Designing with LEGO: exploring low fidelity visualization as a trigger for student behavior change toward idea fluency

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Novice design students struggle to engage with early stage design visualization tools such as sketching and prototyping. Instead students...     

Keeping informed during times of economic downturn: the trusted amateur as a preferred source of financial information

Service providers need to understand financial capability from the perspective of the older client, in order to deliver services best suited for this age group. This article explores how older people perceive one dimension of their financial capability—their ability to stay financially informed. Older people were found to be accessing less traditional sources of financial information: they are either selfreliant for information, researching on the internet or using the media, or they tap into existing sources of social capital found within their social networks. Trusted public and voluntary sector service providers are preferred information resources over and above professionals in financial services. These findings suggest financial services need to build trust and/or form partnerships with other trusted voluntary or public sector services.     

值得关注的两种债券

市场上流通着由众多不同发行者发行的多种债券. 债券有许多特征,诸如付息方式、债券发行市场、可支付通货、受保护性以及法律地位等.债券的发行者可以是政府、企业、专门的信托机构,甚至可以是非盈利组织.债券的种类通常是由发行者的类型和债券本身的特性所决定的,下面我们简单地讨论两种主要债券:     

Capital account reform and short- and long-run stock price leadership

This paper studies the effect of capital account liberalization policies on the price discovery of cross-listings in Chinese stocks. We construct a non-linear causality framework that decomposes short- and long-run dimensions of price leadership. Our analysis shows that capital account liberalization has had a profound effect on long-run A- and H-price leadership traits. Specifically, increased inward capital movement from Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors strengthens long-term leadership in the mainland A-market. Similarly, increased capital outflow from the Chinese mainland galvanizes long-term price discovery processes in the Hong Kong H-market. We thus offer strong evidence that capital account liberalization promotes stock market efficiency in the long-run. The present study's empirical account also suggests that such capital flows inhibit short-term lead-lag effects.     

UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER ROUNDTABLE ON Bankruptcy vs. Bailouts: The Case of General Motors and the U.S. Auto Industry

In an event staged at Rochester's Geva Theatre in the midst of the global financial crisis in 2009, Tom Jackson, one of the world's two most highly regarded bankruptcy scholars (the other is Doug Baird) as well as a former President of the University of Rochester, begins by explaining why the U.S. Chapter 11 reorganization process is well suited to resolving the problem of excess capacity that has long plagued the U.S. auto industry. As Jackson has noted elsewhere, thanks to both academic research and the efforts of legal and corporate practitioners to implement the findings of this research, The current Chapter 11 process is a dramatic improvement over the world of 1985. In those days, our system put the bankruptcy judges— people who generally do not have a great deal of financial sophistication—in the impossible position of deciding among the conflicting claims of parties whose incentives were to provide biased information. The great thing about the auction process that is now routinely used by the ABI—and which wasn't being used anywhere in the bankruptcy process 20 years ago—is that we're likely to get more reliable information from people who are putting up their own money…[and so] backing their projections of future performance and value with cash. This has the great benefit of taking the judges out of a role for which they have neither the proper training or experience—or the right incentives… [As a result of recent reforms,] what we have today is a much more streamlined process. Sale mechanisms are more likely to be used, exclusivity periods are less likely to be extended, and it has begun to look a lot like the auction or M&A model that some of us proposed years ago. This relatively new reliance on an M&A‐type auction process is reassuring because, as Cliff Smith points out, One of the biggest challenges in bankruptcy is determining the value of the firm, or the size of the pie that can end up being divided among the creditors. And this means that before you start divvying up the firm's assets, it's critically important to get reliable answers to questions like: How valuable is this business under the current management? And how valuable could it be if we allowed the ownership to change? Judges don't have a comparative advantage in answering these questions because they simply don't have the specific knowledge to make this kind of determination. Using the auction system in a market setting is likely to generate much more reliable answers. Besides preserving value for creditors, a better informed and more efficient reorganization process can also have the critically important effect of removing excess capacity in industries that are weighed down by it. And as Smith goes on to say, Financially troubled companies that will not be viable under any management team and are therefore worth more dead than alive are clearly candidates for Chapter 7, and the job of the bankruptcy courts is to get them there as expeditiously as possible. Liquidate the business and free those assets to move to higher‐valued uses… Take the case of the airline industry. Although keeping extra carriers in business through prolonged stays in Chapter 11 may help keep airfares down, these artificially low fares are also likely to discourage even profitable competitors from investing in the future. And this ends up working against the long‐run interest of the industry and the general public. In sum, bankruptcy has at least two potentially important roles to play in a well‐functioning economy. First is distinguishing companies that should survive and remain intact from those that should be pulled apart. In cases of chronic overcapacity in which companies are clearly worth more dead than alive, the firm's assets should be sold, either piecemeal or in their entirety, to the highest bidders. But for all economically viable businesses, there are two general outcomes: In cases where a competent management team is the victim of external circumstance—and perhaps the wrong capital structure—the likely outcome is an LBO‐type transaction in which outsiders provide new funding for the current team. But in those cases where the current management is viewed as part of the problem, the system is designed to shift control to new owners and management—and as quickly as possible. Such a process can be expected to contribute to long‐run economic growth by helping ensure that industries end up with the right amount of capacity, neither too much nor too little.     

