How (Over) Confident Are Financial Analysts?

Extensive research has been devoted to the quality of analysts' earnings forecasts. The common finding is that analysts' forecasts are not very accurate. Prior studies have tended to focus on the mean of forecasts and measure accuracy using various summaries of forecast errors. The present study sheds new light on the accuracy of analysts' forecasts, by measuring how well calibrated these forecasts are. The authors follow the tradition of calibration studies in psychological literature and measure the degree of calibration by the hit rate. They analyze a year's worth of data from the Institutional Brokers Estimate System database, which includes over 200,000 annual earnings forecasts made by over 6,000 analysts for over 5,000 companies. By using different ways to convert analysts' point estimates of earnings into a range of values, the authors establish the bounds that are necessary to determine the hit rates, and examine to what extent the actual earnings announced by the companies are bracketed by these intervals. These hit rates provide a more complete picture of the accuracy of the forecasts.     

首席执行官(CEO)是领导者还是经理人?

关于首席执行官(CEO)的权力与义务一直是困惑中国企业所有者与经营者的问题。如何赋予CEO适当的权力,从而使CEO与所有者目标趋于一致成为这一问题的核心。而中国现实的问题是在法人主体缺位的情况下,CEO往往既充当所有者,又是经营者,这种权力与义务的"模糊"使CEO与所有者的目标难以一致。因此,无论从CEO还是从所有者,都对现行企业管理提出制度上的改革要求。笔者认为,CEO必须通过适当的组织制度来释放和化解这种由于法人主体缺位造成的压力,而建立"透明"的企业内部组织制度是CEO惟一的最佳选择。     

Section 401(k), 403(b) and 457(b) plans: who can do what?

This article examines the three main types of supplementary pension arrangements. It focuses on their origins and development, employer eligibility, deferral and contribution limits, funding arrangements and other technical requirements as they have been affected by recent developments.     

What (if any) are the returns to computer use?

Using North American data, we revisit the question first broached by Krueger (1993 Krueger, AB. 1993. How computers have changed the wage structure: evidence from microdata. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108: 33–60. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and re-examined by DiNardo and Pischke (1997 DiNardo, JE and Pischke, J-S. 1997. The returns to computer use revisited: have pencils changed the wage structure too?. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112: 291–303. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) of whether there exists a real wage differential associated with computer use. Employing a mixed effects model with matched employer–employee data to correct for the fact that workers and workplaces that use computers are self-selected, we find that computer users enjoy an almost 4% wage premium over nonusers. Failure to correct for worker and workplace selection effect leads to a more than twofold overestimate of this premium.     

Who Dares to Care? (In the World of Finance)

This study argues that gendered barriers to care are limiting the progress of socially responsible investment (SRI). Anchored within the world of finance – an industry predicated on mathematical theorizing, neoclassical economic thought, and omission of relational values – the inclusion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting, a commonly used term for nonfinancial information in SRI, in investment decision making confronts several barriers. One such barrier concerns care: who cares for what, and where. In an environment where an atomistic-individualistic ontology dominates, and a relational-values ontology is omitted, the study investigates the possibilities for ESG to have a wider uptake. It considers the changes required to align the inherently relational aspect of care within a culture of economic reasoning reliant on the exclusion of care. It concludes with suggestions for how a relational caring perspective can be incorporated to accommodate and encourage SRI in the world of financial management.     

我是谁?珠三角必须回答的问题(下篇)

我是谁 王志刚:作为一个广东籍的学者,能够看出这么深刻的问题不容易.15年前我就对广东说了一句话,广东人敏于行而拙于思,广东人动手快,讲求落袋为安.往好里说这叫实干,没有形而上的约束,而且就近有香港为师,香港怎么整咱们怎么整,不就完了嘛.但是刚才你这个问题说到了点子上.本来,中央说放开福建和广东,结果广东成功了,福建没有成功,这其中有很多客观原因,但是其中有一个很重要的原因就是受中原文化的约束比较少,敏于行嘛.     

