大数据对法院司法统计的积极功效及边界

最高人民法院于2016年应用人民法院大数据管理和服务平台以后,全国法院司法统计完全实现计算机自动采集。从发展脉络来看法院司法统计正处于智能化转型阶段,仍然存在一些问题。随着大数据及新技术的引入,司法统计“大数据”得以成为现实,包括了数据采集的全面化、统计分析的综合化、统计平台的社会化,进而提出了大数据助力司法统计精准化的具体路径,包括了提高基础数据的量与质、加强对司法统计数据的深度分析和可视化分析、推进基础设施建设。然而,二者并不具有正相关性。因此,推进司法统计大数据化需要注意有两个限度。     

城镇化背景下治安治理社会化的探索与创新——以钱江世纪城派出所“物业联席会”创建为例

治安治理社会化的核心是社会力量的参与。从宋代的民治传统到建国以来的政策与实践探索,从警务社会化、治安管理社会化到治安社会化、社会治安社会化治理等概念的相继提出,构成了治安治理社会化的演进脉络。治安治理社会化的本质是治安秩序维护的多元化,强调多元化共治、过程性理念与互动性思维的有机统一。杭州市公安局萧山区分局以“物业联席会”机制创建为载体,整合社会资源,激发社会组织活力,为治安治理社会化提供了更多可能的路径。借鉴“物业联席会”的创建经验,城镇化背景下的治安治理社会化应坚持党委组织领导,协同推进组织载体创新、联动机制创新与智慧化手段运用相融合。     

Employment quality index for the South African labour market

ABSTRACT

While the South African government specifically set targets on job creation in its numerous economic strategies since the economic transition, various local studies examined the levels and trends in labour force, employment and unemployment to evaluate if these targets were met. However, the quality of employment has not been thoroughly examined. This is the first local study that fills the existing research gap by deriving a composite, multidimensional employment quality index by taking 18 indicators from seven dimensions into consideration: wage, work hours and flexibility, employment security, income security, social benefits, skills and participation. Using the 2010–16 Quarterly Labour Force Survey data, the empirical findings indicated that highly educated, white male workers aged at least 35 years, who lived in urban areas of the Western Cape and Gauteng provinces, and were involved in high skilled occupations in the formal, public sector enjoyed significantly better employment quality.     

Does rice farming shape audit quality: Evidence from signing auditors level analysis

This study examines whether signing auditors from rice planting regions affect audit quality. Using a sample of 12,223 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market over the period of 2004–2015, our findings reveal that signing auditors from rice regions are significantly negatively associated with the likelihood of unclean audit opinions, suggesting that signing auditors with rice culture are more likely to succumb to the managers and hamper independence, and thus are more inclined to issue favorable audit opinions, and eventually impair audit quality. Furthermore, audit firm size and industry expertise attenuate the negative relation between signing auditors with rice culture and audit quality. In addition, above findings are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests using different measures of audit quality and signing auditors from rice cultivating areas and our conclusions still stand after using the Heckman two-step approach, placebo test and differences-in-differences method to address the potential endogeneity problem.     

CEO internal experience and voluntary disclosure quality: Evidence from management forecasts

Internally‐promoted CEOs should have a deep understanding of their firm's products, supply chain, operations, business climate, corporate culture, and how to navigate among employees to get the information they need. Thus, we argue that internally‐promoted CEOs are likely to produce higher quality disclosure than outsider CEOs. Using a sample of US firms from the S&P1500 index from 2001 to 2011, we hand‐collect whether a CEO is hired from inside the firm and, if so, the number of years they worked at the firm before becoming CEO. We then examine whether managers with more internal experience issue higher quality disclosures and offer three main findings. First, CEOs with more internal experience are more likely to issue voluntary earnings forecasts than those managers with less internal experience as well as those managers hired from outside the firm. Second, CEOs with more internal experience issue more accurate earnings forecasts than those managers with less internal experience as well as those managers hired from outside the firm. Finally, investors react more strongly to forecasts issued by insider CEOs than to those issued by outsider CEOs. In additional analysis, we find no evidence that these results extend to mandatory reporting quality (i.e., accruals quality, restatements, or internal control weaknesses), perhaps because mandatory disclosure is subjected to heavy oversight by the board of directors, auditors, and regulators. Overall, our findings suggest that when managers have work experience with the firm prior to becoming the CEO, the firm's voluntary disclosure is of higher quality.     

