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This study rigorously investigates the intricate dynamics between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), quantified through Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores, and financial performance (FP), measured via the return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE), within the UK banking sector. Our analysis is based on a comprehensive dataset from Bloomberg. This research encapsulates data from 32 banks publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange over a six-year span from 2017 to 2022. Employing panel data regression models while controlling leverage and bank size, we delve into the relationship between banks' CSR engagements, as reflected in their ESG scores, and their financial outcomes. Our findings indicate a negative correlation between the ESG score and both the ROA and ROE, suggesting that elevated CSR commitments may inversely impact short-term financial returns. This finding not only challenges prevailing narratives within the sector but also fosters a crucial discourse on the balance between ethical banking practices and profitability. The implications of this research study are manifold, extending to policymakers, banking executives, and investors, suggesting a revaluation of CSR strategies in alignment with long-term value creation and sustainable banking. This study not only enriches academic discourse on CSR within the financial sector but also serves as a beacon for future inquiries into the evolving landscape of responsible banking, advocating for a nuanced understanding of CSR's role in shaping the financial and ethical contours of the banking industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital twin (DT) research field is experiencing rapid expansion; yet, the research on industrial practices in this area remains poorly understood. This paper aims to address this knowledge gap by sharing feedback and future requirements from the manufacturing industry. The methodology employed in this study involves an examination of a survey that received 99 responses and interviews with 14 experts from 10 prominent UK organisations, most of which are involved in the defence industry in the UK. The survey and interviews explored topics such as DT design, return on investment, drivers, inhibitors, and future directions for DT development in manufacturing. This study's findings indicate that DTs should possess characteristics such as adaptability, scalability, interoperability, and the ability to support assets throughout their entire life cycle. On average, completed DT projects reach the breakeven point in less than two years. The primary motivators behind DT development were identified to be autonomy, customer satisfaction, safety, awareness, optimisation, and sustainability. Meanwhile, the main obstacles include a lack of expertise, funding, and interoperability. This study concludes that the federation of twins and a paradigm shift in industrial thinking are essential components for the future of DT development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the wealth distribution of UK households through a detailed analysis of data from wealth surveys and rich lists, and propose a non-linear Kesten process to model the dynamics of household wealth. The main features of our model are that we focus on wealth growth and disregard exchange, and that the rate of return on wealth is increasing with wealth. The linear case with wealth-independent return rate has been well studied, leading to a log-normal wealth distribution in the long time limit which is essentially independent of initial conditions. We find through theoretical analysis and simulations that the non-linearity in our model leads to more realistic power-law tails, and can explain an apparent two-tailed structure in the empirical wealth distribution of the UK and other countries. Other realistic features of our model include an increase in inequality over time, and a stronger dependence on initial conditions compared to linear models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impact of academic research onto the non-academic world is of increasing importance as authorities seek return on public investment. Impact opens new opportunities for what are known as "professional services": as scientometrical tools bestow some with con1dence they can quantify quality, the impact agenda brings lay measurements to evaluation of research. This paper is partly inspired by the famous "two cultures" discussion instigated by C.P. Snow over 60 years ago. He saw a chasm between different academic disciplines and I see a chasm between academics and professional services, bound into contact through competing targets. This paper draws on my personal experience and experiences recounted to me by colleagues in different universities in the UK. It is aimed at igniting discussions amongst people interested in improving the academic world and it is intended in a spirit of collaboration and constructiveness. As a professional services colleague said, what I have to say "needs to be said". It is my pleasure to submit this paper to the Festschrift devoted to the 60th birthday of a renowned physicist, my good friend and colleague Ihor Mryglod. Ihor's role as leader of the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics in Lviv has been essential to generating some of the impact described in this paper and forms a key element of the story I wish to tell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the market's reaction to U. K. Insider transactions and analyzes whether the reaction depends on the firm's ownership. We present three major findings. First, differences in regulation between the U. K. And United States, in particular the speedier reporting of trades in the U. K. , may explain the observed larger abnormal returns in the U. K. Second, ownership by directors and outside shareholders has an impact on the abnormal returns. Third, it is important to adjust for news released before directors' trades. In particular, trades preceded by