Violations of Service Fairness and Legal Ramifications: The Case of the Managed Care Industry

Adapted from Chan's (2000) model depicting success of litigation, this paper argues that with the application of various legislation, health maintenance organizations' (HMOs') violations of service fairness to each group: enrollees, physicians, and hospitals give rise to each group's lawsuits against the HMOs. Various authors (Bowen et al., 1999; Seiders and Berry, 1998) indicate that justice concepts such as distributive, procedural, and interactional justice can be applied to the area of service fairness. The violation of these underlying justice principles with HMOs' service unfairness to enrollees, physicians, and hospitals is examined. A general synopsis of the ethical issues in the managed care industry is provided. The various lawsuits launched by each group: enrollees, physicians, and hospitals together with the key statutes used are discussed. This paper also highlights the provisions and ramifications of the 11 April 2000 landmark agreement that Aetna made with Texas Attorney General John Cornyn to settle the 1998 lawsuit brought against the company. Lastly, the current ethical issues in the managed care industry are further discussed. The value of this paper can be adapted to the study of organizations' service fairness violations in other industries or in the educational, governmental, and not-for-profit sectors both nationally and internationally.     

Quality Management Systems Certification: Research Note

Although International Quality Standards 9000 certification is one of the most popular quality assurance systems in the world, its contribution to a firm's value is still a controversial issue. This project re-examines this issue by using stock market reactions to the announcements of the award of certification made by a sample of Hong Kong listed companies, as a proxy for its contribution to a firm's value. The results suggest that on average certification increased a firm's value. However, most of this value increase was incorporated into stock prices before formal announcements were published in newspapers. In addition, the contribution of certification to value was greater in smaller firms than in larger ones. This can be attributed to fewer stock traders and professional analysts following smaller firms.     

Price-volume relation in stocks: A multiple time series analysis on the Singapore market

We examine the price-volume relation in stocks using the multiple time series approach due to Tiao and Box (1981). This approach has the advantage of treating price and volume jointly and symmetrically (without enforcing the roles of input and output). It is free of the simultaneity bias in regression analysis and the unidirectional dynamics imposed by transfer function models. Empirical results show that there is implicit positive correlation between price and volume through their residuals. However, the results for the explicit lead and lag relations are mixed. The technical analysts' adage that volume often leads the trend of price is not supported. Nonetheless, the implicit relationship between price and volume confirms the usefulness of incorporating volume data to forecast future return. Our analysis shows that the multiple time series models outperform the univariate models in post-sample forecasts.     

From T-Bills to Stocks: Seasonal Anomalies Revisited

This paper employed eleven data series which consist of stocks, bonds, bills, equity premiums, term premiums, and various default premiums to investigate whether January seasonality reported in existing literature is robust across different states of the economy as this has important trading implications. For the periods 1926–1990, small stocks, small stock premiums, low grade bonds, and default premiums (spread between high grade, low grade and government bonds) reveal January seasonality and that the seasonality is robust across different states of the economy except for low grade bond returns and default premiums. January seasonality for low grade bond returns and low grade bond default premiums are primarily driven by results found during periods of economic expansion. Overall, January seasonality is more evident during the economic expansion periods although the magnitude of default premiums is larger during periods of economic contraction. Furthermore, prior findings of strong summer equity returns are primarily driven by the results found during the periods of economic contraction. It is also found that equity returns are generally higher during periods of economic expansion.     

Philosophical Foundations of Eminent Hong Kong Chinese CEOs’ Leadership

Because of the importance of Confucian doctrines in shaping ethical business practices under Chinese leadership, revealing the roles of other Chinese ethical doctrines in modern Chinese leadership is informative. A thorough understanding of the ethical foundations of Chinese leadership is necessary for fruitful interaction with Chinese leaders, according to cultural fit theory. The present study illustrates the philosophical foundations of business management, based on dialogues with five eminent corporate executive officers (CEOs). It reveals that the CEOs practice a style of Chinese leadership synthesizing Confucian, Daoist, Mohist, and Legalist doctrines. The Confucian doctrines advocate benevolence, harmony, learning, loyalty, righteousness, and humility. They are the most prevalent tenets that support paternalism and collectivism. The Daoist doctrines emphasize flexibility and reversion (e.g., the principle that the weak can defeat the strong). They bolster the leader’s forbearance. The Mohist doctrines underpin thrift and working with the masses whereas the Legalist doctrines inculcate self-control and innovativeness. Hence, contemporary Chinese leadership does not rely exclusively on Confucian ethics and this reflects evolution over 1000s of years.     

