Does the “Zurich consensus” provide grounds for cautious optimism?

It is now clear that the so-called “Washington consensus”, the obsession with markets and the studied refusal to engage with global problems, is dead. The month of November 2008 may be seen by future generations as a turning point in human civilisation. While the Club of Rome has been warning for decades of the consequences of unsustainable growth, organisations like the World Economic Forum and the International Energy Agency have until recently supported the old market-oriented approach that assumed economic growth would solve all our problems. Now the financial crisis has exploded that myth and triggered rethinking of basic assumptions. A new consensus is emerging that recognises biophysical limits and the interlocking social, economic and environmental challenges we face. This provides grounds for cautious optimism that we may be entering a period of social learning which will allow human civilisation to survive.     

Temporal Patterns in Foreign Exchange Returns and Options

Although the foreign exchange market is believed to be one of the most efficient financial markets in the world, there is significant evidence that technical analysis is profitable in this market. In this study we investigate the ability of information from the options market to supplement the commonly used information on past prices to predict temporal patterns in foreign exchange returns. We find that strategies using information from at-the-money options were more consistently profitable than the commonly used strategies based on only historical spot exchange rates (past prices). Consequently, options appear to contain information regarding future spot exchange rate movements.     

Financial performances,entrepreneurial factors and coping strategy to survive in the COVID-19 pandemic: case of Vietnam

Vietnam has been one of a few countries that successfully contained the COVID-19 pandemic. However, aggressive measurements against the pandemic were at the expense of economic activities and companies’ financial performances. This cross-sectional study uses a survey of 672 companies in Vietnam and the logistic regression model to explore companies’ coping strategy choices based on their degree of financial distress, companies’ profiles, entrepreneurial factors, and the interactions between them. The results suggest that companies predominantly selected cost-cutting strategies to deal with the economic shutdown. However, the interactions between financial and entrepreneurial factors could significantly increase the likelihood of selecting growth-focused strategies. Besides, when facing a global pandemic such as COVID-19, managers’ perceptions about the spillover effects of global risks were much more impactful than local risks on companies’ coping strategy selections. This paper can help to inform managers to better deal with the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak.     

Rethinking Oz: More than policy,the underlying mindset

Do Australians see themselves as larrikins or victims? In this essay, I examine the entrenched assumptions Australians most commonly bring to their understandings of their present and future world. While some contemporary Aussies choose a unique voice, most others have swapped their British legacy for the can-do illusions of the Wizard of Oz.. Will Australia break out of its ingrained thinking to create a new future? Does Oz realise that the attending problems cannot necessarily be solved by the industrialist, short-term thinking that bred them? The present authoritarian thought system reaches back through two millennia of Western civilisation, almost unchallenged. It lacks long-term vision. This industrialist perspective still largely defines the understandings Australians have about their choices for the future, limiting our creativity for dealing with the dilemmas and opportunities ahead. This mindset is linear, exclusionary and competitive. It seeks either to take charge of nature's rhythms or ignore them. An emerging mindset of networking, rather than top–down control, may be starting to clear the smog. This new way of thinking is organic, inclusionary and collaborative—and certainly aware of longer-term horizons. It could replace the buccaneering, conformist mentality with self-responsibility and respect for diversity. Recent attempts to reinvent Oz with long-term vision fail to stand outside the mindset that frames competitive Westminster politics, limited by its institutionalised confrontation and either–or thinking. Oz could well make a “pledge to future generations” when examining alternative mindsets.     

When do transformative initiatives really transform? A typology of different paths for transition to a sustainable society

This special issue of Futures is filled with good examples of initiatives that each in their own way take part in shaping our common future. Authors from different parts of the world document that the initiatives make a difference within their own realm. The question raised here is how and to what extent such transformative efforts can contribute to transforming the world at macro level, bringing us closer to a sustainable society. Based on the flora of literature about sustainable development, five different answers are presented in the form of five alternative pathways. The goal should not be to reach consensus on which strategy is best, but rather to have as many people as possible marching together in the same direction under different banners. Individuals who see no pathway leading to their goal tend to resign. The combined efforts of people with common goals but different strategies may produce the necessary dynamics to meet the needs of future generations.     

Varying risk premia in international bond markets

Cochrane and Piazzesi [Cochrane, J.H., Piazzesi, M., 2005. Bond risk premia. American Economic Review 95, 138–160] use forward rates to forecast future bond returns. We extend their approach by applying their model to international bond markets. Our results indicate that the unrestricted Cochrane and Piazzesi (2005) model has a reasonable forecasting power for future bond returns. The restricted model, however, does not perform as well on an international level. Furthermore, we cannot confirm the systematic tent shape of the estimated parameters found by Cochrane and Piazzesi (2005). The forecasting models are used to implement various trading strategies. These strategies exhibit high information ratios when implemented in individual countries or on an international level and outperform alternative approaches. We introduce an alternative specification to forecast future bond returns and achieve superior risk-adjusted returns in our trading strategy. Bayesian model averaging is used to enhance the performance of the proposed trading strategy.     