我是谁?珠三角必须回答的问题(下篇)

我是谁 　　王志刚:作为一个广东籍的学者,能够看出这么深刻的问题不容易.15年前我就对广东说了一句话,广东人敏于行而拙于思,广东人动手快,讲求落袋为安.往好里说这叫实干,没有形而上的约束,而且就近有香港为师,香港怎么整咱们怎么整,不就完了嘛.但是刚才你这个问题说到了点子上.本来,中央说放开福建和广东,结果广东成功了,福建没有成功,这其中有很多客观原因,但是其中有一个很重要的原因就是受中原文化的约束比较少,敏于行嘛.……     

The risk elicitation puzzle revisited: Across-methods (in)consistency?

Experimental Economics - With the rise of experimental research in the social sciences, numerous methods to elicit and classify people’s risk attitudes in the laboratory have evolved....     

Does democracy cause growth? A meta-analysis (of 2000 regressions)

The relationship between democracy and economic growth has been widely debated in the social sciences with contrasting results. We apply a meta-analytical framework surveying 188 studies (2047 models) covering 36 years of research in the field. We also compare the effect of democracy on growth with the effect of human capital on growth in a sub-sample of 111 studies (875 models). Our findings suggest that democracy has a positive and direct effect on economic growth beyond the reach of publication bias, albeit weaker (about one third) of that of human capital. Further, the growth effect of democracy appears to be stronger in more recent papers not surveyed in Doucouliagos and Ulubaşoğlu (2008). Finally, we show that the heterogeneity in the reported results is mainly driven by spatial and temporal differences in the samples, indicating that the democracy and growth nexus is not homogeneous across world regions and decades.     

Old (Chicago) school,new century: the link between Knight and Simons’ Chicago plan to Buchanan’s constitutional money

James Buchanan had long been a champion of the early Chicago school’s emphasis on the essential role that institutions play in framing the market process. In his post-2009 analysis of the financial crisis, Buchanan echoed his old Chicago mentors like Frank Knight and Henry Simons in arguing that the Great Recession, like all previous financial crises, was primarily a failure of the rules governing our monetary-financial system. This “old Chicago” emphasis on the institutional “rules of the game” formed the basis of his essential post-2009 argument that the financial crisis fundamentally represented not a market failure, per say, but a constitutional failure. In this paper, I connect the dots in Buchanan’s post-2009 analysis of the Great Recession and his reaffirmation of the need for “constitutional money” to his old Chicago mentor’s strikingly similar calls for a radical restructuring of the monetary-financial system in the Chicago Plan of the 1930s. Though Buchanan’s twenty-first century resurrection of these ideas has yet to conjure up the academic support of his predecessors, certain elements of his “old school” monetary-financial reforms have experienced a strong revival since the financial crisis, as has Buchanan’s more general call to “constitutionalize money.”     

EASY MONEY OR HARD TIMES? HEALTH AND 401(k) LOANS

Rising health care costs and declining personal savings rates are nearly synonymous with household medical debt. For some, defined contribution (DC) retirement savings plans provide a ready source of funds to meet these medical debts. We examine whether health status and health insurance coverage predict the likelihood of having a DC loan using data from the Federal Reserve's triennial Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) from 1989 to 2007. We find that poor health raises the likelihood that a household will borrow from their DC plans, even controlling for other forms of debt, access to credit, and whether households are covered by health insurance. Our estimates of the amount of the DC loan, taking selection effects into account, indicate that DC loan amounts are also influenced by health status; those with poor health borrow more from their DC plans. Apart from health status, once a household decides to borrow from their retirement funds, race and education also influence how much to borrow. We argue that public policy can improve the long‐term financial retirement security of households by offering more opportunities to save for medical emergencies, while cautiously maintaining the opportunity to borrow from DC plans. (JEL D12, D14, D91)     

中国经济增长(1978-2015):灵感还是汗水?

