Difference of Gain and Loss on Currency Translation and Conversion

This article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of translation and conversion of currency. Foreign currency translation is the process of reporting financial information from one currency to another. Foreign currency transactions take place on the spot, forward, or swap markets. Currencies bought or sold on the spot generally have to be delivered as soon as possible, that is, within 2 working days. Foreign currency translation is carried out to prepare joint financial reports. Translation is simply a change in monetary units, just as a balance sheet expressed in British pounds is restated into its US dollar equivalent. No physical exchange takes place, and no related transaction occurs as if a conversion were made.

Cross-border buyout pricing

Using a dataset of 1149 global private equity transactions, we find that cross-border buyouts are associated with significantly higher valuation multiples than domestic ones. We attribute this finding to informational disadvantages of foreign acquirers. Consistent with this idea, we find that the spread in valuation multiples narrows when the target operates in a country with high accounting standards, when it was publicly listed prior to the buyout, and when information production is facilitated due to large firm size. Further results suggest that local partnering in a syndicate serves as an effective remedy to avoid adverse pricing effects. The spread in valuation multiples is also less pronounced for large buyout funds, presumably because they draw on sufficient organizational resources to cope with cross-border-related transaction costs.

Educating for the Cooperative Society

The role of government in fostering HE’s contribution to societal cooperativeness is, in present conditions of high demand, contested both politically and ideologically. Although devolution of decision taking to universities is widely apparent, four types of strong influence remain in government use: mandates, funding incentives, investment in capacity-building, and overall system adjustment. These have fostered changes in the HE policy agenda from the outcomes espoused in the foundational Robbins Report namely: skilling (not prioritized), general powers of the mind, the advancement of learning, and a shared culture of citizenship. Over-skilling now grows, and leaves difficult policy questions such as: occupational filtering down, student debt and loan servicing, bureaucratic drift with related transaction costs, and decline in education standards. Considering what a university is good for, as opposed to good at, is a challenge for many policy makers.

Does Inter-Municipal Cooperation Really Reduce Delivery Costs? An Empirical Evaluation of the Role of Scale Economies, Transaction Costs, and Governance Arrangements

Inter-municipal cooperation in public service delivery has attracted the interest of local authorities seeking to reform public service provision. Cost saving, together with better quality and coordination, has been among the most important drivers of such cooperation. However, the empirical results on inter-municipal cooperation and its associated costs offer divergent outcomes. By conducting a meta-regression analysis, we seek to explain this discrepancy. We formulate several hypotheses regarding scale economies, transaction costs, and governance of cooperation. While we find no clear indications of the role played by transaction costs in the relationship between cooperation and service delivery costs, we find strong evidence that population size and governance are significant in explaining the relationship. Specifically, small populations and delegation to a higher tier of government seem to offer cost advantages to cooperating municipalities. As an extension of our model, we seek to disentangle service-related transaction costs based on asset specificity and ease of measurability of the service.

Nava Jyoti: Farmer’s Pursuit of Profitable Sales

Small and marginal farmers in India face several difficulties in selling produce due to their scale of production and related transaction costs. Aggregation of produce under the aegis of a producer organization is seen as a possible solution for improving market access. This case is about Nava Jyoti, a producer organization based in Odisha, India. Nava Jyoti received support from several institutions in the form of grants, soft loans and managerial handholding at the time of its inception. However, after a few years Nava Jyoti had incurred losses due to several internal and external factors affecting its sales operations. Building profitable sales operations was the key for farmers to stand on their own feet since grants and other institutional support would not flow indefinitely. The time had come to review the sales operations and take corrective steps, finding an optimal route to market strategy was the envisaged outcome of the review process. Solutions had to be relevant to the context and capabilities of Nava Jyoti’s members — small and marginal farmers in one of the poorest regions of the country.

Data Mining in Human Resources

In this paper, we briefly review and update our earlier work (Long & Troutt, 2003) on the topic of data mining in the human resources area. To gain efficiency, many organizations have turned to technology to automate many HR processes (Hendrickson, 2003). As a result of this automation, HR professionals are able to make more informed strategic HR decisions (Bussler & Davis, 2002). While HR professionals may no longer need to manage the manual processing of data, they should not abandon their ties to data collected on and about the organization’s employees. Using HR data in decision-making provides a firm with the opportunity to make more informed strategic decisions. If a firm can extract useful or unique information on the behavior and potential of their people from HR data, they can contribute to the firm’s strategic planning process. The challenge is identifying useful information in vast human resources databases that are the result of the automation of HR related transaction processing.

Policy-related transaction costs of agricultural policies in Finland

This paper assesses policy-related transaction costs (PRTC) associated with the main agricultural and agri-environmental policy instruments in Finland. We find that area-based income support measures entail low transaction costs as expressed in percent of payments, not only in Finland but also in other European countries. Moreover, transaction costs in the Finnish agri-environmental programme are surprisingly low. Within the agri-environmental programme, transaction costs increase with more targeted and differentiated agri-environmental measures. For the basic mandatory measures, these costs are even lower than the transaction costs for the area-based income support measures. What regards the most differentiated policy measures such as conservation of special biotopes or establishment of riparian buffer zones, transaction costs increase considerably. Combining these findings with the actual targets of the Finnish agricultural policies provides indirect evidence about the impacts of policy instruments and the efficiency of administration in implementing the instruments. For area-based income support measures, the Finnish administration seems to work very efficiently. For water protection targets, enforcement and division of labour within the administration seem to be insufficient.;