Inferring the private information content of trades: a regime‐switching approach

This paper presents an empirical model for inferring the private information content of trades at the transaction level. The trade‐indicator model of Glosten and Harris ( 1988 ) is extended to a two‐state regime‐switching setting, and the model is estimated using tick‐by‐tick data from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The specialist is found to react in accordance with the proposed model. Bid–ask quotes set after the execution of a trade reflect the conjectured information content of that particular trade. Based on the estimated model four empirical results emerge: (a) the suggested regime‐switching model fit data well; (b) the reverse J‐shaped pattern of intra‐daily quoted spreads is shown to agree with the clustering of costs incurred by the specialist through trading with better‐informed agents; (c) on average 9% of all trades are found to reveal private: information to the specialist; (d) results regarding the trading volume of informed traders support the stealth trading hypothesis suggested by Barclay and Warner ( 1993 ). Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Artificial intelligence and content analysis

Content analysis is a very tedious method of data collection. This paper addresses once more the question of whether and how computers may be used to facilitate content analysis in the coding stage. To interpret natural language automatically a computer program must be able to unravel the syntactical structure of sentences (‘parsing’) and to trace their semantical meaning by dealing with textual context (= ‘co-text’), prior knowledge (context outside the text) and semantic variability (different or ambiguous meanings of words and phrases). Several approaches to enable computer programs to perform these tasks are discussed, including approaches from the fields of cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. The conclusion should be that it is still impossible to enable computer programs to perform all these tasks. But there are possibilities for using computer programs to support human coders both in the coding stage and the data-analysis stage of content analysis. As an example the program CETA to perform Computer-aided Evaluative Textual Analysis is discussed.     

Contextual content analysis

This article suggests one way to systematically code textual data for research. The approach utilizes computer content analysis to examine patterns of emphasized ideas in text as well as the social context or underlying perspective reflected in the text. A conceptual dictionary is used to organize word meanings. An extensive profile of word meanings is used to characterize and discriminate social contexts. Social contexts are analyzed in relation to four reference dimensions (traditional, practical, emotional and analytic) which are used in the social science literature. The approach is illustrated with five widely varying texts, analyzed with selected comparative data. This approach has been useful in many social science investigations to system-atically score open-ended textual information. Scores can be incorporated into quantitative analysis with other data, used as a guide to qualitative studies, and to help integrate strengths of quantitative and qualitative approaches to research.     

Computer-assisted content analysis of newspapers

Content analysis as a methodology of data collection from text sources is very labor intensive and therefore costly. Advances in computer-assisted content analysis have greatly increased the power of the methodology. But, even in a computer environment, complex searches require extensive prior manipulation of the original text in order to assign to it a basic structure. It is this structure that allows researchers to perform complex queries in highly general ways. I argue that Semantics provides powerful templates for structuring text data (text grammars) and other conceptual tools that can be profitably used to increase the efficiency of content analysis projects (e.g. news schema and macro propositions). More generally, I argue that efficiency in content analysis projects depends upon such characteristics as (1) organization of the coding task; (2) newspaper reporting practices. The discussion of these characteristics results in several suggestions on how to increase the efficiency of the methodology.     

上海国际物流业发展的优势及劣势分析

世界经济的发展,带来了国际物流发展的机遇和挑战。上海作为我国经济中心,想要朝着国际经济、金融、贸易和航运中心发展,必须加快发展国际物流业。文中从上海经济和外贸发展的宏观环境着手,阐述了上海发展国际物流的重要性和必要性。并结合上海历年商贸和物流发展的数据,分析了上海发展国际物流的优势与劣势。指出在现阶段的经济发展趋势下,应当从加强物流平台整合、构筑物流信息平台、加快物流标准制定和人才培养等方面推进上海市国际物流业发展和融合的基本思路。     

Coloured semantic networks for content analysis

This paper adapts a widespread formalism of Knowledge Representation known in the AI literature as J. Sowa'sConceptual Graphs to the purposes of Content Analysis. It is proposed that instead of nested contexts, negation and modalities could be represented by colouring the links and the nodes of the graphs. This colour-based representation of logic enables the replacement of Sowa's game-theoretical semantics by a matching algorithm. It is also claimed that the resulting local application of negation and modalities is close to the behaviour of negation and adverbs in natural language. Above all, the use of colours restores a unique level in semantic networks. These flat semantic networks are appealing to social scientists because they avoid information redundancy and improve connectivity in the network. Two methods of textual analysis that can take direct benefit from semantic networks (semantic paths distributions and texts clustering) are presented. However, flat semantic networks that remain semantically correct are perhaps even more interesting because they may bridge standard networks with connectionnist networks. In such a perspective, Coloured Conceptual Graphs represent an intermediate but promising step.     

Expatriate compensation and its link to the subsidiary strategic role: a theoretical analysis

This paper focuses on the strategic design of expatriates' salaries. Unlike standard expatriation literature that assumes a lack of connection between strategy and international managers' compensation, we use the theoretical concepts from the international strategic management research to discuss how different international strategies affect the way expatriates are compensated. In this respect, the paper proposes a series of hypotheses on how expatriate compensation systems take shape according to the role that the expatriates may play in the internationalization process. The hypotheses refer to the type of incentives offered to encourage acceptance of the assignment, the type of criteria used to evaluate their performance and the reference unit used to establish variable compensation.     

