The chronospace: A proposed methodology for futures studies

In a recent article in Futures, ¹ eclectics was presented as the first part of a methodology of futures studies. In this second article, time is introduced as a variable and expressed in a diagram entitled the chronospace. Time is treated both as a subjective perception and as a vehicle for causality. The passage of time is perceived as a “scenario”, the content of which must vary with the scenario writer and the medium used. The perceived symmetry between historical and futures studies leads the author to propose the construction of a new science of time—chronosophy —to use with eclectics as an operational methodology for futures studies.     

Continuity and Discontinuity in Accounting Technology in Danish State Institutions

The development of accounting technology in the Danish state sector is characterised by episodes of disruption and the longevity of certain principles that define accounting's accountability as involved in producing the state as a unit, as providing a continuous concern for productivity, and as providing the means by which a parliamentary democracy may work. The episodes of disruption may often repair on this trinity of issues. The recent transformations are radical as they introduce a new form of management via individualised 'accounting-cultured' institutions and managers. They do so via a heightened emphasis on a core technology already in place supplemented by a new mode of output orientation rather than input orientation via a Company Accounts . In addition to reporting on spending, this set of accounts introduced a series of non-financial measures such as productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction.     

Pandemics of the poor and banking stability

We first develop a theoretical model that shows that the likelihood of a collapse of the banking industry of a developing country increases, as the joint prevalence of large pandemics such as AIDS and malaria increases. We also show that the optimal bank reserves increase as the prevalence increases. In the empirical part of the paper, we consider a large dataset of developing countries, and we exhibit a causality effect from combined prevalence to deposit turnover, as well as causality effect from an increase of combined prevalence to an increase in bank reserves. Those empirical facts therefore support our theoretical findings.     

THE ART OF STRATEGIC DIVESTMENT

Divestiture makes sense only as part of a sound, long-term strategy. Before simply shedding business units, companies must consider all the options, and be willing to constantly review, replenish, and trim portfolios as markets change and evolve. In so doing, a company increases not only its flexibility but also its chances of adding shareholder value.
This article examines the corporate restructuring "big picture," in which divestments are only one alternative. It reviews additional measures besides divestments, such as outsourcing, joint ventures, asset swaps, and using new technologies to cut costs, and provides case studies of each. It also raises some interesting issues regarding divestiture, such as ways to sell a business unit without strengthening a competitor's hand, as well as strategies for improving a business unit's valuation in preparation for sale. The authors, who are M&A advisors at Accenture, conclude that "a carefully planned and well-executed restructuring that involves divestiture can be as significant a victory for management and shareholders as a successful acquisition."     

The future of science studies

Science studies suffers from a sense of secondariness. It can abandon this inferiority if it relocates itself in terms of a politics of knowledge. Science studies should stop viewing itself as a quilt patch of subjects and reading itself as a creative mediation between knowledge and power. This is illustrated in terms of the emergence of Science Studies in India. Official India emphasized science policy as an extension of the Nation-State. Science studies arose as a response to science policy questioning the social contract between Science and State in India. Science studies emerged as a part of civil society after the Emergency of 1975 and among social movements rather than as a professionalized academic subject. In attempting to create an identity, science studies moved across four axis of possibility: the science of science, interdisciplinary science, transscience and alternative science. The second part of the paper links science studies to the democratic imagination. It argues that the citizen must be seen as a scientist, a person of knowledge not merely as a consumer and voter. The citizen thus becomes a trustee of local, defeated and marginal forms of knowledge. Its real role is in enhancing the democratic imagination, providing methodologies of conflict resolution and plural frameworks of knowledge for cognitive justice, thus emerging as a site for dissenting imaginations against the emerging global regime.     

Gold and the US dollar: Hedge or haven?

Using a model of dynamic conditional correlations covering 23 years of weekly data for 16 major dollar-paired exchange rates, this paper addresses a practical investment question: Does gold act as a hedge against the US dollar, as a safe haven, or neither? Key findings are as follows. (i) During the past 23 years gold has behaved as a hedge against the US dollar. (ii) Gold has been a poor safe haven. (iii) In recent years gold has acted, increasingly, as an effective hedge against currency risk associated with the US dollar.     

