A Re-Examination of the Market Reaction to Failed Mergers

This study examines the revaluation of shares surrounding the cancellation of mergers over the years 1976–1985. The results are first categorized according to the party cancelling the merger and then by subsequent merger activity. The results are as expected: target firms that become involved in merger activity, subsequent to the cancellation, experience positive cumulative prediction errors (CPEs). Targets that do not become involved in subsequent merger activity have CPEs that return to pre-merger announcement levels. These results do not vary when bidders or targets cancel the merger.     

A Re-Examination of the Wealth Expropriation Hypothesis: The Case of Captive Finance Subsidiaries

This paper re-examines Kim, McConnell, and Greenwood's (1977) study of captive finance subsidiaries. We suggest that, as long as firms are concerned with reputation, shareholders will find it costly to engage in deliberate wealth expropriation and thus have no incentives to do so. Using a sample of fourteen firms with publicly traded debt, we compute and test the statistical significance of abnormal returns to shareholders, bondholders, and the firm when captives are incorporated. We find that shareholders gain 14.9 percent, bondholders lose 2.3 percent, and firm value increases a significant 10.4 percent. Our results are inconsistent with wealth expropriation and lend support to the importance of reputation to firms.     

The Ex-Dividend Day Behavior of Stock Prices: A Re-Examination of the Clientele Effect

Past studies have documented an ex-dividend day price drop which is less than the dividend per share and positively correlated with the corresponding dividend yield. In contrast to prior work, we show that, without additional information, the marginal tax rates cannot be inferred from this phenomenon which is, therefore, not necessarily the result of a tax induced clientele effect. Despite adjustments for potential biases in earlier work, however, the correlation between the ex-dividend relative price drop and the dividend yield is still positive which is consistent with a tax effect and a tax induced clientele effect.     

A Re-Examination of Shareholder Wealth Effects of Calls of Convertible Preferred Stock

Common stock price reactions to announcements of 67 calls of in-the-money convertible preferred stocks are examined, and a significant average abnormal return of ?1.6 percent is documented. The finding is robust to the choice of estimation period and the assumed return-generating process. Annual dividend obligations for the called preferred issues in the sample typically are greater than the dividends for the common shares into which they are converted, and announcement-period abnormal returns are negatively correlated with changes in dividends. Moreover, calls that result in dilution of voting rights appear to have greater adverse valuation effects than calls that do not alter voting rights concentration.     

The Purchasing Power of Money and Nominal Interest Rates: A Re-Examination

While it has been known for some time that, under uncertainty, the original version of the Fisher hypothesis is not precisely correct, empirical researchers have largely ignored this fact. Such an omission has possibly resulted in erroneous conclusions concerning other hypotheses; most notably the impact of prices on the real economy. This paper clarifies some of the previous interpretations of the existing empirical literature and provides a theoretical version of the relation between prices and interest rates. Empirical tests based on both the Livingston survey data and data from time-series forecasting models provide support for the Fisher effect and the hypothesis that only covariance risk is priced in the Treasury bill market.     

An Empirical Re-Examination of the Cross-Section of Expected Returns: UK Evidence

This paper is a study of the Fama and French (1992) analysis in the UK context. Consistent with their findings, our results do not support a positive relationship between beta and average monthly returns. We find that book-to-market equity and market leverage are consistently significant in explaining UK average returns. Contrary to the Fama-French evidence, size has an insignificant effect on average returns. A puzzling negative beta-returns relationship is found in some monthly regressions,and results based on annual data reveal a reversal of betas for the smallest-size portfolios. Some possible explanations are offered for these findings.     

A Model for Analyzing the Impact of Selective Lapsation on Mortality

Abstract

This paper presents a model for examining the effect of various relationships between mortality rates and lapse rates on the mortality experience of a cohort of insured lives. The approach is individual rather than the aggregate traditionally used in analyzing selective lapsation. The model assumes that insured lives are healthy at policy issue, but later may move to an impaired state from which the lapse rate is zero. Associated with each insured is an unobservable “risk level” random variable, which reflects the heterogeneity of the insured group. Individual mortality and lapse rates are functions of the risk level. A numerical illustration provides some interesting results obtained by using this model.     

