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We find evidence that the runs on banks and trust companies in the Panic of 1907 were linked to the Bank of England’s contractionary monetary policy actions taken in 1906 and 1907 through the medium of copper prices. Results from our vector autoregressive models and copper stockpile data support our argument that a copper commodity price channel may have been active in transmitting the Bank’s policy to the New York markets. Archival evidence suggests that the plunge in copper prices may have partially triggered both the initiation and the failure of an attempt to corner the shares of United Copper, and in turn, the bank and trust company runs related to that transaction’s failure. We suggest that the substantial short-term uncertainties accompanying the development of the copper-intensive electrical and telecommunications industries likely played a role in the plunge in copper prices. Additionally, we find evidence that the copper price transmission mechanism was also likely active in five other countries that year. While we do not argue that copper caused the 1907 crisis, we suggest that it was an active policy transmission channel amplifying the classic effect that was already spreading through the money market channel. If the bust in copper prices partially triggered the 1907 panic, then it provides additional evidence that contractionary monetary policy may have had an unintended, adverse consequence of contributing to a bank panic and, therefore, supports other recent findings that monetary policy deliberations might benefit from considering the policy impact on asset prices.

As yet there are no indications that the President of the Local Government Board intends to give the force of law to the recommendations submitted to him by the Departmental Committee appointed by the Board to inquire into the use of preservatives and colouring matters in food. It is earnestly to be hoped that at least some of the recommendations of the Committee will become law. It is in the highest degree objectionable that when a Committee of the kind has been appointed, and has carried out a long and difficult investigation, the recommendations which it finally makes should be treated with indifference and should not be acted upon. If effect should not be given to the views arrived at after the careful consideration given to the whole subject by the Committee, a very heavy responsibility would rest upon the Authorities, and it cannot but be admitted that the Committee ought never to have been appointed if it was not originally intended that its recommendations should be made legally effective. Every sensible person who takes the trouble to study the evidence and the report must come to the conclusion that the enforcement of the recommendations is urgently required upon health considerations alone, and must see that a long‐suffering public is entitled to receive rather more protection than the existing legal enactments can afford. To refrain from legalising the principal recommendations in the face of such evidence and of such a report would almost amount to criminal negligence and folly. We are well aware that the subject is not one that is easily “understanded of the people,” and that the complicated ignorance of various noisy persons who imagine that they have a right to hold opinions upon it is one of the stumbling blocks in the way of reform; but we believe that this ignorance is confined, in the main, to irresponsible individuals, and that the Government Authorities concerned are not going to provide the public with a painful exhibition of incapacity and inaction in connection with the matter. There is some satisfaction in knowing that although the recommendations have not yet passed into law, they can be used with powerful effect in any prosecutions for the offence of food‐drugging which the more enlightened Local Authorities may be willing to institute, since it can no longer be alleged that the question of preservatives is still “under the consideration” of the Departmental Committee, and since it cannot be contended that the recommendations made leave any room for doubt as to the Committee's conclusions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of video‐conferencing as a suitable technology for business process reengineering (BPR) training of 12 health sector participants located in Prince Edward Island, Canada.

An action research was adopted. The participants received training from a remote BPR consultant located in Northern Ireland (UK), with the assistance of local moderators. The focus of the study is concerned with the quality of the learning experience and the important role played by local moderators.

Overall, the use of video‐conferencing technology provided a valuable learning experience. It was also cost effective and an efficient use of both the consultant's and the participants' time. A key part of the success of the exercise was the role of one of the local moderators who acted as the “eyes and ears” of the consultant.

A general contribution to knowledge is the positioning of the argument developed within the technology diffusion literature. The paper offers important insights into the effective use of video‐conferencing technology for BPR training purposes; and Knipe and Lee's evaluation of a video‐conferencing experiment in terms of the relationship between the human actors at the remote and local sites is discussed and extended.

Describes the mechanism of interlibrary lending (ILL) as used by the Library of the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong – an institute of higher education only four years old. Examines the library′s informal network with other academic libraries in Hong Kong. Provides a statistical analysis that illustrates the features and trends of the ILL service in the past few years. Outline major problems that handicap ILL.

This study establishes a baseline for the mortgage industry's beliefs and attitudes about race, culture, and discrimination in mortgage banking and determines if these attitudes vary by race. Through survey research, the data reveals that race matters in the lending arena.

From the 1960s onwards, students and members of the academic community on growing numbers of college and university campuses in the United States chose to confront the issue of apartheid by advocating divestment from corporations or financial institutions with any sort of presence in or relationship with South Africa. Student divestment advocates faced serious opposition from university administrators as well as opponents of institutional divestiture both at home and abroad. Despite these challenges, the academic community in the United States was one of the first arenas where anti-apartheid activism coalesced. This chapter examines the campaigns of students and educators who participated in the debate over divestment – to engage with the South African government and apartheid through dialogue and communication or to disengage completely from the country through withdrawal of financial investments. The anti-apartheid efforts of the academic community at Michigan State University, one of the first large research universities in the United States to confront the issue of apartheid and divestment at the university level and beyond, serves as a window to view academic activism against apartheid. The Southern Africa Liberation Committee (SALC), a consortium of students, faculty, and community members dedicated to aiding the liberation struggle of Southern Africa, led the efforts at Michigan State and collaborated with allies across Michigan and the United States. SALC focused most of its efforts on South Africa, though the organization also confronted the issue of South Africa's controversial occupation of South West Africa and the ongoing civil war in Angola.

This article reports a wide range of complementary or antinomic insights into the multi‐layered globalizing process, in an attempt to understand its causes and significance. Different perceptions and assessments of its far‐reaching consequences all over the world are picked out. The ambiguity of the high‐technology revolution with potential transition from material to time values is contrasted with the self‐destructive bases of self‐interest policies, and the flagrant defeat of the modern economy among those excluded from planetary society. While on the surface it seems to be only a change of relations between the finance sphere and the “real economy”, the more comprehensive and penetrating cognition of recent occurrences reveals a questioning of human values. New forms of social relationships will need to be imagined to define what human worth is.

What is the academic community's contribution to the understanding of merger and acquisition (M&A) performance to date? Although there exists already a vast amount of theoretical as well as empirical studies aiming at explaining, predicting or understanding post-acquisition performance, there seems to be a growing dissatisfaction among scholars with the fragmented findings that have emerged to date. A possible explanation is that M&A scholars have mainly dealt with explaining the variance in M&A performance and have generally overlooked that contradictory findings are due to different measures of performance. This state of affairs is even more marked in the realm of technology-driven acquisitions, in that we find measures of both overall post-acquisition performance and post-acquisition innovative performance. Academics are therefore called upon to investigate what M&A scholars measure as post-acquisition performance in high-technology industries.

This chapter points toward a better understanding of M&A performance construct in high-tech settings through a review of existing empirical research of technology-based M&As within a broad range of scholarly journals. Findings present a fragmented state of affairs with a proliferation of operational definitions of post acquisition performance and a wide array of indicators. Moreover, different perspectives and time lags are accounted for.

The upsurge of Chinese and Indian outward foreign direct investment (FDI) raises an unanswered question about locational determinants of direct investment from the two countries. Using an unbalanced bilateral FDI database, we find that Chinese and Indian FDI are attracted to countries with large market size, low GDP growth, high volumes of imports from China or India, and low corporate tax rates. We also find important differences between China and India. While Chinese FDI is drawn to countries with open economic regimes, depreciated host currencies, better institutional environments, and English speaking status, none of these factors are important for Indian FDI. Chinese FDI is also deterred by geographic distance and OCED membership. However, neither of these has any impact on Indian FDI.