组织战略视角下的商业银行组织结构分析

商业银行组织战略的完整内涵包括银行的宗旨或使命、发展的操作目标以及完成这些使命和目标的竞争战略.商业银行的组织结构应适应使命、目标和竞争战略的变化,并保证商业银行组织战略的顺利达成.受传统计划经济模式的影响,我国商业银行的组织结构还无法真正反映银行的组织战略.我国商业银行在今后的组织设计和组织改造中必须做到与组织发展战略的协调与配合.     

Human Resource Allocation in a CPA Firm: A Fuzzy Set Approach

The review of existing human resource allocation models for a CPA firm shows that there are major shortcomings in the previous mathematical models. First, linear programming models cannot handle multiple objective human resource allocation problems for a CPA firm. Second, goal programming or multiple objective linear programming (MOLP) cannot deal with the organizational differentiation problems. To reduce the complexity in computing the trade-offs among multiple objectives, this paper adopts a fuzzy set approach to solve human resource allocation problems. A solution procedure is proposed to systematically identify a satisfying selection of possible staffing solutions that can reach the best compromise value for the multiple objectives and multiple constraint levels. The fuzzy solution can help the CPA firm make a realistic decision regarding its human resource allocation problems as well as the firm's overall strategic resource management when environmental factors are uncertain.     

Private Equity in the U.S.: Building a New Future

Despite the recent downturn, private equity firms still have an important role to play in the global economy. At the same time, many PE firms may need to rethink their strategies. Practices that have been worked in the past may not produce acceptable returns in a future, particularly given the current constraints on financing and leverage. One source of PE's comparative advantage, as demonstrated during the recent crisis, has been the ability of the best and most experienced firms to reorganize their portfolio companies when they get into financial trouble. But in addition to their financial management skills, specialized operating expertise has become more critical to success, and those PE firms that have not acquired it are especially likely to find that past success in raising capital is no guarantee of success in the future. The authors begin by providing a brief overview of the past three decades of global private equity to identify how the market arrived at its current position. Using the findings of academic research together with case studies and interviews with PE practitioners in the U.K., the authors suggest a number of building blocks for the future that reflect the considerable success of the most reputable and experienced PE firms in increasing the value of their portfolio companies.     

Beyond medicine : Health challenges and strategies in the 21st century

The future of health involves much more than the future of medical care since the major factors affecting health are environmental, social and economic ones. Health has generally improved in the past century, but the continuation of this trend is threatened by population growth, urbanization environmental change, poverty, inequity, war, existing communicable and chronic diseases, and possible new ones. New policies and strategies emerging to deal with these challenges include the formulation of healthy public policy, investing in health, and the development of new structures and processes of governance. Integrated national studies focused on human well-being and environmental health are one means through which the futures field could contribute to the improvement of health in 21st century. Visioning workshops and other participatory futures activities are equally important, since they enable people and communities to take part in the definition and achievement of their preferred health futures.     

The question mark over coal: Pollution,politics, and CO2

There is a growing concern about the effect of fossil-fuel burning, and the consequent increase in carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration in the atmosphere. This increasing concentration is now well-documented, and although the evidence of actual or potential climate changes is not conclusive, the growth in energy consumption magnifies the importance of the possible dangers. This article highlights two aspects of the issue. The CO₂ increase will be mainly produced by coal. And whereas the increase in atmospheric CO₂ is now being imposed upon the world principally by the USA, the USSR, and Western Europe, the developing countries will probably be important contributors by early in the next century. Using world energy resource estimates and projections of the global production of CO₂ from fossil-fuel burning in the year 2025, the authors argue that it will be difficult to achieve an international consensus and commitment to deal with the issue. This is because of the relationship between economic growth, industrialisation, and the production of CO₂, and because of the distribution of the beneficial and harmful effects of any climatic change.     

Futures in global space//www.models.gis.media : [BBR]1[/BBR]

Geographers deal with global and local space and their interrelationships and thus bring new insights, perspectives, and methods to global questions. This is appealing to futurists since the principle of ‘think globally-act locally’ has been an inspiration for many years. In this paper I explore how old and new approaches in geography, as well as new information technologies such as the World Wide Web (WWW) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), might contribute to global modeling. I briefly review also the history of global economy models to discover lessons for future attempts to construct global models, not least how prevailing paradigms and institutional expediency determine the intellectual effort, and its impact. I then describe some of the new directions being undertaken by global modelers, quantitative geographers and regional scientists in the 1990s, and the possibilities and challenges for the next few years, and their contribution to the knowledge building process and its context.     

