The hunger for meaning

The global crisis is a crisis of meaning — a search for story as to how we now understand the world. The search for new meaning is explored through the congruence and convergence in the insights of several authors from the secular world; four in particular, two of whom are from the business world. Technology and materialism have made us mercenaries with no commitment and responsibility to the collective future, to morality, and to society. They reflect the false life energies we pursue in our search for meaning. Our innate desire to seek meaningful connection with the living world and a transcendent purpose in the universe is compromised. Yet this purpose is essential for evolutionary survival where we engage with the interior, subjective dimensions of reality, not just in our personal but also in our collective lives. The modern concepts of stewardship and partnership help in that transformation, of ourselves and in our systems of governance, from command and control structures to interdependent structures.     

浅谈抓落实的重要意义及其方式方法

抓落实是一个老生常谈的话题，对于如何抓落实仁者见仁，智者见智，但有一条可以肯定，那就是通过抓落实可以折射出一个单位的领导能力、管理能力等诸多方面的情况。落实是一种文化，是一种能力，是一种作风，更是一种执行力。     

The Laffer curve revisited

Laffer curves for the US, the EU-14 and individual European countries are compared, using a neoclassical growth model featuring “constant Frisch elasticity” (CFE) preferences. New tax rate data is provided. The US can maximally increase tax revenues by 30% with labor taxes and 6% with capital taxes. We obtain 8% and 1% for the EU-14. There, 54% of a labor tax cut and 79% of a capital tax cut are self-financing. The consumption tax Laffer curve does not peak. Endogenous growth and human capital accumulation affect the results quantitatively. Household heterogeneity may not be important, while transition matters greatly.     

The geometric-mean principle revisited

The paper provides expositions of the two fallacies involved in the advocacy of the geometric-mean principle for long-run portfolio selection.     

The two-fund separation theorem revisited

This paper resolves two issues regarding the traditional capital asset pricing model with one risk-free asset which seem to have been overlooked in the literature. First, it provides an elementary and complete proof of the two-fund separation theorem which accounts for the fact that asset demand may become undefined if the limiting slopes of the investor’s indifference curves are finite. Second, it shows that an additional limiting condition on investors’ risk aversions is generally necessary to guarantee existence of an equilibrium. Moreover, a generalized existence result is formulated which includes investors who in equilibrium may not invest in risky assets and a simple condition ensuring positive equilibrium asset prices is given.     

The optimal rate of inflation revisited

Inflation viewed as a tax on cash balances is investigated using the optimal commodity tax framework. The optimal inflation rate is shown to depend on the effect of changes in the rate of inflation on quantity demanded of ‘costly-to-produce’ goods. Even when other goods are taxed, it is not always optimal to have a positive tax on money, as Phelps and others have claimed. A zero tax or even a rate of deflation greater than the pre-tax rate of interest may be optimal.     

Bookbuilding vs. fixed price revisited: The effect of aftermarket trading

Investors who possess information about the value of an IPO can participate in the offering as well as trade strategically in the aftermarket. Both the bookbuilding and the fixed price IPO selling methods require more underpricing when aftermarket trading by informed investors is considered. Bookbuilding becomes especially costly, since the potential for profit in the aftermarket adversely affects investors' bidding behavior in the premarket. Unless the underwriter can restrict its bookbuilding effort to a small enough subset of the informed investors, a fixed price strategy that allocates the issue to retail investors produces higher proceeds on average, contrary to the conventional wisdom in the literature. We therefore find a benefit to limiting access to the premarket and, hence, provide an efficiency rationale for the practice by American bankers of marketing IPOs to a select group of investors. We also provide unique policy and empirical implications.     

