Adaptive market hypothesis: The story of the stock markets and COVID-19 pandemic

Since the level of markets’ information efficiency is key to profiteering by strategic players, Shocks; such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can play a role in the nature of markets’ information efficiency. The martingale difference and conditional heteroscedasticity tests are used to evaluate the Adaptive form of market efficiency for four (4) major stock market indexes in the top four affected economies during the COVID-19 pandemic (USA, Brazil, India, and Russia). Generally, based on the martingale difference spectral test, there is no evidence of a substantial change in the levels of market efficiency for the US and Brazilian stock markets in the short, medium, and long term. However, in the long term, the Indian stock markets became more information inefficient after the coronavirus outbreak while the Russian stock markets become more information efficient. Intuitively, these affect the forecastability and predictability of these markets’ prices and/or returns. Thereby, informing the strategic and trading actions of stock investors (including arbitrageurs) towards profit optimization, portfolio asset selection, portfolio asset adjustment, etc. Similar policy implications are further discussed.     

新冠疫情对我国中小企业经济状况的影响及对策分析

2020年以来,新冠疫情对我国中小企业的影响巨大。论文从收入、成本、现金流三个方面分析了疫情下我国中小企业的现状及可采取的对策,以期助力中小企业渡过难关。     

Gold and US sectoral stocks during COVID-19 pandemic

In this study, we examine the hedging relationship between gold and US sectoral stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic. We employ a multivariate volatility framework, which accounts for salient features of the series in the computation of optimal weights and optimal hedging ratios. We find evidence of hedging effectiveness between gold and sectoral stocks, albeit with lower performance, during the pandemic. Overall, including gold in a stock portfolio could provide a valuable asset class that can improve the risk-adjusted performance of stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we find that the estimated portfolio weights and hedge ratios are sensitive to structural breaks, and ignoring the breaks can lead to overestimation of the hedging effectiveness of gold for US sectoral stocks. Since the analysis involves sectoral stock data, we believe that any investor in the US stock market that seeks to maximize risk-adjusted returns is likely to find the results useful when making investment decisions during the pandemic.     

Post-script—Retail forecasting: Research and practice

This note updates the 2019 review article “Retail forecasting: Research and practice” in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the substantial new research on machine-learning algorithms, when applied to retail. It offers new conclusions and challenges for both research and practice in retail demand forecasting.     

Covid-19-tested food labels

While the transmission of virus SARS-CoV-2 via food is rare, some Chinese food retailers are considering a Covid-19-tested food label. However, how consumers may support such a label is unknown. We quantify Chinese consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for food carrying a Covid-19-tested label using an online choice experiment. We find that the WTPs for such a label are always positive for all food products considered. The amount of WTP depends on the entities authenticating the labels, country of origin of the food, and consumers’ socio-demographic status. Contrary to expectation, the knowledge on Covid-19 does not affect consumer preferences for the Covid-19-tested food labels. Our benefit and cost analysis suggests a possible large benefit of creating and administering a Covid-19-tested food label. This study provides insights for policymakers, global food manufacturers, and retailers to create marketing strategies to alleviate consumer food safety concerns associated with Covid-19.     

Balancing risk with virtual private networking during a pandemic

When the pandemic struck and teaching went online worldwide, universities had to make pressing decisions that balanced cybersecurity against other factors, including health and safety, usability, and cost. One such challenge Indiana University (IU) faced was how to accommodate the secure telecommunications needs of 130,000 faculty, staff, and students who would now be teaching, learning, doing research, and working from home. Some universities reflexively promoted virtual private network (VPN) use for all activities. Such an approach would have been unsustainable at IU, however, owing both to the licenses and resources needed for the sheer number of users and to the high-throughput applications on which they rely. Perhaps even worse, it would have increased the chances that the VPN would be unavailable during a critical incident or other situation in which secure communications must be guaranteed. Instead, IU launched an awareness campaign demonstrating exactly when VPN use is and isn’t needed. In addition, network staff employed a VPN feature called split tunneling to reduce the load. This article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of this approach and how IU made the decision to balance both sides of the risk equation to ensure the continued advancement of its mission throughout the pandemic.     

突发公共事件对电影行业影响的量化研究

人工收集和整理2012—2018年在中国市场上映的首轮院线电影信息数据，构建电影需求的嵌套logit回归模型，以新冠肺炎疫情为准自然实验，来量化突发公共事件对电影行业复产复工的影响。结果显示：第一，关于上映时间选择，在恢复营业后，如果所有因为疫情尚未上映的电影选择顺延上映能有效避免过度竞争的局面。第二，关于上映节奏控制，控制好未定档电影的上映节奏，保持适当的竞争能促进经济效益提升。其中，从11月份开始以每周两部的频率上映未定档电影的经济效益最佳。第三，关于上映方式选择，与线下播放相比，疫情期间选择线上播放能及时收回成本并有利于经济收益最大化的实现。研究结论为电影行业制定复产复工策略提供依据，为未来应对突发公共卫生事件提供参考。     

疫情背景下航空维修业发展方向探索

我国的社会经济一直在持续发展,在这种基础上航空技术也更加成熟,中国航空维修业也获得了一定的发展。论文主要简要地介绍了国内民航维修业的特点,初步探讨了疫情背景下民航维修业在未来发展中的应对思路,希望可以给大家带去一些启发。     

疫情防控常态化下的世界经济战略走向

新冠疫情的出现冲击了世界经济,从经济全球化和全球经济治理体系两个维度分析疫情对世界经济的影响以及世界经济未来走向,研究发现:(1)新冠疫情通过影响全球价值链、贸易投资和就业环境阻碍经济全球化进程,中美矛盾升级、原有治理体系规则未与时俱进和激进政策的不确定性对全球经济治理体系提出新的挑战;(2)新冠疫情强化了世界各国对人类命运共同体的认识,将人类命运共同体融入全球治理体系将是未来治理的重要趋势;(3)新冠疫情可能会使世界经济格局出现新的变化,而中国在此次疫情中高效率的抗疫举措将进一步提升自身在世界经济格局中的地位和参与度。     

Learn from the past and prepare for the future: A critical assessment of crisis management research in hospitality

Given the substantial impact of crisis on the hospitality industry, crisis and crisis management have drawn attention from scholars. While each study makes a significant contribution to the existing knowledge of crisis management in hospitality, the fragmented perspective of each study makes it difficult to identify the key findings and unsolved problems. This paper presents a synthesis and critical assessment of state-of-the-art crisis management research in hospitality. It categorizes articles based on a three-stage framework covering pre-crisis planning, mid-crisis management, and post-crisis recovery. Two main perspectives in the literature are identified: one from hospitality service providers and one from stakeholders. Core research topics and concepts in each stage and perspective are reviewed. In addition, this paper proposes four major directions for future research: crisis management from stakeholders’ perspectives, integrative research, causal and behavioral research, and theoretical enhancement. It discusses the theoretical and practical implications of this study.