Testing Calendar Effects of International Equity and Real Estate Markets

There are a lot of previous studies on calendar effects. However, most of them use traditional methods like regression. Hui et al. Habitat International 48, 38–45, (2015b) incorporated Shiryaev-Zhou index with logistic regression to study the Halloween and January effects of eight securitized real estate markets, but they fixed the moving-window size to be 130 days. How the change in moving-window size affects the calendar effects cannot be seen. In this study, we also apply the Shiryaev-Zhou index, but we allow the moving-window size to vary. Furthermore, we incorporated Shiryaev-Zhou index with analysis of mean (ANOM) and logistic regression to examine calendar effects of general equity and securitized real estate indices of Hong Kong, Japan, US, UK, France and Germany during the period 1996 – 2014. The results show that our new methods can detect additional channels of significant calendar effects of which normal methods fail to show. Furthermore, the general equity indices show significant Halloween and January effects. However, for the securitized real estate indices, the Halloween and January effects are less significant or even go into reverse in some cases. This study has two main implications. Firstly, investors can formulate a better trading strategy to earn more profits. Secondly, trends and phenomena found in equity markets may not be applicable to real estate markets, so investment rules on equity markets may not work on real estate markets.     

Required Rates of Return for Corporate Investment Appraisal in the Presence of Growth Opportunities

Traditional methods of estimating required rates of return overstate hurdle rates in the presence of growth opportunities. We attempt to quantify this effect by developing a simple model which: (i) identifies those companies that have valuable growth opportunities; (ii) splits the value of shares into ‘assets‐in‐place’ and ‘growth opportunities’; and (iii) splits the equity β into β for ‘assets‐in‐place’ and ‘growth opportunities’. We find growth opportunities for UK companies over the 1990–2004 period to average 33% of equity value. Incorporating the effect of growth opportunities, the average cost of capital for investment purposes falls by 1.1 percentage points.     

The primacy of human capital and social capital in influencing landholders’ participation in programmes designed to improve environmental outcomes*

Increasing landholder participation in environmental programmes is often essential for achieving desired levels of restoration and protection, as well as the economic goals of efficiency and equity. Previous literature has identified sociodemographic property and attitudinal variables that influence participation. Using qualitative research, we identify variables relating to human capital (business orientation and information seeking behaviour) and social capital (trust in those delivering programmes and connectedness with other landholders) that have been seldom or never identified as influencing participation. New scales are developed and existing scales refined for measuring these constructs, and their influence on past and future participation is examined together with a range of other constructs. The effect of these variables is examined using a survey of Australian landholders, and the results demonstrate the primacy of variables relating to human and social capital in influencing past and future participation.     

One-sided patience with one-sided communication does not justify stackelberg equilibrium

The theory of games (with complete information) in which a single patient longrun player faces a succession of short-run opponents cannot plausibly be used to justify the Stackelberg solution concept, because if that player can select which subgame-perfect equilibrium is to be played then she can presumably also change her selection. Consequently, while she can choose among one-shot Nash outcomes, she cannot achieve the Stackelberg outcome.     

The political economy of housing prices: Hedonic pricing with regression discontinuity

This paper uses hedonic pricing to empirically estimate the value of publicly provided local goods and services in the constituencies of the ruling party relative to those of the opposition parties. To improve control for omitted variables that change smoothly over space, we use a regression discontinuity design to restrict the sample to houses that are near the electoral boundaries. Using resale market prices of public flats in Singapore, in some cases we find a moderate but highly statistically significant difference in housing prices across the electoral boundaries that separate the constituencies of the ruling party and the opposition parties.     

The influence of the introduction of accounting disclosure regulation on mandatory disclosure compliance: Evidence from Jordan

This paper examines the influence of accounting disclosure regulation, governance reforms and ownership changes, resulting from privatisation, on mandatory disclosure compliance of a sample of 80 non-financial, listed Jordanian companies for the years 1996 and 2004. Employing two checklists based on the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) extant in the years 1996 and 2004, we find that disclosure compliance with the IFRS is significantly higher in 2004 than that in 1996. Our multiple regression results indicate that disclosure regulation reforms produced the most significant influence on mandatory disclosure compliance. Further, governance reforms through the mandate of audit committees emerged as a significant determinant of compliance with mandatory disclosure requirements.     

International perspectives on tourism‐led development: some lessons for the SDIs

The concept of tourism‐led socio‐economic development is neither new nor peculiar to South Africa. This study draws on the international experience of the Malindi‐Mombasa coastal development corridor in Kenya, the Goa Coast of India, the Kulu Valley and Bhutan in the Himalayas, the Gambia, Dominica, Belize and the Maldives. It assesses the results achieved in these tourism programmes against the strategic objectives of those South African SDIs that place a heavy emphasis on the country's tourism potential. The SDIs, as described elsewhere in this collection, represent a new paradigm adopted by the South African government, aimed at moving away from a protected and isolated approach to economic development, towards one in which international competitiveness, regional cooperation and a more diversified ownership base are paramount. The key objectives of the tourism‐led development corridors, including the Wild Coast and Lubombo SDIs, are to generate sustainable economic growth and development; generate sustainable long‐term employment creation; maximise the extent to which private sector investment and lending can be mobilised into the process; change the ownership base of the industry so that people previously excluded from the mainstream of the economy by discriminatory practices can play a meaningful role as workers, managers and owners of new tourism enterprises; and to exploit the opportunities that arise from new tourism and ecotourism developments for the creation of upstream and downstream business opportunities, especially small businesses owned by previously marginalised groups.     

A review of current A/AS syllabuses in Design and Technology

Concluding remarks It can be seen that the common core has brought a great deal of consistency between the syllabuses. There was a belief that A-levels would be restructured as a result of the National debate about core skills for A-levels, but this now seems to have been shelved. The pressure now is from the evolving form of National Curriculum Technology and the search for continuity and progression and from the developing relationship with other 16–19 courses, e.g. BTEC (Business and Technician education Council). The recent paper by Smithers and Robinson (1992) failed to add very much to the debate as a result of the rather simplistic and divisive view it presented.The review of A and AS-levels in Design and Technology is due to begin in the near future. It is essential that a full representation of the issues and complexities of this field is made so that developments can be soundly based. Design and Technology has made great strides at A and AS-level and it is vital to ensure that this progress is both recognised and sustained through the review process.     

A Simple Estimator of Two-Dimensional Copulas,with Applications1

Copulas are distributions with uniform marginals. Non-parametric copula estimates may violate the uniformity condition in finite samples. We look at whether it is possible to obtain valid piecewise linear copula densities by triangulation. The copula property imposes strict constraints on design points, making an equi-spaced grid a natural starting point. However, the mixed-integer nature of the problem makes a pure triangulation approach impractical on fine grids. As an alternative, we study the ways of approximating copula densities with triangular functions which guarantees that the estimator is a valid copula density. The family of resulting estimators can be viewed as a non-parametric MLE of B-spline coefficients on possibly non-equally spaced grids under simple linear constraints. As such, it can be easily solved using standard convex optimization tools and allows for a degree of localization. A simulation study shows an attractive performance of the estimator in small samples and compares it with some of the leading alternatives. We demonstrate empirical relevance of our approach using three applications. In the first application, we investigate how the body mass index of children depends on that of parents. In the second application, we construct a bivariate copula underlying the Gibson paradox from macroeconomics. In the third application, we show the benefit of using our approach in testing the null of independence against the alternative of an arbitrary dependence pattern.