Impact of Advance Notice Periods on the Performance Persistence of Hedge Funds

This paper examines the impact of the advance notice period on hedge fund performance persistence in investors＇ portfolios. As investors in hedge funds face several trading restrictions related to the funds＇ common investment terms and conditions, it is hypothesized that the advance notice period generates illiquidity for investors and impairs their ability to benefit from performance persistence in hedge funds. Using a sample of 4,788 hedge funds over a period from 1994 to 2008 and contingency table based standard methodology for returns and Sharpe ratios, the results suggest that accounting for individual funds＇ advance notice periods has a negative impact on the performance persistence of hedge funds. The proportion of significantly persistent funds declines when incorporating the advance notice period, especially for short time horizons. Furthermore, a considerable part of hedge fund performance persistence is related to asset class-specific terms and conditions, reducing the amount of short-term performance persistence in practice.     

The influence of operating cash flow and investment cash flow to the accounting conservatism measurement

This research investigates the influence of cash flow from operating and investing activities to conservative accounting practices. Cash flow from operating activities shows the performance of a firms and its earnings quality. Higher operating cash flow indicates better performance, and it is expected to produce better earnings in the future. Better earnings would be a positive signal for investor as a basic to predict the firm＇s prospect. Investing activities will push or lowering operating assets. For firms that implementing the conservative accounting practices, changes in investment will influence the earnings＇ quality. When the investment goes up, the conservative practices will cause lower reported earnings. The hypothesis for this research is that there is a positive relation between operating and investing cash flow to accounting conservatism practices about whether it uses market value or accrual measurement. The result of the first test using market value accounting conservatism as a proxy has shown a positive relation between operating and investing activities cash flow to accounting conservatism practices, but investing cash flow does not have a significant effect to accounting conservatism practices. The result from the second test, using accrual measurement accounting conservatism has shown a significant positive relation for both operating and investing cash flow to accounting conservatism practices. A positive relation between operating and investing cash flow to accounting conservatism practices indicates that accounting conservatism is one of the tools that can be used to measure firm＇s financial performance and as an investment decision making tool for investor. Nevertheless those effects highly depend on the accounting conservatism proxy measurement used.     

Budget Structure and Pollution Control： A Cross-country Analysis and Implications for China

In the published literature, the differences in environmental performance across countries are typically explained using the Environmental Kuznets Curve. The Environmental Kuznets Curve states that pollution initially increases with economic growth. Once GDP per capita reaches a certain level, the relationship reverses. In the present paper, we provide an alternative hypothesis, where budget structure plays an important role in explaining the variations in pollution across the world.＂ the lower the business-related taxes as a share of total tax revenue, the higher the property tax in total tax revenue and the higher the ratio of public health expenditure in total expenditure, then the stronger the incentive of pollution control and the lower the pollution level. Our empirical findings reveal that the budget structure does have an important impact on pollution control. The policy implication of this research is that effective control of environmental pollution requires changes in tax structure and expenditure assignment. This research has important policy implications for China ＂s tax system reform and pollution control efforts.     

对盈利质量的需求与中国资本市场的基本面分析

It was reported that Chinese fund managers are patiently planning for the long-term with expectations that China‘s market conditions will improve, recognizing that regulators continue to take steps to improve corporate transparency. This paper discusses the relevance of high quality publicly available earnings information, how accounting standards influence the quality of reported earnings, and how capital market participants act as monitoring forces for earnings quality. Using the U.S. market as a benchmark, this paper considers earnings quality characteristics and monitoring forces in the context of the Chinese market. My overarching premise is that high quality analysis of high quality accounting information is crucial for the efficient flow of resources through a capital market. Thus it is instrumental to the growth of China‘s financial market and its economy. To this end, the paper summarizes potential impediments to high quality earnings and high quality analysis in China.     

An Empirical Study on Momentum and Contrarian Effects in Chinese Futures Market

As Chinese futures market is on track of standardized development, its efficiency and related investors＇ strategy have drawn wide attention from scholars worldwide. This paper aims to provide an empirical study on momentum and contrarian effects in Chinese futures market. It investigates how efficient this market has been after decades of development and what investment strategy can be used to obtain significant positive excess return. The analysis is based on weekly and monthly trading data of the major commodity futures listed in three Chinese futures exchanges since January, 1999. By establishing a zero-cost investment trading strategy as testing method, this empirical study shows that contrarian effect is significant in both weekly frequency （short term） and monthly frequency （long term）, and that as the holding period extends, the contrarian effect disappears. It also concludes that the reverse effects in the short term and long term origin from three factors： defective information transfer system, mean reversion in the contrarian effect, and immaturity of investors＇ mentality.     

