Estimating Outage Costs in China: A Modified Tobit Model

The electric power shortages in China the period from 2002 to 2007 had pervasive effects. How to measure the economic costs of power shortages becomes one of the central questions of interest to regulators, industrial users, and investors. The current study estimates the objective outage costs to industrial users using an adjusted Tobit model and survey data on 812 firms in six provinces in China during 2002–5. Empirical results show that objective outage costs are higher than the willingness to pay to avoid outages, but are lower than the willingness to accept to accept outages, implying that firms are loss averse.     

The Impact of Economic Shocks in the Rest of the World on South Africa: Evidence from a Global VAR

The substantial change in South Africa’s trade patterns over the past two decades has affected the impact of economic shocks in major world economies on South Africa. To investigate the effect, we use a global vector autoregression (GVAR) model with time-varying trade weights to account for changing international trade linkages. We show that the long-term impact of a shock to Chinese GDP on South African GDP is much stronger in 2009 than in 1995, due to the substantial increase in South Africa’s trade with China since the mid-1990s. At the same time, the importance of the U.S. economy to South Africa diminished considerably. The results indicate one of the possible reasons why the recent global crisis did not affect South Africa as much as it affected developed economies. It also stresses the increased risk, to the South African and other economies, should China experience slower GDP growth.     

南非:税收与公司法律的变化

考虑到1999年7月2日的大选,南非政府在预算和税法方面引入了极少的一些变化.在税收方面唯一的一项实质性的变化是公司税率由35%降低到30%.然而在公司法方面的变化却是意义深远的,其中包括一项允许公司买卖自已股票的修订,也有一些其他方面的修订如增加公司股东和董事薪金方面的透明度.     

The Validity of the Economic Value Added Approach: an Empirical Application

This study investigates the relative explanatory power of the Economic Value Added (EVA) model with respect to stock returns and firms' market value, compared to established accounting variables (e.g. net income, operating income), in the context of a small European developing market, namely the Athens Stock Exchange, in its first market‐wide application of the EVA measure. Relative information content tests reveal that net and operating income appear to be more value relevant than EVA. Additionally, incremental information tests suggest that EVA unique components add only marginally to the information content of accounting profit. Moreover, EVA does not appear to have a stronger correlation with firms' Market Value Added than the other variables, suggesting that – for our Greek dataset – EVA, even though useful as a performance evaluation tool, need not necessarily be more correlated with shareholder's value than established accounting variables.     

Public Sector Transformation and Ethics: A View from South Africa

This article describes the change processes the Government of National Unity adopted after the 1994 elections in order to transform the South African public service. It shows that the Government is faced with a number of problems (reasons for change) some of which emanate from the legacy of the apartheid past and others from the current situation. Further, the article looks at the vision, mission and objectives set by the Government for the transformation process, while the current change policies and programmes are also highlighted. Finally, the article explores how the Government is dealing with the ethical issues arising from the transformation.     

关于运用经济资本分析方法推进农业银行业务增长方式转变的调研报告

经济资本已不再是虚拟的资本概念，而是具有实际操作性、覆盖范围极其广泛的管理指标，这一管理指标正自上而下渗透到基层。为了切实了解经济资本在基层行的实施情况，本文通过对襄樊分行经济资本占用情况的实地调查，认真分析了实施经济资本管理以来对业务经营产生的影响及存在的问题和难点，并就二级分行如何运用经济资本管理方法推进业务增长方式转变提出了针对性建议。     

经济增加值估价模型在证券投资分析中的应用

在证券投资分析中，充分利用现有财务报告中有关企业当前与未来的有价值信息，构造EVA估价模型，符合价值创造角度的思想。根据财务报表中存在的重要财务数据与企业价值的确定关系，通过对EVA进行分解，得到下一层指标Roc，通过Roc这个中间渠道，可从已知过去的EVA数据，推算出预测期EVA的数据，逐步解决“会计信息怎样从价值层面帮助投资者进行投资”这一重要问题。     

The Really Long-Run Performance of Initial Public Offerings: The Pre-Nasdaq Evidence

Financial economists have intensely debated the performance of IPOs using data after the formation of Nasdaq. This paper sheds light on this controversy by undertaking a large, out‐of‐sample study: We examine the performance for five years after listing of 3,661 U.S. IPOs from 1935 to 1972. The sample displays some underperformance when event‐time buy‐and‐hold abnormal returns are used. The underperformance disappears, however, when cumulative abnormal returns are utilized. A calendar‐time analysis shows that over the entire period, IPOs return as much as the market. The intercepts in CAPM and Fama–French regressions are insignificantly different from zero, suggesting no abnormal performance.