The decomposition of US and Euro area stock and bond returns and their sensitivity to economic state variables

This paper decomposes US and Euro area excess stock and bond return innovations into news factors using the Campbell–Schiller methodology. The results indicate that stock return volatility is mostly due to volatility of future excess return news. Inflation news plays a minor role although it is significantly correlated with excess return innovations. For the bond market too, it is future return news—not inflation news—that moves bond returns most. For finite investment horizons, however, asset market movements give a differential importance to the various news components. Results are comparable for the US and the Euro area, but differ in terms of magnitudes. In addition, sensitivities (‘betas’) to a set of state variables are estimated, yielding high interest rate betas and low money growth betas. Generally, inflation, unemployment and leading indicator betas are significant. Asset market exposures to oil and exchange rate changes are more significant for the Euro area than in the US.     

Some thoughts on social and environmental accounting education

Although there are probably more academics interested in the social and environmental dimensions of accounting than previously, there is still relatively little discussion of curricular and pedagogical issues in this branch of the accounting domain. This paper attempts to raise the structure of social and/or environmental dimensions within accounting education for debate. This is done by proposing the qualitative background to a social and environmental accounting course, and then suggesting curricular materials and assessment approaches that have been used in this area.     

Liquidity and Returns to Target Shareholders in the Market for Corporate Control: Evidence from the US Markets

In this paper we analyze how stock market liquidity affects the abnormal return to target firms in mergers and tender offers. We predict that target firms with poorer stock market liquidity receive larger announcement day abnormal returns based on the following considerations. First, target firms with poorer stock market liquidity receive greater liquidity improvements after a merger or tender offer. Second, deals that involve less liquid targets are less anticipated and/or more likely to be completed. Third, less liquid stocks have more diverse reservation prices across shareholders and thus require a higher takeover return. Consistent with these expectations, we show that abnormal returns to target firms’ shareholders are significantly and positively related to the difference in liquidity (measured by the bid‐ask spread) between acquirers and targets as well as the magnitude of target firms’ liquidity improvement.     

日本介护从业者工资影响因素分析

本文利用日本介护劳动安定中心实施的2012年介护劳动实态调查中的劳动者调查样本数据,尝试对影响介护从业者工资的因素进行分析。其中,着重对学历、资格的取得、入职后的研修与工资的关系进行了讨论。在学历方面,把学历细分为6个等级(分别为是否为福祉相关专业的高中毕业、大专毕业、大学及以上学历毕业)。观察出大学及以上学历毕业具有学历溢价表现。在资格的取得方面,把资格细分为11个种类,但正规就业与灵活就业的表现有所不同。正规就业中,介护福祉士、访问介护员1级资格的取得与工资有着密切关系。灵活就业中,介护支援专员、护士、理疗师资格更为重要。在入职后的研修方面,无论是正规就业还是灵活就业都表现出了研修的重要性。     

Effects of exposure to the International Education Standards on perceived importance of the global harmonization of accounting education among Japanese accounting academics

This exploratory study empirically examines the degree to which the Japanese accounting academics is exposed to the IESs and explores their perception of the importance of global harmonization in accounting education in terms of ensuring quality global control of the accounting profession. Responses from 76 questionnaires found that accounting staff, particularly in the post graduate Accounting Schools, have a basic understanding of the IESs and view this global harmonization as favorable whereas staff who teach at undergraduate level or at ordinal postgraduate level in tertiary schools have a much lower understanding and perception. This is of concern to the accounting profession as it is in these undergraduate schools and ordinal postgraduate schools from where the majority of successful CPA examinees graduate each year. The findings also indicated that the IESs can be effectively used as a benchmarking tool within the Japanese accounting academics.     

On the consequences of state dependent preferences for the pricing of financial assets

This paper introduces state dependent utility into the standard Mehra and Prescott [J. Monet. Econ. 15 (1985) 145] economy by allowing the representative agent's coefficient of relative risk aversion to vary with the underlying economy's growth rate. Existence of equilibrium is proved and its asymptotic properties analyzed. This generalization leads to level dependent marginal rates of substitution, a property that sharply distinguishes this model from the standard construct. For very low coefficients of relative risk aversion, the equilibrium risk free and risky security returns are demonstrated to have volatilities and an associated equity premium that substantially exceed what is found in the data. This provides a contrasting perspective on the classic “equity premium puzzle.”     