Research of public policy-making and marketing effect --Taking Taiwan＇s consumption voucher for example

Public policy-making is usually subject to influence from environmental factors at home and abroad, and ＂crisis＂ is often the key point for public policy to be listed as the important objective of government policy. In order to deal with the global financial tsunami in 2008, Taiwan government puts forward a number of public policies to revitalize the economy, and issuance of consumption voucher is one of the most important plans. It will cost NT$ 82.9 billion to issue consumption voucher, which is a large sum. It is worth evaluation of whether these paying taxes are used properly. Therefore, this research is to test the effectiveness from two levels： public policy-making and marketing management of public policy. The research results indicate that the public policy-making process is very rigorous and the marketing management shows a good effect, people generally think it as a benevolent policy. The high level of exposure makes the consumer confidence index rise and contributes to the positive improve effect of tax revenue. Besides, consumption voucher also promotes other effects, such as enhance Taiwan＇s international visibility, help the needy, replacement of the new identity card, catch the wanted suspect, etc. In a word, Taiwan government made a right decision to issue the consumption voucher and has made brilliant achievements in it.     

Economic Analysis of Professional Ethic of Accountants

Accountants＇ abiding the code of ethics or not is inevitably affected by many factors, especially by the economic factors. Cost and revenue, the economic externalities and the marginal utility of substance and ethics, all of these economic drivers arising from their behaviors have much effect on the accountants＇ ethic behavior choice. If we want to diminish the breach behaviors, from the economic angle, we should adopt the following measures as a plus to our widely-spreading and in-depth education system for all accountants： to increase the costs arising from the practitioners＇ breach behaviors, to construct the trust system in a relatively fast pace over time in future, to make certain the ownership of the ＂trust goods＂ for respective practitioners to accumulate their costs and revenues, to integrate the accountancy practitioners into the occupation to make them behave as a whole and enhance their substance utilities to a optimal situation.     

Testing the impact of trading volume on market return and volatility： The case of the Romanian stock market

This paper examines both the return-volume and volatility-volume movements on Bucharest stock exchange, in order to evaluate the impact of changes in stock market liquidity on stock returns and on volatility of returns. We employ linear Granger-causality tests to investigate the dynamic relation between trading volume, stock returns and returns volatility on the Romanian stock market, using daily logarithmic returns for the composite index BET-C, as a proxy for the market, and daily logarithmic change in trading volume during the period January 2004-July 2008. As a proxy for return volatility we employ absolute values of daily deviation of return from its mean value during the considered time period. We can report unidirectional linear causality from returns to volume and also from volume to volatility.     

Property Tax in Urban China

This paper examines China＇s urban housing sector and proposes that property, tax reform be undertaken. Specifically, China should significantly reduce taxes on transactions and introduce property taxes during the possession of houses. This will increase housing affordability as a result of lower transaction costs, reduce speculation because of the higher opportunity cost of holding vacant houses, stabilize the fiscal system by generating more sustainable tax revenue, and improve the efficiency and fairness of the property tax system according to the principles of ＂ability-to-pay＂ and ＂user pays＂.     

The Six Relationships between Goodwill and Core Competence of Corporation—Review of Research on Goodwill Accounting

Goodwill and core competence of the corporation are two concepts and they are easy to be confused, moreover, it uneasy to differentiate the source of advantages gained by the corporate, and also leads to a serious distortion between the value of the corporation acknowledged by market and the record value of accounting. This paper analyses the substance of goodwill and that of corporate core competence before coming to the conclusion that goodwill is a kind of combined intangible asset while core competence is a reluctant intangible asset, which means that both goodwill and core competence of the corporate belong to intangible assets, but the composing factors are inter-crossing and inter-containing. Moreover, goodwill and core competence have similar characters and there are also some relationships between them, such as succession ＆ development, abstract ＆ concrete, and superficiality ＆ essence as well. At the same time, there are some distinct differences between them in the following aspects： origination of research, initial definition, research background and theoretical basis, composing factors, value identified and measurement methods, way of value manifested, principle of value contribution and its accounting, etc. In the end, this paper comes to the conclusion that it is core competence that stands for the capability to gain advantages profit while goodwill is only a purchasing price margin, which is the balance of the exchanging value and book value of the net assets of the enterprise purchased. So, the core competence theory should be combined into goodwill accounting so as to establish core competence accounting, which will manifest the source of advantages gained by the corporation.     

