The dynamics of adult education : effectiveness of financial education seminars

This study examines the impact of adult education seminars in superannuation investments for retirement has on the investment intentions and decision making of those adults attending the seminars.  The socio-political context of the data is that of an aging population and a future government being unable to afford the current level of age pensions being paid, and attempting to encourage individuals to plan and provide for their own financial well-being in retirement.  Three themes emerged from the data and were seen to be representative of the major issues found in adult education for financial self-sufficiency: education for knowledge, education for decision making, and education for action.  In an attempt to measure the immediate impact of the seminar on the attendees decision making, the investment intentions of seminar attendees were captured at the start and end of the seminar. This was followed up three months later to see whether the intentions expressed at the end of the seminar had been implemented.  The immediate impact of the seminar was to encourage the respondents to express an intention to increase their investment strategy, however when the follow-up was done three months later, the results were mixed. Some respondents who did not express an intention to change their investment strategy actually made changes, and other respondents who did express an intention to make a change, did not do so.

Evaluating the impact of financial literacy programs on the retirement savings of superannuation fund members

Currently, in Australia, the age pension, paid for out of Commonwealth government taxes, forms the basis of Australia’s retirement income system, however, given the reality of an ageing population has compelled the government to undertake a number of measures to shift the responsibility for saving to the individual, forcing them to accept an increasing level of responsibility for their financial decision-making. In the light of the changing retirement environment, it would be expected that Australians’ would ensure that they became financially literate, however, despite the amount of information and advice available in the market place, this is not the case, and they do not appear to be appropriately prepared for their retirement. Recognising the importance of financial literacy, an increasing number of government agencies, employers, superannuation funds and schools are implementing financial literacy programs in Australia. This article provides an overview of the impact that attending a financial education seminar has on the retirement decisions and settings of participants. Evidence is provided from this research that in the short term, providing financial education programs make a difference to an individual’s intended retirement settings. However, the impact of these education programs in changing investment behaviour is less conclusive.

Questioning the future of paper and online survey questionnaires for management research

The way that we build the foundations of our intellectual capital in management has changed. One example is the steady move in management research from the use of traditional paper-based survey questionnaires to online technology-based formats. This paper considers this shift, particularly focusing on the question of whether the advantages of online survey questionnaires outweigh their potential problems. The historical use of paper-based survey questionnaires has produced a large body of literature on both the advantages and disadvantages in their use, which are reviewed here alongside those of online survey questionnaires. In addition, welI-tested methods are available for increasing survey response rates in paper format, and these should not be thrown out in the quest to utilise online survey methodology. Rather, researchers should aim to exploit the potential benefits of online technologies and increase response rate by thoughtfully combining traditional and new methods. This paper argues for further discussion and research attention on electronic methods of data collection to ensure potential cost savings are not outweighed by either financial or participation costs involved in online survey questionnaire design.

Regulatory theory insights into the past, present and future of general purpose water accounting standard setting

Purpose – Accounting and water industry experts are developing general-purpose water accounting (GPWA) to report information about water and rights to water. The system has the potential to affect water policies, pricing and management, and investment and other decisions that are affected by GPWA report users' understanding of water risks faced by an entity. It may also affect financial returns to accounting and auditing firms and firms in water industries. In this paper the authors aim to examine the roles of the accounting profession, water industries and other stakeholders in governing GPWA. Recognising that the fate of GPWA depends partly upon regulatory power and economics, they seek to apply regulatory theories that explain financial accounting standards development to speculate about the national and international future of GPWA.

Design/methodology/approach – Official documents, internal Water Accounting Standards Board documents and unstructured interviews underpin the authors' analysis.

Findings – The authors speculate about the benefits that might accrue to various stakeholder groups from capturing the GPWA standard-setting process. They also suggest that internationally, water industries may dominate early GPWA standards development in the public interest and that regulatory capture by accounting or water industry professionals will not necessarily conflict with public interest benefits.

Practical implications – Accounting for water can affect allocations of environmental, economic, social and other resources; also, accounting and water industry professional standing and revenues. In this paper the authors identify factors influencing GPWA standards and standard-setting institutional arrangements, and thereby these resource allocations. The paper generates an awareness of GPWA's emergence and practical implications.

Originality/value – This is an early study to investigate water accounting standard-setting regulatory influences and their impact.

The effect of financial constraints, investment policy, product market competition and corporate governance on the value of cash holdings

This study empirically investigates the value shareholders place on excess cash holdings and how shareholders’ valuation of cash holdings is associated with financial constraints, firm growth, cash-flow uncertainty and product market competition for Australian firms from 1990 to 2007. Our results indicate that the marginal value of cash holdings to shareholders declines with larger cash holdings and higher leverage. However, firms that are more financially constrained, that have higher growth rates and that face greater uncertainty exhibit a higher marginal value of cash holdings. These findings are consistent with the explanation that excess cash holdings are not necessarily detrimental to firm value. Firms with costly external financing and that also save more cash for current operating and future investing needs find that the market values these cash hoarding policies favourably. Finally, there is limited evidence of an association between various corporate governance measures and the value of cash holdings for a shorter sample period.

