基于区块链技术的建筑材料供应链质量数据安全共享方法

传统方法在建筑材料供应链质量数据安全共享中应用效果不佳，不仅数据误码率比较高，而且数据共享时延比较长，无法达到预期的数据安全共享效果。为此提出基于区块链技术的建筑材料供应链质量数据安全共享方法。利用区块链技术对建筑材料供应链质量数据属性加密，建立建筑材料供应链质量数据安全共享链，整合建筑材料供应链质量数据加密、解密程序，通过对用户身份验证实现对质量数据安全共享，以此完成基于区块链技术的建筑材料供应链质量数据安全共享。实验证明，设计方法的数据误码率在1%以内，数据共享时延在1s以内，具有良好的数据安全共享效果。     

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.     

Are they telling the truth? Revealing hidden traits of satisfaction with a public bike-sharing service

Public bike-sharing systems (BSSs) are an emerging mode of transportation introduced by municipalities to solve congestion problems in metropolitan areas, especially when integrated with other types of transportation. In the last years, the number of public bike-sharing services has been constantly on the rise all over the world, and generally the overall satisfaction with them is high. However, satisfaction with public services is driven by mechanisms that can differ from those in the private sector. It is important to establish to what extent a high satisfaction is genuine or simply ephemeral. Even “old” public services (like public transportation) become “gold” when accompanied by the introduction of new technologies. In this paper we analyze this phenomenon using data from a satisfaction web-survey conducted among customers of the public BSS “BikeMi” in Milan, Italy, in a period when mobile technologies have been introduced to speed up the service. On analyzing the responses to satisfaction questions using simple summary statistics, the level of satisfaction resulted very high. However, our aim was to look for potential “darker” sides of the service by detecting possible hidden satisfaction components. For this purpose, we used the Nonlinear Principal Components Analysis, which is particularly powerful in this context. A simple textual analysis was also performed as a validating test. Results from our analysis indicated that satisfaction is flawed by a set of factors like the mechanics of the bikes, the picking and dropping system, and the apps used to organize the service. Less concern was detected for more general aspects of the service.     

Online piracy in the context of routine activities and subjective norms

Why do mainstream consumers who would not typically engage in illegal behaviour routinely resort to online piracy of copyrighted software? This paper provides answers to this research query by applying routine activity theory and the theory of reasoned action. The paper’s study analyses consumers’ role as possible offenders that can have the opportunity to engage in online software piracy as part of their routine online activities. Although it is problematic to measure the exact magnitude of the negative impact on the US economy, as stated by the Government Accountability Office it is sizeable. After analysing the conceptual model using a US national consumer sample of over 700 consumers, results show the influence of proximity to motivated offenders, target suitability, and capable guardianship on consumers’ attitudes and perceived subjective norms towards online software piracy, as well as their intentions to engage in this illegal behaviour on the Internet. By integrating routine activity theory, a criminology theory with the theory of reasoned action from psychology and analysing a widespread online software piracy phenomenon, several academic and practical contributions are made.     

产学研协同创新成本分摊机制研究

产学研协同创新是推动技术创新的一条重要路径，但创新成本分摊机制是影响产学研协同合作的一个重要问题。通过构建充分竞争市场下的多阶段博弈模型，从成本分摊机制角度探究了如何有效推进产学研协同创新。通过模型扩展与求解，获得成本分摊后的帕累托改善以及产学研协同创新的可行路径。结果表明：企业和学研方基于自身收益最大化而进行的成本分摊协商无法实现帕累托最优，而轮流出价博弈模型下的成本分摊形成机制能够有效改善各方收益，并使整体收益达到帕累托最优，因此是一条现实可行的帕累托改善路径，其中，各方获得的收益增量与耐心程度的对比有关。     

Persistence of Price–Cost Margin and Technical Efficiency in the Indonesian Food and Beverage Industry

Abstract

This research investigates the persistence of price–cost margin (PCM) and technical efficiency (TE) of firms and the relation between these two factors in 44 subsectors of the Indonesian food and beverage industry in the period 1980–2014. Data envelopment analysis with a bootstrapping approach is applied to estimate TE. An autoregressive model, accounting for endogeneity, is applied to estimate the persistence coefficients of PCM and TE. A cross-sectional regression model is also applied to estimate the relation between the persistence of the PCM and the persistence of TE. The results show that for these food and beverage firms, high PCM and low TE persist. Furthermore, the persistence of PCM negatively affects the persistence of TE in the industry.     

Operating cash flow asymmetric timeliness in Australia

Operating cash flow (CFO) asymmetric timeliness occurs when CFO reflects bad news more quickly than good news. We examine the presence and determinants of CFO asymmetric timeliness in Australia, where substantial differences in reporting requirements of cash flow components, in characteristics of listed companies and in the degree of conservative financial reporting produce contrasting findings to those in the United States. We find supportive evidence for the novel ‘sticky cost behaviour’ explanation and also the product-pricing strategy, but not the life cycle hypothesis. These findings are useful for investors and analysts concerned with forecasting the future values of companies.     

Politically connected boards,family and business group affiliations,and cost of capital: Evidence from Indonesia

We investigate the effect of politically connected boards (both supervisory boards [SBs] and boards of directors [BODs]) on cost of debt and equity capital of listed companies in Indonesia which has established a two-tier corporate governance system. The results, based on 250 firms, suggest that companies with politically connected SBs experience lower cost of debt and equity capital, whereas politically connected BODs have no association with cost of either debt or equity. Furthermore, we find that family firms and firms belonging to business groups with politically connected SBs enjoy lower cost of debt and equity capital. Our main results are robust to alternative measures and to tests for endogeneity.     

Beta and firm age

We document a robust pattern of beta declining over the age of a firm. We find that changes in systematic risk via firm characteristics and life-cycle stages are insufficient to explain this pattern. Moreover, standard proxies for the quantity and quality of information also explain this pattern only partially. To fully explain this pattern we rely on the increasingly important role of familiarity in financial decision making: familiarity is a determinant of beta and firm age is a proxy for the degree of familiarity that investors feel toward individual stocks. To illustrate the implication of our findings, we document that when we control for firm age there is support for the CAPM and its use as an input for the cost of equity capital calculation.     

信息分享对原始设备制造商与其合同制造商竞争的影响

研究了原始设备制造商的预测信息分享对一个原始设备制造商和一个与其同时有合作和竞争的合同制造商组成的供应链系统的影响,建立制造商间信息分享的模型,该模型包括一个原始设备制造商和一个合同制造商。研究发现,原始设备制造商关于市场潜在需求预测信息的分享对其预期利润是不利的,同时需求信息预测的精度对原始设备制造商信息分享的决策也有影响,原始设备制造商没有动机与其供应链成员进行信息分享,但信息分享使得供应链整体利润增加。最后,建立一个信息分享补偿机制分享供应链利润的增加量,以期通过信息分享补偿机制促使原始设备制造商有动机进行信息分享,从而实现其与合同制造商的“双赢”。