The Information Content of Environmental Performance of the Companies Listed on Indonesia Stock Exchange Period 2010-2011

Information content is a meaningful information for users to make decision. If the information is effecting to users＇ decison. One of the information is the announcement of the environmental performance. This information is effecting to investor reaction. Indonesia experience many problems of environmental damage. Program Penilaian Peringkat Kinerja Perusahaan （PROPER） or Company Performance Rank Program as an environmental control tool released by Kementerian Lingkungan Hidup （KLH） or Environmental Ministry and government received good response from several parties. However, some research studied about the relationship of environmental performance and economic performance found unexpected result. This research attempts to analyze the effect of environmental performance to abnormal return by event study analysis technique before and after PROPER announcement. The observation period is 2010 and 2011. The sample used in 2010 is 30 companies; while in 2011 are 41 companies. Hypothesis used Wilcoxon Rank test with selected window is five days before and five days after the announcement. The result shows that, without rank categorization, there is no significant difference of abnormal retum before and after PROPER announcement in 2010, while there is a significant difference of abnormal return before and after PROPER announcement in 2011. By the rank categorization, in both of observation period, there is a significant different of abnormal retum before and after the company received good rank, while there is no significant difference of abnormal return before and after the company received bad rank. Hence, it is recommended to KLH and government to announce louder the PROPER result, mainly for the companies which received bad rank and make this program to be mandatory due to its urgencies.     

Cooperation Satisfaction and Performance： Empirical Evidence from Chinese Banks and Their Foreign Strategic Investors

In this paper, we investigate whether the mutual satisfaction of Chinese banks and foreign strategic investors （FSI） in terms of their cooperation with each other affects the performance of Chinese banks＇. Since 2004, China ＇s banking authority has conducted an annual survey on Chinese banks and their FSI, assessing levels of mutual satisfaction in terms of their cooperation. We use these survey results to examine the effects of satisfaction levels on the profitability of Chinese banks. Our results reveal that satisfaction affects profitability; that is, satisfied foreign investors and Chinese banks yield better performance. Satisfaction determinants for each party are also examined. Although the profitability of Chinese banks does not show a significant effect on the satisfaction of either party, bank loan to deposit ratios, regions of FSI home countries, and the type of Chinese banks＇ are important factors that might affect satisfaction.     

Investment Valuation Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset

Valuation is at the heart of every investment decision, whether that decision is to buy, sell, or hold. But the pricing of any financial asset has become a more complex task in modern financial markets. Now completely revised and fully updated to reflect changing market conditions, Investment Valuation, Second Edition, provides expert instruction on how to value virtually any type of assettocks, bonds, options, futures, real assets, and much more. Noted valuation authority and acclaimed NYU finance professor Aswath Damodaran uses real-world examples and the most current valuation tools, as he guides you through the theory and application of valuation models and highlights their strengths and weaknesses.     

Workplace isolation and job performance： A study on carpet weaving women

Workplace isolation has been recognized as a critical issue in organizational theory. Studies have found that employees who felt isolated might also show low performance in their organizations. However, there is very little empirical research about the relationship between perceived isolation and job performance, and most of the studies were conducted on salespeople working in the virtual offices. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the relationship between workplace isolation and job performance in terms of productivity and emotional outcomes of carpet weaver women. In order to do this, job performance of a sample of 238 employees who were exposed to a radical workplace change was analyzed. The means of the performance variables before and after five years of the workplace change were statistically compared via paired sample t-tests and the results indicated significant differences between pre and post means of the performance variables. A qualitative research was also carried out through a number of in-depth interviews with the carpet weavers to enrich the breadth and depth of the findings. Findings of the qualitative study replicated the results of the quantitative study that monotonous and unsocial working conditions lowered the job performance of the employees.     

