Financial integration and the price of world covariance risk: Large- vs. small-cap stocks

We investigate whether recent country-level evidence of global pricing is particular to large-cap stocks. Specifically, we examine cross-country return correlations and conduct asset pricing tests on three size-based stock portfolios for nine developed countries over the period from 1980 to 2004. We find that large-cap stocks realize significant comovements across countries, whereas small-cap stocks realize smaller average correlations (relative to both large-cap stocks and small-cap stocks across countries). More important, asset pricing tests suggest that while large-cap stocks are priced globally, global pricing is rejected for most small-cap stocks. Finally, the evidence indicates that financial integration deepened in recent years primarily for large-cap stocks. Overall, the results suggest that the global pricing pertains chiefly to large-cap stocks.     

How to measure mutual fund performance: economic versus statistical relevance

In the present paper a comprehensive assessment of existing mutual fund performance models is presented. Using a survivor‐bias free database of all US mutual funds, we explore the added value of introducing extra variables such as size, book‐to‐market, momentum and a bond index. In addition to that we evaluate the use of introducing time‐variation in betas and alpha. The search for the most suitable model to measure mutual fund performance will be addressed along two lines. First, we are interested in the statistical significance of adding more factors to the single factor model. Second, we focus on the economic importance of more elaborate model specifications. The added value of the present study lies both in the step‐wise process of identifying relevant factors, and the use of a rich US mutual fund database that was recently released by the Center for Research in Security Prices.     

The “swing of the pendulum” from public to market support for science and technology: Is the U.S. leading the way?

The structure and financing of science and technology activities are undergoing a slow, but profound, change. This change can be briefly characterized as a shift from relying and supporting public science to a stronger emphasis on “market-based” incentives for science and technology. In this paper we analyze this shift in a historical perspective, discussing both the theoretical explanations and the empirical trends of the ongoing change. While we do not claim to provide a comprehensive and exhaustive identification of the causes of this shift, we argue that it is largely driven by the perception of a shift of the U.S. policy towards market-based, rather than publicly supported, incentives for science and technology. This, in turn—given the strong economic performance of the United States over the 1990s—has influenced policies in most OECD countries, especially in Europe.We conclude by analyzing the evolution of research in U.S. higher education and find two major trends: an increasing diversity in the number of institutions of different types other than universities and a steady and continuous public funding of the leading U.S. universities. This has allowed the construction of an infrastructure now used largely by the private sector, but it also noted that the United States has not compromised public support for core areas or in those fields in which there is a clear perception that market incentives are not sufficient for meeting the strategic targets of the U.S. policy. The implication is that there is a considerable policy diversity in the U.S. practice and that all aspects of this diversity should be considered when using the United States as a reference.     

From rationality to hyperreality: paradigm poker

This paper, following McGoun's (1997) seminal article comparing the economy of financial securities to a hyperreal poker game, argues that finance and accounting researchers should take the “linguistic turn” that has rejuvenated theory and research in many, if not most, of the social science and humanities in recent decades. In general terms, this means following Ludwig Wittgenstein's language game paradigm rather than Karl Popper's scientific deductive hypothesis testing methodology. The paper illustrates this by drawing on some of Jean Baudrillard's' ideas, particularly his concept of hyperreality and his phases of the image theoretic.The paper presents a poststructuralist genealogical analysis of the radical ruptures and reformulation of the meaning attributed to the accounting sign of earnings over the feudal, counterfeit, production, and simulation eras. It concludes that, as with many other signs in contemporary society, the earnings sign no longer has any relationship with, nor does it any longer refer to, any real or intrinsic profit but instead floats ungrounded in today's financial economy.The paper recommends that researchers in finance and accounting adopt paradigms from literary theory, semiotics, linguistics, and semiology rather than continue to rely on economics-based theory, which has lost its power for explaining and predicting happenings in today's financial economy of self-referencing models and images.     

Reporting Performance: Comprehensive Income and its Components

The underlying question raised in this article is: why is the accounting profession's conceptual framework (CF) so authoritative when it is conceptually incoherent? A supplementary question is how can ‘conceptually robust’ accounting standards be derived from an incoherent framework? This article draws on Page and Spira's (1999) contrasting framework metaphors to suggest that the appearance of conceptual robustness is more important than the reality, and illustrates the point with the International Accounting Standards Board's (IASB’s) progress report on its reporting performance project. Some inherent weaknesses in the move towards internationally enforceable financial regulations have been acknowledged, but this article suggests the IASB's project demonstrates two additional weaknesses: internal incoherence, and the potential for political ends to drive supposedly technical regulations.     

中国证券市场有效性研究

本文对有效市场理论进行了简单的阐述,研究了我国证券市场有效性的现状,对中国证券市场有效性的实证研究及检验成果进行了总结评述,分析了中国证券市场有效性欠佳的主要原因,提出了增强证券市场有效性的对策和建议。     

Optimal investment with fixed financing costs

Models with a premium on external finance produce counterfactual predictions about liquidity management. We address this shortcoming by introducing a fixed cost of increasing external finance into an otherwise standard investment/financing problem. This additional financial friction is well-motivated by case studies and our analysis shows that it generates more realistic predictions about liquidity management: firms hold external finance and idle cash simultaneously, and may invest an additional dollar of cash flow in liquidity rather than repaying external funds or investing in productive capital. In addition to better fitting the stylized facts about the time-series and cross-sectional pattern of liquidity holding, these results may help shed light on the fragility of estimates of investment–cash flow sensitivities.     

纽约股票市场对中国A股市场的影响

首先，本文考察了纽约股市波动对中国A股市场的影响。一般认为，中国的A股市场由于严格的资本控制而免受外国影响。但是，通过月度、每周、每日的样本数据（1992年到2004年），经过季节性调整和汇率变动调整后，我们发现上海和深圳A股市场的变动与美国股票价格指数变动相一致。其次，我们考察国家贝塔值（country beta）在马尔可夫转换误差修正模型中的动态关系。对中国市场来说，国家贝塔值和错误纠正项的重要性紧密相连。在东亚金融危机之前，美国市场对中国A股市场的影响普遍存在，而东亚金融危机产生后，则是通过国家贝塔值来影响中国股市的收益。     

Tacit meaning in disguise: Hidden metaphors in new product development and market making

This article explores the role of metaphor in product development processes and market making. Based on a sociocognitive perspective of innovation dynamics and required learning by market actors, the potential of metaphors for mental model development during new product development (NPD) processes is investigated. Three roles for metaphors as cognitive focusing devices for the co-evolution of producers' and consumers' mental models are inferred: mental model communication, mental model matching, and mental model creation. These roles are illustrated by examples that reinforce the need for creativity in applying metaphors as cognitive focusing devices in NPD and market making.