Conditional Mandates on Management Earnings Forecasts: The Impact on the Cost of Debt

Exploiting a unique conditional disclosure mandate on management earnings forecasts (MEFs) in China, we examine the differential effects of voluntary and mandatory MEFs on the cost of debt. We find that firms providing voluntary MEFs have lower cost of debt than do mandatory forecasters and nonforecasters. The results of the channel analyses reveal that voluntary forecasters have greater commitment to voluntary MEFs in future periods than do mandatory forecasters and nonforecasters, and the precision, accuracy, and timeliness of MEFs are higher for voluntary forecasters than for mandatory forecasters. Additional analyses show that the differential effects of voluntary and mandatory MEFs on cost of debt are stronger for voluntary forecasters operating in opaque information environments, issuing high-quality and confirming forecasts, controlled by private shareholders, and operating in highly competitive product markets. Overall, our results indicate that, compared with mandatory MEFs, voluntary MEFs are more informative for credit investors, particularly for firms facing greater information risk and operating uncertainty.     

西藏城乡居民家庭养老现状与趋向分析

在西藏,家庭曾是老年人养老的基本依赖。然而,随着经济社会条件的变化和人口流动,老年人的生存状况与过去大不相同。传统的家庭养老功能面临着新的挑战,主要表现如家庭结构逐渐趋向小型化、子女数量减少而使家庭供养负担加重、老龄化导致家庭养老功能弱化。面对这些新的挑战,西藏城乡居民的养老出现新趋向,如自我养老观念提高、女儿养老地位加强以及社会化养老等。     

The effect of mandatory CSR disclosure on firm profitability and social externalities: Evidence from China

We examine how mandatory disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) impacts firm performance and social externalities. Our analysis exploits China's 2008 mandate requiring firms to disclose CSR activities, using a difference-in-differences design. Although the mandate does not require firms to spend on CSR, we find that mandatory CSR reporting firms experience a decrease in profitability subsequent to the mandate. In addition, the cities most impacted by the disclosure mandate experience a decrease in their industrial wastewater and SO₂ emission levels. These findings suggest that mandatory CSR disclosure alters firm behavior and generates positive externalities at the expense of shareholders.     

Dialectical mind can be sweet toward crisis‐associated products/brands

Consumers’ thinking style (e.g., dialectical thinking), which is fundamental to cognition, has been paid inadequate attention in the consumer literature. This research explores the impact of dialectical thinking on Chinese consumer responses toward crisis‐associated products/brands. Findings in three experimental studies indicate that, in comparison to those primed with nondialectical thinking, consumers primed with dialectical thinking report higher levels of purchase intention and trust for a crisis‐associated product/brand. This is the case not just for products with Chinese cultural background, but also for products with western cultural background. Consumers’ perceived severity of crises moderates the impact of dialectical thinking, with a stronger impact in a highly severe crisis situation than in a less severe one. A survey study indicates a similar pattern. These findings are important in suggesting ways of encouraging Chinese consumers to be insistent on quality standard in order to better protect their consumer rights, and moreover, for multinational corporations on how best to respond and formulate strategies of handling product‐harm crises in the Chinese market.     

Hours underemployment and employee turnover: the moderating role of human resource practices

Using Canadian nationally representative, multisource longitudinal data, this paper examines relationships between hours underemployment, employee turnover and human resource practices. The results of hierarchical linear models indicate that underemployed employees are more likely to leave an organisation that relies heavily on part-time workers, whereas they are more likely to stay when their employers hire regularly from within the company. These findings extend the literature on hours underemployment from individual-level direct effects to organisational-level moderating factors, and accordingly, they provide empirical evidence that human resource professionals can use to address the detrimental effects of underemployment.     

基于可持续生计分析框架的农户宅基地流转意愿研究

[目的]宅基地流转是城乡建设用地优化配置和农民财产性收入增加的重要途径,对解决我国当前土地资源利用的供需矛盾,推动高效用地具有重要意义。文章从家庭生计资产量化入手,探讨不同资产配置类型农户宅基地流转的影响因素,旨在进一步推进宅基地流转进程。[方法]通过农户生计量化法和Logistic回归模型进行实证分析。[结果](1)农户整体宅基地的流转意愿较高,达到69.84%,但资产缺乏型农户的流转意愿非常低,仅有37.93%;(2)非农迁移意愿、宅基地功能和家庭生计资产总值对宅基地流转具有显著影响,年龄、专业技能、住房的满意度、宅基地面积、非农收入比例、非农就业状况6个因素对不同类型农户的影响出现差异。[结论]该文提出建立贫困农户的技能培训机制,制定多样化的宅基地流转制度,从而保证不同类型农户在宅基地流转后,整体福利水平不下降。     

Big data driven cycle time parallel prediction for production planning in wafer manufacturing

Cycle time forecasting (CTF) is one of the most crucial issues for production planning to keep high delivery reliability in semiconductor wafer fabrication systems (SWFS). This paper proposes a novel data-intensive cycle time (CT) prediction system with parallel computing to rapidly forecast the CT of wafer lots with large datasets. First, a density peak based radial basis function network (DP-RBFN) is designed to forecast the CT with the diverse and agglomerative CT data. Second, the network learning method based on a clustering technique is proposed to determine the density peak. Third, a parallel computing approach for network training is proposed in order to speed up the training process with large scaled CT data. Finally, an experiment with respect to SWFS is presented, which demonstrates that the proposed CTF system can not only speed up the training process of the model but also outperform the radial basis function network, the back-propagation-network and multivariate regression methodology based CTF methods in terms of the mean absolute deviation and standard deviation.     

The impact of crude oil inventory announcements on prices: Evidence from derivatives markets

This study examines the impact of weekly crude oil storage announcements on oil futures and options prices. We document evidence of a strong announcement day effect on both markets, and find prices to move in anticipation of the inventory surprise. Futures returns significantly decrease with positive surprises and increase with negative surprises. There is no evidence of an asymmetric impact on futures prices. Near‐the‐money options exhibit the greatest price sensitivity, and the magnitude of the price response of both futures and options declines with maturity. The results remain robust even after controlling for various macroeconomic and other storage‐related news variables.