Multi-factor financial planning: an outline and illustration

This paper deals with the support of strategically oriented financial planning processes in business firms. In handling a financial planning problem, the decision maker has to deal with a number of complications. In this paper special attention is paid to the risk with regard to the outcomes of the financial plan and the existence of multiple, conflicting goals. An interactive approach to financial planning is presented. Risk is modeled by means of so-called multi-factor risk models and multiple goals are explicitly accounted for through the use of an interactive goal programming method. The use of the interactive approach will be numerically demonstrated by means of an exemplary planning problem.     

Transaction costs and market efficiency: Evidence from commission deregulation

This study analyzes the impacts of explicit transaction costs on weak-form market efficiency within the context of the brokerage commission deregulation in Japan in October 1999, which led to lower commission rates across the market. Applying two alternative statistical tests to both daily and weekly data, we find that return randomness (unpredictability) increases significantly for stocks listed in Japan, but not for the Japanese stocks dually listed in the United States, which are immune to the deregulation. These results suggest an inefficiency loss or an efficiency gain in the Japanese equity market following the deregulation, insofar as randomness proxies for efficiency.     

Obesity: An economic and financial perspective

Obesity has been slowly increasing in most countries. This problem has increased to an extent that it is being labeled an epidemic and a leading cause of preventable deaths, second only to smoking. This paper provides a synthesis of the extant economics literature on obesity. More importantly, a framework outlining the economic causes and effects of obesity is discussed. The causes of obesity are many, including economic, technical, historical, and biological. The effects of obesity can be external or internal. These effects, in turn, can be direct or indirect. Recommendations for governments and businesses and directions for future research are discussed. Helpful comments from James Payne and research assistance of Richard Connelly are appreciated. Financial support from the Katie School of Insurance at Illinois State University is gratefully acknowledged.     

基于效率视角的金融生态研究综述

金融生态是具有中国特色的概念。学界对金融生态的研究,对提高我国金融业效率具有重要意义。本文基于效率视角从理论和实证两方面对金融生态理论研究进行了梳理,重点梳理并评析金融生态的内涵、假设前提、金融生态和金融效率的关系三个方面,并对金融生态的进一步研究作出展望。     

An agent-based model for financial vulnerability

This study addresses a critical regulatory shortfall by developing a platform to extend stress testing from a microprudential approach to a dynamic, macroprudential approach. This paper describes the ensuing agent-based model for analyzing the vulnerability of the financial system to asset- and funding-based fire sales. The model captures the dynamic interactions of agents in the financial system extending from the suppliers of funding through the intermediation and transformation functions of the bank/dealers to the financial institutions that use the funds to trade in the asset markets. The model replicates the key finding that it is the reaction to initial losses, rather than the losses themselves, that determine the extent of a crisis. By building on a detailed mapping of the transformations and dynamics of the financial system, the agent-based model provides an avenue toward risk management that can illuminate the pathways for the propagation of key crisis dynamics such as fire sales and funding runs.     

An analysis of risky financial decisions

A problem of financing uncertain cost of a project is investigated. The paper analyses the allocation and the loss due to the cost uncertainty. Different formulations of the problem are suggested and compared: expected profits, chance constraint maximization and a utility approach. It is shown that even a risk-neutral manager is willing to pay a premium to reduce uncertainty. The two approaches to risk, chance constraint versus concave utility, are shown to be non-equivalent.     

Estimating structural changes in regression quantiles

This paper considers the estimation of multiple structural changes occurring at unknown dates in one or multiple conditional quantile functions. The analysis covers time series models as well as models with repeated cross-sections. We estimate the break dates and other parameters jointly by minimizing the check function over all permissible break dates. The limiting distribution of the estimator is derived and the coverage property of the resulting confidence interval is assessed via simulations. A procedure to determine the number of breaks is also discussed. Empirical applications to the quarterly US real GDP growth rate and the underage drunk driving data suggest that the method can deliver more informative results than the analysis of the conditional mean function alone.     

Some applications of stochastic analysis in financial economics: An outline

The basic features of a recent approach to the theory of continuous trading, are presented.

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Sommario Vengono presentate le linee base di un recente approccio alle opzioni in tempo continuo basato su tecniche di analisi stocastica.