news on mergers and acquisitions and CEO replacements contain significantly less information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the cross section of stock returns using an original dataset consisting of annual observations on price, dividends, and shares outstanding for nearly all stocks listed on U.K. exchanges between 1870 and 1913, supplemented with additional information about attrition. The only clear pattern in the historical U.K. data is the high returns of extremely small stocks. Among the largest 99.8% of stocks, the historical U.K. data do not display the pattern found in modern U.S. (CRSP) data of excess returns for small stocks or stocks with poor past performance. Unlike CRSP data, stocks that do not pay dividends do not outperform stocks that pay small dividends during this period. However, as in the modern data, there is a weak relation between dividend yield and performance for stocks that pay dividends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined a major contention of stakeholder theory: namely, that a firm can simultaneously enhance the interests of its shareholders and other relevant stakeholders. Financial data relating to the U.K. water supply industry and the customer service performance indicators introduced after privatization in 1989 to protect customer interests provided the basis of the authors' empirical analysis. The results show that, although improving relative customer service performance is costly for firms in terms of current profits, shareholder returns respond in a significantly positive manner to such improvements. The authors interpret this finding as being consistent with stakeholder theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article tests the Fisher hypothesis with British data and focuses on the relationship between inflation and rates of return for common stocks. Regression models are used to evaluate statistics from the London Business School share price databank and inflation measures from the Index of Retail Prices. The Wholesale Price Index is mentioned in the context of replication tests. The study extended some of the monthly data back to 1935 and the annual data to 1919. The Financial Times Ordinary Share Index provided monthly stock market returns from June 1935 and an equally weighted geometric mean of the stock returns.

This paper investigates a sample of forty-seven British closed-end investment trusts over the interval 1960 to 1970. Using the traditional performance measures of Jensen, Treynor, and Sharpe, it was found that no trust in any of the intervals studied had performance measures that were significantly different from zero. This either means that the test was not powerful enough to identify any superior performance if it existed, or that no trust significantly outperformed the LSE. Two other performance measures were investigated: The first involved an empirically estimated security market line and the second the zero-beta form of the capital asset pricing model. In both cases some significant measures of performance were obtained. On investigating whether the performance measures abstracted from beta, it was found that whereas the new measures were related to beta the effect in the case of the traditional measures was insignificant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to identify which factors best capture systematic return covariation is central to applications of multifactor pricing models. This paper uses a common data set to evaluate the performance of various proposed factors in capturing return comovements. Factors associated with the market, size, past return, book-to-market, and dividend yield help explain return comovement on an out-of-sample basis (although they are not necessarily associated with large premiums in average returns). Except for the default premium and the term premium, macroeconomic factors perform poorly. We document regularities in the behavior of the more important factors, and confirm their influence in the Japanese and U.K. markets as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare initial offer prices in privatizations to initial prices in public offerings of private companies. The evidence indicates that government officials in the United Kingdom underprice IPOs significantly more than their private company counterparts. In Canada and Malaysia, however, the opposite is true. There does not appear to be a general tendency for privatizations to be underpriced to a greater degree than private company IPOs. We provide additional evidence on the determinants of privatization initial returns. Our findings indicate that initial returns are significantly higher in relatively primitive capital markets and for privatized companies in regulated industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test whether the reaction of international stock markets to oil shocks can be justified by current and future changes in real cash flows and/or changes in expected returns. We find that in the postwar period, the reaction of United States and Canadian stock prices to oil shocks can be completely accounted for by the impact of these shocks on real cash flows alone. In contrast, in both the United Kingdom and Japan, innovations in oil prices appear to cause larger changes in stock prices than can be justified by subsequent changes in real cash flows or by changing expected returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the behavior of share prices around the ex-dividend dates before and after the introduction of the 1988 Income and Corporation Taxes Act that reduced substantially the tax differential between dividends and capital gains in the United Kingdom. We find that, in the pre-1988 period when the differential taxation of dividends and capital gains is high, ex-day returns are positive and significant. In contrast, in the post-1988 period, ex-day returns are, in most cases, negative and insignificant. Further analysis reveals that, while ex-day returns are significantly related to dividend yield and to the length of the settlement period, they are not affected