The effect of control deprivation on consumers’ adoption of no-pain,no-gain principle

Consumers often base their judgments on a no-pain, no-gain principle—that is, one must pay a cost in order to achieve a beneficial outcome. For example, they infer the quality of a product from its price and judge a bad-tasting medicine to be more effective than a tasty one. Although the use of this principle to infer the value of a product or service has been observed in several domains, the processes that underlie its use have not been fully explored. We find that when people feel out of control, they tend to use the principle because it exemplifies a causal relationship between actions and outcomes and endorsing it reaffirms their belief that they have control over the outcomes of their behavior. Our findings have implications for how marketers might position products and services to attract consumers who perceive themselves as having different levels of control.     

Institutional Economics as Theory of Policy Change: Impact of Past Policy Failures on Present Policy

Social scientists have developed several theories for understanding or evaluating policy change over time. Since all costs or benefits are not internalized owing to positive transaction costs, policymaking is always implemented under cost underestimation conditions and, therefore, is imperfect. I call this trait policy failure in this article. Furthermore, I show that a new framework combining the social costs approach and the legal/economic approach in institutional economics is suitable and can be applied to evaluating how past policy failures affect present policy, providing as an example the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.     

就业结构调整对水库移民土地流转的影响研究*——以南水北调中线工程移民为例

[目的]为促进水库移民的生计恢复及转型,探寻就业结构和土地流转间的交互机制,分析两者间耦合作用对当前移民安置模式及政策的影响。[方法]文章从移民就业结构变迁出发,通过超边际理论构建了安置区移民土地的流转机制模型,推演了从业决策对土地流转行为的影响路径,并运用南水北调农业安置移民数据进行实证检验。[结果]大面积转出土地是移民搬迁后土地处置的主要行为,移民中土地转入户有所增加,但土地集中度却有所减少。移民非农就业较搬迁前有明显上升,并有向当地兼业转移的趋势,但与土地流转间并不互为因果,农村社保还难以弱化其对土地养老的依赖。劳动力数量、非农就业时间、非农收入占比、土地政策等对移民土地流转行为和规模均有显著影响,而外出就业前景和地租水平在促进土地流转行为的同时,却不一定能增加土地流转面积。[结论]移民外迁中可以采用无土安置代替农业安置,推动移民土地流转的关键在于技能培训、政策保障和地租补贴,简单的就业推荐和土地权属划分的作用有限。而对于移民中的农业大户,则需在满足土地转入面积的基础上,保障其在安置区的各项土地权益。     

颠覆性创新四阶段扩散过程模型

基于颠覆性创新、创新扩散、创新模糊前端等相关理论，从全流程角度创新性地构建了颠覆性创新四阶段扩散过程模型，包括颠覆性创意产生、颠覆性创新产品开发、侵蚀非主流市场、占据主流市场4个阶段，各阶段之间相互关联、循环往复，并受到技术、市场、政策、竞争等外部环境因素影响。选取液晶电视机和山寨手机作为高端和低端两个颠覆性创新典型案例，通过对其进行验证性分析，构建具体的高端与低端颠覆性创新四阶段扩散过程模型。     

Farm size and productivity growth in the United States Corn Belt

In recent decades, agricultural production in the U.S. has continued to shift to large-scale operations, raising concerns about the economic viability of small and midsized farms. To understand whether economies of size provided an incentive for the consolidation of production, the study estimates the total factor productivity (TFP) of five size classes of grain-producing farms in the U.S. Heartland (Corn Belt) region. Using quinquennial Agricultural Census data from 1982 to 2012 the study also compares TFP growth rates across farm sizes to gain insight into whether observed productivity differences are likely to persist. The finding of a strong positive relationship between farm size and TFP suggests that consolidation of production has contributed to recent aggregate productivity growth in the crop sector. The study estimates the extent to which sectoral productivity growth can be attributed to structural change versus other factors including technological change. The study also explores some tradeoffs associated with policies that raise the productivity of small versus large farms.     