     

Strategy: the key to financial payback from reengineering

This article will present the differences between restructuring, reengineering, and reinventing. It will identify a process for developing a leadership position that is difficult or impossible to duplicate and show how to develop a business strategy that leads to correctly identifying the core value-added processes of your business--the right ones to reengineer.     

ST公司财务特征分析

本文选择在2005年因财务状况异常而被特别处理（ST）的上市公司,同时选取同行业、规模相近的非ST公司作为配对样本。通过比较两类公司财务报表项目均值,以及对t值的分析,总结出ST公司的财务报表项目特征。力图在分析上市公司财务困境成因的基础上,探讨各财务报表项目之间的关系以及它们对上市公司发生财务困境的预警作用。     

Powerful tests for structural changes in volatility

Detecting structural changes in volatility is important for understanding volatility dynamics and stylized facts observed for financial returns such as volatility persistence. We propose modified CUSUM and LM tests that are built on a robust estimator of the long-run variance of squared series. We establish conditions under which the new tests have standard null distributions and diverge faster than standard tests under the alternative. The theory allows smooth and abrupt structural changes that can be small. The smoothing parameter is automatically selected such that the proposed test has good finite-sample size and meanwhile achieves decent power gain.     

Comparisons of aggregation procedures for interaction data: An illustration using a college student international flow table

Various approaches for developing regional schemes on the basis of geographic interaction data are discussed, using a 46 × 46 international flow table of college students as an example. The hierarchical clustering procedure employed by Masser and Brown to study movement data for London and Liverpool is compared with that utilized by Slater to analyze internal migration in several nations and is found to be more successful in the sense of explained interaction, a criterion Masser and Brown maximize in a stepwise—not necessarily optimal—manner. Slater's method, however, appears to be less subject to chaining—the sequential growth of a cluster— and more productive of distinct subgroups. It can also be interpreted as the fitting of a tree structure to a dissimilarity matrix. Both techniques are shown to yield highly significant functional regions, by comparing their results with those obtained through a large number of random partitionings of the 46 nations. The substantial value of the Ford-Fulkerson network flow algorithm in optimal partitioning and hierarchical clustering is discussed. This algorithm can also be used to define nodal in- and out-migration regions—i.e. collections of nations that have fewer people entering or leaving them as a whole than their nodal nations. To determine functional regions, the flow table is first doubly-standardized to have all row and column sums equal. Nodal regions—which cannot be hierarchically ordered—are found through study of the unadjusted flows themselves. Political, linguistic and geographic influences explain many of the international groupings obtained.     

An international study of causality-in-variance: Interest rate and financial sector returns

We demonstrate that causality-in-variance test could be employed to model the direction and lags in information flow between two variables and to avoid misspecifications. We apply this methodology to test the causality between the financial sector returns and interest rates of the G7 countries and show that the direction and the lead/lag structure of causality in the mean and the variance are more complex and dynamic than that have previously been reported. In most cases, we found two-way information flow both at the mean and the volatility level. Causality results give us insights into (i) how and when information is impacted on different market segments, and (ii) design more objective bi-variate models with the appropriate lag structure.     

Credit allocation and the financial crisis: evidence from Spanish companies

The worldwide financial crisis of 2007–2008 raised serious concerns about the soundness of banks’ activities and about the extent to which banking regulation should supervise banks’ investment decisions. We contribute to this topic by examining the Spanish case, which has been emblematic of the bubble and burst dynamics in the credit market. In particular, we study the allocation of bank credit among Spanish companies from 1999 to 2014, showing that larger companies accumulated greater amounts of bank loans per unit of total assets, thus leading to a notable concentration. We also find that, during the Spanish boom period, bank loans shifted from the manufacturing to the construction industry, and in particular to the largest companies of the latter sector. This happened in spite of the high leverage of large construction firms, which was increasing also due to their growing debt. We argue that the higher operating benefits, reflecting the increase of the housing price during the boom period, overvalued construction firms as potential borrowers. The bankruptcy of several large construction companies during the Spanish crisis supports the need for monitoring and regulation, to avoid an excessive concentration of bank credit to a few large companies, especially if they belong to a specific sector.