by the commonly used measures of transaction costs, such as the bid-ask spread and trading volume, or by the day of week, month of the year, type of dividend distribution, or number of days to the actual receipt of the cash dividend. We conclude that taxation affects significantly ex-day share prices in the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidence of slowly mean-reverting components in stock prices has been controversial. The hypothesis of stock price mean-reversion is tested using a regression model that yields the highest asymptotic power among a class of regression tests. Although the evidence that the equally weighted index of stocks exhibits mean- reversion is significant in the period 1926-1988, this phenomenon is entirely concentrated in January. In the post-war period both the equally weighted and the value-weighted indices exhibit seasonal mean-reversion in January. A similar phenomenon is also observed for the equally weighted index of stocks traded on the London Stock Exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: External Wall Insulation (EWI) insulates and protect homes against damp. The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme incentivised large energy providers in the UK delivering energy efficiency measures such as EWI to fuel impoverished households. Return on Investment (ROI) analysis is utilised to determine if EWI is a cost-effective procedure in terms of improving health related quality of life (HRQOL) measured using the EQ-5D-3L?, reducing health care expenditure, and fuel costs. Data comes from Stockton-On-Tees council, health care costs data, and information collected from households in the most socially deprived areas in Stockton-on-Tees. Results: The total cost of installation across all 2252 that received EWI was £10,222,954 in 2016 GBP. Annual total benefits were extrapolated across all 3265 households that received EWI. Total benefits were differences between the control and treatment groups in fuel costs, health care costs, and HRQOL multiplied by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Quality Adjusted Life Year threshold (£20,000). Total benefits for all households that received EWI were £1,519,045. The ROI of EWI is - 41%. 7.9 years are needed to recoup the costs of the initial investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a time-varying factor-augmented VAR to investigate changes in the transmission mechanism of economic shocks in the UK. Our estimates demonstrate the importance of time variation and suggest that monetary policy shocks had a bigger impact on inflation, equity prices and the exchange rate during the inflation targeting period. Changes in the transmission of policy shocks to bond yields point to more efficient management of long-run inflation expectations. Finally, we investigate responses of disaggregated prices, with the median becoming more negative and cross-sectional patterns consistent with a decrease in the role of cost channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The seminal work of J. B. Jefferys highlighted two unusual features of the Victorian equity market, namely high share denomination and uncalled capital. This article examines the extent to which publicly traded company stocks in the nineteenth century had these features. It also analyses the effect of these features on stock returns using monthly data for the London Stock Market over the period 1825-70. We find that stocks with unpaid capital earned a higher return, which is consistent with investors being rewarded for the risk of a call on their personal assets. We also find that stocks with a high share denomination earned a lower return, which is consistent with the view that this feature was conducive to superior corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organisational Sustainability Modelling is a new way to measure Cloud business performance quantitatively and accurately. It combines statistical computation and 3D Visualisation to present the Return on Investment arising from the adoption of Cloud Computing by organisations. The Cloud Return On Investment methodology described in this paper makes use of a highly structured and organised process to review and evaluate Cloud business performance. We illustrate its use with two case studies. The first case study concerns a National Health Service (NHS) Trust UK Infrastructure and confirms that using Cloud infrastructures can improve efficiency. It also results in raising the benchmark, the minimum acceptance level to complete concurrent tasks. The second case study shows 3D Visualisation being used to confirm incremental improvements to an NHS Bioinformatics project. The low risk-free rate may imply code development that allows reduced time to complete, and objective is clearly met and project delivery is straightforward. We introduce a structured Quality Assurance process, and demonstrate how to ensure the quality of our data analysis, which other researchers miss out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We extend standard models of conditional earnings conservatism and adaptation value to the context of the corporate refocusing activities of UK listed companies. This analysis is interesting because refocusing activities are: (1) commonly anticipated by significant negative returns in the financial year(s) before the refocusing event; (2) typically associated with large material charges; and (3) likely to be part of a strategic plan with the internal decision preceding the formal public announcement. We complement Burgstahler and Dichev [1997] by showing how their nonlinear relation between share prices and earnings changes around refocusing events as adaptation options are exercised. Because refocusing events also involve large realized losses and major changes to firms’ strategic plans, we expect to see systematic changes in the timing relations between stock returns and reported earnings. To capture this, we show how the coefficients of Basu’s [1997] model of conditional conservatism change around refocusing events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical literature on Bryant and May, market leaders for many years in the English match trade, is rich and interesting although it contains little on the connections between labour and technology-related managerial practices and the economic returns that they engendered. This is surprising given the importance of profit considerations to business behaviour in general and to Bryant and May's functioning in particular. This paper accordingly examines the connections between the firm's approach to technological innovation and labour relations and the financial returns it was able to generate and distribute to its owners across the period 1884 to 1927. