The dynamics of positive action in UK trade unions: the case of women and black members

This paper considers positive action strategies amongst UK trade unions, aimed at increasing membership and levels of participation and representation among women and black workers. It provides an overview of women’s, black members’ and race structures within large Trades Union Congress unions and a detailed case study of one large UK trade union. We find that there are salient differences in the way that unions approach issues of gender equality, compared with the approach adopted towards race equality. The paper explores possible explanations, justifications and implications of these differences.     

住宅地价的区位模型研究——以北京市为例

本文利用了北京市1998至2003年的普通住宅出让资料,在GIS空间分析技术的支持下,采用多元回归的方法,建立北京市普通住宅地价区位模型,量化分析主要区位因子对住宅地价的影响程度。文中还结合北京市环线交通特点,通过把虚拟变量引入地价模型,提出了环线地价的边际值的新概念。分析结果表明:地价在不同的环线区间是显著不同的,相同的环线区间内的地价差异不大;商圈是对地价影响最大的区位因子;地铁或城铁站、高速公路、主要道路对地价的影响次之;公园对地价的影响不显著。     

General‐to‐Specific Model Selection Procedures for Structural Vector Autoregressions*

Structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models have emerged as a dominant research strategy in empirical macroeconomics, but suffer from the large number of parameters employed and the resulting estimation uncertainty associated with their impulse responses. In this paper, we propose general‐to‐specific (Gets) model selection procedures to overcome these limitations. It is shown that single‐equation procedures are generally efficient for the reduction of recursive SVAR models. The small‐sample properties of the proposed reduction procedure (as implemented using PcGets) are evaluated in a realistic Monte Carlo experiment. The impulse responses generated by the selected SVAR are found to be more precise and accurate than those of the unrestricted VAR. The proposed reduction strategy is then applied to the US monetary system considered by Christiano, Eichenbaum and Evans (Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 78, pp. 16–34, 1996) . The results are consistent with the Monte Carlo and question the validity of the impulse responses generated by the full system.     

Syndicated Loan Announcements and Borrower Value

Announcements of syndication loans increase borrowers' shareholder wealth if they are revolving credit agreements but not if they are term loans. Share price responses to revolving credit announcements are positive and significant, whereas the wealth effect for term loans is negative and significant. The results show that announcements from both the financial press and commercial information providers can affect borrower share price reaction. Overall, single syndication announcements appear to be more newsworthy than multiple announcements reported in the financial press, and we find evidence of information leakage, post‐announcement drift, or both.     

注册会计师诚信征信系统的框架设计

诚信是注册会计师行业的生存基础。但近年来,国内外一系列财务报告舞弊案使注册会计师行业面临着前所未有的“诚信危机”。理论界、实务界和监管层为此提出各种改进措施,如果将诚信档案建立在现代信息技术基础上并将其功能系统化,就可构建出注册会计师诚信征信系统,使注册会计师的诚信状况处于实时动态监控之中。征信系统是收集个人或企业的信用和其他信息,经过整理与分析之后,以信用报告、查询结果等形式提供给有关各方,以控制授信人风险和惩戒失信行为的一种信息系统,同时也是一种敦促个人和企业诚实守信的社会经济机制。注册会计师诚信征…     

Noise Trading and the Management of Operational Risk; Firms,Traders and Irrationality in Financial Markets*

abstract Efficient market models cannot explain the high level of trading in financial markets in terms of asset portfolio adjustment. It is presumed that much of this excessive trading is irrational ‘noise’ trading. A corollary is that there must either be irrational traders in the market or rational traders with irrational aberrations. The paper reviews the various attempts to explain noise trading in the finance literature, concluding that the persistence of irrationality is not well explained. Data from a study of 118 traders in four large investment banks are presented to advance reasons why traders might seek to trade more frequently than financial models predict. The argument is advanced that trades do not simply occur in order to generate profit, but it does not follow that such trading is irrational. Trading may generate information, accelerate learning, create commitments and enhance social capital, all of which sustain traders' long term survival in the market. The paper treats noise trading as a form of operational risk facing firms operating in financial markets and discusses approaches to the management of such risk.     

The dynamics of moonlighting in Russia1

This paper uses the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to analyse the dynamics of moonlighting by the working‐age population. We find that moonlighting is transitory and that a desire to switch jobs expressed in the past is positively related to moonlighting in the present and to actual job changes in the future. We also find that workers who moonlighted as self‐employed in the past represent 26.5 percent of the new self‐employed. These results suggest that moonlighting in Russia can be seen as an effective incubator for setting up new self‐employed businesses, thereby providing long‐term benefits for the economy.     

Improved estimation of portfolio value‐at‐risk under copula models with mixed marginals

Portfolio value‐at‐risk (PVAR) is widely used in practice, but recent criticisms have focused on risks arising from biased PVAR estimates due to model specification errors and other problems. The PVAR estimation method proposed in this article combines generalized Pareto distribution tails with the empirical density function to model the marginal distributions for each asset in the portfolio, and a copula model is used to form a joint distribution from the fitted marginals. The copula–mixed distribution (CMX) approach converges in probability to the true marginal return distribution but is based on weaker assumptions that may be appropriate for the returns data found in practice. CMX is used to estimate the joint distribution of log returns for the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) index and the associated futures contracts on SGX and TAIFEX. The PVAR estimates for various hedge portfolios are computed from the fitted CMX model, and backtesting diagnostics indicate that CMX outperforms the alternative PVAR estimators. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 26:997–1018, 2006     

Financial Development and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Six MENA Countries

This paper examines the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth for six Middle Eastern and North African countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia), within a quadvariate vector autoregressive framework. We employ four different measures of financial development and apply the augmented vector autoregression vector (VAR) methodology of Toda and Yamamoto to test for Granger causality. Our empirical results strongly support the hypothesis that finance leads to growth in five out of the six countries. Only in Israel could weak support be found for causality running from economic growth to financial development but no causality in the other direction. These findings suggest the need to accelerate the financial reforms that have been launched since the mid 1980s and to improve the efficiency of these countries’ financial systems to stimulate saving/investment and, consequently, long‐term economic growth.     

试论我国城市公用事业的民营化

我国的城市公用事业由于投资主体单一、缺乏竞争、效率低下、服务质量差等特点，急需实行民营化以激活民间资本，提高公共产品的供给效率。本文分析了城市公用事业的现状、民营化趋势、民营化模式以及政府的管制政策。