A General Procedure for Constructing Mortality Models

Recently a large number of new mortality models have been proposed to analyze historic mortality rates and project them into the future. Many of these suffer from being over-parametrized or have terms added in an ad hoc manner that cannot be justified in terms of demographic significance. In addition, poor specification of a model can lead to period effects in the data being wrongly attributed to cohort effects, which results in the model making implausible projections. We present a general procedure for constructing mortality models using a combination of a toolkit of functions and expert judgment. By following the general procedure, it is possible to identify sequentially every significant demographic feature in the data and give it a parametric structural form. We demonstrate using U.K. mortality data that the general procedure produces a relatively parsimonious model that nevertheless has a good fit to the data.     

City Markets as a Unit of Analysis in Audit Research and the Re-Examination of Big 6 Market Shares

Big 6 market shares based on aggregate national data have been used in prior research to infer market leadership and industry expertise, and to differentiate Big 6 accounting firms from one another. In this study it is demonstrated that further differences exist with respect to city-specific audit markets, both between firms and within the same firm across different city markets. The specific finding is that the national market leader is not the city-specific market leader the vast majority of time. Usefulness of the city-level unit of analysis is further demonstrated by re-examining the 1989 mergers creating Ernst & Young and Deloitte Touche. The primary effect of the Ernst & Young merger was to increase market shares in cities in which the pre-merger firms already had significant market shares, resulting in an increase in the number of cities in which the merged firm achieved top ranking. In contrast, the primary effect of the Deloitte Touche merger was an expansionof the number of city-level markets in which the merged firm had significant (though not leading) market shares. The findings of this study suggest that, in order to move beyond our current understanding, important audit research questions such as the reason for particular auditor–client alignments, the competitive nature of markets, audit pricing of reputations, and auditor reporting and independence issues should be investigated in city-level markets where audit contracting occurs and where Big 6 market shares (and presumably reputations) vary widely from city to city.     

Mind the Gap: A Study of Cause-Specific Mortality by Socioeconomic Circumstances

Socioeconomic groups may be exposed to varying levels of mortality; this is certainly the case in the United Kingdom, where the gaps in life expectancy, differentiated by socioeconomic circumstances, are widening. The reasons for such diverging trends are yet unclear, but a study of cause-specific mortality may provide rich insight into this phenomenon. Therefore, we investigate the relationship between socioeconomic circumstances and cause-specific mortality using a unique dataset obtained from the U.K. Office for National Statistics. We apply a multinomial logistic framework; the reason is twofold. First, covariates such as socioeconomic circumstances are readily incorporated, and, second, the framework is able to handle the intrinsic dependence amongst the competing causes. As a consequence of the dataset and modeling framework, we are able to investigate the impact of improvements in cause-specific mortality by socioeconomic circumstances. We assess the impact using (residual) life expectancy, a measure of aggregate mortality. Of main interest are the gaps in life expectancy among socioeconomic groups, the trends in these gaps over time, and the ability to identify the causes most influential in reducing these gaps. This analysis is performed through the investigation of different scenarios: first, by eliminating one cause of death at a time; second, by meeting a target set by the World Health Organization (WHO), called WHO 25 × 25; and third, by developing an optimal strategy to increase life expectancy and reduce inequalities.     

