Top performing banks: the benefits to investors

In this study, we examine whether superior accounting performance as reported in the annual ABA Banking Journal Top Performing Banks survey translates into higher investor returns. We observe that the announcement effect is more pronounced during the early years of the survey. For the entire survey period and for later sub-periods in which bank holding companies (BHCs) are ranked based on return on equity (ROE), we observe statistically-significant superior holding period returns against both the S&P 500 index and in some cases a matched sample. These results include raw and risk-adjusted returns as well as buy and hold abnormal returns (BHARs). We obtain similar results after controlling for the market return, size, book-to-market ratio, and momentum factors.     

Informal Spaces: The Geography of Informal Economic Activities in Brussels

This paper unravels the relations between different categories of the informal economy and their spatial distribution in the geographical setting of Brussels. Micro perspectives (households as economic agents) and macro perspectives (the informal economy related to economic recession) are combined in order to deal with categories of informal activities which are homogenous in terms of their spatial logic. In the first part we review several classifications of informal economic activities and assess them in terms of their congruence with the distinctions of economic actors and spatial logic. The second part elaborates on the raisons d’être of three large categories of informal economic activities in relation to urban development and on the production environments of these activities in Brussels: the domestic sector and suburban development; economic recession and survival strategies in the inner city; and, finally, flexibility and informalization in urban light industry. Polanyi’s concept of modes of economic integration (market, redistribution and reciprocity) offers a powerful tool to understand informal economic activities as a set of interrelations between households and other economic actors in order to gain access to their living resources — Ce texte analyse les relations entre différentes catégories d’activités économiques informelles et leur répartition spatiale à Bruxelles. Les perspectives micro (les ménages en tant qu’agents économiques) et macro (l’économie informelle liée à la récession économique) sont combinées pour aboutir à des catégories d’activit’és’économiques informelles homogènes en termes de logique spatiale. Dans une première partie nous considérons plusieurs classifications des activités économiques informelles pour évaluer au niveau théorique leur congruence avec les types d’acteurs et les logiques spatiales. La seconde partie décrit les raisons d’? tre de trois grandes catégories d’activités économiques informelles et les met en relation avec le développement urbain et leurs milieux de production à Bruxelles. On distingue ainsi le secteur domestique liéà la péri-urbanisation, les stratégies de survie liées à la récession dans le centre-ville et la flexibilité et l’informalisation de l’industrie urbaine. Le concept de modes d’intégration économique de Polanyi (échange marchand, redistribution et réciprocité) constitue un outil d’analyse efficace pour comprendre ces activités économiques informelles en tant que combinaisons précises d’interrelations entre ménages et autres acteurs économiques permettant aux premiers d’accéder à leurs moyens d’existence.     

非正规垃圾填埋场治理技术研究——以永州市某非正规垃圾填埋场为例

以永州市某非正规垃圾填埋场为例,对目前较成熟的非正规垃圾填埋场治理技术——原位封场和异位转场开展了比选,基于各治理技术的特点,结合本垃圾填埋场情况,确定了永州市某非正规垃圾填埋场采取原位封场的治理方案,并介绍主要工程措施,为今后类似项目提供借鉴.     

Individual versus institutional investors and the weekend effect

Since the late 1980’s, considerable research has focused on the behavior of individual versus institutional investors and the potential patterns which may emerge from their trading activities. Miller (1988) and Abraham and Ikenberry (1994) posit that the tendency for negative Monday returns on equity (i.e., the weekend effect) is at least partially explained by the trading behavior of individual investors. Sias and Starks (1995), on the other hand, present empirical evidence showing a dominant role played by institutional traders. This study contributes to the literature by distinguishing between individual versus institutional trading as it relates to the weekend effect. We find that the information-processing hypothesis is consistent with observed institutional trading patterns, thus supporting the results of Sias and Starks (1995). In addition, these results are shown to be robust with respect to market type (i.e., auction and dealer markets).     

Institutional investors and industrial relations data: an empirical survey

Financial institutions play a major role in investing funds in the shares of individual companies. To what extent do investment managers and analysts take account of industrial relations information when making their decisions?     