A case for taxing education

In this paper we establish, contrary to conventional wisdom, a case for taxing education, as a supplement to the labor income tax, by drawing on some informational feature of education, which the government may utilize. Discretionary decisions of individuals to acquire education may serve as an additional signal (to earned labor income) on the underlying unobserved innate earning ability, thereby mitigating the informational constraint faced by the government. JEL Classification H2 · D6     

Colonising the future: Mega-trade deals,education services and global higher education markets

This paper explores a less well-examined aspect of time in relation to higher education and the academy; that of ‘time-future’. The paper takes the case of education trade strategies being pursued by governments and allied agencies, and explores the multiple ways in which time-future is mobilised. Drawing on trade documents, government statistics, and related reports, the paper points to two time-future dynamics at work. The first dynamic focuses on the ways in which the future is imagined by strategic actors, and legitimated through creating equivalences between education trade, economic growth and prosperity. The second dynamic explores the ways in which the current round of global and regional trade negotiations colonise the future as a political resource. I reflect on how time-future is a key resource and modality of power to be claimed and cognitively shaped so as to reorient actor’s expectations towards the rhythms and demands of capitalism, and away from the temporal orders of the academy. However, efforts to commodify higher education, on the one hand, and colonise higher education futures exclusively to serve the interests of economic investors, on the other, continues to be contested. As a result, a new temporal order is yet to become common-sense, and an existing order is yet to die.     

中国保险费率管理制度的变迁与改革

自国内保险业恢复发展以来,费率管理就作为一项重要的保险管理制度确立起来。随着保险业发展情况的变化和政府对金融业管理体制的调整,中国保险业费率管理制度先后经历了分散的指导性管理、严格的集中统一管理和市场化管理三个发展阶段,并正在向更加全面的费率市场化管理迈进。梳理和回顾这一变迁过程的诱因和成果,对于继续推进保险费率市场化改革意义重大。     

On the optimal provision of social insurance: Progressive taxation versus education subsidies in general equilibrium

In this paper we compute the optimal tax and education policy transition in an economy where progressive taxes provide social insurance against idiosyncratic wage risk, but distort the education decision of households. Optimally chosen tertiary education subsidies mitigate these distortions. We highlight the quantitative importance of general equilibrium feedback effects from policies to relative wages of skilled and unskilled workers: subsidizing higher education increases the share of workers with a college degree thereby reducing the college wage premium which has important redistributive benefits. We also argue that a full characterization of the transition path is crucial for policy evaluation. We find that optimal education policies are always characterized by generous tuition subsidies, but the optimal degree of income tax progressivity depends crucially on whether transitional costs of policies are explicitly taken into account and how strongly the college premium responds to policy changes in general equilibrium.     

Tax education in the UK: a survey of tax courses in undergraduate accounting degrees

This paper presents the results of a postal survey designed to examine the teaching of taxation in UK universities. The project looks at taxation in undergraduate accounting degree programmes and adopts an objective centred focus. The principal aim of the survey was to examine the relationships between some characteristics of individual tax courses, including the course objectives and coverage, staffing, teaching and assessment methods, in an attempt to draw some conclusions on the nature of tax education in UK accounting degrees. The results of the survey and consequent analysis may provide taxation and accounting educators, professional bodies and researchers into accounting education with an insight into approaches to, and methods used in, taxation teaching. It may also present a framework for comparative international research in tax education.     

The evolution of futures in school education

School education seems to be mostly stuck in an outdated industrial era worldview, unable to sufficiently address the significance and increasing rapidity of changes to humanity that are upon us. An integrated forward-looking view should, now more than ever, be of central importance in how we educate. Yet there is little sign that—unlike corporations—school systems are recognising the true value of futures studies. A brief history of futures in school education shows the significant role played by the World Futures Studies Federation in its evolution to date. The article also introduces integral analysis as a way of opening up new possibilities to help school education develop due foresight and to more fully realise its potential as a prime facilitator in individual and cultural evolution.     

省域科技资源配置状况评价——以湖南省"两型社会"建设中的科技配置为例

通过借助SPSS统计软件,采用聚类分析、相关分析、因子分析等统计方法,以湖南为例,对省域地级市的科技资源配置状况进行分析评价,反映出我国省域科技支撑体系的构建离两型社会建设的要求存在一定的差距,在以城市为核心的一定省域空间范围内,科技资源配置综合状况存在明显的区际差异,区际科技资源优化共享与协调利用机制有待创新性改进;同时科技资源的区际差异性、多样性也反映出省域科技资源存在相当的开发潜力,按照两型社会建设的要求,选择、配置、利用好省域科技资源,提升整体科技实力是实现省域经济转型的必要途径。     

Market power and price discrimination in the US market for higher education

We estimate an equilibrium model of private and state college competition that generates realistic pricing patterns for private colleges using a large national data set from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). Our analysis distinguishes between tuition variation that reflects efficient pricing to students who generate beneficial peer externalities and variation that reflects arguably inefficient exercise of market power. Our findings indicate substantial exercise of market power and, importantly, sizable variation in this power along the college quality hierarchy and among students with different characteristics. Finally, we conduct policy analysis to examine the consequences of increased availability of quality public colleges in a state.     

