Combining LCA and RA for the integrated risk management of emerging technologies

Emerging risks of innovative technologies, like for instance nanotechnology, require proactive assessments in order to guarantee that their future materials and products will not result in adverse effects on health, safety and the environment. The combination of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Risk Assessment (RA) offers a systematic approach to identify and assess potential impacts. LCA is a well-known analytical tool, standardised in ISO 14040-14044, to assess the environmental impact of the entire life-cycle of a product or service. Its strengths are the systematic approach to analyse all life-cycle stages of complex systems. Integrated risk management can benefit in various ways from LCA. Firstly, LCA offers a new dimension to the safety paradigm, exploring the principles and synergies between LCA and RA. Secondly, LCA offers a systematic approach to analyse the risks of innovative technologies along their entire life-cycle (from design, building, maintenance, operation to decommissioning). Thirdly, LCA offers an analytical tool to quantify the environmental impact of emerging technologies. In combination with RA, LCA can provide scientifically sound information for the early assessment of potential impacts on health, safety and the environment.     

Discussion of “Implied Equity Duration: A New Measure of Equity Risk”

Equity duration offers an interesting new approach to measuring stock risk. The cross-sectional relation between duration and returns is puzzling and invites further investigation.     

The impact of possible-offer announcements on the wealth effect of target firms

The stock market materially and positively responds to released information on possible offers, likely because such announcements signal the high probability that formal bids will be offered. If potential takeover discussions are revealed earlier, then target shareholders will gain significantly lower abnormal returns around the time of when formal offers are announced. Financial bidders are less likely to approach targets with earlier possible offers; however, if they do offer possible takeovers, they need to pay incrementally higher bid premiums in their formal offers. The reform inherent in the U.K. Takeover Code of 2011 weakens a bidder’s willingness to offer possible takeovers. The pre-reform effects of possible offers on the wealth effect of targets differ from those seen after the reform.     

New developments

This article offers an overview of recent attempts to reconfigure the relationship between state and civil society in Australia. The article offers five models of how state/civil society relations might play out under the Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal government. These models include corporate, nostalgic, technological, neo-liberal, and the UK government’s Big Society variants. The article concludes that the Turnbull government’s approach to civic renewal is not innovative, and has reverted to a thin corporate model of state/civil society relations.     

A Complete Nonparametric Event Study Approach

Event studies have been used to examine the direction, magnitude, and speed of security price reactions to various phenomenon. Concerns over the lack of normality in stock return distributions motivated the introduction of nonparametric test statistics in the event study literature. A parametric procedure (OLS), however, has been extensively employed in the estimation of parameters for the market model. This paper, in contrast, applies Theil's nonparametric regression in the estimation of abnormal returns; an approach which is distribution free and provides a complete nonparametric approach for the detection of abnormal performance. Simulation results indicate Theil's estimation procedure offers a slight improvement in power in the detection of abnormal performance over the traditionally employed methodology. The results suggest employing Theil's nonparametric estimation procedure combined with the rank statistic. This complete nonparametric combination offers similar power with fewer underlying assumptions.     

Strategies for healthcare facilities, construction, and real estate management

Adventist HealthCare offers the following lessons learned in improving the value of healthcare facilities, construction, and real estate management: Use an integrated approach. Ensure that the objectives of the approach align the hospital or health system's mission and values. Embrace innovation. Develop a plan that applies to the whole organization, rather than specific business units. Ensure commitment of senior leaders.     

ON APPLICATION OF THE RANK TRANSFORMATION DISCRIMINATION METHOD TO FINANCIAL PROBLEMS

Multiple discriminant analysis is a powerful analytic tool for the financial researcher. However, data transformations are a near necessity for improving relevant sample characteristics, since the assumption of normality plays a critical role in successfully applying the technique to financial problems. The rank transformation approach is an alternative that offers considerable advantages over traditional mathematical transformation procedures. The strength of rank transformation is illustrated in this paper using the bond-rating problem as an empirical example. The results are significant because a classic model is shown to be more robust than previously was assumed. We suspect that other multivariate financial problems could benefit from the approach as well.     

Extending the capital asset pricing model: the reward beta approach

This paper offers an alternative method for estimating expected returns. The proposed reward beta approach performs well empirically and is based on asset pricing theory. The empirical section compares this approach with the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the Fama–French three‐factor model. In out‐of‐sample testing, both the CAPM and the three‐factor model are rejected. In contrast, the reward beta approach easily passes the same test. In robustness checks, the reward beta approach consistently outperforms both the CAPM and the three‐factor model.     

An experiential approach to learning about the balanced scorecard

The balanced scorecard (BSC) is an integrated strategic performance management framework that helps organizations translate strategic objectives into relevant performance measures. This paper offers guidelines for implementing an experiential approach to learning about the BSC through the study of “real-world” organizations. This approach emphasizes hands-on experience with the team-based, cross-functional, and strategic aspects of management accounting designed to address several educational objectives, including: understanding organizational strategy and critical success factors; gaining insight into how to measure performance; and developing oral presentation and team-building skills. Specific examples of classroom materials to facilitate implementation of this approach in management accounting courses at both graduate and undergraduate levels are also offered.     

A longitudinal study of the determinants of transfer pricing change

Evidence of a change in transfer price offers a rare opportunity to examine underlying causes to explain the need for change. Three modern-day frameworks are employed in this longitudinal case study to interrogate the events and actions taken at an iron and coal company during the last quarter of the 19th century. This approach provides insights to potentially influential factors effecting transfer price determination which may be neglected or overlooked in current theoretical or empirical studies.     