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dividends can provide a tangible signal of earnings, but this function depends upon characteristics of financial reporting that were not always present in early financial capitalism. Although eighteenth-century English canal companies offered low-risk securitized capital approved by Parliament and were important to the development of financial capitalism, little is known about the economic state of the canal industry, beyond observed dividend levels. This article estimates rates of return on equity for a set of major English canals, but shows that their financial reporting under-represented equity inputs so that dividend rates did not reliably signal operating returns or equity-based rates of return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The measurement of business performance addresses issues central to business history and this paper examines the evidence on rates of return for UK risk-bearing capital across the period 1855-1914. Existing series, based on the archival records of individual companies and on market data, provide results that are relatively reliable, if limited in scope. The national income accounting framework, in conjunction with capital stock measurements, instead offers the potential to identify a comprehensive series, although one subject to a number of valuation assumptions. In this paper, such a new series is provided and evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This study aims to look at the conventional wisdom with regards to budgeting methods, processes, and sophistication in light of recent macro work relating budgetary approaches to risk-taking. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a survey of UK advertisers and personal interviews, current advertising and promotions budgeting methods and processes are summarized. A series of hypotheses relating risk, process and experience to advertising and promotions budgeting sophistication were tested. Findings - UK advertisers were found to use a variety of budgeting methods (two methods on average per company). Judgmental methods dominate, especially the "what is affordable" method, but at the same time more sophisticated methods like objective and task and measurement techniques (in particular return on investment) were solidly represented. The relationship between budgeting sophistication and risk was investigated, the premise being that risk and budgeting sophistication are inversely related, as well as budgetary processes and marketing experience. Research limitations/implications - Considerable insight is provided into the methods and processes being used. It is concluded that the explanation as to why firms use sophisticated or unsophisticated methods for setting their advertising and promotion budgets is largely related to organizational culture. Originality/value -Just over 1.5 percent of the UK's gross domestic product is spent on advertising and promotions (£19 billion). The study suggested that the primary reason for the lack of consensus on budgetary sophistication is that stakeholders involved with budgeting are far less concerned with specific methods than dealing with cultural norms, personalities, access to supporting data and policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-1990s the dividend yield reached and largely remained at a historically low level, even accounting for the stock market correction in the early 2000s. This appears to suggest that prices are overvalued. However, alternative valuation models based upon comparing bond and equity yields suggest that, if anything, prices are undervalued. This paper seeks to provide answers to this seeming paradox. Preliminary results suggest non-stationarity of the dividend yield and bond yield–equity yield differential, although the yield ratio is possibly stationary, casting doubt on mean reversion. Evidence from structural breakpoint testing suggests that all measures have been subjected to several mean level shifts throughout the sample period, and notably within the last decade, such that each series now fluctuates around a mean level lower than that experienced previously. Thus, the lower dividend yield and lower bond–equity ratio do not necessarily imply equity mispricing but that concepts of pre-existing normal levels no longer apply. In explaining why higher equity prices are supported, we note that the last decade has seen a period of historically low and stable inflation and interest rates. Further, there is a strong positive relationship between inflation and the dividend yield. This more stable economic environment has led to more accurate valuation of stocks and lower required rates of return, thus supporting higher prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are three key types of political risk facing pension schemes: those induced by demographic, economic, and pure political factors. The state scheme in the United Kingdom has been susceptible to all three types since 1980, with the result that the annual real internal rate of return on the second-pillar state pension for the average male worker fell from 5.1% to 1.5% over 25 years. The flat-rate, first-pillar Basic State Pension has also experienced a fall in its IRR of 3 percentage points as a result of the indexation basis changing from earnings to prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine whether past return measures have any