Crashing into the future

The title of this paper, Crashing into the Future, references a conception of technology as containing its own future demise. It is a conception of the future as accident or discontinuous. We find this in J.G. Ballard's novel Crash (1973), in many of David Cronenberg's early films of the seventies, and more recently in his film adaptation of Crash (1996). This paper focuses on Crash (both the novel and the film) in terms of the way the future is pathologized through the car, and, in particular, how the car crash foregrounds temporality in a manner that is traumatic.     

Optimal Release of Information By Firms

This paper provides a positive theory of voluntary disclosure by firms. Previous theoretical work on disclosure of new information by firms has demonstrated that releasing public information will often make all shareholders worse off, due to an adverse risk-sharing effect. This paper uses a general equilibrium model with endogenous information collection to demonstrate that there exists a policy of disclosure of information which makes all shareholders better off than a policy of no disclosure. The welfare improvement occurs because of explicit information cost savings and improved risk sharing. This provides a positive theory of precommitment to disclosure, because it will be unanimously voted for by stockholders and will also represent the policy that will maximize value ex ante. In addition, it provides a “missing link” in financial signalling models. Apart from the effects on information production analyzed in this paper, most existing financial signalling models are inconsistent with a firm taking actions which facilitate future signalling because release of the signal makes all investors worse off.     

Genetic risk information

Risk information and communication of health risks play a large role in medicine. With the growing importance of genetics and genomics in medicine, the importance of risk communication will even increase in the future. This paper starts with a discussion on the concept of medical risk information and then focusses on genetic risk information. Three examples of genetic risk information are discussed (carrier testing, susceptibility testing and pharmacogenomics testing) in order to exemplify the broad variety of types of risk information and their specific challenges for medical counselling.     

Evidence on the use of unverifiable estimates in required goodwill impairment

SFAS 142 requires managers to estimate the current fair value of goodwill to determine goodwill write-offs. In promulgating the standard, the FASB predicted that managers will, on average, use the fair-value estimates to convey private information on future cash flows. The current fair value of goodwill is unverifiable because it depends in part on management??s future actions (including managers?? conceptualization and implementation of firm strategy). Agency theory predicts managers will, on average, use the unverifiable discretion in SFAS 142 consistent with private incentives. We test these hypotheses in a sample of firms with market indications of goodwill impairment. Our evidence, while consistent with some agency-theory based predictions, does not confirm the private information hypothesis.     

The future of the motorcar: Alternative scenarios

In contrast to conventional forecasts usually based on constant cost projections, the author considers the future of the motorcar as depending on dynamic changes in the pattern of costs and values related to private car ownership and use. The social, environmental, material and technological factors most influencing the future cost of motoring are analysed, and desirable policies are examined. The results are projected into two scenarios, high and low, of the future conditions for private motoring. The analysis is focused on the Netherlands, but is generally applicable to other Western European countries.     

Adverse selection in the used‐car market: evidence from purchase and repair patterns in the Consumer Expenditure Survey

We analyze adverse selection in the used‐car market using a new approach that considers a car as an assemblage of parts, some with symmetric information and others with asymmetric information. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and Consumer Reports, we examine turnover and repair patterns. We find evidence of adverse selection due to the conditions of the transmission, engine, and, during colder months, air‐conditioning; and sorting due to the conditions of the vehicle body and, during warmer months, air‐conditioning. Our quantification exercises indicate that adverse selection may have a meaningful effect on trade volume and quality in the secondhand market.     

信息不对称条件下银行业市场结构与市场竞争研究综述

将信息不对称理论纳入银行业市场竞争模型是当前跨经济学与金融学两个领域的热点问题。本文从理清产业组织理论中银行业市场结构与竞争和现代金融学中银行业信息不对称研究的发展脉络出发,对信息不对称与银行信息垄断和市场进入壁垒、信息不对称条件下银行的市场竞争行为等文献进行综述,评估银行业市场竞争程度的测量方法和实证分析结果。希望此综述对未来进一步的研究有所启示。     

From authenticity to significance: Tourism on the frontier of culture and place

The tourism of the future will include greater demand on the part of citizens of economically emerging nations, as well as on the part of a growing number of retirement age persons in many of the more developed countries. There are important environmental, cultural, and social consequences associated with these demographic shifts. Trendsetters for the tourism of the near future are likely to be well-educated elites who are familiar with travel and comfortable in culturally diverse situations. They will have an understanding of the consequences of global economic development, and will better realize that their participation in tourism comes with a cost to communities and environments through which they pass. They will see value in tourism experiences that support principles of environmental sustainability, heritage preservation and cultural diversity, and human equality. This generation of tourists will have greater choice of travel venues and access to considerably more information on which to base their travel plans, and they will be more likely to expect travel experiences that have breadth as well as depth and that provide opportunities for self-improvement as well as leisure and entertainment.     

