Future cities in a warming world

More than half the global population are already urban, and the UN and other organisations expect this share to rise in future. However, some researchers argue that the future of cities is far from assured. Cities are not only responsible for 70% or more of the world's CO₂ emissions, but because of their dense concentration of physical assets and populations, are also more vulnerable than other areas to climate change. This paper attempts to resolve this controversy by first looking at how cities would fare in a world with average global surface temperatures 4 °C above pre-industrial levels. It then looks at possible responses, either by mitigation or adaptation, to the threat such increases would entail. Regardless of the mix of adaptation and mitigation cities adopt in response to climate change, the paper argues that peak urbanism will occur over the next few decades. This fall in the urban share of global population will be driven by the rise in biophysical hazards in cities if the response is mainly adaptation, and by the declining attraction of cities (and possibly the rising attraction of rural areas) if serious mitigation is implemented.     

Integrating Management Accounting and Marketing in the Pursuit of Competitive advantage: the case for strategic management accounting

As a powerful approach to accounting for competitive advantage, strategic management accounting remains largely unexploited. Externally focused on the market, strategic management accounting integrates insights from management accounting and marketing within a strategic management framework. Consequently it can be distinguished from seemingly related attempts to develop a more strategically significant approach to accounting to management. In addition to debating these issues, the paper draws on field study data to suggest a potentially fruitful advance of the strategic management accounting concept in the form of brand management accounting.     

Creating corporate advantage

What differentiates truly great corporate strategies from the merely adequate? How can executives at the corporate level create tangible advantage for their businesses that makes the whole more than the sum of the parts? This article presents a comprehensive framework for value creation in the multibusiness company. It addresses the most fundamental questions of corporate strategy: What businesses should a company be in? How should it coordinate activities across businesses? What role should the corporate office play? How should the corporation measure and control performance? Through detailed case studies of Tyco International, Sharp, the Newell Company, and Saatchi and Saatchi, the authors demonstrate that the answers to all those questions are driven largely by the nature of a company's special resources--its assets, skills, and capabilities. These range along a continuum from the highly specialized at one end to the very general at the other. A corporation's location on the continuum constrains the set of businesses it should compete in and limits its choices about the design of its organization. Applying the framework, the authors point out the common mistakes that result from misaligned corporate strategies. Companies mistakenly enter businesses based on similarities in products rather than the resources that contribute to competitive advantage in each business. Instead of tailoring organizational structures and systems to the needs of a particular strategy, they create plain-vanilla corporate offices and infrastructures. The company examples demonstrate that one size does not fit all. One can find great corporate strategies all along the continuum.     

从一宗金融争议看仲裁的优势

被申请人将其在某上市公司(以下简称上市公司)的股权1300万股作价4160万元投资于申请人的公司,该股权折合成人民币后,被申请人在申请人的股权占4150万股,占总股本的37．73％。由于被申请人是该上市公司的发起人,按照《公司法》和《公司章程》规定,该股权在3年内不得转让。因此,当时被申请人和申     

Comparative advantage and unemployment

Worker heterogeneity in productivity and labor supply is introduced into a matching model. Workers who earn high wages and work high-hours are identified as those with strong market comparative advantage—high rents from being employed. The model is calibrated to match separation, job finding, and employment in the SIPP data. The model predicts a big drop in employment for workers with weak comparative advantage during recessions. But the data show that workers with strong comparative advantage also display sizable employment fluctuations, implying that aggregate employment fluctuations are not explained by the responses of workers with small rents to employment.     

Establishing bounds on the tax advantage to debt

The partial dismantling of the imputation tax system that commenced in July 1997 once more opens the discussion on the relative tax advantage to debt and its impact on the cost of capital. In this paper we examine the implications of these recent changes for the value of the tax advantage to debt. We analyse the value of debt-related tax shields by computing the individual tax liabilities of 1268 quoted companies that reported during the period 1980–2000 taking account of any tax exhaustion or surplus ACT. We use these estimates to establish an upper bound on the tax advantage to debt. We conclude that even following the 1997 changes in the imputation tax system the probable value for the average current tax advantage to debt in the UK at present is at most about 13% of the value of debt.     

Public policies against global warming: a supply side approach

The countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol have pledged to limit global warming by reducing the demand for fossil fuels. But what about supply? If suppliers do not react, demand reductions by a subset of countries are ineffective. They simply depress the world price of carbon and induce the environmental sinners to consume what the Kyoto countries have economized on. Even worse, if suppliers feel threatened by a gradual greening of economic policies in the Kyoto countries that would damage their future prices; they will extract their stocks more rapidly, thus accelerating global warming. The paper discusses the remaining policy options against global warming from an intertemporal supply-side perspective.     

对注册会计师行业发挥更大作用的一些思考

去年,刘仲藜会长率中国代表团200多人出席了第17届亚太会计师大会并代表中国注册会计师行业在大会上做了重要演讲。刘会长阐述了三大观点:第一,充分肯定会     

An Alternative View on Regulatory Distortions in a Competitive Financial Services Industry

We present an alternative view on regulatory distortions in the banking industry. We use the duopoly model developed by Boot, Dezelan, and Milbourn (BDM, 2000), where a bank with low monitoring costs faces a bank with high monitoring costs. We show that when the initial level of the capital requirement is low, an increase of the minimum ratio between capital and total assets causes a higher decrease in profits at the bad bank than at the good bank. This finding contrasts with BDM's theorem 1, which predicts that a regulation imposing an identical increase in production costs on both banks will cause a greater loss in profits at the good bank than at the bad bank. We also look at the impact of an increase in the minimum ratio between capital and total assets on the profits of a representative bank in three other competitive environments identified in BDM. We find that the decrease in the representative bank's profit caused by an increase in the capital requirement is larger when the bank faces competition from an unregulated firm than when it faces a regulated competitor or no competitor at all. This result is consistent with BDM's theorem 2.     

