope
Authors: Nguyen V. H. , Maurras J.‐F.
Published: March 2003

We study a linear description of PCkn the convex hull of incidence vectors of all the cycles consisting of exactly k edges (k≥4) in Kn, the complete undirected graph with n vertices. First, we describe some properties of PCkn. Second, we discuss relations between PCkn and PCk′n′ with k′>k and n′>n. Then we give three lifting algorithms that transform a facet of PCkn into facets of PCkn′ with n′>n. Finally, we provide an integer formulation and a partial linear description of PCkn.
The Underground Economy, the Demand for Currency Approach and the Analysis of Discrepancies: Some Recent European Experience
Authors: Caridi Paolo , Passerini Paolo
Published: March 2003

Recent estimates of the size of the “underground economy” have used the so‐called “demand for currency approach.” One of the assumptions made by these studies is that official statistics do not take into account the underground economy when estimating GDP. After setting some definitions, the paper presents a brief critical review of the method and results obtained for the European Union using this approach. It points out that the different concepts of unreported and unrecorded activities are incorrectly considered to be equivalent. The third section, after a review of the method of estimating the underground economy using the discrepancy approach, presents the new results of the authors which give an indication of the amount of the unreported activities already included in official national accounts statistics in the EU. The results of the discrepancy approach disprove the widespread belief that official statistics only include officially recorded transactions and reinforce the critical view on the results obtained with the currency‐demand approach.
Growth, Prosperity and the Generation of Inequality
Authors: Saunders Peter
Published: March 2003

Books reviewed in this article:

Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and John Schmitt, The State of Working America, 1998–99

Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wadsworth (eds.), The State of Working Britain
Globalization—then and now
Authors: Kotwal Ashtok
Published: March 2003

Book reviewed in this article:

K. O’Rourke and J. Williamson, Globalization and History
Mapping the New Deal: local disparities in the performance of Welfare‐to‐Work
Authors: Sunley Peter , Martin Ron , Nativel Corinne
Published: March 2003

In recent years, following the lead of the US, several OECD countries have introduced ‘workfare’ policies that link receipt of unemployment and related social benefits to compulsory participation on state‐administered work and training schemes. The UK’s New Deal (Welfare‐to‐Work) for Young People is one of the largest and most developed of these workfare programmes. Official evaluations of the UK’s New Deal for Young People claim that it has been a national success, but overlook local variations in its results. This paper uses the Government’s own performance measures, data on local unemployment flows, numbers of New Deal participants recycled through the scheme as second starts, and interviews with both local policy managers and participants, to demonstrate that these local variations have been substantial. These different indicators suggest that the programme has been noticeably less effective in many inner urban and depressed industrial labour markets. In such areas the ‘recycling and churning’ of participants through the programme are more significant, and suggest that local labour market structures play a significant role in shaping policy outcomes. The paper argues that recent additions to the New Deal to improve job search and matching fail to address this local variation, and that a longer‐term approach is required that seeks to improve not only the employability of individuals, but also the local employment opportunities open to them. One key implication is clear: that local labour market conditions can exert a significant influence on the outcomes of national workfare type policies, not only in terms of geographical variations in the problem to be solved, but also in shaping and constraining the local nature of policy outcomes.
Accruals Management, Investor Sophistication, and Equity Valuation: Evidence from 10–Q Filings
Authors: Balsam Steven , Bartov Eli , Marquardt Carol
Published: March 2003

The release of the full set of financial statements in Form 10–Q provides investors with the data necessary to estimate the discretionary portion of earnings, thereby allowing them to better assess the integrity of reported quarterly earnings. We thus expect a negative association between unexpected discretionary accruals estimated using 10–Q disclosures and stock returns around 10–Q filing dates. Consistent with our expectations, we document a negative association between unexpected discretionary accruals and cumulative abnormal returns over a short window around the 10–Q filing date. Furthermore, this association varies systematically with investor sophistication. Finally, results from portfolio tests indicate that this association is economically as well as statistically significant. One interpretation of our findings is that accruals management has substantial valuation consequences, which are quickly impounded into stock prices.
The Cost of Employee Stock Option Grants: An Empirical Analysis
Authors: Marquardt Carol A.
Published: March 2003

This study presents empirical evidence on the ex post costs of employee stock option (ESO) grants to issuing firms and examines whether the Black–Scholes [1973] model provides reasonable estimates of these values. Because there are no market prices for ESOs, the traditional avenues for testing option–pricing models are unavailable. This research relies instead on techniques from the economic forecasting literature, viewing model values as forecasts of the options’ payoff. The theoretically appropriate rate at which to discount ESO payoffs is derived under the maintained hypothesis that the Black–Scholes model is valid. This rate is used in estimating ex post ESO costs at the time of grant, which are then compared with Black–Scholes estimates using Theil’s [1966] tests of forecast rationality. Based on a sample of 966 ESO grants over 1963–1984, the results suggest that the Black–Scholes model, adjusted for concavity in the time to exercise using the Hemmer, Matsunaga, and Shevlin [1994] procedure, appears to provide reasonable estimates of ex post ESO costs for the average ESO grant. However, there is significant variability in the amount of model error on an individual grant basis.
The Sale of Assets to Manage Earnings in Japan
Authors: Herrmann Don , Inoue Tatsuo , Thomas Wayne B.
Published: March 2003

In this article we investigate Japanese managers’ use of income from the sale of fixed assets and marketable securities to manage earnings. The earnings management target examined is Japanese managers’ forecasts of current–year earnings. We find a negative relation between income from asset sales and management forecast error. When current reported operating income is below (above) management's forecast of operating income, firms increase (decrease) earnings through the sale of fixed assets and marketable securities. The results hold after controlling for expected future performance, debt–to–equity ratio, size, growth, and last year's income from asset sales.
Forms of Foreign Investment Liberalization and Risk in Emerging Stock Markets
Authors: Hargis Kent
Published: March 2003

I examine the effect of different forms of foreign investment liberalization on risk in emerging equity markets, including international cross‐listings and closed‐end country funds, and in the domestic equity market as foreign investment restrictions are eliminated. I find that in Latin American markets volatility declines significantly with different forms of foreign investment liberalization, and in Asian markets volatility does not increase significantly. Volatility is driven by domestic factors in South America, but the transmission of volatility from the United States to Mexico increases after liberalization. The market risk exposure increases in Argentina after liberalization, in Chile with an index of American Depositary Receipts, and in Thailand with greater foreign ownership, reducing the diversification benefits of these markets.
The Firm Size Effect and the Economic Cycle
Authors: Kim Moon K. , Burnie David A.
Published: March 2003

Small firms have, on average, lower return on assets and higher leverage than do large firms. Small firms tend to do well in good economic conditions but to perform poorly in the worst economic conditions. We investigate the hypothesis that the small firm effect is manifest in the expansion phase of the economic cycle but not in the contraction phase. The empirical results of our study confirm the hypothesis for 1976–95. We use the alpha, residual, and regression methods in testing the hypothesis.