Informal conflict intervention: Advice and dissent

A disparity appears to exist between how managers are advised to handle conflict and the intervention methods that they utilize in actual practice. Normative advice tends to agree that managers should adopt a facilitative, mediatorlike role (e.g., Walton, 1987; Tjosvold, 1990), while the empirical research suggests that managers are much more controlling, often deciding how to resolve the problem on their own (e.g., Kolb, 1986; Sheppard, 1983). The present study focuses on two potential reasons as to why managers utilize the methods they do: (1) They treat choices instrumentally to achieve key goals and (2) they interpret or frame conflicts in a form that suggests directive action. One hundred and eighty managers were interviewed about a recent effort to intervene in a dispute at work. The results confirm that managers are very controlling when intervening in disputes and relates this to both interpretive frame and, to a lesser extent, managerial goals. A canonical analysis appears to emphasize the pivotal role that frame plays in influencing whether or not managers choose the solution. Implications of these results for managerial action are discussed.     

House price dynamics: Fundamentals and expectations

We investigate whether expectations that are not fully rational have the potential to explain the evolution of house prices and the price-to-rent ratio in the United States. First, a stylized asset-pricing model solved under rational expectations is used to derive a fundamental value for house prices and the price–rent ratio. Although the model can explain the sample average of the price–rent ratio, it does not generate the large and persistent fluctuations observed in the data. Then, we consider a rational bubble solution, an extrapolative expectations solution and a near rational bubble solution. In this last solution agents extrapolate the future from the latest realizations and the degree of extrapolation is stronger in good times than in bad times, generating waves of over-optimism. We show that under this solution the model not only is able to match key moments of the data but can also replicate the run up in the U.S. house prices observed over the 2000–2006 period and the subsequent sharp downturn.     

Straddling the Divides: Remaking Associational Life in the Informal African City

Actors in fluid African urban environments endeavor to construct effective means to generate collaborative social action, enforce collective responsibility, and deploy effective and legitimate instruments of power. This effort configures an uneasy tension between the adoption of normative discourses of urban management and governance, and the proliferation of more provisional and informal modalities of association. The article treats informalization as a dynamic process related to new challenges faced by urban citizens in their attempts to access opportunities and, at the same time, maintain social coherence. It explores a broad range of tactics and institutions being used to access livelihood opportunities that more often are now external to the quarter, while maintaining some functional sense of local solidarity. Les acteurs intervenant dans l'incertitude des contextes urbains africains s'efforcent d'élaborer des moyens efficaces pour générer des collaborations d'action sociale, faire valoir une responsabilité collective, et déployer des instruments de pouvoir performants et légitimes. Cette entreprise crée un malaise entre les discours normatifs adoptés par l'autorité et l'encadrement urbains, et la prolifération de modalités d'association provisoires et informelles. L'article traite de ‘l'informalisation’ en tant que processus dynamique dans le cadre des nouveaux défis que les citoyens urbains rencontrent dans leurs tentatives d'accéder à des opportunités tout en préservant la cohérence sociale. Il explore un large éventail de tactiques et institutions utilisées pour obtenir des possibilités de subsistance – désormais plus souvent extérieures au quartier – et protéger parallèlement un certain sens fonctionnel de solidarité locale.     

Coupling between financing and innovation in a startup: embedded in networks with investors and researchers

Innovation may be a basis for starting a business, and financing is typically needed for starting. Innovation and financing may conceivably be negatively related, or be unrelated, or plausibly be beneficially related. These possible scenarios frame the questions: What is the coupling between innovation and financing at inception, and what is the embeddedness of coupling in networks around the entrepreneur, specifically networks with investors and researchers? These questions are addressed with a globally representative sample of entrepreneurs interviewed at inception of their business. Innovation and financing are found to be decoupled, typically; less frequently to be loosely coupled, and rarely to be tightly coupled. Coupling is promoted by networking with both investors and researchers, with additive effects and with a synergy effect. By ascertaining coupling and its embeddedness in networks as a way for building capability in a startup, the study contributes to empirically supported theorizing about capability building.