Dynamic stochastic analysis of the farm subsidy-efficiency link: evidence from France

The existing literature on the subsidy-efficiency nexus is almost exclusively based on static modelling and thus ignores the inter-temporal nature of production decisions. The present paper contributes to this literature by developing a dynamic stochastic frontier model, which is then estimated using a sample of French farms over the period 1992–2011. For comparison purposes, the static counterpart of the dynamic model is also estimated. The results indicate that, in the dynamic case as well as in the static one, public subsidies are negatively associated with farm technical efficiency. Nevertheless, these linkages are found to be weak, and they are much weaker when dynamic aspects are taken into account.     

国际大都市服务业结构与功能特征

在信息技术革命及全球经济服务化的背景下,国际大都市服务业快速发展,服务业内部结构变化及特征出现了新的特点.在分析国际大都市1990-2000年间服务业就业结构变化的基础上,总结出不同层次国际大都市服务业的结构特征;结合国内外相关研究,概括了国际大都市的主要功能特征及未来的发展趋势.     

价值链会计的计量及主要内容探析

本文对价值链管理进行了探索,认为价值链会计的核心是增值链,然后在此基础上,提出了价值链会计的计量和主要内容。     

Integrated analysis of content and construct validity of psychometric instruments

Establishing adequacy of psychometric properties of an instrument involves acquisition and evaluation of evidence based on item content and internal structure. Content validity evidence consists of subject matter experts providing quantitative ratings of the extent to which items are a representative sample of targeted domain. Evidence of internal structure includes factor analytic studies and examination of item interrelationships based on item responses from participants. Although subject matter expert ratings and participant response data are traditionally analyzed separately, each serves to inform the other in important ways. We propose integrating subject matter experts’ and participants’ data seamlessly to establish a unified model of validity evidence. The approach is applied to an instrument designed to measure nursing home culture change (i.e., resident-centered care). The proposed method has been demonstrated to be useful with a posterior distribution resulting in stable estimates of psychometric parameters superior to traditional analytic approaches. To illustrate the efficacy of the methodology, we present a simulation study and discuss its place in psychometric methods.     

Structural analysis of international trade: Environmental impacts of Norway

Final demand purchases initiate production processes that ultimately lead to environmental impacts. With the increase in international trade, many production processes occur outside of the country of final consumption. Whilst several studies have evaluated the pollution embodied in consumption and trade flows, few studies have investigated the structural linkages between domestic consumption and production in foreign regions. In this article we apply three complementary approaches to study the production network leading from the Norwegian economy to domestic and international environmental impacts: (1) the consumption perspective identifies final demand purchases that produce environmental impacts; (2) the production perspective identifies the production processes generating the pollution for a given demand; and (3) structural path analysis is used to provide the linkages between the global production networks linking consumption and production. We find that the three approaches provide different, but complementary information. For policy to focus on both sustainable consumption and production, all three approaches are required to fully identify environmentally important sectors in an economy.     

Trends in international commodity prices: Panel unit root analysis

The purpose of this paper is to examine the behavior of international commodity prices within the context of the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis. To this end, I utilize a panel unit root approach which is able to account for multiple structural breaks and cross-section dependency. The unit root analysis for 24 international commodity prices during the period 1900–2003 shows evidence in favor of the trend stationary process in the commodity prices. The results thereby imply that shocks to commodity prices are temporary in nature and tend to be corrected over time. The estimation of the trend stationary models indicates that the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis is not a universal phenomenon.     

Classification of countries for international development planning using cluster analysis

This research study proposes an objective, systematic and multidimensional approach, which makes use of cluster analysis algorithms and complementary statistical techniques, to determine distinct classification or grouping of countries based on as many development indicators as thought relevant. The choice of development indicators to be included as variables is dictated by the interests of the development agency, which in this study is the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).The results of the analysis suggest that there are five distinct groups of countries in the ESCAP region, rather than just three, known as developed, developing and least developed countries in ESCAP and other U.N. agencies. In both classifications, the developed countries and the least developed countries form distinct groups. However, the classification derived by cluster analysis refines the broad middle group of developing countries further into three; one group already closely similar to the developed group in many aspects, another group relatively nearer to the least developed group, and one group lying right in the middle of the middle layer. The analysis also directs attentions to possible misconceptions that could result from an assessment of developing countries based on just a few development indicators.     

国际货运代理企业法律地位与责任的分析

随着物流经济的快速发展,国际货运代理业务的服务范围不断拓宽,其身份由最初的收发货人代理发展到目前的第三方物流供应商。由于身份的转变,其法律责任也发生了变化。本文就国际货运代理企业在转型中的法律地位与责任问题进行了分析研究。     

比率税制下的乘数:理论推导和探讨

目前国内权威版本的《宏观经济学》教材,对三部门经济中比率税制的各种乘数的推导和论述存在相互矛盾的结果。本文基于宏观经济学的基本原理,运用数学模型推导了三部门经济中比率税的各种乘数,得出真正的平衡预算乘数恒等于1的结论。