Alternative modeling for long term risk

In this paper, we propose an alternative approach to estimate long-term risk. Instead of using the static square root of time method, we use a dynamic approach based on volatility forecasting by non-linear models. We explore the possibility of improving the estimations using different models and distributions. By comparing the estimations of two risk measures, value at risk and expected shortfall, with different models and innovations at short-, median- and long-term horizon, we find that the best model varies with the forecasting horizon and that the generalized Pareto distribution gives the most conservative estimations with all the models at all the horizons. The empirical results show that the square root method underestimates risk at long horizons and our approach is more competitive for risk estimation over a long term.     

The long term impact of Betrand de Jouvenel

Second Thoughts is an attempt to stimulate the collective memory of futures studies (FS) and to enable us to reflect on the meaning of quality in relation to earlier work. Have standards improved? If so, in what ways? What earlier ideas succeeded or failed? Which writings have stood the test of time? What important areas remain to be tackled? This feature appears several times a year, depending on the number and quality of contributions received. The editors welcome short, constructively critical articles between 800 and 1500 words on any topic, idea, book or person which has contributed to the development of FS as we understand it today. Articles about little-known pioneers are as welcome as those about well-known names. The series continues with three views of the impact of Bertrand de Jouvenel's thinking on the study of the future.     

The term structure of interbank risk

We infer a term structure of interbank risk from spreads between rates on interest rate swaps indexed to the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and overnight indexed swaps. We develop a tractable model of interbank risk to decompose the term structure into default and non-default (liquidity) components. From August 2007 to January 2011, the fraction of total interbank risk due to default risk, on average, increases with maturity. At short maturities, the non-default component is important in the first half of the sample period and is correlated with measures of funding and market liquidity. The model also provides a framework for pricing, hedging, and risk management of interest rate swaps in the presence of significant basis risk.     

The dawn of the e-lance economy

Will the large industrial corporation dominate the twenty-first century as it did the twentieth? Maybe not. Drawing on their research at MIT's Initiative on Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century, Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher postulate a world in which business is not controlled through a stable chain of management in a large, permanent company. Rather, it is carried out autonomously by independent contractors connected through personal computers and electronic networks. These electronically connected free-lancers-e-lancers-would join together into fluid and temporary networks to produce and sell goods and services. When the job is done--after a day, a month, a year--the network would dissolve and its members would again become independent agents. Far from being a wild hypothesis, the e-lance economy is, in many ways, already upon us. We see it in the rise of outsourcing and telecommuting, in the increasing importance within corporations of ad-hoc project teams, and in the evolution of the Internet. Most of the necessary building blocks of this type of business organization--efficient networks, data interchange standards, groupware, electronic currency, venture capital micromarkets--are either in place or under development. What is lagging behind is our imagination. But, the authors contend, it is important to consider sooner rather than later the profound implications of how such an e-lance economy might work. They examine the opportunities, and the problems, that may arise and anticipate how the role of managers may change fundamentally--or possibly even disappear altogether.     

The term structure of credit spreads with jump risk

Default risk analysis is important for valuing corporate bonds, swaps, and credit derivatives and plays a critical role in managing the credit risk of bank loan portfolios. This paper offers a theory to explain the observed empirical regularities on default probabilities, recovery rates, and credit spreads. It incorporates jump risk into the default process. With the jump risk, a firm can default instantaneously because of a sudden drop in its value. As a result, a credit model with the jump risk is able to match the size of credit spreads on corporate bonds and can generate various shapes of yield spread curves and marginal default rate curves, including upward-sloping, downward-sloping, flat, and hump-shaped, even if the firm is currently in a good financial standing. The model also links recovery rates to the firm value at default so that the variation in recovery rates is endogenously generated and the correlation between recovery rates and credit ratings before default reported in Altman [J. Finance 44 (1989) 909] can be justified.     