Informed Trading When Information Becomes Stale

This paper characterizes informed trade when speculators can acquire distinct signals of varying quality about an asset's value at different dates. The most reasonable characterization of private information about stocks is that while information is long‐lived, new information will arrive over time, information that may be acquired by others. Hence, while a speculator may know more than others at a moment, in the future, his information will become stale, but not valueless. In an environment that allows for arbitrary correlations among signals, we characterize equilibrium outcomes including trading, prices, and profits. We provide explicit numerical characterizations for different informational environments.     

Finding diamonds in the rough: Analysts’ selective following of loss‐reporting firms

Investors face greater difficulty valuing loss‐reporting than profit‐reporting firms: losses may be due to very different reasons (e.g., poor operating performance or investments in intangibles, and financial accounting information is of more limited use for valuing loss‐making firms than profit‐making firms. Because of increased uncertainty about loss firms’ future financial and business viability, we hypothesize that financial analysts will be more selective when choosing to follow loss firms than profit firms, with the result that “abnormal” analyst following will be more informative to investors regarding the future performance of loss firms than profit firms. Consistent with this prediction, we find that abnormal analyst coverage is useful for predicting firms’ future prospects, and is more strongly associated with future performance (stock returns and ROA) for loss firms than for profit firms. The market, however, does not seem to use this useful information when pricing loss firms: for loss firms a portfolio investment strategy based upon abnormal analyst following can generate positive excess returns over 1‐ to 3‐year holding periods. These results are stronger for persistent‐loss firms than for occasional‐loss firms. We conclude that abnormal analyst following contains useful information about firms’ future prospects, and even more so for loss firms than for profit firms.     

将对未来的估计包含在今天的财务报表中

本文阐释了将对未来的估计包含在今天财务报表中的方式,而不是为什么应当将对未来的估计包含在今天财务报表中的问题。在今天的财务报表中包含对未来的估计并不是一个新概念,但用处却日益增加。这主要是因为会计准则制定机构认为,反映当前经济状况、并根据对未来的预期更新的对资产和负债的计量方式,将产生有利于做出经济决策的更为有用的信息,这正是财务报告的目标所在。这也是会计准则制定机构关注公允价值会计的原因。如何将对未来的估计包含在财务报表中,取决于资产和负债的计量属性,以及从财务报告角度对资产和负债的定义。现行资产和负债的定义取决于确定产生预期经济利益流入或流出的过去交易或事项,对于预期经济利益流入,还需要关注对预期的控制。因此,并不是所有预期经济利益的流入或流出都予以确认。附注披露能够帮助财务报表使用者理解已经在财务报表中确认的估计,并提供尚未确认估计的相关信息。将对未来的估计更多地包含在今天的财务报表中,将会产生与目前反映的收益有所不同的收益计量方式,但值得讨论的是,这种计量能够对经济决策提供更好的信息。     

Integrated Reporting: A Review of Developments and their Implications for the Accounting Curriculum

Integrated reporting (IR) is a major development in a number of sustainability-related accounting initiatives and, if widely adopted, will require significant developments in professional and university accounting curricula. These will include: a strategic rather than operational or transactional focus; longer- rather than short-term outlook; prospective rather than retrospective analysis; qualitative commentary as well as quantitative information; and reports on wider business performance metrics rather than on narrower external financial reporting data or audit compliance. This paper reports on ACCA's support of and response to the latest initiatives in IR, in particular the impact this will have on the education and training of accountants in order to reflect these new principles to prepare the twenty-first-century accountant for a much more challenging role in the near future. These developments can only be in the wider public interest of improving the relevance of information for decision-making, for all stakeholders, and allow greater efficiency in the allocation of financial and other resources and in adding public value.     

Financing and the demand for corporate insurance

In this paper we examine the insurance decision of a firm with private information regarding its cash flows and insurable losses. We show that, even in the absence of bankruptcy costs and information production by insurers, the firm's attempts to hedge its information risk can induce it to demand insurance. If higher operating revenues are accompanied by a lower insurance risk, the firm will choose to self-insure. In contrast, if higher operating revenues are accompanied by a higher insurance risk, the firm will demand insurance. In fact, if its insurable losses are relatively small, the firm will fully insure its losses. Further, if there exists considerable uncertainty regarding the firm's insurance risk, the level of coverage demanded by the firm is dependent on its private information, with higher levels of coverage signaling favorable information regarding the firm's future operations.     