significant predictive ability for future returns of UK unit trusts with international equity objectives. We find significant positive persistence between the past return performance of the trust relative to its investment sector and future trust returns relative to its sector. This result holds at short-run and long-run return horizons. The persistence is stronger in trusts that perform well relative to their sector. Our findings suggest that the past return performance of the trust relative to their sector provides a useful guide to future return performance relative to their sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine how well different linear factor models and consumption-based asset pricing models price idiosyncratic risk in U.K. stock returns. Correctly pricing idiosyncratic risk is a significant challenge for many of the models I consider. For some consumption-based models, there is a clear tradeoff in the performance of the models between correctly pricing systematic risk and idiosyncratic risk. Linear factor models do a better job in most cases in pricing systematic risk than consumption-based models but the reverse is true for idiosyncratic risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Credit in early modern England has been studied by both social historians of the market and historians of the book. The intersection of these literatures is explored by asking the question: how did producers of books about interest (which was closely connected to credit) convince readers that their books could be trusted? One particular book is considered: a palm-sized book of interest calculations by John Castaing. Most importantly, and unusually, many copies of this book contain his signature, which, it is argued, must be interpreted in the context of the particular role that signatures played in guaranteeing financial transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the magnitude of aggregate longevity risk and which entities in the United Kingdom should bear the financial burden. The author reviews the uncertainty surrounding past forecasts of life expectancy and projects future trends. He concludes that the state has absorbed much of the longevity and investment return risks through defined benefit funds. He recommends that the state should gradually transfer much of the preretirement longevity risk to private providers of capital willing to take on those risks for an acceptable rate of return.

The present article proposes a multivariate approach to unsmoothing appraisal-based real estate return indexes to recover the true market volatility information in real estate returns. It scrutinizes the role played by errors in variables, in conjunction with an analysis of other economic activities relevant to real estate returns, to exploit the functional relationship and the mechanism of interactions between real estate returns and these economic activities. Appraisal smoothing can therefore be detected and corrected properly and efficiently, without presuming a weakly efficient real estate market. The approach is then applied to U.K. real estate indexes as empirical examples. The results suggest a reasonable volatility in U.K. real estate investment that is close to reality. It is found that the volatility of the true market return on real estate is 1.5404–1.9282 times that of the return on the appraisal-based indexes, in contrast to figures of 2.4862–5.8720 produced by the fully unsmoothing procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of the paper is to explore whether there is any relationship(s) between social and environmental disclosure and the financial market performance of the UK's largest companies. Design/methodology/approach -- Two data sets were used in the study. The CSEAR database of UK companies provided the social and environmental disclosure component. The second data were the stock market returns earned by the largest UK companies as listed by The Times 1,000. A series of statistical tests was performed to examine whether any relationship could be detected in either the cross sectional or longitudinal data over a period of ten years. Findings -- No direct relationship between share returns and disclosure was found. Neither had such a relationship been expected, in keeping with the prior literature. However, the longitudinal data revealed a convincing relationship between consistently high(low) returns and the predilection to high(low) disclosure. There is no single convincing theoretical explanation as to why this might be. Originality/value -- This paper demonstrates the importance of examining a range of hypotheses on longitudinal data when other research suggests that any relationships are unlikely to be unstable year on year. More significantly, this paper is motivated not by a concern to understand better how investors' already-high returns may be bettered, but rather to explore how the alleged potential of financial markets to contribute to social responsibility and sustainability might be engaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the earnings of qualified teachers who choose to teach with the 'opportunity wage' for those who do not teach. It also find that the 'rate of return on career choice' for teachers has been declining for both men and women over the past 25 years although teaching is still relatively well paid for women. Higher education participation in Great Britain increased rapidly in the late 1980s and graduate surveys reveal that a high proportion of graduates obtain professional or associate professional occupations after graduation.

Discusses the features of Great Britain's Enterprise Act 2002 on corporate insolvency laws. Implementation of rescue-orientated and inequitable modifications; Aim of the regulation to attain a corporate rescue environment, a higher return for creditors and a balanced system of insolvency distribution; History of corporate insolvency laws; Focus of the article on the abolition of administrative receivership, reformation of the administrative procedure, removal of the Crown's preferential status in insolvency.