The new meaning of quality in the information age

Software applications are now a mission-critical source of competitive advantage for most companies. They are also a source of great risk, as the Y2K bug has made clear. Yet many line managers still haven't confronted software issues--partly because they aren't sure how best to define the quality of the applications in their IT infrastructures. Some companies such as Wal-Mart and the Gap have successfully integrated the software in their networks, but most have accumulated an unwidely number of incompatible applications--all designed to perform the same tasks. The authors provide a framework for measuring the performance of software in a company's IT portfolio. Quality traditionally has been measured according to a product's ability to meet certain specifications; other views of quality have emerged that measure a product's adaptability to customers' needs and a product's ability to encourage innovation. To judge software quality properly, argue the authors, managers must measure applications against all three approaches. Understanding the domain of a software application is an important part of that process. The domain is the body of knowledge about a user's needs and expectations for a product. Software domains change frequently based on how a consumer chooses to use, for example, Microsoft Word or a spreadsheet application. The domain can also be influenced by general changes in technology, such as the development of a new software platform. Thus, applications can't be judged only according to whether they conform to specifications. The authors discuss how to identify domain characteristics and software risks and suggest ways to reduce the variability of software domains.     

The success of bank mergers revisited. An assessment based on a matching strategy

The question of whether or not mergers and acquisitions have helped to enhance banks' efficiency and profitability has not yet been conclusively resolved in the literature. We argue that this is partly due to severe methodological problems involved. In this study we analyze the effect of German bank mergers from the period 1995-2000 on the banks' profitability and cost efficiency. We suggest a new matching strategy to control for the selection effects arising from the fact that pre-dominantly under-performing banks engage in mergers. Our results indicate a neutral effect of mergers on profitability and cost efficiency. Comparing our results with those obtained from a naive performance comparison of merging and non-merging banks indicates a severe negative selection bias with regard to the latter.     

The geometric-mean principle revisited : A reply

As far as I know neither Samuelson nor Merton nor indeed Ophir has challenged the basic principle imbedded in the geometric-mean principle for long-run portfolio selection. If they or he wishes to adopt a significantly different policy and I follow the G policy, in the long run I become3almost certain to have more wealth than they. This hardly seems an erroneous or trivial proposition.     

The psychodynamics of meaning and action for a sustainable future

Environmental policy and social research tends to neglect the inner, experiential dimensions of human life. Yet, the ways in which individuals seek to achieve psychological and emotional well-being in their lives is inevitably expressed in behaviour that impacts on ecological (and social) processes.The yearning for this ‘inner human sustainability’ is psychologically rooted and subjectively experienced. Beliefs and worldviews about how best to satisfy it are culturally (i.e. inter-subjectively and collectively) constructed and expressed through behaviour that, in turn, supports or undermines the external ecological and social world. Consumerism and its associated behaviours are inherently unsustainable socio-ecologically and psychologically. Through a psychodynamic theory of human experience, meaning and behaviour, the paper explains why any policy, if it is to be effective in the long-term, must be attentive to psychological, experiential and cultural dimensions of human beings and beliefs about how needs and wants will be satisfied. It also argues that long-term societal and cultural transformation is only possible when individuals take responsibility for their own development, transformation and engagement in the larger social and ecological complex on which they depend. Policy-making, research and education are themselves cultural activities that seek to respond appropriately to changes in the external world within the constraints of powerful cultural (collective) and psychological (individual) values and priorities. A systemic approach to sustainable development requires consideration of the mutual dependence between eco-social and psycho-cultural realities.     

The search for meaning in a changing work context

The nature of work is currently undergoing a complete transformation. In response to economic pressures organizations are reshaping themselves into totally new forms. Information technology is underpinning this transformation by providing the backbone for new organizational structures and new ways of working. The implications of this transformation are far reaching, particularly as the entire concept of work changes. The boundaries which have traditionally existed between organizations, individuals, family, home life and community will disappear as work increasingly becomes situation-independent and centred in the home. Our current understanding of the meaning of work will become increasingly obsolete and therefore will force individuals to search for new meanings of work in their lives. As a result work will take on an entirely different meaning. This article explores the problems of the meaning of work in a context of change. We look forward to a future in which the nature of work as we know it now will have changed beyond recognition. The question we address is this: what will work mean to us in the future?     