     

如何保护中小投资者的利益

我国证券市场繁荣发展的基石是有效保护投资者的利益,而其中最主要的是保护中小投资者的利益,股票市场的中小投资者地位处于劣势,加之我国股票市场的不规范,企业筹资理念的错位,使其利益经常遭受侵犯,文章结合一些案例,对侵犯中小投资者利益的手法进行了剖析,并提出了相应的保护中小投资者利益的若干措施。     

Collective rationality and functional wisdom of the crowd in far-from-rational institutional investors

The average portfolio structure of institutional investors is shown to reproduce the structure which optimally accounts for transaction costs when investment constraints are weak. Strikingly, this result emerges even though these investors are not aware of the existence of such law and despite the fact that their aims and tools are very heterogeneous. This extends the so-called wisdom of the crowd to much more complex situations in two important ways. First, wisdom of the crowd also holds for whole functions instead of a point-wise estimates. Second, this shows that in socio-economic systems, the optimal individual choice may only be found when the diversity of individual decisions is averaged out. Thus, rationality at a collective level does not need nearly rational individuals with well-aligned incentives. Finally we discuss the importance of accounting for constraints when assessing the presence of wisdom of the crowd.

     

Great expectations: Past wages and unemployment durations

Decomposing wages into worker and firm wage components, we find that firm-fixed components are sizeable parts of workers' wages. If workers can only imperfectly observe the extent of firm-fixed components in their wages, they might be misled about the overall wage distribution. Such misperceptions may lead to unjustified high reservation wages, resulting in overly long unemployment durations. We examine the influence of previous wages on unemployment durations for workers after exogenous lay-offs and, using Austrian administrative data, we find that younger workers are, in fact, unemployed longer if they profited from high firm-fixed components in the past. We interpret our findings as evidence for overconfidence generated by imperfectly observed productivity.     

Informal employment in Poland: an empirical spatial analysis

The main goal of our article is to bridge the gap in the regional analysis of informal employment in Poland and in particular to indicate the propensity for informal work in the working-age population, to test if informal activities are typical for marginalized people (less educated, unemployed, older) and to identify the regional and spatial heterogeneity in the propensity. We use data from the ‘Human Capital Balance 2010–2014’ survey. Results indicate a strong relationship between the probability of informal work and age, sex and labour force status. Moreover, a strong spatial dependency can be observed.     

Informal Sector and Manufacturing Location: In Search of the Missing Links

Abstract

Although the informal sector is very large and unevenly distributed within developing countries, its relative size and location have not been investigated from the perspective of location models. This paper builds a modified Core–Periphery model where formal and informal firms compete in consumer markets. The model suggests that in a peripheral region, where informal goods constitute a competitive alternative to formal goods, a larger critical mass of workers is needed for the formal sector to become profitable. Informal sector competitiveness, however, also increases formal firms' sensitivity to home market effects. Thus, indirectly, a competitive informal sector can foster formal manufacturing agglomeration.

RÉSUMÉ Bien que le secteur informel soit très étendu et distribué de façon irrégulière dans les pays en voie de développement, son envergure et sa distribution relatives n'ont fait l'objet d'aucune étude sur le plan de modèles de localisation. La présente communication crée un modèle « centre–périphérie » modifié, dans lequel des entreprises officielles et non officielles rivalisent sur des marchés de consommation. D'après ce modèle, dans une zone périphérique où les produits informels constituent une alternative à des produits officiels, une masse critique de travailleurs plus importante est nécessaire afin que le secteur officiel devienne rentable. Toutefois, la compétitivité du secteur informel accro??t également la sensibilité des entreprises officielles à des effets sur le marché interne. En conséquence, un secteur informel compétitif peut, indirectement, encourager une agglomération de fabrication officielle.