新型农村合作医疗中的农民信息角色分析

本文从农民在新农合中扮演的信息角色出发，通过数据对比、实地调查等方式以及农民与其他利益相关主体的关系分析，对农民的信息角色定位进行深入的论述．提出农民扮演信息接受者的角色、信息参与者或者制定者的角色以及信息评估者和信息反馈者等多重角色。我们还就农民在新农合中信息角色存在问题进行了分析，指出农民作为信息接受者，存在信息接收的不完整、农民作为信息的参与者、评估者和反馈者，缺乏信息上行渠道等问题。最后我们就存在的问题提出了几点建议：建立多层次、多形式的制度性信息宣传源、开展多形式的医疗知识下乡活动，完善新农合的配套设施、健全信息反馈机制，广纳农民心声、加强制度建设和监督力量，堵住潜在的“漏洞”。     

The role of banks in the governance of nonfinancial firms: Evidence from Europe

The aim of our research is to investigate the important role of banks in the governance of companies listed in the Euronext 100 index. Primarily, this research seeks to examine the impact of a bank’s presence within a firm, as a creditor or shareholder, on firm performance, as well as the motivations of banks to acquire holdings, and whether the presence of a bank as a shareholder of a firm facilitates its access to bank loans. Empirical analyses are conducted with a sample of 86 nonfinancial institutions listed in the Euronext 100 index over the period 2008–2013 using the three-stage least squares method. The study shows, first, that the presence of a bank within a firm, as a creditor or shareholder, is positively related to firm performance. Moreover, the firm’s performance is an important determinant of the presence of bank shareholding. Finally, the presence of a bank as a shareholder of a firm does not facilitate its access to bank loans.     

The Landscape of Economic Growth: Do Middle-Income Countries Differ?

We review the growth experience of middle-income countries. Economic factors associated with growth appear to differ between middle-income and other countries. The efficiency of the financial system is importantly related to the growth rate in low- and middle-income countries, but appears to matter less as one moves up the income scale. Demographic variables also matter importantly in low-income countries. In middle-income countries, in contrast, measures of the financial system no longer appear to matter as importantly, as if inefficiencies in banking and financial systems are no longer as binding a constraint as at earlier stages of financial development; nor are demographic variables as important as before. At this point, other variables gain a growing role: these include whether the country experiences a banking or currency crisis, the extent of non-foreign direct investment capital inflows, and government debt as a share of gross domestic product.     

A credit risk model for large dimensional portfolios with application to economic capital

In this paper we develop a multi-period and multi-state portfolio credit risk model which is applicable to large dimensional portfolios like for example retail and mortgage portfolios. The model includes a methodology for estimation and simulation of systematic transition risk through a model for stochastic migration, a methodology for the modelling of recoveries in the case of stochastic collaterals as well as an approach to dimension reduction of the portfolio. One important application of our model is economic capital (EC) and a concept of EC based on the analogy with classical risk theory is introduced and the questions of allocation as well as risk-adjusted pricing based on the allocation of EC are structured and described. The model is illustrated by an extensive numerical example giving a concretization of the model as well as of several of the concepts introduced.     

GARCH-stable as a model of futures price movements

A GARCH-stable process is tested as a model of the distribution of daily futures prices. The GARCH-stable process cannot be rejected as a model of 12 of the 37 price series considered. The evidence regarding stable distributions as a model of futures prices is not as unfavorable as suggested by some past research. The remaining rejections of the GARCH-stable model could be due to the inappropriateness of the stable distribution assumption or to other factors such as ignoring day-of-the-week effects and price limits.     

The future as metaphor

One of the fascinating and frustrating facts of modern future watching is the almost shameless manner with which the concept of the future is used and abused. It is demonstrably an idea and a word that means quite different things according to a variety of factors. As the assumptions we make about what we call ‘the future’ can influence our choices, a clearer understanding of our inconsistent employment of the term is always in order. In this essay five prominent ways we can think about the future are explored. These concern imagining the future as time, as a challenge, as a destination, as an answer, and as a judgment.     

企业应担负起社会责任

如今,企业是否应该承担社会责任的问题得到广泛关注,人们对这个问题的想法各有不同。有些人认为企业只需要做到利润最大化,而作者不同意追求利润最大化是企业的唯一目标。企业的社会责任就是对客户,供应商,雇员,股东,以及环境负责。企业应遵守法律,并自觉的采取进一步措施,来提高人们的生活质量。     

Öffentliche Güter mit Versicherungscharakter

Dikes as well as early warning systems against natural disasters are just two examples for pure public goods that serve as an insurance device. Dikes reduce the probability of a loss caused by flooding. Such public goods can be seen as public self-protection. By contrast, early warning systems do not reduce the probability of a loss, but the size of a loss. Hence, such public goods can be seen as public self-insurance. The present paper presents a model which takes these characteristics into account. Conditions for the efficient provision of such public goods are derived. Moreover, we analyze the consequences of a change in income and risk aversion towards the efficient provision level as well as the interaction with private market insurance.     