Decomposing the VIX: Implications for the predictability of stock returns

The VIX index is not only a volatility index but also a polynomial combination of all possible higher moments in market return distribution under the risk-neutral measure. This paper formulates the VIX as a linear decomposition of four fundamentally different elements: the realized variance (RV), the variance risk premium (VRP), the realized tail (RT), and the tail risk premium (TRP), respectively. Using an innovative and nonparametric tail risk measure, we find that approximately one-third of the VIX's formation is attributed to the TRP. In addition to VRP, RT and TRP are crucial components for predicting future returns on equity portfolios.     

A survey of international accounting education in the US and some other countries

This study compares the extent of coverage and methods employed by US and non-US business schools to internationalize the accounting curriculum. Using a survey methodology, the study comparatively explores: (1) approaches to internationalize the accounting curriculum: separate course vs integration; (2) relative importance of international accounting topics; (3) strategies and obstacles to implement the integration approach to internationalization; and (4) the level of satisfaction with the internationalization achieved. The findings of the study should benefit both schools currently involved in internationalizing their accounting curriculum as well as those planning to internationalize their programs in the future.     

Global contagion of market sentiment during the US subprime crisis

This paper investigates how global market sentiment propagates among the markets and how the interdependency through the propagation changes during the course of the US subprime crisis. We adopt a bivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model, and use a sample of eight global markets: Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, UK, and the Eurozone in our investigation. Our results identify that: (1) a long-run equilibrium relationship existed between market sentiment in the US and other major global markets during the subprime crisis period; (2) a global contagion of market sentiment occurred from the US market on September 15, 2008 to Japan, Korea, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, and the Eurozone; and (3) the major global markets are all interrelated.     

银行信用评估模型效果的量化比较

信用评估模型能有效提高信用评估过程的科学性与结果的准确性.本文围绕主流信用评估模型在性能方面的差异化特征,基于德国信贷数据集、我国个人经营贷数据集与小微企业贷数据集,从六个模型性能评价维度对十二个代表性信用评估模型的拟合能力与泛化能力进行了深入研究.研究发现:(1)逻辑回归模型的总体性能最为优异,其次为判别分析、反向传播神经网络模型,其中逻辑回归模型与反向传播神经网络模型更适用于我国信贷场景;(2)基于无监督学习理论的自组织特征映射神经网络和k均值聚类模型,以及基于惰性学习理论的k最近邻模型的泛化能力较弱,表明各类有监督式主动学习模型更适用于解决信用评估问题;(3)模型理论与结构的复杂性并不必然能够使其在特定应用场景下获得较优的性能评价,结构简单、可解释性更强的模型往往稳健性更好.     

我国开放式基金绩效及选股和择时能力研究

近年来,开放式基金逐渐成为我国基金市场的绝对主体。开放式基金能否取得较好的绩效受到市场的普遍关注。本文选取了资金管理规模前20位的公司,并从中随机挑选1只基金,运用詹森指数、特雷诺比率、夏普指数和信息比率等单因素模型和Fama-French三因素模型对开放式基金的绩效进行分析,并使用T-M模型、H-M模型、C-L模型对基金经理人股票选股与择时能力进行分析。结果发现:第一,我国开放式基金经理的选股能力存在时变性,在上升期具备选股能力,在下跌期不具备选股能力,而无论是在上升期还是下跌期,基金经理普遍不具备择时能力。第二,在市场上升期基金经理比较注意对风险的把控,系统性风险较小,而在下跌期基金投资组合的系统性风险明显上升,基金经理冒险意愿上升,当市场出现大幅度下跌时,其不理性行为会加剧市场的波动。本文的研究结论有利于提升投资者的风险意识和理性意识、促进外部监管部门的精准监管审查,并能够激励基金经理人提高自身风险管控的能力。     

Disagreement and return predictability of stock portfolios

This paper provides evidence that portfolio disagreement measured bottom-up from individual-stock analyst forecast dispersions has a number of asset pricing implications. For the market portfolio, market disagreement mean-reverts and is negatively related to ex post expected market return. Contemporaneously, an increase in market disagreement manifests as a drop in discount rate. For book-to-market sorted portfolios, the value premium is stronger among high disagreement stocks. The underperformance by high disagreement stocks is stronger among growth stocks. Growth stocks are more sensitive to variations in disagreement relative to value stocks. These findings are consistent with asset pricing theory incorporating belief dispersion.