Strategic profiles and performance: An empirical test of select key propositions

Competing theories on internal orientation versus external orientation are examined. The relevant theories are amalgamated and condensed into a number of competing propositions that are empirically tested. The findings suggest that the internally oriented businesses as well as the externally oriented businesses underperform the efficient, marketing oriented businesses.     

Minnesota-type adaptive hierarchical priors for large Bayesian VARs

Large Bayesian VARs with stochastic volatility are increasingly used in empirical macroeconomics. The key to making these highly parameterized VARs useful is the use of shrinkage priors. We develop a family of priors that captures the best features of two prominent classes of shrinkage priors: adaptive hierarchical priors and Minnesota priors. Like adaptive hierarchical priors, these new priors ensure that only ‘small’ coefficients are strongly shrunk to zero, while ‘large’ coefficients remain intact. At the same time, these new priors can also incorporate many useful features of the Minnesota priors such as cross-variable shrinkage and shrinking coefficients on higher lags more aggressively. We introduce a fast posterior sampler to estimate BVARs with this family of priors—for a BVAR with 25 variables and 4 lags, obtaining 10,000 posterior draws takes about 3 min on a standard desktop computer. In a forecasting exercise, we show that these new priors outperform both adaptive hierarchical priors and Minnesota priors.     

Debt and Equity Characteristics of Mandatorily Redeemable Preferred Stock

Abstract. This study examines whether mandatorily redeemable preferred stock (MRPS) is priced more like debt or equity by (1) investigating its debt and equity characteristics and (2) specifying conditions under which one characteristic would dominate the other. Based on a sample of 113 nonconvertible MRPS issued during 1970 to 1990, our results are consistent with the view that MRPS has both debt and equity characteristics. The debt (equity) feature is more pronounced among nonutility (utility) issues. Within the utility group, we find high (low) rated MRPS issues to be more debt (equity) like. Our results appear to support current MRPS disclosure rules.     

企业债务融资的竞争策略效应研究

债务融资类型的不同对企业竞争行为具有异质性影响。依据资本结构产业组织理论,利用2012-2017年我国A股上市公司数据,同时考虑企业广告与R&D投入,验证企业负债的竞争策略效应及行业差异。结果表明：首先,企业负债对其广告投入具有刺激作用,对R&D投入有抑制作用。其次,进一步分析债务结构,发现流动负债刺激企业广告投入,非流动负债刺激企业R&D投入;通过设计竞争对手负债加权平均数,在行业层面衡量竞争对手负债,发现竞争对手流动负债抑制企业广告与R&D投入,竞争对手非流动负债刺激企业R&D投入。第三,负债与企业广告和R&D投入之间存在U型或倒U型的非线性关系。研究结论对企业调整自身负债结构以及预判竞争对手的竞争策略具有很好的指导意义,同时也对资本结构产业组织理论进行了补充与拓展。     

Assimilation of Hong Kong Immigrants in Canada

A flood of emigration from Hong Kong to Canada was observed prior to the handover from Britain back to China in 1997. I pool Canadian Census data from 1991 to 2006 to study the labour market assimilation of Hong Kong immigrants. The findings suggest that these immigrants faced a significant negative wage gap upon entry in comparison with Canadian‐born individuals, and this was larger for cohorts arriving closer to 1997, suggesting a decline in cohort quality. The results also indicate that earnings convergence with the Canadian‐born was slow for the majority of these immigrants.