Current trends in hospital mergers and acquisitions

Healthcare reform will impact hospital consolidation in three key areas: Payment rates will decrease, indirectly encouraging consolidation by forcing hospitals to find new ways to reduce costs and increase negotiating clout with suppliers and payers. The cost of doing business will increase as hospitals spend more on compliance, technology, and physician employment. The ACO model will encourage hospital network formation by rewarding integrated healthcare systems that can reduce costs and improve quality.     

投资银行家剖析当前国际金融走势

美国未来经济走势不明朗 摩根士丹利亚洲首席经济学家谢国忠提出,关于美国经济的形势判断,存在两种看法.一种意见认为,美国经济目前处于周期性调整状态,经济将持续回升;另一种看法则是,美国经济处于泡沫破灭后的调整之中,与一般周期性调整不同.8月份揭晓的美国有关经济数据将给我们一个可信的结论.     

The effects of analyst forecasts and earnings trends on perceptions of management forecast credibility

We examine whether analyst forecasts influence investors’ perceptions of the credibility of a good news management earnings forecast. We hypothesize that the effect of analyst forecasts will depend on whether the analyst forecast confirms management’s forecast and the extent to which management’s forecast is consistent with the prior earnings trend. Findings indicate that the positive effect of a confirming analyst forecast is greater when the management forecast is trend inconsistent than when it is trend consistent. The negative effect of a disconfirming analyst forecast does not differ based on management forecast trend consistency.     

互联网市场:预测与分析

2011年中国位置服务市场将呈现怎样的发展趋势？微博产业通过什么途径实现盈利？2011年中国平板电脑将呈现怎样的增长的态势？中国网络广告市场规模、社交游戏市场和有端网络游戏市场是不是持续稳定增长？     

Disciplined imagination: Building scenarios and building theories

This article outlines a relationship between scenario construction and theory building. This is done in two key ways: (1) it is argued that a deficiency of theory and theory building exists with regard to the phenomenon of scenario construction and (2) it is also argued that scenario construction may constitute a form of theory building. These arguments are developed using foundational works that label both scenario construction and theory building as processes of disciplined imagination. Drawing from other core works in management and organizational change perspectives the argument is developed that scenario construction might most appropriately be thought of as a process of developing and changing theories-in-use. Conclusions and implications for management professionals are drawn.     

Realism,skill, and incentives: Current and future trends in investment management and investment performance

We review the recent trends in investment management and performance research and highlight the fields expected to develop further in the future. The trend to adapt the classic CAPM and factor models seems likely to continue, with the drive for realistic factors, which best proxy the drivers of investment performance, playing a key role. The search for skill, based on enhanced benchmarks, is also a developing area, with new concepts of identification and verification at the fore. The availability of more qualitative data has allowed corporate finance themes such as agency conflict and incentives to be explored. These are some of the areas where we have seen major developments in recent years and where we expect to see continuing development.     

Alternative futures: AmI scenarios and Minority Report

In the last few decades, scenarios have provided a way of analysing the implications of alternative futures, especially as they might be impacted by new technologies. This has been no less true of ambient intelligence (AmI), which may be embedded everywhere in the not so distant future. Most of the scenarios developed by AmI enthusiasts have been rather ‘sunny’, showing how the new technologies promise to make our lives more efficient, enjoyable, productive, enriching. A European project, called Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (SWAMI), deliberately developed ‘dark scenarios’ to highlight the threats to privacy, identity, trust, security and inclusiveness posed by the new technologies. The SWAMI consortium also developed a methodological structure for deconstructing and analysing the dark scenarios. This paper takes that approach a step further by applying it to a cultural artefact, partly to test the validity, utility, applicability of the SWAMI methodology to a scenario not constructed by the consortium and partly to show how some cultural artefacts can be regarded as scenarios in their own right as well as warnings about future technologies. The cultural artefact chosen here was the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report, because it features so many AmI technologies and draws attention to the issues that have been the focus of the SWAMI project.     

观察与展望：值得关注的新产业（续一）

本刊今年第2期刊登《观察与展望：几个值得关注的新产业》,对几个新兴展业的投资价值做了分析,本刊将继续介绍,供参考     

标准普尔展望中国银行业未来

2010年7月,标准普尔发布了题为《贷款质量风险上升不大可能重创中国银行业的原因》的报告,报告对中国银行业不良贷款率、盈利能力等问题做了分析     

Energy scenarios: Toward a new energy paradigm

Primary energy sources exhibited regular long-term logistic substitution trends from the mid-19th century through the third quarter of the 20th century. This analysis, based on an extension of the Fisher-Pry substitution model, accounted for the observed historical shifts of primary energy use from sources of wood, coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. In the mid-1980s the substitution dynamics was replaced by a relatively constant contribution from oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear power, and hydropower. However, a major factor in energy use dynamics in this recent period was substitution of conservation and efficiency for actual fuel use. The energy efficiency is measured as the ratio of economic activity to the rate of energy use (energy intensity). To incorporate these data into the logistic analysis, a method for estimating the fraction of energy saved by the increased efficiency was used. With this interpretation, energy efficiency fits within the substitution model. Furthermore, to identify indications of future energy scenarios, as well as to test the logistic substitution analysis, another statistical approach using ternary diagrams was developed. The consistent results from both logistic substitution and statistical analysis are compared with recent energy projections, trends in decarbonization, Kondratieff waves, and other efficiency measures. While the specific future mix of renewables and nuclear energy sources is uncertain, the more general logistic dynamics pattern of the energy system seems to be continuing as it has for about 150 years now.     

安永：欧元区金融服务业发展预测

安永预测：欧元区整体经济今年仍然面临着非常严峻的各种挑战,财政紧缩、信贷紧缩以及失业率上升等等,这些导致增长缓慢的因素只不过是欧元区的成员国和其金融机构面临问题的一部分而已,因此,     

标准普尔预测中国房地产市场

2010年2月,标准普尔发布了《中国房地产业展望：政府出台紧缩政策,房地产商感到寒意》和《房地产业加快整合步伐背景下的中国房地产商排名》。这两篇报告更新了包括中国海外在内的14家房地产商的信用等级,并对未来的行业前景做出了预测。标准普尔大中华区资深董事曾怡景、企业评级副董事符蓓、贺威对此进行了解读     

Integral scenarios: Reframing theory, building from practice

Australian futurists have been working with a range of integral theories over the past decade to inform new approaches to scenarios. Chief among the integral theories explored is Wilber's All Quadrant, All Level, All Lines, All States, All Types (AQAL) meta-theory. This emerging and diverse set of scenario methods, falling under the term ‘integral scenarios’ as reviewed in this paper, have mostly been developed in practice and to date, have not been represented in futures journals. This paper contextualises integral scenarios with a summary of the theoretical background to their development before arriving at a generic scenario generation process together with a set of utility and quality criteria. This generic framework and criteria are then used to situate a range of case studies of integral scenarios, outlining their features, benefits and limitations. Finally, the areas of potential for further development are highlighted—for both refined and wholly new types of integral scenario methods.     

Accounting and Finance: authorship and citation trends

Accounting and Finance (A&F ) has experienced a surge in published research in the last decade. The analysis here reveals a marked increase in the number of published articles in A&F since 2003, a distinct trend for published papers to have a larger number of authors, a significant and stable contribution by the top 5 Australian accounting/finance departments, as well as a notable increase in contribution from non‐US foreign universities, particularly those located in the UK, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and Spain. An analysis of citations indicates the increasing impact of A&F in recent years.