We investigate the possibility that limited participation in asset markets, and the stock market in particular, might explain the lack of correspondence between the sample moments of the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution and asset returns in U.K. data. We estimate ownership probabilities to separate “likely” shareholders from nonshareholders, enabling us to control for changing composition effects as well as selection into the group. We then construct estimates of the IMRS for each of these different groups and consider their time-series properties. We find that the consumption growth of shareholders is more volatile than that of nonshareholders and more highly correlated with excess returns to shares. In particular, one cannot reject the predictions of the consumption capital asset pricing model for the group of households predicted to own both assets. This is in contrast to the failure of the model when estimated on data for all households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents reports on the reversal of corporate diversification and use of the proceeds from asset sales of Thorn EMI in Great Britain. The restructuring of Thorn EMI presents an example that counters the idea that managers destroy shareholder value when they reinvest the proceeds from asset sales for expansion through acquisitions. Thorn EMI resolved the lack of sufficient funds for investment that characterized its music division during its diversification by raising cash through asset sales for reinvestment in the firm's core music activities. As a result of the concentration in music, the firm experienced significant operating performance improvements and value increases. The largest part of the increases in the company's value during the period were due to management's choice to concentrate in the growing music industry and exit from declining industries and to specific restructuring and other strategy-related announcements. The restructuring was accompanied by concentrating executive powers in the hands of one person. This person was granted company stock and options, albeit in less generous terms than U.S. executives of similar size firms. In the process, the firm created considerable value for its shareholders, out-performed any relevant benchmark, and eliminated a large diversification discount.

This article presents information on a study which analyzed monthly index series for financial assets in Great Britain, covering equities, bonds, bills and inflation. While many researchers use the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP)/Jobotson index series for the United States, an increasing number of studies focus on other countries, providing valuable evidence on long-run historical returns in different economic and institutional environments. As compared with other British data sources, our new indices are more comprehensive and accurate, and they follow a consistent definition throughout the sample period. Turning to the panel titled Correlation with Equity Risk Premium, note that the large positive correlation between British equity risk and bond premia is not replicated overseas, where the correlations, while still positive, are much smaller. The lack of a positive linkage between British equity risk premium and the micro-cap and low-cap premia, however, appears not to be country specific, it is the United States that is an outlier here, reflecting the higher beta of U.S. small-caps, as compared with those of other countries.

Presents evidence for men in England and Wales of the returns to the quantity and quality of education. Ability test in state schools until the late 1960s; Relationship between earnings and earlier schooling; Shift from selective to non-selective education.

The article focuses on the British overseas investment in the late 19th century. The suggestion by economist John A. Hobson suggestion that foreign investment led on to war and annexation never fitted more than a handful of cases even as a simple correlation. Besides, the causal mechanism by which the imperialism of investment was supposed to operate rested on a naive analysis of social relations between financiers and governments. It was suggested that the yield on overseas investments toward the end of the nineteenth century was probably lower rather than higher than that on domestic investments. Briefly stated, the argument of this paper is that the informational and intentional imperfections which explain the insensitivity of foreign investment to rates of return may also help explain the breakdown of the cosmopolitan liberal consensus of the mid-nineteenth century into domestic confrontations of monopoly capital and labor at the heart of the world economy and international confrontation between metropolitan monopoly and peripheral States. With regard to British investment in Argentina it will be argued that some leading capitalists made a marginal sacrifice of income in a more or less deliberate attempt to underwrite the provision of liberal oligarchy in Argentina.

The article examines the relationship between seasonality, stock returns and the macroeconomy, using a multifactor model of stock returns. Here, the authors have sought to examine the nature of seasonality in the British stock returns. By specifying a set of candidate variables for systematic risk factors and taking particular care in generating unexpected components in them, they estimate a multifactor model of stock returns. The first finding is that seasonalities in the British stock returns are caused by seasonalities in expected returns. They find that the seasonality in expected returns is a direct result of particular risk factors in seasonal months. The evidence suggests that the seasonality in stock returns is due to the high risks involved in holding stocks, first in January and December because this is an important period in the yearly business cycle and has implications for current and subsequent levels of economic activity. Second, the April seasonal may be related to the risk of changes in government policy that may come about due to the annual Government Budget and the end of the tax year, both of which may effect future economic activity.

