Market Responses to Buy Recommendations Issued by Personal Finance Magazines: Effects of Information, Price-Pressure, and Company Characteristics

This paper analyzes explicit buy recommendations for stockspublished by German Personal Finance Magazines from 1995 to2003. These recommendations earn significant abnormal returnsof 2.58% within the five days around the publication day. Boththe price-pressure hypothesis and the information hypothesiscan be confirmed by our data. The price-pressure effect is mostevident for small stocks and glamour stocks. However, whereasthe initial price reaction to small stocks is additionally drivenby permanent information value, this does not hold true forglamour stocks. In contrast, value stocks are associated withhigh cumulative abnormal returns that are solely driven by informationvalue.     

Accidental injuries among the elderly within the Vienna community: Epidemiology,risk factors and preventive measures

Abstract

Unintentional injuries ('accidents’) among elderly people are a significant burden in public health because such accidents happen frequently and because the proportion of older age groups in the population will continue to rise during the coming decades. One aim of this study, which was done in Vienna, the capital of Austria, was to broaden the preventive concept, adding lifestyle and living conditions to already well-known risk factors following the health promotion approach. Furthermore, characteristics that predispose older residents to accidents should be identified in order to design preventive measures for reducing injuries in this age group.

809 interviews with people 60 years of age and over were conducted, concerning accidents, outcomes of accidents, physical fitness, drug intake, type of house or dwelling, equipment in the household incorporating safety features, psychological well-being and social relations. The information collected was used to draw cross-sectional comparisons between participants who reported having experienced at least one accident in the previous 12 months and those who did not. Furthermore, the accident incidents were classified into 2 groups: incidents without injuries and injurious accidents. The latter served as a base for the epidemiology of injuries for people 60 years of age and over within the Vienna community.

20% of all senior citizens suffer at least one unintentional injury every year, in addition to which 8% experience critical incidents (mostly falls) without injury. Most accidents occur at home or involve pedestrians in public traffic areas. Over 90% of all accidents are falls, and 20% result in fractures. The most important risk factors for accidents in the elderly are gender, increasing age, poor physical fitness and low physical activity, the type of household and household equipment, poor psychological well-being, low income and loneliness.

The findings regarding falls suggest some possible opportunities for reducing the risk of falls by improving buildings and dwellings of the elderly. A promising attempt at practical implementation of these findings is being conducted by the Vienna-based Austrian Institute for Home and Leisure Safety in cooperation with the Vienna City Council. These two organizations are implementing a long-term program that aims at mobilizing institutions and organizations involved in working with the elderly.     

Money Does Not Grow on Trees: An Argument for Usury

Usury, charging a higher interest rate than thought by some to be “fair,” has had and still has, a bad press. Historically, it was heavily punished. It was then, and all too often is now, thought to be exploitative. Yet, as even the most economically unsophisticated must realize, both sides of these transactions must necessarily gain at least in the ex ante sense, otherwise one or the other would refuse to enter into the deal in the first place. The present paper is an attempt to justify the practice of charging interest on loans, at any rate agreeable to both borrowers and lenders.     

A Bayesian Bioeconometric Model of Invasive Species Control: The Case of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid

In this article we evaluate a US Forest Service plan to mitigate damages from an invasive insect on public, forested land. We develop a dynamic model of infestation and control to explicitly account for biological interactions, baseline conditions, and uncertainty, thus creating a more complete picture of policy impacts than a static cost benefit analysis could provide. We combine the results of the dynamic model with an empirical study of nonmarket forest benefits to create a bioeconomic model of ecosystem management. Estimating the empirical model in a Bayesian framework allows us to treat the economic coefficients of the dynamic model as random variables. We specify distributions for the biological parameters and examine the effects of both biological and economic uncertainty on the predictive distribution of net benefits. We find that the net benefits of the program are positive, and that uncertainty in the biological model contributes substantially more to the variance of our estimate than does uncertainty over the valuation of the resource.