Flow Signals: Evidence from Patent and Alliance Portfolios in the US Biopharmaceutical Industry

Integrating signalling theory and the portfolio diversity literature, we theorize that diversity in a firm's patent and alliance portfolios sends contrasting flow signals impacting its market value in a nuanced way. Diversity in an alliance portfolio mediates the patent portfolio diversity – market value relationship by suppressing the negative effect of patent portfolio diversity creating an overall positive effect. We test our mediation model on a longitudinal set of 225 US biopharmaceutical firms that were awarded 17,078 patents and participated in 37,744 alliances between 1990 and 2006. Our theory and findings contribute three novel insights. First, we demonstrate the value of a temporal lens in explaining why diversity in a firm's patent and alliance portfolios send flow signals that establish expectations among market observers and have performance implications. Second, establishing that patent and alliance portfolio diversity are temporally sequenced provides compelling evidence for the value of studying multiple types of portfolios, their temporal relationships and effects on firm outcomes. Third, since diversity in a firm's portfolios can send contrasting flow signals conditioned on the cognitive demands and proximity involved in interpreting the signals, firms that do not maintain a ‘signalling fit’ with market observers increase the probability of unintentional negative signalling effects.     

Good jump,bad jump,and option valuation

I develop a new class of closed‐form option pricing models that incorporate variance risk premium and symmetric or asymmetric double exponential jump diffusion. These models decompose the jump component into upward and downward jumps using two independent exponential distributions and thus capture the impact of good and bad news on asset returns and option prices. The empirical results show that the model with an asymmetric double exponential jump diffusion improves the fit on Shanghai Stock Exchange 50ETF returns and options and provides relatively better in‐ and out‐of‐sample pricing performance.     

Is Downward Wage Flexibility the Primary Factor of Japan's Prolonged Deflation?

By using both macro‐ and micro‐level data, this paper investigates how wages and prices evolved during Japan's lost two decades. We find that downward nominal wage rigidity was present in Japan until the late 1990s, but disappeared after 1998 as annual wages became downwardly flexible. Moreover, nominal wage flexibility may have contributed to Japan's relatively low unemployment rates. Although macro‐level movements in nominal wages and prices seemed to be synchronized, such synchronicity is not observed at the industry level. Therefore, wage deflation does not seem to be a primary factor of Japan's prolonged deflation.     

Context dependent beliefs

This paper examines a model where the set of available outcomes from which a decision maker must choose alters his perception of uncertainty. Specifically, this paper proposes a set of axioms such that each menu induces a subjective belief over an objective state space. The decision maker’s preferences are dependent on the realization of the state. The resulting representation is analogous to state-dependent expected utility within each menu; the beliefs are menu dependent and the utility index is not. Under the interpretation that a menu acts as an informative signal regarding the true state, the paper examines the behavioral restrictions that coincide with different signal structures: elemental (where each element of a menu is a conditionally independent signal) and partitional (where the induced beliefs form a partition of the state space).     

The implications,challenges and benefits of a complexity-orientated Futures Studies

Complexity science is increasingly cited as an essential component of a Futures Studies (FS) capable of assisting with the wide-ranging and complex societal problems of the 21st century. Yet, the exact implications of complexity science for FS remain somewhat opaque. This paper explicitly sets out the challenges for FS that arise from six complexity science concepts: (1) irreversibility of time (2) path dependence 3) sensitivity to initial conditions (4) emergence and systemness (5) attractor states (6) complex causation. The discussion highlights the implications of these challenges for FS tools such as horizon scanning and weak signals, and sets out the benefits of overcoming the challenges to create an explicitly complexity-orientated FS. The discussion concludes with a set of questions summarising the challenge for FS from complexity science with the aim of stimulating a discussion as to how they can be met. The concluding remarks make some initial suggestions in this regard.     

Small seeds for grand challenges—Exploring disregarded seeds of change in a foresight process for RTI policy

The recent turn in research, technology and innovation (RTI) policy towards challenge-led strategies is posing new demands to Foresight methodology. RTI Foresight practitioners need to complement their well developed set of technology oriented methods with equally sophisticated approaches tackling societal aspects of innovation. In this paper we aim to make a contribution to this requirement. Building on user innovation theory we argue that demand oriented RTI Foresight needs to systematically integrate voices and hypotheses from the fringes of the innovation system. In order to develop a sound approach for this we set out from well established Foresight theory on “weak signals” and “cognitive biases”. Adopting a constructivist stance towards such signals leads us to the need to set up a socially robust, diverse discourse on “seeds of change hypotheses”. We then outline a practical implementation of such a discourse in the context of the recent Foresight process of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in Germany. We describe and discuss the experience of this Foresight process and suggest avenues for further development of the approach.     

大股东参与、定增并购主体关联与利益输送

定增并购的出现为追溯探讨定向增发的价值驱动性或利益输送性提供了新证据。本文采用2006—2013年交易数据对定增并购中大股东参与效果及其双主体关联性的经济后果进行实证检验。研究发现,大股东参与行为虽然短期内可能给市场传递涉嫌利益输送的不利讯号,但从长期看却能起到提升内部资本配置效率及公司价值的战略效能,且大股东参与程度越高,其提升效果越显著;进一步观察双主体差异性发现,只有大股东未参与时,定增主体关联度才与利益输送呈现正相关性,而并购主体关联度则以积极效应为主。由此不仅能够自然破除“大股东剥夺假说”,同时还可为定增并购的科学决策以及“全要素”监管模式的架构提供经验支持。     

山东省农业转移人口市民化成本测算及分担机制构建

农业转移人口市民化的综合成本主要包括政府财政负担的公共成本和个人承担的个人成本两部分。采用分类加总法测算得出山东省农业转移人口市民化的人均公共成本约为15.07万元,个人成本约为2.37万元/年,同时绝大多数农业转移人口还需要集中支付一笔可观的购房成本,人均约12.43万元。合理消化这一巨额成本,需要发挥政府的主导作用,同时鼓励企业、农业转移人口、社会积极参与,构建一个由政府、企业、农业转移人口、社会等共同参与的多元化成本及责任分担机制。     

“信号与系统”课程教学方法初探

针对"信号与系统"课程理论性强、数学公式多,学生理解和掌握困难以及实验条件有限等现状,提出了运用主线教学法、比较法等多种教学方法,将MATLAB仿真软件引入课程教学的各个环节,加强习题课教学等措施以期达到提高教学效果的目的。最后通过一个实例说明了该教学方法的具体运用。