An alternative quality of life ranking on the basis of remittances

Remittances provide an essential connection between people working abroad and their home countries. This paper considers these transfers as a measure of preferences revealed by the workers, underlying a ranking of countries around the world. In particular, we use the World Bank bilateral remittances data of international salaries and interpersonal transfers between 2010 and 2015 to compare European countries. The suggested least squares method has favourable axiomatic properties. Our ranking reveals a crucial aspect of quality of life and may become an alternative to various composite indices.     

On the stability of coalition structures

We resolve a seeming conflict between a non-existence result on solutions to coalition formation in hedonic games [Barberà, S., Gerber, A., 2007. A note on the impossibility of a satisfactory concept of stability for coalition formation games. Economics Letters 95, 85–90] and the universal existence of stable coalition structures in TU games under the χ-value [Casajus, A., 2008. Outside options, component efficiency, and stability, Games and Economic Behavior (forthcoming). doi: 10.1016/j.geb.2007.04.003].     

基于集对分析的项目风险排序方法

风险排序是项目风险管理的重要环节。在综述已有方法的基础上，提出一种基于集对分析的风险排序方法，计算了各种风险的联系度，建立两步循环算法，对项目风险按大小进行排序。最后，用一个实例说明了本方法的实用性。     

Technical efficiency of Norwegian banks: The non-parametric approach to efficiency measurement

The nonparametric frontier methodology is applied to a sample of banks, where output levels are measured either by the number of accounts and their average size, or by the total balances of the accounts. The efficiency rankings of individual banks are found to depend substantially on our choice of output metric, whereas the estimated size of potential productivity improvements in the banking sector are less affected. The results on economies of scale are also largely unchanged.The refereeing process of this paper was handled through S. Grosskopf.     

Assessing Contestability of Electoral Outcomes

This article applies Saaris geometric methodology to assess how muchdifference the choice of a particular positional voting procedure makeson the election outcomes. The British 2001 parliamentary elections are usedas an illustration of the methodology. The election results as well as MORIinterview data are used to make inferences regarding the possibility ofthe Borda effect. Saaris geometricrepresentation technique is resorted to in describing all possiblepositional voting outcomes in single-member constituencies where threecandidates are competing. Finally, two basic winning criteria are discussed.     

2003年中国国际竞争力评价和分析

2003年瑞士国际管理发展学院(IMD)的国际竞争力评价显示,中国正在成为世界制造业中心,经济实力在SARS影响下仍然能够稳步提升,信息化建设成就卓著,但中国进一步提升国际竞争力仍然需要深化市场经济观念,加强教育和人才培养,提升基础竞争力和科技竞争力,改善金融体系。     

Aggregating Incomplete Lists of Journal Rankings: An Application to Academic Accounting Journals*

We introduce a branch‐and‐cut algorithm to aggregate published journal rankings based on subsets of the accounting literature in order to create a consensus ranking. The aggregate ranking allows specialist and regional journals, which may only be ranked in a limited number of studies, to be placed with respect to each other and with respect to the generalist journals that are usually included in ranking studies. The approach we develop is a significant advance over ad hoc approaches to aggregating journal rankings that have appeared in the literature and may provide a theoretically sound and replicable basis for further exploration of the concept of journal quality and the stability of journal rankings over time and ranking methods.     

Using Contingent Ranking to Estimate the Loss of Amenity Value for Inland Waterways from Public Utility Service Structures

A contingent ranking exercise was used to estimate the amenity loss for recreational users associated with pylons, overhead cables and pipelines along canals. Over 80% of canal users were willing to pay higher utility bills to reduce the number of service structures found along canals. Aggregated across all canal users, mean annual willingness to pay for a 1% decrease in service structures was estimated to be nearly £750,000. The implications of these findings could be significant in any future negotiations between British Waterways and those companies responsible for siting pipelines and cables along canals.     

Use of active peer benchmarks in assessing UK mutual fund performance and performance persistence

The majority of UK style-specific mutual funds either report a broad market index as their prospectus benchmark or give no benchmark at all – a practice that may be (a) strategic, or (b) cultural and attributable to the lack of UK style-specific indices (e.g. mid-cap-growth, small-cap-value). The choice of a broad market index as a benchmark can bias the inferences of a fund’s performance and performance persistence. This study is the first to provide an alternative to style-specific indices in the UK, and suggests the use style-specific peer group benchmarks, following [Hunter, D., E. Kandel, S. Kandel, and R. Wermers. 2014. “Mutual Fund Performance Evaluation with Active Peer Benchmarks.” Journal of Financial Economics 112 (1): 1–29]. Our sample comprises of 817 active UK long-only equity mutual funds allocated to nine Morningstar style categories (peer groups) during the period 1992–2016. We show that the funds with the most significant positive peer-group-adjusted alphas continue to perform well one year ahead, in terms of both parametric and non-parametric measures of persistence in performance. Moreover, persistence in performance is driven by both winner and loser funds. The results within each peer group are by and large consistent with these findings.