公私合作构建我国的长期护理保险制度:国外的借鉴

鉴于我国日益严重的老龄化趋势以及沉重的老年护理费用,在我国推行长期护理保险制度势在必行。本文分析了国外护理保险制度中公私合作的模式、经验和教训,指出我国唯有以政府推动、政策支持、强制投保、商业化经营、社会化运作为原则,充分发挥政府的法律、财税支持与监管职能,引入保险公司的商业化经营,建立覆盖城乡的社会化护理机构,继续巩固家庭在老年护理中的作用,才能实现我国长期护理保险制度的可持续发展。     

The systematic risk of corporate bonds: default risk,term risk,and index choice

In this paper, we empirically examine the systematic risk of corporate bonds in the Euro area. Based on a unique sample of 784 bonds from 1999 to 2010, we show that the systematic risk of constructed bond portfolios and individual bonds—measured against three different market indices—depends on credit quality, term risk, and index choice. A significant increase in systematic risk for lower-rated bonds is observed following the start of the financial crisis. In multi-factor models, bond portfolios load significantly on default and term risk, which are included as additional factors. Conducting Fama and MacBeth cross-sectional tests, we find that default and term risk are priced with economically relevant premiums that range from 0.35 to 0.62 % per month. Our results are robust to the inclusion of characteristics such as rating and time to maturity.     

The market price of risk of the variance term structure

In this paper I examine the market price of risk of the variance term structure. To this end, the S&P 500 option implied variance term structure is used as a proxy for aggregate variance risk. Principal component analysis shows that time variation in the variance term structure over the 1996–2012 period can be explained mainly by two factors which capture changes in the level and slope. The market price of risk of each factor is estimated in the cross-section of stock returns. The slope of the variance term structure is the most significant factor in the cross-section of stocks returns and carries a negative risk premium. The slope factor has also some predictive ability over long horizon equity returns.     

权益再融资资金使用方式与再融资以后的经营业绩

本文讨论了中国上市公司的权益再融资资金使用方式与再融资以后的经营业绩之间的关系。结果发现,与国外的有关研究结果不同,投资于具体项目公司的再融资以后的经营业绩下滑幅度显著低于没有具体投资项目的公司。这说明,对于中国上市公司而言,投资于具体项目公司的代理成本相对低于没有具体投资项目的公司。此外,在公司治理机制有待完善的情况下,政策因素能够发挥一定的积极作用。2001年以后,证监会关于关联交易表决的特殊规定在一定程度上减弱了再融资资金使用方式与再融资后经营业绩之间的负相关关系。     

The challenges of risk society for impact assessment

This paper takes its point of departure in Ulrich Beck’s theory of risk society and the aspects that characterise this society. The paper puts forward a hypothesis, on which theoretical challenges the characteristics of risk society pose to impact assessment as a decision support tool; namely, the challenge of delivering assessments and predictions and the challenge of handling differences of opinion and debate. Through a case example of integration of climate change in strategic environmental assessment, the paper uses empirical evidence from a survey and a series of interviews to carry out a preliminary discussion of how the theoretical challenges are reflected in practice. The case study results show that the challenge of delivering assessments and predictions in a risk society is reflected in the current state of practice, while the challenge of handling differences of opinion and debate is not clearly reflected.     

中韩货币志在长远

目前，中日韩三国央行行长会议机制已经宣布建立，我国央行与韩国央行签署了规模为1800亿元人民币、38万亿韩元的中韩本币互换协议，这也是次贷危机爆发以来，亚洲新兴市场国家主动应对外部冲击的重要举措。我们知道，到2007年为止，亚洲10加3成员之间已经签署了16份双边货币互换协议，总规模达到800亿美元。     

战略风险评估7步走

“对大多数公司而言,董事会倾注注意力和时间的重心是理解战略及关联风险并提供指导……以及对高管实施战略和风险管理两方面的业绩进行监管。”由美国全国公司董事协会（NACD）出版的《加强美国上市公司监管的关键议定原则》中如是表示。     