Advertising dynamics and competitive advantage

Can advertising lead to a sustainable competitive advantage? To answer this question, we propose a dynamic model of advertising competition where firms repeatedly advertise, compete in the product market, and make entry as well as exit decisions. Within this dynamic framework, we study two different models of advertising: in the first model, advertising influences the goodwill consumers extend toward a firm (“goodwill advertising”), whereas in the second model it influences the share of consumers who are aware of the firm (“awareness advertising”). We show that asymmetries may arise and persist under goodwill as well as awareness advertising. The basis for a strategic advantage, however, differs greatly in the two models of advertising. We show that tighter regulation or an outright ban of advertising may have anticompetitive effects and discuss how firms use advertising to deter and accommodate entry and induce exit in a dynamic setting.     

IPO的发展与优势

IPO作为一种重要的企业融资方式深受各大企业的青睐。近期阿里巴巴的IPO问题更是成为金融界和互联网界的热门话题．再次将IPO推向风口舌尖。人们常说,每一个企业都有一个IPO梦想。那么,IPO融资到底是怎样的一个面目．又有着怎样的魔力使得各大公司为之赴汤蹈火呢？且看汉鼎咨询深度分析。     

The half-truth of first-mover advantage

Many executives take for granted that the first company in a new product category gets an unbeatable head start and reaps long-lasting benefits. But that doesn't always happen. The authors of this article discovered that much depends on the pace at which the category's technology is changing and the speed at which the market is evolving. By analyzing these two factors, companies can improve their odds of succeeding as first movers with the resources they possess. Gradual evolution in both the technology and the market provides a first mover with the best conditions for creating a dominant position that is long lasting (Hoover in the vacuum cleaner industry is a good example). In such calm waters, a company can defend its advantages even without exceptional skills or extensive financial resources. When the market is changing rapidly and the product isn't, a first entrant with extensive resources can obtain a long-lasting advantage (as Sony did with its Walkman personal stereo); a company with only limited resources probably must settle for a short-term benefit. When the market is static but the product is changing constantly, first-mover advantages of either kind--durable or short-lived--are unlikely. Only companies with very deep pockets can survive (think of Sony and the digital cameras it pioneered). Rapid churn in both the technology and the market creates the worst conditions. But if companies have an acute sense of when to exit-as Netscape demonstrated when it agreed to be acquired by AOL-a worthwhile short-term gain is possible. Before venturing into a newly forming market, you need to analyze the environment, assess your resources, then determine which type offirst-mover advantage is most achievable. Once you've gone into the water, you have no choice but to swim.     

Grasping the direct marketing advantage

This paper describes why financial services companies are uniquely placed to use direct marketing and how they need to overcome a number of issues in order to maximise its potential. It weighs up practical limitations such as the Data Protection Act and industry regulations as well as examining softer issues such as the drawbacks of a traditional financial services culture and the need to protect credibility through maintaining sufficient levels of customer confidentiality and trust. A discussion of practical recommendations and how they can be best implemented explores possible solutions to the challenges.     

Regulatory Distortions in a Competitive Financial Services Industry

This paper focusses on the interaction between regulation and competition in a simple industrial organization model. We analyze how regulation affects the profitability of financial institutions. We find that information asymmetries impose a heavy regulatory burden on the higher-quality banks, highlighting the importance of fine-tuning regulation. Our other main results point at the importance of a level playing field.     

Competitive equality as a criterion for financial reform

Many arguments about financial reform appeal to competitive equality among types of institutions. But this is irrelevant; what matters is equitable treatment, not of institutions, but of their owners and customers, and economic efficiency. There are two rival definitions of the former, avoidance of unexpected regulatory changes, and changing regulations to maintain markets. If no externalities exist, equity to customers requires imposing the same burden on customers of all institutions. So does the efficiency criterion. These criteria are applied to three problems: permitting demand deposits in thrifts, imposing a reserve requirement on such deposits, and eliminating Regulation Q.     

Competitive foreclosure

We model oligopolistic firms, producing substitutes, who compete for inputs from capacity constrained suppliers in a decentralized market. Compared to a price‐taking input market, the incentive to foreclose downstream competitors leads to higher input prices and to a higher aggregate amount of input acquired. This novel feature mitigates the output reducing effect of downstream market power and may even restore efficiency in the unique (input) market clearing equilibrium. Other equilibria, where firms coordinate on which suppliers to target, result in excess supply (involuntary unemployment, if input is labor) and even higher input prices. Our insights generalize to alternative vertical structures.     

Competitive IPOs

Competition between investment banks for lead underwriter mandates in IPOs is fierce, but having committed to a particular bank, the power of the issuer is greatly reduced. Although information revelation theories justify giving the underwriters influence over pricing and allocation, this creates the potential for conflicts of interest. In this clinical paper we analyse an interesting innovation that has been used in recent European IPOs whereby issuers separate the preparation and distribution roles of investment banks, and keep competitive pressure on the banks throughout the issue process. These 'competitive IPOs' allow the issuer greater control and facilitate more contingent fee structures that help to mitigate against 'bait and switch.' But unlike more radical departures from traditional bookbuilding – such as auctions – the competitive IPO is an incremental market-based response to potential conflicts of interest that retains many of the advantages of investment banks' active involvement in issues.     

如何实现我国从社会福利国家向竞争国家转型

在经济全球化的条件下，如何推进社会福利和社会保障政策，是我国面临的重大难题。从长远看我们必须在加速提高国家竞争力的条件下，促进我国社会福利水平的提高。要做到这一点，我们必须改变传统习惯，全方位地进行社会经济改革，加强国际间的经济合作，使我国融入经济全球化的潮流中。