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There are two distinct types of forecasting model in which past experience is used as an indicator of the future, and these may be termed “causal” models and “non‐causal” models. (An extensive discussion of these model types appears in Robinson and Wood and Fildes.) Non‐causal (naive) models simply extrapolate past history on the forecast variable and disregard those forces which caused the particular pattern for the time series. The object is to select the type of curve which provides the closest fit to a given historical series, and complex statistical procedures exist for carrying out this exercise. The great problem with forecasting by extrapolation is that it presupposes that the factors which were the main cause of growth in the past will continue to be the main cause in the future, which may be incorrect, and if this is the case the use of this technique will result in poor forecasts. If one considers sales of foreign holidays as an example, one realises that there may be significant changes in the variables affecting these sales, such as income changes, fare changes, and changes in exchange rates. In order to forecast sales of foreign holidays reasonably accurately it is therefore necessary to construct a causal model in which sales are explicitly related to the determining forces.

The implications of modern portfolio theory for pension fund investment management are examined and compared with actual behaviour. It appears that the extent to which pension funds diversify goes far beyond that required for risk reduction, and therefore possible alternative motives are suggested. There is also some evidence of excessive equity trading.

Drawing on Wendt’s (1995, 1999) thin constructivist approach to international relations this paper aims to critically examine how the measures taken by the Australian Government to protect the country from coronavirus (COVID-19) have prompted politicians and opinion-makers to mobilize globalizing and de-globalizing discourses towards divergent conceptualizations of national resilience.

The paper examines 172 Australian political and media articles, which focus on both COVID-19 and globalization/de-globalization published between February and June 2020. The data were imported to NVivo to enable in-depth thematic analysis.

The paper develops the concept of crisis protectionism to explain how COVID-19 has been mobilized in discourses aimed at accelerating selective de-globalization in Australia. Selective de-globalization is inductively theorized as involving material structures (i.e. border closures), ideational structures (i.e. national identity) and intersubjectivities (i.e. pre-existing inter-country antagonisms).

The paper relies upon publicly available data about Australian discourses that relate to a unique globally disrupting extreme event.

Crisis protectionism and selective de-globalization are important to multinational enterprises (MNE) that operate in essential industry sectors (e.g. medical supply firms), rely upon open borders (e.g. the university sector) and for MNEs entering/operating in a host country experiencing antagonistic relationships with their home country.

The paper extends Witt’s (2019) political theorization of de-globalization towards a socialized theory of de-globalization. By rejecting liberal and realist explanations of the relationship between COVID-19 and de-globalization, this study highlights the importance and endogeneity of non-market risks and non-economic logic to international business and MNE strategy.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

This issue of Managerial Finance is devoted to modern portfolio theory which has evolved since the pioneering work of Markowitz in 1952. Before the development of modern portfolio theory investors and their advisers used the “traditional approach” to investment management and portfolio selection.

Since the arrival of mass production, commodification has been plaguing markets – none more so than that for music. By separating production and consumption in space and time, commodification challenges the very conditions underlying economic exchange. This chapter explores authenticity as the institutional response to the commodification of music, rekindling the relationship between isolated market participants in the increasingly digitized world of music. Building upon the “Production of Culture” perspective, we unpack the commodification of music across five different institutional realms – (1) production, (2) consumption, (3) selection, (4) appropriation, and (5) classification – and provide a thoroughly relational account of authenticity as an institutional practice.

The efficient market hypothesis (EMH) asserts that share prices fully reflect all available information, any new or shock information being very rapidly incorporated into the share price. This apparently simple hypothesis, if true, has very powerful implications for investment analysis and corporate management.

The purpose of this study was twofold: first, to optimize the Environmental Attitudes Inventory (EAI) and second, to establish a baseline of the difference in environmental attitudes between first and final year students, taken at the start of a university’s declaration of commitment to EfS.

The psychometrically designed EAI was used to overcome the problems and limitations of the much-used, but controversial, revised New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) Scale. The performance of the original 72-item EAI was compared with our 37-item reduced form using a population of first- and final-year university students.

The reduced 37-item EAI provides a reliable and valid tool for investigating structured, multi-dimensional environmental attitudes of university students while reducing response burden and increasing response and completion rates compared with the longer versions of the EAI.

No attempt is made to link elements of the university experience with changes in attitude between first- and third-year students. The authors expect the 12-faceted EAI to provide more detailed feedback on the affective outcomes of EfS initiatives than currently used instruments.

This research contributes to establishing the EAI as a gold standard with which to monitor students’ environmental attitudes. Although most studies aimed at understanding the impact of EfS measure attitude change over relatively short periods of time – typically using the brief NEP scale administered immediately before and after a specific semester course – the approach developed here is designed to detect attitudinal change that may be ascribed to the entire university experience between students’ first and final year.