Return predictability and shareholders’ real options

This study re-interprets the properties of the residual income model by highlighting the shareholders’ abandonment (liquidation or adaptation) option. We estimate the value of this real option as an explicit component of abnormal earnings in the residual income model and test the improvement in valuation after incorporating it into the model. Relative to the traditional specification of the residual income model, this real options model has a stronger predictive power for future abnormal stock returns. We also find that the superior return predictability of the real options model is pronounced in the set of firms with a high probability of exercising liquidation options (for example, those with low profitability, low growth opportunities, high underlying asset volatility, and low intangible assets), which is consistent with the importance of shareholders’ abandonment option in equity valuation. The results are robust to extensive sensitivity checks.     

增长领先者制胜之道——以运营战略创造优势

对于许多公司而言．在当前竞争加剧的情况下保持盈利和持续性的增长，尤如海市蜃楼。尽管存在诸多障碍，实现持续增长仍然并不是难以企及的目标。但是，要实现这一目标．仅有脉络清楚的业务战略是远远不够的，采用强有力的运营战略至关重要。     

A comparison of graduating seniors who receive job offers and those who do not according to hospitality recruiters’ selection criteria

This study used an exploratory mixed methods approach to identify the characteristics possessed by hospitality graduating seniors who receive job offers. Quantitative analyses reveal that: (a) seniors who receive job offers are different from those who do not in relevant work/internship experience, perceived person-organization and person-job fit, leadership/career preparedness, professionalism, and interview behaviors and (b) student characteristics have various effects on recruiters’ hiring decisions in different hospitality segments. Suggestions are provided to help students better prepare for a hospitality career and hospitality programs better educate students for employments. Future research is advocated to address the limitations.     

Small U.S. dairy farms: can they compete?

The U.S. dairy industry is undergoing rapid structural change, evolving from a structure including many small farmers in the Upper Midwest and Northeast to one that includes very large farms in new production regions. Small farms are struggling to retain competitiveness via improved management and low‐input systems. Using data from USDA's Agricultural Resource Management Survey, we determine the extent of U.S. conventional and pasture‐based milk production during 2003–2007, and estimate net returns, scale efficiency, and technical efficiency associated with the systems across different operation sizes. We compare the financial performance of small conventional and pasture‐based producers with one another and with large‐scale producers. A stochastic production frontier is used to analyze performance over the period for conventional and pasture technologies identified using a binomial logit model. Large conventional farms generally outperformed smaller farms using most economic measures—technical efficiency, various profitability measures, and returns to scale.     

点亮盐湖城—美商优莎纳公司2009年年会报道

2009年8月26日至29日，优莎纳公司在美国犹他州盐湖城召开了全球年会（亚太地区年会将于明年5月在香港举行），来自全球各地的近万名经销商参与了此次盛会。今年优莎纳全球年会的会议主题是“没有极限”（NoLimit）。公司执行长大卫·华斯在欢迎词中指出，过去一年的金融危机造成的经济衰退、失业破产随处可见，