People is People

9月11日,为期两天的第二届中美消费品安全峰会差不多算是为一场妖魔化"中国制造"的闹剧落下了帷幕。会议期间,中美双方签署了《关于推进消费品安全的联合声明》,并宣布成立玩具、烟花、打火机、电器四个工作小组,旨在从设计、生产等源头确保中国输美产品的质量安全。     

How well is productivity being priced?

By understanding how productivity shocks affect firm value, an entrepreneur can better compute the risk premium associated with uncertainty in production. This study explores the link between plant-level productivity and firm value for the baking and confectionary sector. From the impulse response analysis, the study finds that there is a lag in the firm’s response to productivity shocks at the plant level. Further, the paper employs Tobin’s Q as a valuation metric that acts as a link between a firm’s manufacturing plant productivity and firm value. Empirical estimations indicate that there is comovement between firm valuation and plant level productivity.     

When is a move a migration?

"This paper extends the traditional theory of urban location to derive a consistent model of inter- and intra-regional mobility. It demonstrates that the two are behaviorally distinct. Workplace and residence relocations tend to be 'substitutes' in intra-regional mobility but are 'complements' in inter-regional mobility. Previous empirical papers have neglected the theoretical foundations of intra-regional mobility. In consequence, they have made four types of analytical compromises: defined 'migration' as any change in residence location, used job changes as proxies for workplace mobility, neglected commuting distances, and used estimation techniques that do not reveal the underlying behavior."     

How quickly is temporary market inefficiency removed?

I provide evidence on the length of time it takes for arbitrageurs to exploit attractive investment opportunities. A unique data set from the Internet sports betting market allows me to focus on the speed of investor response in an environment that is not affected by the joint hypothesis problem. The market does not instantly converge to an efficient level after mispricing occurs, but the adjustment process is rapid. Arbitrageurs remove many of these opportunities within minutes of them being created and the majority are gone within an hour. Arbitrage opportunities that are more difficult to find last for longer.     

How likely is a UK recession after Brexit?

• In the wake of the UK Brexit vote, forecasters have rushed to downgrade their growth forecasts for the UK, with some now expecting a recession. Using the Oxford Economics' Global Economic Model, we examine how likely a recession is by looking at the shocks the UK economy faces and the policy responses. We conclude that while a sharp slowdown is likely – in line with our own new forecasts – a recession is unlikely.
• Many UK forecasters are now predicting a recession in 2017, even though ‘stand‐alone’ recessions in industrial countries are rare. Our forecast is less downbeat. The UK faces a series of negative shocks including to consumers and business confidence, but growth will be supported by the weaker sterling and likely policy responses.
• Using the Oxford Economics' Global Economic Model, we show that to shift our baseline forecast of growth of 1.1% next year to zero would require a very severe negative confidence shock. Our new baseline already assumes a shock equivalent to one‐third of that seen in the global financial crisis (GFC). All else being equal, the shock would have to be around two‐thirds of that in the GFC to cut GDP growth to zero in 2017.
• Our new baseline also does not incorporate all the possible policy levers the UK can employ. We currently assume the Bank Rate drops to zero, but if a ‘rescue package’ of £75 billion of QE and a fiscal stimulus equal to 1% of GDP was also added, then the shock to confidence needed to get zero GDP growth would have to be similar to that seen in the GFC. We do not consider this likely given the scale of financial stress and credit restriction that occurred globally at the time of the GFC.

     

What is an Accountant? An Investigation of Images

Abstract

The purpose of our paper is to identify different images of accountants held by different groups of people and to understand how the different images come about. In doing so, we focus on how accountants are perceived by others as well as how they perceive themselves. Through analysis of 1,794 usable questionnaire responses by university students, newly appointed accountants, and practicing accountants, we find an image close to the beancounter stereotype, and that of a modern professional, with the highest score for success but also for honesty. We also uncover a third image including nuances that are neither favorable nor unfavorable (the plain vanilla accountant), which suggests that the extremes found in cultural representations do not always reflect the real world. In addition, we find that the greater the distance from the profession, the less attractive the image of accountants is and that different sources of influence affect perceptions of accountants. In particular, the public perception of an accountant is less favorable when constructed from media sources. Finally, we add to the existing literature by showing that the self-image of accountants may change over time as experienced practitioners, compared to new hires, exhibit a sort of disillusionment about their professionalism.     