In this paper an attempt is made to assess the behaviour of the rate of return on sales of unionised firms as compared to the non-unionised ones in the late 1980s in the United Kingdom. The main aim is to examine what has happened to the relationship between unionisation and profitability after the changes in the union legislation, competition environment and cyclical variations that took place over this period. The impact of different forms of union-firm bargaining on the union-profitability effect is also examined. The data reveal that the negative union effect on profitability exists, even after controlling for firm specific fixed effects, but that it has been sharply reduced over the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests for the presence of nonlinear dependence and chaos in real-time returns on the U.K. FTSE-100 Index, using a six month sample of about 60,000 observations. Since there is clear evidence of nonlinearity, we follow other researchers in this field by applying the same tests to the residuals from a GARCH process fitted to the data, in order to find out whether or not the nonlinearity can be explained by this type of model. In the event, our results suggest that GARCH can explain some but not all of the observed nonlinear dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this section I will not attempt to summarise the detailed argument but will evaluate the sets of criteria established by the 1967 and 1978 White Papers. In retrospect, the 1967 White Paper was probably too ambitious in its attempts to specify a general framework which would be applicable to all nationalised industries. The theoretical foundations of that document were firmly rooted in first-best Paretian welfare economics. The second-best issue was not explicitly faced and the importance of stabilisation and distributional objectives, relative to allocative ones, not assessed. Foster (1971, p. 43) detected the dilemma in the White Paper, commenting that `all arguments are qualified to the point of equivocation'. The possible inconsistency between the financial control (financial targets) and the economic controls (TDR and LRMC pricing) was recognised but never resolved. This difficulty, and the failure to transform the LRMC pricing rule into operational terms for each industry, contributed to the widespread disregard of the pricing guidelines. The insistence on the use of the TDR, the easiest part to enforce as a result of the procedures for approval of investment programmes, was half-hearted. Enforced price restraint reduced the meaning of any comparison of actual and target financial results. The overall impression of failure is difficult to resist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on economist P. Temin's model of the phenomenon of capital outflow from Great Britain during the period 1870 to 1914. Temin opts for the view that the capital exports were a rational economic response on the part of Victorian investors to differences in rates of return and risks between domestic equities and foreign bonds, and he attempts to fortify his stand with a macroeconomic model of the capital market. He also appears to subscribe to the view that a diversion of some of the capital from exports to the domestic market would have been beneficial to the British economy. His policy prescription of a tax on the returns from foreign bonds suggests as much. According to the author, Temin's diagnosis of the problem is at variance with his policy prescription. The model Temin presents to explain capital outflows is elegant and succinct, but unfortunately the complex nature of the international economy of the nineteenth century renders it sterile. It is not clear that restraints on such capital flows would necessarily have been to the advantage of the domestic economy.

To unlock the investment resources needed, action learning approach has to motivate managers to want to stay with their employers, not for reasons of gratitude or bonding but because the action learning process has opened up opportunities for individual growth and development within the workplace which has made the investment. It is a sharing of the intellectual equity in the future of the business. Action learning is not education for its own sake. It is education for capability in the context of management education. Action learning must produce more effective, not simply better qualified, managers. This goal is achieved for the employer/investor by requiring that assignments submitted for assessment are actionable within the workplace and, when acted upon, return considerably more than the programme cost. Management action learning readily yields returns on the investment of over 100 per cent in three years, even if the manager concerned leaves during that period. Home study was undertaken initially on logistics systems, customer account profitability analyses and customer service organisational structures. In each area, knowledge was formally tested in application and use. Despite good results, many felt more knowledge was needed to move the business and their careers forward.

The article estimates the returns to schooling for men in a standard human-capital model, using a large U.K. sample to address the endogeneity of schooling. The rate of return to schooling is an important factor in determining educational attainment and participation and, ultimately, wages and incomes. There are a variety of sources of bias associated with ordinary least-squares estimates of the return to schooling. The data set used in this analysis is the U.K. Family Expenditure Survey (FES). Our sample consists of 34,336 employed males aged 18-64 in the year of interview, obtained from pooling the nine consecutive annual FES cross sections from 1978 to 1986. Important legislation on schooling was introduced in the 1944 Education Act. Of particular interest in this study are the provisions for raising the minimum school-leaving age. The first increase, from 14 to 15, occurred in 1947.

Discusses the accounting and regulatory issues that have emerged from the privatization of water and sewerage authorities in Great Britain. Required rate of return and the capital base to which it should be applied; Problem of accountability for determining optimal quality standards and levels of service; Approach to promoting efficiency.