The fundamental theorem of welfare economics asserts that under conditions of perfect competition Pareto efficiency will obtain. This has provided the conceptual basis for the market failure approach to regulation, which focuses on failure to satisfy the conditions for perfect competition as...

Asymmetric information is at the heart of situations involving trust. In the case of B2C Internet commerce, the information asymmetry typically relates to the difficulty that consumers have of distinguishing between "trustworthy" and "untrustworthy" Web merchants. The impasse can be resolved by...

We review the policy arguments in favour of assisting SMEs in various areas of their operations. Our review suggests that many of the arguments put forward for subsidising SME activities (as distinct from some activities of firms regardless of size) are not economically justified. Nonetheless,...

This paper examines the process of innovation within SMEs, focusing on a sample of firms in New South Wales, Australia. The trend of the last several decades towards increased integration of global markets, or globalization, has meant that many firms are experiencing continuously increasing...

Chinese companies report year-end earnings and dividends simultaneously, so when the two sets of news are in conflict, the relative importance of earnings versus dividends can be disentangled. Chinese dividend announcements take precedence over earnings news, as revealed by Cumulative Absolute...

This paper provides a method for testing for regime differences when regimes are long-lasting. Standard testing procedures are generally inappropriate because regime persistence causes a spurious regression problem - a problem that has led to incorrect inference in a broad range of studies...