Fancy Bitcoin and conventional financial assets: Measuring market integration based on connectedness networks

We investigate the relationship between Bitcoin and conventional financial assets from a perspective on the connectedness of asset networks. We adopt the method of measuring connectedness proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012, and 2014) in a VAR system to study the dynamic interdependence between returns in Bitcoin, stocks, oil, and gold. We find that the connectedness between bitcoin and conventional assets is weak. The separation of positive and negative returns in the Bitcoin market shows the existence of an asymmetric pattern of the spillover effects between Bitcoin and conventional assets. A rolling window analysis finds that although Bitcoin prices experience a rising link to other financial assets, the magnitude is proven to be moderate. However, connectedness via negative returns is much stronger than via positive ones and exhibits a clearly increasing trend in recent periods. Our results in application are generally robust to other popular cryptocurrencies, such as ETH and Ripple. The findings presented in this paper have important implications for financial market participants, policymakers, and researchers in light of projected increases in the adoption of Bitcoin, as well as the rapid development of cryptocurrency.     

Internal pyramid structure,contract enforcement,minority investor protection,and firms’ performance: Evidence from emerging economies

This study investigates the relationship between internal pyramid structure and performance of Chinese, Pakistani, Malaysian pyramidal firms, the effect of judicial efficiency and minority investor protection on this relationship. The results show that the pyramid structure of Pakistani firms is more complicated than Chinese and Malaysian firms, both vertically and horizontally. The study finds that the impact of control layers on performance is negative and stronger than control chains. Moreover, the results illustrate that the effect of control layers on performance at Chinese firms is negative but lower than at Pakistani and Malaysian firms. However, control chains have insignificant association with performance at Chinese pyramid firms. We find that efficient judiciary abates the negative impact of control layers and chains on performance. Our results reveal that in the absence of efficient courts the minority investors’ protection have insignificant impact on the association between internal pyramid structure and firms’ performance.     

The price of going green: the role of greenness in green bond markets

In this paper, we empirically investigate how greenness information is priced in the green bond market. Our comparison of liquidity-adjusted yield premiums of green bonds versus synthetic conventional bonds indicates that, on average, there is no robust and significant yield premium or discount on green bonds. However, green bonds certified by an external reviewer enjoy a discount of about 6 bps. Furthermore, green bonds that obtain a Climate Bonds Initiative certificate show a discount of around 15 bps. The findings suggest that a universally accepted greenness measure can benefit the development of the green bond market.     

How efficient is the market for Australian firms’ earnings information?

We construct a measure of the speed with which forecasts issued by sell-side analysts accurately forecast future annual earnings. Following Marshall, we label this measure earnings information flow timeliness (EIFT). This measure avoids the aggregation problem inherent in price-based measures of information efficiency. We document large variation in EIFT across firm-years, and show that EIFT is positively associated with the extent of analyst following, consistent with increased analyst coverage improving the speed with which earnings-related information is recognised. We also find that EIFT is higher for firm-years classified as ‘bad news’ (i.e., where analysts’ forecasts at the start of the financial period exceed the reported outcome). However, when we separately consider instances where analysts appear to forecast non-GAAP (or ‘street’) earnings rather than GAAP earnings, we find that the greater timeliness of bad news is concentrated among observations where analysts forecast non-GAAP earnings, where unusual items are typically excluded. We conclude that the market for accounting information is more efficient for negative operating outcomes than for negative outcomes reflecting unusual items.     

Does economic policy uncertainty raise corporate precautionary cash holdings? Evidence from China

Using China as the research setting, this paper investigates the relationship between economic policy uncertainty and corporate precautionary cash holdings. Empirical results show a U-shaped relation between economic policy uncertainty and corporate precautionary cash holdings. Empirical analysis, in terms of ownership structure, firm size, corporate competitiveness and geographical location, further shows that (i) the effects for economic policy uncertainty in both state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises are significant, but the effect is stronger for state-owned enterprises; (ii) such significant effect is also found more strongly in small and medium-sized enterprises and highly competitive enterprises; and (iii) the effects for eastern, central and western China are all statistically significant, but the effect is strongest for eastern China.