Estimating the cross-sectional market response to an endogenous event: Naked vs. underwritten calls of convertible bonds

The literature on conditional event studies advocates the use of endogenous switching models to analyze cross-sectional variation in the stock market's response to corporate announcements of endogenous events. This paper proposes the use of a flexible Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach for estimating such models. The Bayesian MCMC approach offers several advantages over the Heckman–Lee two-stage estimation approach. In particular, analysis of the “treatment effect” (the difference between the observed and counter-factual outcomes) controls for the endogeneity of the firm's choice. As an application, the paper examines the market's response to naked and underwritten calls of convertible bonds. The paper reports evidence that the market's response to calls of convertible bonds is correlated with the private information partially revealed by the firm's choice of call type. However, although the average treatment effect associated with an underwritten call is negative, it is not significantly different from zero.     

Detection of Management Fraud: A Neural Network Approach

The detection of management fraud is an important issue facing the auditing profession. A major contributor to this issue is the Loebbecke and Willingham (1988) conceptual model for the detection of management fraud. A cascaded Logit approach using the Loebbecke and Willingham model was developed in Bell et al. (1993). The present study offers an alternative approach using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). This paper develops a successful discriminator of management fraud using both the generalized adaptive neural network architectures (GANNA) and the Adaptive Logic Network (ALN) approaches to designing neural networks. The discriminant functions can distinguish between fraudulent and non-fraudulent companies with superior accuracy to the cascaded Logit results of Bell et al. (1993). Finally, the discriminant function provides a parsimonious set of questions useful for detecting management fraud.     

Closed-form valuation of American call options on stocks paying multiple dividends

An American call option on a stock paying a single known dividend can be valued using the Roll–Geske–Whaley formula. This paper extends the Roll–Geske–Whaley model to the n dividends case by using the generalized n-fold compound option model. In this way this paper offers a closed-form solution for American options on stocks paying n known discrete dividends. Moreover, the model also offers the critical values of the early exercise boundaries at each ex-dividend date instant, making it easy to define an early exercise strategy. Numerical examples are included to illustrate this approach.     

The Taylor Principle and Monetary Policy Approaching a Zero Bound on Nominal Rates: Quantile Regression Results for the United States and Japan

This paper offers a new approach that estimates the response of interest rates to inflation and the output gap at various points (quantiles) on the conditional distribution of interest rates. This offers an improvement on empirical estimates conducted only at the mean and also allows us to test the propositions that policy shows greater aggression to inflation in the reaction function in terms of a greater response coefficient as interest rates reach low levels, and increasing aggression as the lower bound is approached. We find support for the Taylor principle, a more aggressive response to inflation than under a Taylor rule, but no detectable evidence of increasing aggression as the zero lower bound is approached in the US and Japan.     

Liquidity and capital under uncertainty and changing market sentiment: A simple analysis

This study introduces a general approach to investigate resource allocation and asset prices in an economy with uncertainty and shifts in market sentiment. The approach presents a number of key features: first, it proposes a choice-theoretic model that determines the utility that the agents derive from holding assets with different liquidity. Second, it incorporates a variable (endogenously-determined) cost structure of asset liquidation, which reflects the (in)efficiencies of the financial infrastructure and changes in market moods. Third, it also incorporates a model of expectations formation under uncertainty and changing market sentiment. While rich in structure, the approach offers a simple analytical framework to investigate resource allocation decision and asset price dynamics under various sources of uncertainty, and to explore the micro-economics of speculative bubbles and boom–bust sequences. The use of a possible market-specific prudential policy tool is discussed.     

Systems theory and technological change

This paper offers a different approach to the analysis of technological change traditionally offered by neo-classical economists. Using a general systems approach, changes in technology are described by the process of adaptation of technologies to their external environment, similar to the concepts of homeostasis and self-regulation in biological and electronic systems.     

International asset allocation using the market implied cost of capital

The Black and Litterman (Financ Anal J 48(5):28–43, 1992) (BL) approach to portfolio optimization requires investor views on expected asset returns as an input. I demonstrate that the market implied cost of capital (ICC) is ideal for quantifying those views on a country level. I benchmark this approach against a BL optimization using time-series models as investor views, the equally weighted portfolio, and allocation methods based on stock market capitalization and GDP. I find that the ICC portfolio offers an increase in average return of 2.1 percentage points (yearly) as compared to the value-weighted portfolio, while having a similar standard deviation. The resulting difference in Sharpe ratios is statistically significant and robust to the inclusion of transaction costs, varying BL parameters, and a less strictly defined investment universe.     

Fixing the individual health insurance market

The individual health insurance market is in crisis. Among the possible options for reform, a managed competition approach offers the broadest, most comprehensive solution.     

Cultural dynamics in the diffusion of informatics

The diffusion of informatics, particularly of artificial intelligence devices, could produce sociocultural effects unlike those accompanying the introduction of other revolutionary technologies. A particular philosophy is associated with the computerization of society-yet this is appropriate only as a technical approach to communication and information processing problems and offers little in broadening the intellectual dimensions of man. To enhance human potential in both mental and intellectual senses and to reduce the dangers of inter- and intracultural conflict, an intellectique (connecting epistemology to informatics) is proposed to give us informatic tools that would allow the expression of cultural and personal differences.     

Ontology-based e-Assessment for Accounting Education

Abstract

This summary reports on a pilot of a novel, ontology-based e-assessment system in accounting. The system, OeLe, uses emerging semantic technologies to offer an online assessment environment capable of marking students' free text answers to questions of a conceptual nature. It does this by matching their response with a ‘concept map’ or ‘ontology’ of domain knowledge expressed by subject specialists. This article describes the potential affordances and demands of ontology-based assessment and offers suggestions for future development of such an approach.