Past Returns and Investment Trust Discounts

Abstract:   The relationship between past net asset value returns and the current discount on investment trusts is investigated. The relationship is weaker for the component that is common to all trusts in the same sector, and is significantly stronger for more liquid trusts. The time lag before returns have their full impact on discounts is consistent with the requirements of distinguishing 'skill' from noise. Although discounts vary widely even within the same sector, the range of variation appears to be consistent with an arbitrage equilibrium, in which the profits of exploiting apparent pricing anomalies are just insufficient to invite arbitrage trades.     

Replacement Investment: Optimal Economic Life Under Uncertainty

Replacement investment is essentially a regenerative optimal stopping problem; that is, the key decision concerns when to terminate the life of existing plant – and hence when to start over again. This paper examines this optimisation problem within a continuous time framework and studies the qualitative and quantitative impact of uncertainty on the timing of new investment (and the criteria that should be used for terminating the life of existing plant).     

The Wealth Effect of Domestic Joint Ventures: Evidence from Taiwan

This study presents important international evidence by examining the wealth effect of domestic joint ventures by Taiwanese firms. In opposite to United States evidence, we find that announcements of domestic joint ventures by Taiwanese firms are, on average, associated with significantly negative abnormal stock returns. We also find that the stock market response to announced domestic joint ventures is significantly positively related to the announcing firms' investment opportunities, size of investment and debt ratio, and is significantly negatively related to the business relatedness variable. In contrast, free cash flow, firm size, relative firm size and managerial ownership are found to have no significant power in explaining the market response. Our results support the investment opportunities, synergy and complementarity hypotheses as well as a broad interpretation of the free cash flow hypothesis, but reject the absolute size, relative size and alignment-of-interests hypotheses. This study makes valuable contributions to the literature by providing the first direct evidence on the role of investment opportunities, synergy and alignment-of-interests in explaining the wealth effect of domestic joint ventures     

Investment Opportunities and the Relation Between Equity Value and Employees' Bonus

A sample of firms where employee stock options and other long‐term incentives are absent but an annual bonus is required is examined. A positive relation is found between firm equity value and stock bonus but not cash bonus. The positive relation is stronger when the firm has greater investment opportunities. Additionally, the relation is shown to be nonlinear in the sense that the marginal effect of stock bonus on equity value is positive but decreasing (negative) when the stock bonus is below (above) the breakpoint. Overall, the annual stock bonus is valued positively by investors even though it is linked to the firm's contemporaneous but not future performance.     

中国邮政储蓄银行中间业务特色化发展战略的设想——以安徽分行为例

自成立之日起,中国邮政储蓄银行依托强大的邮政网络,励精图治,其中间业务迅速发展,呈现出品种丰富、效用增强、规模扩大的趋势。该行在中国作为＂草根银行＂,的确为区域经济的发展做出了应有的贡献,但和金融同业相比,其中间业务发展仍凸显产品研发滞后、业务收益不高、操作风险尚存等问题。本文以邮政储蓄银行安徽分行为例,结合其中间业务发展现状的分析,对邮政储蓄银行特色化发展战略进行设想,提出要通过审时度势、东学西渐、内外联动和左右开弓的系列措施助力其中间业务发展。     

Existence of a competitive equilibrium in a one sector growth model with heterogeneous agents and irreversible investment

Summary. We prove existence of a competitive equilibrium in a version of a Ramsey (one sector) model in which agents are heterogeneous and gross investment is constrained to be non negative. We do so by converting the infinite-dimensional fixed point problem stated in terms of prices and commodities into a finite-dimensional Negishi problem involving individual weights in a social value function. This method allows us to obtain detailed results concerning the properties of competitive equilibria. Because of the simplicity of the techniques utilized our approach is amenable to be adapted by practitioners in analogous problems often studied in macroeconomics. Received: September 13, 2001; revised version: December 9, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" We are grateful to Tapan Mitra for pointing out errors as well as making very valuable suggestions. Thanks are due to Raouf Boucekkine and Jorge Duran for additional helpful discussions. We also thank an anonymous referee for his/her helpful comments. The second author acknowledges the financial support of the Belgian Ministry of Scientific Research (Grant ARC 99/04-235 “Growth and incentive design”) and of the Belgian Federal Goverment (Grant PAI P5/10, “Equilibrium theory and optimization for public policy and industry regulation”). Correspondence to: C. Le Van     

Jackson,Karl D., (Ed.), Asian Contagion: The Causes and Consequences of a Financial Crisis

The purpose of this article is to identify the extent of inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) worldwide. A large number of countries were aggregated on a regional basis to examine their inward and outward stocks as a percentage of gross fixed capital formation for the period 1980–2006. Among the findings was that the annual increase for both inward and outward FDI was less than 1%. Also, countries grouped by the aggregates developed, Africa, Latin America and Caribbean, Asia and Oceania, and developing were found to differ significantly in their means.     

Where a contract is signed determines its value: Chinese provincial variation in utilized vs. contracted FDI flows

There are major differences between ex ante corporate investment plans and ex post investments. The case of China is useful for understanding this problem because there is substantial time series and cross sectional variation in the ratio of utilized to contracted FDI (UC ratio), which is less than one in most province-year observations. Provinces may believe that they are rewarded for reporting higher levels of contracted FDI, which would lead to lower UC ratios and higher policy incentives in subsequent years. Alternatively, provinces may be rewarded for reporting data more accurately, which would lead to higher UC ratios and policy incentives in subsequent years. Empirical analysis supports the second, institutional theory and suggests that provinces may increase their rate of utilizing pledged FDI by strengthening their legal systems and reducing government bureaucracy.     

Home country effects of foreign direct investment: From a small economy to a large economy

Previous studies on home country effects mainly focused on FDI from large developed economies to other countries. But today's super recipient is a relatively larger economy than its investors and many of these investors are not classified as “developed economies.” A simple Ak type model implies that a small and more developed country investing in a large and less developed country will experience decreases in both employment and income disparity (compared to the recipient country) as the less-developed recipient country gains the higher technology of production through FDI inflows. The empirical results for the Four Tigers (source countries) and China (recipient country) are consistent with our theoretical model of FDI outflows. We also find that FDI outflows to China decrease the ratio of exports to GDP only for small source countries, even though a higher investment in China raises the share of these countries' exports-to-China to China's total imports.     

从勒菲维尔改写理论赏析林纾的翻译策略

林纾是我国晚清时期的翻译奇才,他的翻译作品典雅流畅,风行一时,因而他的翻译思想、翻译动机、接受环境、对原作的＂误译＂和＂不忠＂等都被深入研究和评价。他也因为对原作的＂误译＂和＂不忠＂而饱受争议。从翻译学文化操控派代表人物勒菲维尔的改写理论视角来看,林纾的＂误译＂和＂不忠＂往往是他刻意选择的结果,这实质上就是一种改写,是他在当时社会文化的操控下,对原作做出的赋予其二次生命的调整,即是林纾在中国当时社会意识形态、诗学观等因素影响下对西方文学所进行的改写。