A review of Short Sea Shipping policy in the European Union

Short Sea Shipping (SSS) has attracted a lot of attention in the European Union in the last 15 years. It is considered as a mode favoured to alleviate road congestion. Alas, promises have not been met and cargo transfers have not reached their objectives yet, despite strong financial will and a programme for modal shift implemented by the European Union (EU). The hypothesis raised by this paper is that Short Sea Shipping has not been well defined in the EU and market potential for modal shift from land to sea has been overestimated. Therefore, this has a great impact for policy-making. Studies have covered many topics such as its implementation using case studies, cost-benefit analysis compared to land-transport modes, general European shipping policy and its environmental contribution. Therefore, little has been written on the role of public institutions in its implementation and no critical assessment of the success of supporting public programme in the EU has been done. This paper explains how the lack of a final definition has led to misadapted public policies favouring modal transfer in the EU and how misknowledge of SSS markets has led to the overestimation of the modal shift potential.     

Doing battle with short sellers: The conflicted role of blockholders in bear raids

If short sellers can destroy firm value by manipulating prices down, an informed blockholder has a powerful natural incentive to protect the value of his stake by trading against them. However, he also has a potentially conflicting incentive to use his information to generate trading profits. We show that a speculator can exploit this conflict and force the blockholder to buy a disproportionately large amount to prevent value destruction. This is costly for the blockholder because the trades must sometimes be executed at inflated prices. Given reasonable constraints on short sellers, a sufficiently large blockholder will have the incentive to absorb these losses and prevent a bear raid. However, conditions exist under which outside intervention may be warranted.     

Informed trading before analyst downgrades: Evidence from short sellers

This paper studies short-selling prior to the release of analyst downgrades in a sample of 670 downgrades of Nasdaq stocks between 2000 and 2001. We find abnormal levels of short-selling in the three days before downgrades are publicly announced. Further, we show that this pre-announcement abnormal short-selling is significantly related to the subsequent share price reaction to the downgrade, and especially so for downgrades that prompt the most substantial price declines. Our findings are robust to various controls that might also affect short-selling such as pre-announcement momentum, three-day pre-announcement returns, and announcement-day share price. In addition, the results are independent of scheduled earnings announcements, analyst herding, and non-routine events near downgrades. Further evidence suggests that tipping is more consistent with the data than the prediction explanation which posits that short sellers successfully predict downgrades on the basis of public information about firms’ financial health. Finally, we present evidence that downgraded stocks with high abnormal short-selling perform poorly over the subsequent six months by comparison with those with low abnormal short-selling. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that short sellers are informed traders and exploit profitable opportunities provided by downgrade announcements.     

短肽型肠内营养剂对结直肠癌围手术期患者的影响

目的探讨短肽型肠内营养剂对结直肠癌围手术期患者的影响。方法选取2017年6月至2019年8月滨州医学院附属医院收治的结直肠癌手术患者104例作为研究对象,随机分为试验组和对照组,各52例。试验组采用短肽型肠内营养剂进行营养支持,对照组患者采用传统清洁灌肠,比较患者手术前1 d及术后1 d、3 d、7 d IgC、IgA、IgM、CD3^+、CD4^+、CD8^+水平和术中肠道清洁情况。结果术后7 d,CD3^+、CD4^+逐渐升高,试验组的升高情况明显优于对照组,差异有统计学意义(P<0.05)。试验组患者术中肠道清洁情况与对照组比较,差异无统计学意义(P>0.05)。结论对结直肠癌患者围手术期采用短肽型肠内营养剂进行治疗,有利于患者术后免疫功能恢复。     

Forecasting GDP growth with financial market data in Finland: Revisiting stylized facts in a small open economy during the financial crisis

This paper examines the ability of financial variables to predict future economic growth above and beyond past economic activity in a small open economy in the euro area. We aim to clarify potential differences in forecasting economic activity during different economic circumstances.Our results from Finland suggest that the proper choice of forecasting variables is related to general economic conditions. During steady economic growth, the preferred choice for a financial indicator is the short-term interest rate combined with past values of output growth. However, during economic turbulence, the traditional term spread and stock returns are more important in forecasting GDP growth. The time-varying predictive content of the financial variables may be utilized by applying regime-switching nonlinear forecasting models. We propose a novel application using the negative term spread and observed recession as signals to switch between regimes. This procedure yields a significant improvement in forecasting performance at the one-year forecast horizon.     

An empirical examination of the benefits of international diversification

We examine the benefits of international portfolio diversification for U.K. investors between January 1985 and December 2000 using the approach of Wang [Wang, Z., 1998. Efficiency loss and constraints on portfolio holdings. Journal of Financial Economics 48, 359–375] and Li et al. [Li, K., Sarkar, A., Wang, Z., 2003. Diversification benefits of emerging markets subject to portfolio constraints. Journal of Empirical Finance 10, 57–80]. We find significant increases in the Sharpe [Sharpe, W.F., 1966. Mutual fund performance. Journal of Business 39, 119–138] and certainty equivalent return (CER) performance in moving from a domestic strategy to an international strategy that includes either global industry or country equity portfolios, even in the presence of short selling restrictions. We also find significant diversification benefits using U.K. unit trusts with international equity objectives. However, U.K. international unit trusts do not capture all the diversification benefits provided by either global industry or country equity portfolios.     

规避股市系统性风险:股票指数期货的套期保值

随着我国股票市场发展规模的不断扩大,股票市场的投资风险也在加大,如何合理防范或者减少股票市场由于股价波动而给投资者或融资者带来的风险与损失已是摆在我们面前的重要课题。对于无法通过股票投资组合加以消除的系统性风险,我们可以通过股指期货的多头或空头套期保值功能来减少或加以防范。     

经济转型期中国能源需求的长期均衡及短期波动:1978-2005

本文利用1978-2005年样本通过状态空间模型研究了改革开放以来能源需求、经济增长、效率改进等之间的动态相关性,在此基础上使用向量自回归模型、脉冲响应函数、方差分解模型等对能源需求及其影响因素之间的作用机理进行了系统分析,研究结论表明:改革开放以来能源需求、经济增长、产业结构调整、效率改进等存在长期稳定的均衡关系,能源需求的短期波动除了受到相关因素的直接影响外,制度变迁等不可观测变量对能源消费的模式及其变动有着巨大的推动作用;在对我国能源需求影响的众多变量中,我国经济增长方式的转变和工业化进程的深入推进,尤其是重工业比例在国民经济结构的进一步提高对能源需求的调整具有重要的决定作用;能源价格对能源需求的波动尚未起到明显的调控作用,我国政府应当进一步完善能源价格形成机制,使之能够在能源行业资源配置中起到基础作用.     

Modelling conditional skewness: Heterogeneous beliefs,short sale restrictions and market declines

This paper tests the relationship among heterogeneous beliefs, short sale restrictions and time-varying conditional skewness under different market conditions. The results show that heterogeneous beliefs and short sale restrictions have negative impacts on conditional skewness during periods of market decline but have negative, positive or no impacts during periods of market growth. This evidence reconciles conflicting evidence in recent empirical studies on the relationship among heterogeneous beliefs, short sale restrictions and conditional skewness.