An Analysis of Tax Incentives to Attract FDI in Bangladesh： An Empirical Study

The purpose of the study is to understand whether it is still viable to use tax incentives to attract foreign direct investment （FDI） considering their effectiveness and costs to the country, and if not, what should be the alternative, effective, and viable means of promoting the vital FDI inflow. The study investigated various incentives provided by BOI, and other relevant sources available as secondary sources. However, the multinational enterprises （MNEs） are not attracting for investment in Bangladesh always with tax incentives and there are alternative means of attracting FDI such as direct financial grants, subsidies loan guarantees, etc. This paper focuses on tax incentives and the debate against the effectiveness and efficiency in attracting FDI.     

The Application Effect of Securities Portfolio in American and Its Enlightenment for China

Securities investment fund （SIF） is a financial product that centralizes the dispersed capitals of investors to form the SIF, and then invests it on other scattering securities and financial commodities according to the best profit and the least risk negotiated by the investors. It is well applied in US, and gives great enlightenment for the development of Chinese SIF.     

China''''s Industrialization and Reductionof Greenhouse Emissions1

I. IntroductionIndustrialization is characterized by rapid urbanization, the construction of infrastructureand a transfer from labor to capital to knowledge-intensive industrial structures. If theseindicators are used, it is evident that China is still in the early stages of industrialization (He,2001). In 2003, the per capita GDP, for the first time in history, exceeded $1,000 (Li, 2004).Despite electricity shortages and a jump in prices of raw materials such as steel and cement,the GDP i…     

An Analysis of State-Owned Banks＇ Behavior in NPL Disposition

This paper examines the phenomenon whereby state-owned banks in China tend to not only reduce their non-performing loans(NPLs ) through accepting settled assets, but also overvalue and delay liquidating settled assets. The results imply that the state-owned banks exhibit an obvious book loss aversion behavior when disposing their NPLs, i.e. they minimize book loss and hide real credit loss by settling their NPLs with overvalued assets. This paper suggests that this results mainly from improper regulations, weak financial strength, and over-restrictions on NPL disposition. Since introducing a valuation allowance on settled assets, as suggested by the regulatory body, will not produce the desired effect, this paper proposes that a performance measurement and penalty mechanism based on non-performin gassets instead of NPLs will change the banks‘ attitude towards NPL-asset settlement. In addition, a new internal control method governing the entire process from settlement to liquidation is also suggested.     

Thailand＇s 2011 Flood： Household Damages,Compensation and Natural Catastrophe Insurance

This study looks into how households＇ experience with the July-December 2011 flooding in Thailand influences their desire to have flood insurance coverage. It also evaluates coverage and flood depth as the two salient features of the National Catastrophe Insurance Fund （NCIF）, which was established in March 2012 in response to the 2011 Thailand flooding. Altogether 600 households were interviewed in this study to represent the middle and poor households from three areas in Thailand： Nonthaburi, Bangkok, and Pathum Thani. The households＇ flood experience was represented by three variables： （1） damages incurred; （2） compensation received; and （3） level of the flood depth inside their houses. The household survey revealed that damages averaged USD 2,393 for poor households and USD 8,087 for middle households with average flood depth being 127 cm and 83 cm, respectively. Computed damage cost includes both direct costs （damages to property and expenses to repair or replace, cleanup costs） and indirect costs （time spent of family members and volunteer workers as well as loss of earnings）. Middle and poor households affected by the floods received compensation from the government averaging at USD 683 to USD 734. The NCIF offers a maximum coverage of THB 100,000 （USD3,100） for a maximum flood depth of 1 m inside the house. This is clearly higher than compensations received, particularly since low-income households experienced an average flood depth of 127 cm. Unfortunately, these households had no insurance coverage. The same is true for the middle-income households. At 83 cm, had they secured a disaster insurance, the coverage received would have been higher than the compensation they received from the government. Unfortunately only 7% of those interviewed had disaster insurance coverage. What prevents people from getting insurance？ This study found out that despite the bad experience from Bangkok flooding and that over half believed that there is more than 70% chance that a flood a     

A Lesson Learned from the Comparison of Bank Interest Rate in US and UK

According to the interest board, the current account interest and the loan interest rate vary from banks to countries. Both the current account interest and loan interest of US banks are lower than those of UK banks. And the spread between the two interest rates is greater in UK than that in US. Why is that？ The central banks base rates are always the reference interest rates for other banks when setting up the interest rates of their own. And the economy situation in that country may be a factor that affects the spread. Moreover, these two aspects link to each other. In this paper, we will look deeply into the economic situation and the pattern of change in the central bank interest rates in US and UK, hopefully we can bum a light to figure out the trend of change in bank interest rates.