The Three‐Factor Model: A Practitioner's Guide

The three‐factor model (3FM) has slowly but steadily become a popular alternative to the CAPM for measuring risk from the perspective of both corporate finance and portfolio management. The evidence clearly shows a negative relationship between market capitalization and returns, and a positive relationship between the book‐to‐market ratio and returns. Under the assumption that size and value are risk factors, the 3FM incorporates a market risk premium, a size premium, and a value premium into a model that aims to assess risk in a more comprehensive way, and ultimately to provide a more reliable estimation of required return. The required return produced by the 3FM has corporate finance applications (such as cost of capital estimation, project evaluation, and firm valuation) as well as portfolio management applications (such as performance evaluation). This article discusses the foundations and intuition behind the 3FM, as well as its application to the estimation of the cost of equity and excess returns.     

The life cycle of make-whole call provisions

Perception of industry professionals is that these bonds behave no differently than non-callable bonds. However, make-whole callable bonds are almost twice as likely to be retired early as non-callable bonds. Analysis of which bonds/firms include make-whole call provisions as well as of retirement events suggests the call provision aids firms in precautionary refinancing and in paving the way for major corporate events like M&A. Detailed analysis of news reports reveals three motivating rationales: 1) to refund the debt at low current interest rates, 2) as a result of a merger or acquisition, 3) as a mechanism for paying out excess cash.     

When reform comes into play: budgeting as negotiations between administrations

This article addresses not a general theory of social change but a widespread phenomenon in public administration as a field of research: the endless succession of budgetary reforms in the public sector means that institutional change is of constitutive and strategic importance. How this change takes place is examined with the aid of the metaphor of budgeting as a game. The metaphor is elaborated with a view to integrating and conceptually framing existing approaches that describe the budgeting process as a game. A typology of rules permits investigation social and institutional embeddedness of budgeting and to describe change (budgetary reform) as change in action.     

Why people follow the leader: the power of transference

We all admire leaders. In trying to understand how leadership works, however, we often lose sight of the fact that followers are a crucial part of the equation. Regrettably, they get short shrift in the management literature, where they are described as merely responding to their leaders' charisma or caring attitudes. What most analyses seem to ignore is that followers have their own motivations and are as powerfully driven to follow as leaders are to lead. In this article, psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and management consultant Michael Maccoby delves into the unconscious recesses of followers' minds. He looks closely at the often irrational tendency to relate to a leader as some important person from the past--a parent, a sibling, a close friend, or even a nanny. Sigmund Freud discovered this dynamic when working with his patients and called it"transference." But as important as it is, the concept remains little understood outside the realm of clinical psychoanalysis. This is unfortunate, because a solid understanding of transference can yield great insight into organizational behavior and endow you with the wisdom and compassion to be a tremendous leader. The author explains the most common types of transference--paternal, maternal, and sibling--and shows how they play out in the workplace. He notes that they have evolved as our family structures have changed. Whether followers perceive a leader as an all-knowing father figure, as an authoritative yet unconditionally loving mother figure, or as a brother or sister who isn't necessarily a model of good behavior, the leader can manage transferential ties by bringing unconscious projections to light. Then debilitating resentment and animosity can give way to mutual understanding and productivity--and a limping organization can start to thrive.     

CEO political preference and credit ratings

This study investigates whether a CEO's personal political ideology, as captured by his or her political contributions, is associated with a firm's credit ratings. Republican CEOs, we find, are associated with higher credit ratings, especially when their firms are headquartered in conservative areas. In addition, the link between political ideology and credit rating is more pronounced in firms that exhibit high financial distress or weak corporate governance. Changes in political ideology are associated with changes in credit rating. Our results support the behavior consistency, upper echelon, and social identity theories, as well as the risk acceptance hypothesis, and are robust to a number of alternative specifications as well as when alternate approaches and measures of credit risk are introduced. Using Republican CEOs as a proxy for conservative CEOs, our evidence implies that credit rating agencies justifiably view a CEO's political ideology and conservatism as indicative of corporate policies and, therefore, as an important determinant of the firm's credit ratings.     

Educational Insights: A Hybrid Course in Risk Management and Insurance

Universities and colleges continue to face constraints related to classroom space and faculty time, thus increasing the need to consider options such as hybrid courses that can leverage available resources. This article discusses the benefits of a hybrid course, as well as its design and implementation at a large, public university. In addition, for universities that use the introduction to risk and insurance course as a significant course for attracting majors, we identify the benefits for students from the use of hybrid courses, such as the variety of materials and activities utilized, as well as the flexibility in scheduling. This information may be useful in marketing the course so that it will be immediately attractive to students.