Accounting Policy Disclosures and Analysts' Forecasts

Using an international sample, I investigate whether the extent of firms' disclosure of their accounting policies in the annual report is associated with properties of analysts' earnings forecasts. Controlling for firm‐ and country‐level variables, I find that the level of accounting policy disclosure is significantly negatively related to forecast dispersion and forecast error. In particular, I find that accounting policy disclosures are incrementally useful to analysts over and above all other annual report disclosures. These findings suggest that accounting policy disclosures reduce uncertainty about forecasted earnings. I find univariate but not multivariate support for the hypothesis that accounting policy disclosures are especially helpful to analysts in environments where firms can choose among a larger set of accounting methods.     

Health insurance and savings over the life cycle—a semiparametric smooth coefficient estimation

Individuals save for future uncertain health care expenses. This is less efficient than pooling health risk through insurance. The provision of comprehensive health insurance may raise welfare by providing the missing market to smooth out consumption through the life cycle. We employ a semiparametric smooth coefficient model to examine the effects of the introduction of the National Health Insurance in Taiwan in 1995 on savings and consumption over the life cycle. The idea is to estimate the coefficients of health insurance which vary with age. Our results suggest that younger households are more sensitive to the risk reductions, and that they demonstrate a greater response in the reduction of their precautionary saving. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

上海汽车租赁业把脉

自从1989年8月1日在北京诞生了第一家汽车租赁公司--福斯特汽车租赁公司,中国企业租赁公司就如雨后春笋纷纷冒出来.上海作为国际性大都市,汽车租赁业的发展更是走在全国各大城市的前列.现有企业间的竞争指的是目前汽车租赁行业已存在的竞争对手之间的竞争,比如上海安吉、上海强生、上海大众和华东实业之间的竞争.     

Trade and Financial Integration in East Asia: Effects on Co‐movements

In this paper we explore three important areas where deeper trade and financial integration in East Asia can influence: (1) business cycle co‐movements in the region, (2) the extent of risk sharing across countries and (3) price co‐movements across countries. We find evidence that trade integration enhances co‐movements of output but not of consumption across countries. Especially the fact that trade integration does not raise co‐movements of consumption as much as that of output is interpreted as trade integration does not improve the extent of risk sharing. Co‐movements of price arise most significantly as trade integration deepens, lowering the border effects and allowing better opportunities for resource reallocation across countries. In contrast, financial integration demonstrates much weaker evidence of enhancing co‐movements across countries. Deeper financial integration improves price co‐movements weakly but does not enhance output or consumption co‐movements at all. However, since the current level of financial integration in East Asia is quite low, our evidence is too early to firmly determine the role of financial integration.     

In search of fair trade: ethical consumer decision making in France

While the market for fair trade products has been growing in many countries, this paper examines the French market where fair trade remains marginal but is experiencing growth. Using a modified Theory of Planned Behaviour framework the research examines consumer intention to purchase fair trade grocery products in order to explain the pertinent decision‐making criteria of both consumers of and potential consumers of fair trade. Results reveal that concerned consumers should not be treated as one homogeneous group, rather, the distinct variations in the factors that influence their decision making must be considered when promoting, labelling and distributing fair trade products. Implications for both sustaining and developing the market for fair trade products in the future are highlighted and discussed.     

Male–female wage discrimination in Chinese industryInvestigation using firm‐level data1

We use firm‐level data to analyze male–female wage discrimination in China's industry. We find that there is a significant negative association between wages and the share of female workers in a firm's labour force. However, we also find that the marginal productivity of female workers is significantly lower than that of male workers. Comparing wage gaps and productivity gaps between men and women, we notice an intriguing contrast between state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) and private firms. The wage gap is smaller than the productivity gap in SOEs, while the converse is true for private firms. These results suggest that women in the state sector receive wage premiums, whereas women in the private sector face wage discrimination.     

INTERCONNECTION AGREEMENT BETWEEN INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS AND THE OPTIMAL POLICY INTERVENTION: THE CASE OF COURNOT‐TYPE COMPETITION UNDER NETWORK EXTERNALITIES*

We derive the optimal subsidy policy for an interconnection agreement between two symmetric Internet service providers (ISPs) competing á la Cournot in a network service market. The interconnection quality agreed upon is lower than the socially optimal level, as suggested by Crémer et al. (2000 ). In the basic model where both ISPs compete in the domestic market, the optimal investment subsidy rate depends positively on the strength of network externalities. In the extended model where home and foreign ISPs compete in the home market, the optimal subsidy rate for the home government is higher than in the basic model.     

Estimating the Cost of Equity for Property-Liability Insurance Companies

Due to the highly skewed and heavy‐tailed distributions associated with the insurance claims process, we evaluate the Rubinstein‐Leland (RL) model for its ability to improve the cost of equity estimates of insurance companies because of its distribution‐free feature. Our analyses show that there is as large as a 94‐basis‐point difference in the estimated cost of insurance equity between the RL model and the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) for the sample of property‐liability insurers with more severe departures from normality. In addition, consistent with our hypotheses, significant differences in the market risk estimates are found for insurers with return distributions that are asymmetrically distributed, and for small insurers. Third, we find significant performance improvements from using the RL model by showing smaller values of excess return of the expected return of the portfolio to the model return for a portfolio of insurers with returns that are more skewed and for a portfolio of small insurers. Finally, our panel data analysis shows the differences in the market risk estimates are significantly influenced by firm size, degree of leverage, and degree of asymmetry. The implication is that insurers should use the RL model rather than the CAPM to estimate its cost of capital if the insurer is small (assets size is less than $2,291 million), and/or its returns are not symmetrical (the value of skewness is greater than 0.509 or less than ?0.509).     

我国地下金融监管困境的博弈分析

20世纪90年代以来我国地下金融规模急剧扩大。地下金融一方面促进了经济增长，另一方面对正常的经济金融构成危害。虽然我国有关监管机构对地下金融进行严厉监管，但收效不大。文章论述了我国地下金融的成因、规模和利弊，并从不完全信息动态博弈的角度分析了我国对地下金融的监管中存在的问题，指出了如何打破地下金融监管困境的方向。     

基于土地开发适宜性分区的土地空间配置——以宿迁市区为例

研究目的:对宿迁市区进行土地开发适宜性分区,提出差别化的区域土地利用方式与管制措施,优化区域土地的空间配置.研究方法:运用收敛分析法和特尔菲测定法确定指标权重,采用互斥性矩阵分类法确定土地开发适宜性分区.研究结果:通过农用地适宜性和建设用地适宜性的互斥性矩阵分类,将宿迁市区分为建设用地重点保障区域和农用地重点保障区域等6种类型区.研究结论:基于宜农和宜建导向的土地开发适宜性分区,对区域土地空间优化配置、促进土地资源的可持续利用有指导意义.由适宜性分区得到的类型区,从建设用地重点保障区域到农地保护重点区域,分区引导方向由建设用地开发向农用地保护转移.