Africa's dilemma in the transition to the new information and communication technologies

The emergence of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) has dramatically altered theoretical and practical assumptions about the role of the communication media in socioeconomic development. Today, the role of ICTs in developed and developing societies remains a subject of debate, and Africa has been caught in the middle of this debate. Advocates of ICTs, for instance, point to how the West experienced the impact of industrial technology and found it to be an indispensable tool for development. If the new technologies are good for the West, will the same hold true for the developing world? For Africa, the question is a difficult one: will the new information and communication technologies launch Africa on the path of socioeconomic development or will they subject Africa to a new form of dependence? This article argues that the communication technology which will be adopted by Africans, irrespective of how the West moves, will be the one that is easily accessible and which poses no challenge to sociocultural practices. That communication technology of the future will be the telephone.     

Informational society

The coming technology of automation, communications, and information processing, contributing to a new “social nervous system”, is discussed. The basic assumptions are that in the future, organisations will have no physical location and that man's primary activities will not be traditional work. The article suggests what this would mean for communities, economic organisations, government and the individual, and proposes a utopian institutional structure based on the stated technological assumptions.     

The Market's Differential Reactions to Forward-Looking and Backward-Looking Dividend Changes

Empirical evidence on the signaling hypothesis of dividends is weak and mixed. Recent studies find that dividend changes reflect mostly current and past earnings but not future earnings. We provide a model in which not all dividend changes contain new information about future earnings. Some dividend decisions are backward looking (noninformation or nonsignaling events). Other dividend decisions are forward looking (information or signaling events). The model helps identify the two types of dividend changes and predicts that the market will respond strongly only to forward‐looking dividend changes. We provide evidence consistent with the implications of the model.     

Applying the biological evolution metaphor to technological innovation

A synthetic theory of evolution is taken as representing the metaphor for the process of innovation. The model is employed to highlight major characteristics of changes in technological innovation and in the time phasing of industrial inventions and innovations. Analysis at the level of the industrial sector is used as a heuristic example of the metaphor, with a focus on innovations in the car industry. Forecasting future products is seen as related to materials requirements, primary human needs and the role of the service sectors.     

Value added tax non-compliance in the car market

We examine value added tax (VAT) non-compliance in the European Union (EU) car market. This issue is of paramount importance because of the loss of VAT revenue, the profound distortion of market mechanisms, and the dangerous variety of fraudulent schemes employed. In addition to the usual VAT fraudulent schemes on intra-community trade, the special regimes, and the different regulations for the sale of motor vehicles in the EU member states per se, favour non-compliance in the car market. Non-compliance also takes advantage of the lack of adequate and prompt information exchange among the tax administrations of different countries and, within each country, between the tax administrations and their departments responsible for motor vehicles. We highlight the fact that the current measures are insufficient to fight VAT non-compliance and that the new rules proposed in the ‘definitive VAT system’ are inadequate to control the proliferation of scams in the car market. Accordingly, we suggest more substantial measures: well-targeted and prompt cross-checks through archives and databases, and the monitoring of their effectiveness; electronic invoices; real-time exchanges of information between the different tax and transport authorities; and increased harmonisation of the special VAT schemes that aim to eliminate one of the most exploited opportunities for illicit gain, to the detriment of the EU member states.     

Information and the Cost of Capital in a Mean‐Variance Efficient Market

Before information ? arrives, market observers must be uncertain whether the stock price conditioned on ? will be higher or lower than the current price. Otherwise there is an obvious arbitrage opportunity. By assuming this minimal condition of efficient markets, it is shown under the mean‐variance CAPM that information that leaves the future value of a firm more certain, in the sense that its perceived covariance with the market is reduced towards zero, can lead to a higher expected return on that asset. A further result is that it is theoretically possible that the required return on the stock will necessarily fall after observing signal ?, or (in other circumstances) that it will necessarily rise. In general, information that allows better discrimination between firms leads some firms to have higher costs of capital and other firms to have lower costs of capital. Less obviously, better discrimination between firms can induce a higher average cost of capital across the market.     

Quantifying alternate futures of religion and religions

Writers on the future of religion are usually drawn to extreme portrayals of decline or revival of religion. However, the world’s religious situation is replete with detailed information, drawn from enormous data collections on religious affiliation and questions about religion in government censuses. Quantitative tools, utilizing this information in the context of demography—births, deaths, conversions, defections, immigration, and emigration, provide a more nuanced view of mankind’s religious future. Alternate futures of religious affiliation can be produced by extrapolating explicit assumptions related to these six areas. Demographic trends coupled with conservative estimates of conversions and defections envision over 80% of the world’s population will continue to be affiliated to religions 200 years into the future.