本文采用中国31个省区市1978—2015年面板数据,基于空间计量模型和增长核算法,测算了市场潜能、资本、劳动力和全要素生产率对经济增长的贡献率。结果表明:1978—2015年间,资本对经济增长的贡献率最高(34.86%),市场潜能次之(34.55%),再次是TFP(22.03%),最低是劳动力(8.56%)。根据"克鲁格曼质疑"的界定,对中国"增长奇迹"贡献率最大的是"灵感"因素,贡献率为61.93%,"汗水"因素的贡献率为38.07%。改革开放之初的1978—1989年,中国经济增长确实主要依赖于"汗水",其贡献率达62.03%。但"汗水"的贡献率随着时间推移不断下降,1990—2000年为52.41%,2001—2015年快速下降到21.93%,而"灵感"的贡献率开始占主导地位,达78.07%。就区域差异看,经济发达地区的经济增长更依赖于"灵感",欠发达地区更依赖于"汗水"。本文的核心结论是:1978年以来中国创造"增长奇迹"是高投入增长和高效率增长共同作用的结果,依赖于"汗水"与"灵感"的双轮驱动,且越来越依赖于"灵感"。该结论并不支持"克鲁格曼质疑",且认为由于技术进步、人力资本提升、制度改革和市场化推进导致的资源和商品在区域间的优化配置等"灵感"因素的增强,中国经济增长是可持续的。     

The “Treasury View”: An (un-)expected return?

Abstract

By examining the rhetorical use of an old piece of economic theory by some contemporary economists, this paper intends to report on “how today's economists conduct a public policy debate”. This paper is neither a scholarly history of the interwar debate nor a sophisticated critique of current economic policy. It is an attempt to link the policy and theoretical arguments of two similar debates separated by nearly 80 years. The second part of the paper demonstrates that the (un-)expected return of the Treasury View is a case study illustrating two very different modelling strategies.     

中国替代了其他亚洲国家(地区)的出口吗?

本文运用引力模型检验了1990—2003年间中国的出口增长是否以及如何替代了其他亚洲国家对第三方市场的出口。中国的出口可以狭义的界定为不包括香港的出口,也可以广义地界定为包括香港的出口。文章考查了中国狭义的出口和广义的出口对亚洲出口的替代效应是否存在差异,并做了总体及分解分析。然后,考查了不同亚洲国家及不同贸易伙伴的替代效应的不同。研究发现:在发达国家市场上以及将中国大陆与香港加总考虑时,替代效应更为显著。另外,中国对高收入国家的替代效应要更大。文章也考查了中国的发展所引起的从邻国的进口增加是否会产生抵消效应,发现:中国的经济增长确实增加了从所抽样的亚洲国家的进口,特别是从日本和韩国的进口。     

IS THERE A (DOWNWARD SLOPING) DEMAND CURVE FOR VOLUNTEER LABOUR?

ABSTRACT * * I would like to thank the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy and the Irwin Foundation for financial support for my dissertation, which led to many of the ideas contained in this paper, as well as my dissertation advisors at Boston College. I would also like to thank my colleagues at John Carroll University and at the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Case Western Reserve University, for their advice and comments on previous versions of this paper. All errors, however, remain my own responsibility.
: Are organizations that use volunteers content to accept all of the volunteer labour offered to them, or do they make some sort of demand-side decision as to how much volunteer labour to use? This paper looks for evidence of such a demand curve for volunteer labour in data collected by the Urban Institute in the early 1980s. Evidence is found that organizations are consistent over time in their use of volunteer labour.     

(How) Do research and administrative duties affect university professors’ teaching?

We analyse the interaction between university professors’ teaching quality and their research and administrative activities. Our sample is a high-quality individual panel data set from a medium-size public Spanish university that allows us to avoid several types of biases frequently encountered in the literature. Although researchers teach roughly 20% more than nonresearchers, their teaching quality is also 20% higher. Instructors with no research are 5 times more likely than the rest to be among the worst teachers. Over much of the relevant range, we find a nonlinear and positive relationship between research output and teaching quantity on teaching quality. Our conclusions may be useful for decision-makers in universities and governments.