Out of the shadows: a discussion on law reform for the prevention of financial abuse of older people

Financial abuse of older people too often lives ‘in the shadows, hidden by fear and shame’. This and the protective love between family members can screen changes that are critical to an older person’s financial and living arrangements. Rather than a single event, it is usually a series of well-intentioned but ill-considered financial acts, which at some point tips over into abuse interwoven with an intricate web of family relationships. Was a transfer of title or a loan to an adult child really misappropriation? Has thoughtlessness become undue influence or even theft? 

The future of psychoanalytic institutes

The author contends that both conceptual and institutional problems permeate psychoanalytic institutes. Although institutional problems are historically based, they also derive from confusions around ill-defined concepts that lead to arbitrariness, authoritarianism, and the stifling of creativity. Psychoanalysis is a humanistic discipline that is touted as a science but is organized as a religion. Problems surrounding the right to train pervade psychoanalytic schisms, and transmission comes through processes of anointment. Institutional "false expertise" invokes the aura of anointment where training analysts pass down received truth through an esoteric pipeline depending on genealogy instead of function. Quasi-religious thinking and politics rush in to fill the gap between the level of claimed knowledge that affords qualification and the far lower level of real knowledge. Institutes should rely on evidence of candidates' performance and engage in open-ended inquiry

Exempt treatment of financial intermediation services under a value-added tax: an assessment of alternatives

Most countries with a value-added tax (VAT) exempt financial intermediation services from the tax. While exemption is generally perceived to be undesirable, it is also widely regarded as unavoidable because of technical difficulties in applying VAT to these services. This article reviews the standard rationale for exempt treatment and then considers the relative merits of two recent challenges raised in the tax literature. The first challenge involves the application of cash flow taxation to financial intermediation services in a manner that is consistent with an invoice/credit VAT (which is the dominant form). The second challenge proposes a comprehensive system of zero-rating of financial intermediation services, which is supported by a characterization of the household consumption of such services as non-taxable. The author argues that each of these alternatives to an exemption system suffers from both theoretical and practical implementation difficulties that make maintenance of exempt treatment the preferred approach, at least in the short term. There is, however, a simpler alternative to these fundamental reform options, involving modification of just one aspect of an exemption system to relieve some of its more problematic aspects. Many of the interpretative problems and associated inefficiencies that plague an exemption system arise from the need to distinguish between taxable and exempt financial services. The author argues that these difficulties can be eliminated, to a large extent, by basing the distinction on the form of prices. In support of this approach, he points out that it is consistent with the underlying reasons for the application of exempt treatment. The author considers a number of other possible modifications, but these are either rejected outright or viewed with a healthy skepticism. For example, the author is critical of the apparent rationale for the application of cash flow taxation to property and casualty insurers. He also rejects proposals that accept some looseness in the formulaic allocation by financial intermediaries of the costs of business inputs between exempt and taxable services for input credit purposes. In his view, an explicit reliance on pricing structures to draw the boundary between exempt and taxable services is preferable to the provision of relief for blocked input tax credits of financial intermediaries. Finally, the author is skeptical of the case for a policy response intended to address the tax bias under an exemption system for financial intermediaries to insource supplies.

Response : A defensible and workable approach to the income tax treatment of financial instruments

It is a privilege to have the opportunity to respond to the comments on my monograph1 provided by Mark Gergen, Glenn May, and Gordon Longhouse. Their comments, which are inevitably coloured by their very different perspectives, reflect the considerable expertise that each one of them has in the area of the income taxation of financial instruments. Indeed, it is with some hesitation that I offer a response in defence of various portions of the analysis presented in my monograph in support of some pretty modest proposals in this extremely difficult area of income tax law. Although I spent considerable time exploring some necessary first principles and their implications for the design of a system for the income taxation of financial instruments, I made several concessions to certain practical constraints that led me to support, in some measure, the status quo reflected in certain of the existing literature, as well as the legislation in a select group of countries. On the assumption that many readers may be unfamiliar with the monograph, I propose to respond by outlining much of my analysis in the monograph and the proposals that are the logical outcome. Throughout the outline, I will highlight and respond to what I see as the important points of difference emphasized by Gergen, May, and Longhouse.

Dimensions of financial competence

Whether or not someone has the ability to look after his or her own financial affairs is one of the most common problems brought before courts and tribunals in Australia. At present, there is no agreed-upon objective standard for assessing financial competency. The aims of this study were twofold: (1) to clarify which financial skills and tasks are considered important to adults in the Australian community when assessing financial competence; and (2) to evaluate a model of financial competence proposed by Webber, Reeve, Kershaw and Charlton. Professional service providers and students judged the importance of 61 skills, tasks and characteristics related to financial competence. The results supported a 6-factor model of financial competence. The findings suggest that it is possible to identify agreed-upon criteria for financial competency and provide a first step towards the development of a valid scale of financial competency.

On the future of teacher education: challenges, context and content

This article focuses on a discussion paper, which presents an analysis of context under four headings before turning to issues of what kind of teachers, teacher education and education services are required for 2020. There are three issues to be faced in the twenty-first century. The first issue is how to deal with the reconstitution of the natural environment so as to avoid imminent disaster. The second issue is how to overcome the xenophobia, learn to live with difference and construct institutions capable of accommodating difference. The third is how to mitigate gross disadvantages within and between societies.