Employing structural topic modelling to explore perceived service quality attributes in Airbnb accommodation

This study employs the structural topic model to extract service quality attributes from 242,020 Airbnb reviews in Malaysia. 22 service related topics were extracted from the corpus and four topics have not appeared in previous Airbnb studies. A widely used modified SERVQUAL questionnaire (MSQ) is cross-validated in this study by comparing its service quality attributes with the results of the topic modelling, which indicates that this MSQ can cover general Airbnb service quality attributes. This study also examines the different preferences of Malaysian and international Airbnb users and the changing patterns of the top six service quality attributes during a five-year period. The findings reveal that Malaysian Airbnb users care more about the appearance and location of the property, and international Airbnb users pay more attention to whether the property can accommodate a group of people. In addition, communication with the host is found to play an increasingly important role in Airbnb users’ lodging experiences.     

Contracting Institutions,Agro‐food Trade and Product Quality

The agro‐food sector has experienced a profound transformation of contractual arrangements along the value chain, coinciding with important technological innovations and product quality upgrading. Our understanding of the impact that this transformation has had on trade flows in the agricultural sector is very limited. In particular, we have limited knowledge about the extent to which the patterns in agro‐food trade have been driven by the quality of contractual institutions. Using existing measures which capture the sensitivity of agro‐food products to contractual imperfections, we show that countries with better contract enforcement specialise in the production of food which requires higher level of relationship‐specific investments. We also find that countries with better contracting institutions and producing contract‐intensive goods specialise in exporting high quality foods. In addition, we show that the quality of contracting institutions might importantly affect the process of product quality upgrading.     

Advancing environmental productivity: Organizational mindfulness and strategies

This study investigates the importance of mindfulness‐based organization systems and policies on the organization's continuous efforts to become a greener company. The study is devised as a pooled cross‐sectional time series analysis of productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling of U.S. companies. The data set taken from U.S. Newsweek 500 recorded 600 companies dispersed into 63 industries during the period of 2012–2014 and provided 1,498 company–industry–year observations. The study found that systems and policies (e.g., deployment of third‐party auditors for its environmental metrics report; linkage of the remuneration of company's senior executive team with the achievement of environmental performance targets; and establishment of a committee at the Board of Directors' level whose mandate includes sustainability of the company in environment‐ and resource‐related matters) connect the company's mindfulness to its effort in improving the environmental quality through the company's productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling. The relationships are positive and significant. Also, systems and policies serve as a motivator for the firm to continue to improve upon the current achievements. The study emphasizes the importance of translating organizational and individual mindfulness into organization policies and systems in order to motivate the organization to continuously improve its productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling leading to improvements in environmental quality.     

An explainable machine learning approach to improve take-off time predictions

Accurate aircraft trajectory predictions are necessary to compute exact traffic demand figures, which are crucial for an efficient and effective air traffic flow and capacity management. At present, the uncertainty of the take-off time is one of the major contributions to the loss of trajectory predictability. In the EUROCONTROL Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre, the predicted take-off time for each individual flight relies on the information received from the Enhanced Traffic Flow Management System. However, aircraft do not always take-off at the times reported by this system due to several factors, which effects and interactions are too complex to be expressed with hard-coded rules. Previous work proposed a machine learning model that, based on historical data, was able to predict the take-off time of individual flights from a set of input features that effectively captures some of these elements. The model demonstrated to reduce by 30% the take-off time prediction errors of the current system one hour before the time that flight is scheduled to depart from the parking position. This paper presents an extension of the model, which overcomes this look-ahead time constraint and allows to improve take-off time predictions as early as the initial flight plan is received. In addition, a subset of the original set of input features has been meticulously selected to facilitate the implementation of the solution in an operational air traffic flow and capacity management system, while minimising the loss of predictive power. Finally, the importance and interactions of the input features are thoroughly analysed with additive feature attribution methods.     

Enhancing relationships in e-tail: Role of relationship quality and duration

This research deals with antecedents and outcomes of relationship quality in e-tail. SMART-PLS analysis of survey data from India (n = 644) showed that perceived value, e-service quality, interaction, discounts and transaction related factors were found to have a positive effect on relationship quality (RQ). RQ mediates the relationship between these antecedents and self-brand connect and loyalty. Support for serial mediation was found with RQ and self-brand connect preceding loyalty formation. Relationship duration positively moderated the effect of RQ on self-brand connect. RQ was conceptualized as a formative second order factor. E-tailers may invest in antecedents of RQ and they may devise strategies to increase the duration of relationships.