人民币是否进入长期下跌走势

2014年人民币兑美元汇率首次出现下跌。尽管跌幅微小，一些人开始担心。本文拟从人民币汇率改革的路径进行分析，借助购买力平价理论分析未来人民币汇率的长期趋势。
　　中国对外开放与汇率改革
　　经济发展需要三大要素：劳动力、土地和资本。根据木桶理论，木桶里装多少水取决于最短的木板。三大要素需要保持合理的比例，资源才可能充分使用。新中国成立一直到改革开放以前，中国作为世界第一人口大国拥有丰富的人力资源，同时作为世界第三大面积的国家，拥有大量的土地，只是非常缺少资本。因此资本是中国的最短板。     

Evidence-based risk assessment

A knowledge framework for medical manual revision, competitive underwriting, accurate risk assessment, and precision decision making.     

Taxation,time preference,and long term international lending

This paper considers capital movements between two countries with infinite horizons that differ in their rates of time preference. The paper investigates whether there exist regimes of taxing international lending that follow from national optimizing behavior and are consistent with positive consumption in the impatient country in steady state. Three types of taxation regime are considered: (i) taxation by only the borrower country, (ii) taxation by only the lender country, and (iii) taxation by both countries. For all three cases, positive consumption in steady state by the impatient country is possible if the two countries differ sufficiently little in their rates of time preference.     

Communication of risk assessment information to risk managers

This article describes the results of a two-phase study of risk communication between risk assessors and risk managers (including policy makers). The first phase consisted of telephone interviews with 30 air quality risk managers from all levels (18 from local, state, and regional offices, and 12 from national offices). The second phase involved a focus group with 11 senior EPA risk managers representing a broad range of EPA national offices and programmes. The two-hour focus group elicited responses from the risk managers to specific examples of videotaped risk information created by agency risk assessors. The risk managers indicated their interests in hearing both qualitative and quantitative information about risk and emphasized the importance of discussing other information about the decision context. Similar responses to the videotaped risk information were elicited from a class of students at the Harvard School of Public Health. This exploratory work suggests that to better inform risk managers, risk assessors must also appreciate and present the broader context of the decision, and they must convey how uncertainties and weaknesses in the assessment may influence stakeholder perceptions of risk and the effectiveness of different risk management options. Further research on how to communicate risk information to risk managers is recommended.     

An innovative approach to risk and quality assessment in the regulation of care services in Scotland

The Scottish Government’s social care regulator, the Care Commission, seeks continual improvement in the quality of social care services. Its approach has been to establish a modern risk-based regulatory regime using separate measures of risk and quality. We evaluate this twin approach, firstly, in relation to the literature on predictors of poor service quality in care delivery; and, secondly, by interviewing a sample of Care Commission inspectors. We conclude that this system has important advantages, both in terms of regulatory transparency and the need for inspectors to remain sensitive to the separateness of risk and quality issues. Future revisions of risk and quality assessment within social care services, both in Scotland and further afield, should seek to minimise misunderstanding and conflict between regulators and regulatees on closely interrelated matters of risk, quality and efficiency.     

The attitude of Libyan auditors to inherent control risk assessment

Previous empirical evidence contradicts the practices of audit risk assessment recommended by the professional auditing standards. Key differences represent the presumption that auditors can readily distinguish between different categories of risk, how they assess such risks in practice, their application to the different account levels and their capacity to differentiate between what may constitute potentially high or low risks. The paper addresses these differences in the context of the Libyan auditors’ perceptions and practices. The nature and development of the audit profession in Libya makes this a good comparator for the US and UK contexts of audit behaviour. Equally importantly, the religious, political and socio-cultural context combined with Libya's role as an emergent economy is representative of many other economies in the world, thus providing a good comparator for assessing the validity and applicability of the established auditing management principles and procedures. One hundred and sixty four practicing auditors in Libya were investigated, initially by questionnaire and subsequently interview of a smaller sample of 20 auditors. The evidence reinforces prior empirical evidence that inherent and control risks are assessed interdependently, auditors are aware of the risk differentials depending on the level of account and are cognizant of factors normally associated with potentially high and low risk levels.