苏州台企稳坐钓鱼台?——访苏州台资企业协会荣誉会长王勋辉先生

"现在台商已清楚地看清了自己的处境,台资企业必须借助祖国大陆腹地,面向全球市场。因为台资企业来大陆,不光是和大陆企业竞争,更多的是和世界大企业抗衡。"     

Corporate strategy and information disclosure

We examine voluntary disclosures of information about corporate strategies. We develop a model in which managers choose whether to reveal their strategic plans only to some partners of the firm or also to the outside world. We show that managers face a tradeoff when deciding whether to disclose their private information to outsiders. On the one hand, by disclosing their intentions, managers become reluctant to change their minds in the future. This may lead them to make inefficient project implementation decisions. On the other hand, information disclosure about corporate strategy provides strong incentives for partners of the firm to undertake strategy‐specific investments.     

Building the future: Undertaking proactive strategy for national outlook

Future studies should provide the means to forecast potential crisis in order to avoid them or limit their effects [Masini, E. 2006, Rethinking futures studies, Futures 38, 1158-1168]. Recognizing and realizing the future events from past up to the present have been the main concern of the rulers and policy makers from the very beginning of civilization. Future studies are a decisive part of the public decision process which plays a very distinctive role in the desirable future of a society. The role of elites in future studies and scenario building is notable; they design national policies and strategies and have a significant impact in general public. Although future cannot be foretold by anyone, the interactions of advanced nations seem to be counter productive; they try to depict the futures. In this case, the futures are built, not predicted. The interactions of two or more systems at the level of international relations have been discussed in this paper. The imaginations of general public toward the futures are given in each society by using these analogies: railroad, river, sea and game. Therefore, the intervention of advanced nations may confront passive, harmonic, active, proactive and chaotic reaction in the other nations. We have discussed that undertaking proactive strategy is the best way to design national perspective.     

The global emergency—Perspectives,overviews, responses

The article reviews a number of recent works that cover different aspects of continuity and change in a complex world. The choice of these sources is governed by criteria that include quality, relevance and fit with the observer’s interests. In this case the fact that humanity had started to overshoot global limits in the 1980s leads to shared concerns about the viability of the current world order. The chosen works respond to these concerns in two ways. The first group of four works attempts to analyse the present global situation and, in so doing, seek to offer conclusions and recommendations. The second group consisting of two works focus more specifically on possible solutions and strategies of response.     

The future for technological collaboration

Technological collaboration between firms is argued to be increasing and to be an important element of corporate and technological development. Such collaboration is actively promoted by governments. It is a central element of the ‘techno-globalism’ analysis of future international economic and technology development. There are many reasons for the promotion of collaboration, but its outcomes are mixed. Collaboration may reflect industrial and technological weakness; it has a limited technology focus, rarely appropriate to world problems; its international range is restricted to the global triad; and public policies and corporate strategies may be incongruent. By highlighting the many uncertainties surrounding collaboration, this article questions the techno-globalism analysis, and raises some issues concerning the future of collaboration between firms. It argues that whatever its future, the importance of indigenous capabilities remains critical for nations and for their firms.     

Eleonora Masini: Nurturing visions of the future

This profile is an overview of the remarkable career of Eleonora Barbieri Masini, the mother of Futures Studies, who dedicated her professional life to nurturing hopeful visions of the future. She was a leading proponent for studying the future and a reviewer of the field. An Italian sociologist, Masini was first influenced by French thinkers, then by the advocacy of Aurelio Peccei, co-founder of the Club of Rome, with whom she became a close friend. During the change swirling around her beloved Europe, as it struggled for post-war reconstruction, she helped establish the World Futures Studies Federation, taking this global network of futurists behind the Iron Curtain and into the developing world. She was always on the move, particularly seeking out and encouraging women to take seriously their special role in both envisioning and creating the future. Her own hope for the future, which she held against the tide, helped lift her beyond a bleak present.     

An Analysis of Contrarian Investment Strategies in the UK

The performance of contrarian, or value strategies – those that invest in stocks that have low market value relative to a measure of their fundamentals – continues to attract attention from researchers and practitioners alike. While there is much extant evidence on the profitability of value strategies, however, most of this evidence pertains to the US. In this paper, we provide a detailed characterisation of value strategies using data on UK stocks for the period 1975 to 1998. We first undertake simple one-way and two-way classifications of stocks in which value is defined using both past performance and expected future performance. Using sales growth as a proxy for past performance and book-to-market, earnings yield and cash flow yield as measures of expected future performance, we find that that stocks that have both poor past performance and low expected future performance have significantly higher returns than those that have either good past performance or good expected future performance. Allowing for size effects in returns reduces the value premium but it nevertheless remains significant. We go on to explore whether the profitability of value strategies in the UK can be explained using the three factor model of Fama and French (1996). Broadly consistent with the results for the US, we find that using the one-way classification the excess returns to almost all value strategies can be explained by their loading on the market, book-to-market and size factors. However, in contrast with the US, using the two-way classification there are excess returns to value strategies based on book-to-market and sales growth, even after controlling for their loading on the market, book-to-market and size factors.