EXTRACTO Aunque el sector informal es muy amplio y está irregularmente distribuido dentro de los países en desarrollo, su tamaño relativo y localización no se han investigado desde la perspectiva de modelos de localización. Este estudio construye un modelo modificado de centro–periferia donde empresas formales e informales compiten en mercados de consumo. El modelo sugiere que, en una región periférica donde las mercancías informales constituyen una alternativa competitiva a las mercancías formales, el sector formal necesita una mayor masa crítica de trabajadores para ser rentable. No obstante, la competitividad del sector informal también aumenta la sensibilidad de las empresas formales a los efectos del mercado doméstico. Por lo tanto, indirectamente, un sector informal competitivo puede fomentar la aglomeración de la industria manufacturera formal.

     

Individual investors surpass their reputation: Trading behaviour on the Polish futures market

This paper examines individual investors’ trading behaviour by testing the presence of Monday and January anomalies on the Polish futures market, where individuals are the predominant trader type. Both anomalies are well established in the literature, and they are at least partially attributed to individual investors’ trading activities. We conduct an intraday analysis of trading volume, open interest, returns, and return volatility on the futures market in Poland and find the contribution of individuals to market anomalies to be grossly overstated. Hence, individual investors’ trading on the Polish futures market surpasses the prediction by the majority of investigations for mature stock markets.     

The relationship between private investors and small firms: an agency theory approach

Many small firms in Sweden are characterized by a lack of equity capital. For several years measures to increase the equity capital have been discussed. In this discussion the private investors' market has received virtually no attention. This study presents some preliminary results of the private investors in Sweden.

The research in small firms financing is characterized by a lack of theoretical framework. One basic assumption in the study is that agency theory can provide an essential framework to explain the interaction between the private investor and entrepreneur. Twenty-five hypotheses generated from agency theory are formulated and tested on 62 small unlisted firms in Sweden. Multiple regression analysis is used for the causal analyses.

The empirical results in the study show inter alia that the geographic distance and the private investor's knowledge about the portfolio firm's transformation process seem to be the most influential factors for determining the private investor's involvement in the portfolio firms. It is also interesting to notice that none of the variables, frequency of contacts and the private investor's operational work in the portfolio firm affect the performance of the firm. Contrary to conventional wisdom, private investors do not add value to their portfolio firms through their interaction with the entrepreneurs.

The theoretical conclusion is that agency theory does not provide any satisfactory framework to explain the private investor - entrepreneur relationship. Some of the basic assumptions in agency theory seem to be invalid. A model for the relationship between private investors and entrepreneurs is developed in which four interaction strategies are identified. The model gives implications on two levels: the portfolio level and the individual case level.     

Heterogeneous ambiguity attitudes: a field experiment among small-scale stock investors in China

We conducted quasi-field experiments in Chinese brokerage houses to investigate how investors react to ambiguity relative to quantifiable risks and the degree of heterogeneity in these reactions. Our experiment consists of three sections; a background survey; individual self-reports of emotional states; and a series of individual portfolio choice questions involving ambiguous assets and assets with a known probability of success. We calculate an index of ambiguity aversion that controls for risk aversion through a series of simple choices and demonstrate its outside validity. We find a significant degree of heterogeneity in ambiguity attitudes and discuss some demographic or emotional factors that might contribute to this heterogeneity. We also discuss the correlation between ambiguity attitudes and risk attitudes. By conducting these experiments in China, we were able to measure the degree of ambiguity aversion among a sample of experienced and accessible investors who face ambiguous decisions on a daily basis.     

Dissecting the myth of the house price in Chinese metropolises: allowing for behavioral heterogeneity among investors

This paper aims to demystify the housing boom in Chinese metropolises by allowing for behavioral heterogeneity among investors. We construct an agent-based model where investors are categorized into two groups: fundamentalists and chartists. In addition, the investment strategy switching is allowed between these two groups contingent on the historical performance. Using the data of five Chinese metropolises over the period 2008–2014, the results suggest that chartists dominate the housing market and make the house price maintain an upward trend, while fundamentalists play a stabilizing role. Specifically, fundamentalists can serve as a “price anchor” in the market, because the proportion of the fundamentalists is negatively associated with both the growth rate of the house price and the deviation relative to the fundamental value. Overall, the impact of the chartists on the house price is much greater than that of the fundamentalists, which contributes to the ever-increasing house price in Chinese metropolises.