A Gravity Model of Mortality Rates for Two Related Populations

Abstract

The mortality rate dynamics between two related but different-sized populations are modeled consistently using a new stochastic mortality model that we call the gravity model. The larger population is modeled independently, and the smaller population is modeled in terms of spreads (or deviations) relative to the evolution of the former, but the spreads in the period and cohort effects between the larger and smaller populations depend on gravity or spread reversion parameters for the two effects. The larger the two gravity parameters, the more strongly the smaller population’s mortality rates move in line with those of the larger population in the long run. This is important where it is believed that the mortality rates between related populations should not diverge over time on grounds of biological reasonableness. The model is illustrated using an extension of the Age-Period-Cohort model and mortality rate data for English and Welsh males representing a large population and the Continuous Mortality Investigation assured male lives representing a smaller related population.     

Income Inequality and Mortality: A Norwegian Perspective*

While Norway has experienced income growth accompanied by a large decline in mortality during the past several decades, little is known about the distribution of these improvements in longevity across the income distribution. Using municipality‐level income and mortality data, we show that the stark income gradient in infant mortality across municipalities in the 1950s mostly closed in the late 1960s. However, the income gradient in mortality for older age categories across municipalities persisted until 2010 and only flattened thereafter. Further, the infant mortality gap between rich and poor Norwegian families based on individual‐level data persisted several decades longer than the gap between rich and poor municipalities and only finally closed in the early 21st century.     

Monetary Policy Reaction Functions of the TICKs: A Quantile Regression Approach

This study investigates how Taiwan, India, China, and Korea (TICKs) set interest rates in the context of policy reaction functions using a quantile-based approach. Our results indicate the tendency of a milder response to inflation at low interest rates and greater response at higher quantiles of interest rates, where inflation is presumably higher than desired for China and South Korea. While the response to inflation over the quantiles is significant for India, yet the Taylor principle is less likely to hold. For Taiwan, the results imply that another instrument is employed to deal with its official managed floating currency.     

强化会计核算功能——重庆市江北区会计核算中心信息化系统

会计核算是财务管理的基本职能,是财政系统内最先实现电子化和信息化的部门。下面以重庆市江北区财政局会计核算中心信息化为例,介绍从背景调查、用户需求、解决方案到系统测试等一整套会计核算信息化方案。     

对国有投资控股或参股公司进行审计的研究

随着现代企业制度的发展,各类企业为增强企业实力,引入了国有、民营、私人及国外战略投资,组建上市或非上市股份制控股或参股公司,产权结构日趋多元化。合资公司或多或少存在着控制乏力、管理薄弱的问题,如何实施对这类公司的监管,特别是从内部审计的角度如何介入,以维护投资方的利益,实现投资目的,是一个亟待解决的课题。本文拟对合资公司实施内部审计的必要性,内部审计的内容以及应注意的问题和对策,进行初步的探讨。     

Mortality Inequality in the Czech Republic*

We examine the evolution of mortality and mortality inequality among the 77 districts of the Czech Republic ranked by a new poverty index, from 1994 to 2016. The country experienced dramatic improvements in mortality for all age categories and both genders, but with very little variation in inequality. Inequality in mortality has remained substantially stable, increasing only for females aged 20–64.     

Mortality data and the binomial probability law

Introduction.

Critics of the custom that bases actuarial theory on the probability calculus whilst admitting that probability theory may be applicable, have denied that mortality data satisfy the requirements of independence and equi-probability demanded by ‘simple’ theory. We believe that the proper answer to these polemics is that ‘equi-probability’ and ‘independence’ are technical phrases introduced as part of a theory which is purely conceptual. To seek to deny the applicability of the theory on the grounds of the lack of one-to-one correspondence of these words with their counterparts in the everyday world is precipitate. The evaluation of the theory must be decided by the correctness of the results it forecasts. Few of the critics mentioned have produced statistics which support their case: some have even misapplied the theory they so earnestly criticise.     

论货币市场的功能

由于对货币市场功能认识上的不足，我国自改革开放以来一直轻视货币市场，客观上采取了一条“先资本市场，后货币市场”的发展思路。笔者认为，货币市场具有短期资金融通功能、管理功能、政策传导功能、促进资本市场尤其是证券市场发展的功能等四大功能，在金融市场以及市场经济中发挥着基础性作用。