Flexible Term Structure Estimation: Which Method is Preferred?

We show that the recently developed non-parametric procedure for fitting the term structure of interest rates developed by Linton, Mammen, Nielsen, and Tanggaard (J Econ 105(1):185–223, 2001) overall performs notably better than the highly flexible McCulloch (J Finon 30:811–830, 1975) cubic spline and Fama and Bliss (Am Econ Rev 77:680–692, 1987) bootstrap methods. However, if interest is limited to the Treasury-bill region alone then the Fama–Bliss method demonstrates superior performance. We further show, via simulation, that using the estimated short rate from the Linton–Mammen–Nielsen–Tanggaard procedure as a proxy for the short rate has higher precision then the commonly used proxies of the one and three month Treasury-bill rates. It is demonstrated that this precision is important when using proxies to estimate the stochastic process governing the evolution of the short rate     

How is work group inclusiveness influenced by working virtually?

In human resource management research it has become a highly relevant issue to try to understand the challenges that an online work environment pose for the inclusion of marginalized employees. In this regard, inclusiveness scholars have focused on the role that dissimilarities play for organizational inclusion of employees but rarely on how this takes place through technology-mediated interaction. We integrate notions of identity and communication from inclusiveness and virtual work research to develop a theoretical model depicting two variants of social distance (targeted and diffuse). Subsequently we discuss how these forms of social distance affect different dimensions of inclusiveness. Our analysis suggests that the virtual work environment may weaken some negative aspects of bias and discrimination while strengthening others. Based on such findings we argue for the development of a greater sensitivity to the context in inclusiveness research.     

Why is the payoff to schooling smaller for immigrants?

To answer the question, this paper uses the Over-Required-Under Education technique, a new decomposition methodology and data on adult men from the 2000 US Census. Using the 510 three-digit occupational categories, similar patterns emerge whether the mean or mode of education in the occupation is used as the typical (required) level. The partial effect of the occupation's typical schooling level is the same for immigrants and natives. About two thirds of the smaller effect of schooling on earnings is attributable to differences by nativity in the payoffs to over/under education. The remainder is largely due to the different distributions by nativity of over/under education. Favorable immigrant selectivity, especially among the least skilled, and to a lesser extent, limited transferability of foreign schooling, is largely responsible for these patterns. A variety of tests of robustness are performed, including separate analyses for child and adult immigrants.     

Technology and Indian industry: what is liberalization changing?

This paper examines the process of liberalization in India, focusing on the implications for technology and industrial competitiveness. India's industrial and technology policy regime in the sixties and seventies was among the most inward-looking and protectionist anywhere outside the socialist bloc. Dilution of this restrictive policy regime began in the eighties but change has been relatively dramatic since 1991. The paper argues that firms have responded to liberalization by improving efficiency, importing technology and by increasing in-house R&D. However, viewed in comparison with other countries rather than its own past, India still has a long reform agenda pending.     

“Less is more” or “more is better”? The effect of asymmetric information distribution on market efficiency and wealth inequality

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - We provide experimental and empirical evidence on the role of information distribution and accuracy in solving market inefficiency and the related...     

Deposit insurance as private club: is Germany a model?

This paper describes and evaluates the deposit insurance scheme set up by private commercial banks in Germany in 1975. Unlike schemes in most countries, its funding and management is completely private. While other schemes rely on monitoring by depositors to decrease moral hazard, the German scheme relies on peer monitoring by its member banks. This paper evaluates the German deposit insurance scheme against the background of its unique characteristics, a very concentrated private banking market, a strong institutional environment and an antibankruptcy bias in Germany, and determines to which extent it serves as a model for other countries.     

Why is an elite undergraduate education valuable? Evidence from Israel

In this paper we compare the labor market performance of Israeli students who graduated from one of the leading universities, Hebrew University (HU), with those who graduated from a professional undergraduate college, College of Management Academic Studies (COMAS). Our results support a model in which employers have good information about the quality of HU graduates and pay them according to their ability, but in which the market has relatively little information about COMAS graduates. Hence, high-skill COMAS graduates are initially treated as if they were the average COMAS graduate, who is weaker than a HU graduate, and consequently earn less than HU graduates. However, over time the market differentiates among them so that after several years of experience, COMAS and HU graduates with similar entry scores have similar earnings. Our results are therefore consistent with the view that employers use education information to screen workers but that the market acquires information fairly rapidly.