The property rights game: Discovering the meaning of private property

In this paper we discuss the results of an educational game we have developed. This game deals with the acquisition, use, and transfer of private property rights in land and shows participants the importance of property rights in market economies. While our findings are not scientific, they do show that production in a society with solely communal property collapses while production in a society with private property flourishes. We hope that these results encourage others to use this exercise as an educational experience for students.     

慈善之“美”

美国是慈善业高度发达的国家,慈善捐款的数额和民间慈善组织的数量都很庞大。据统计,每年参加捐款的家庭占美国家庭总数的90%左右,并且平均每个家庭将收入的2.36%进行捐赠,可以说美国几乎所有家庭都在做慈善。目前,慈善组织     

The state of American management

Every year, the president of the United States offers his State of the Union address. Here, from one of the most respected managers in America, is a report on the State of American Management. The state of management, says Walter B. Wriston, is good. Despite the predictions of America's decline, our economy continues to prosper. That is because of this fundamental truth: the United States is the only country in the world that renews itself daily. This is the Age of Pluralism, and U.S. business is based on pluralism. The spirit of the entrepreneur has entered the mainstream of U.S. management, transforming bureaucracy and emphasizing leadership. Today's top executives need to be more like politicians than the number-crunchers of yesterday. At the same time, information is flowing more freely, so corporations are eliminating layers of managers who were really just transmission lines. And top managers are learning to listen to the people who are closest to the work. Everyone today is a knowledge worker. The accelerating pace of knowledge has put a greater premium than ever on talent. Globalization is a big part of this new world. From the manager's viewpoint, globalization means that "you're in a marketplace where you're suddenly waking up with a guy...from a country you're not too sure where it is, who's eating your lunch in your hometown." To understand global competition, managers in large and small companies need broad vision. Finally, to deal with change, U.S. managers must confront some issues at home. For instance, our accounting systems are obsolete, both in companies and in our national accounts.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

The Monday effect revisited: An alternative testing approach

This paper questions traditional approaches for testing the Monday effect of stock returns. We propose an alternative, multiple hypothesis testing approach based on the closure test principle which controls the multiple type I error. We consider the US, the UK and the German stock markets and test Monday related pairwise comparisons of daily expected stock returns, while the probability of committing any type I error is always kept smaller than a prespecified level α, for each combination of true null hypotheses. Overall, the new testing approach supports previous findings of a Monday effect for the 1970s and 1980s, in particular for the US and Germany, while it suggests that the Monday effect has vanished in the 1990s and 2000s in all three markets. The comparison of the closure test procedure, the traditional multiple t-test and the Bonferroni test, a classical multiple test procedure, shows that traditional testing may result in spurious significance while the Bonferroni test may sometimes be too conservative.     

Sentiment and stock returns: The SAD anomaly revisited

Widely-cited research by Kamstra et al. (2003) argues that changes in mood resulting from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) drive changes in investor risk aversion and cause seasonal patterns in aggregate stock returns around the world. In this paper we reexamine the so-called SAD effect by replicating and extending Kamstra et al. (2003). We study the psychological underpinnings of the SAD hypothesis and show that the time-series predictions of the SAD model do not correspond to the seasonal patterns in depression found in the general population. We also investigate the cross-sectional prediction that SAD has a greater effect on stock markets in countries where SAD is more prevalent and find no relation between the prevalence of SAD and stock returns. Finally, we document that the SAD effect is mechanically driven by an overlapping dummy-variable specification and higher returns around the turn of the year.     

Investment under demand uncertainty: The newsboy problem revisited

In this article we study the effect of uncertainty on an entrepreneur who must choose the capacity of his business before knowing the demand for his product. The unit profit of operation is known with certainty, but there is no flexibility in our one-period framework. We show how the introduction of global uncertainty reduces the investment of the risk-neutral entrepreneur and, even more, that of the risk-averse one. We also show how marginal increases in risk reduce the optimal capacity of both the risk-neutral and the risk-averse entrepreneur, without any restriction on the concave utility function and with limited restrictions on the definition of a mean preserving spread. These general results are explained by the fact that the newsboy has a piecewise-linear, and concave, monetary payoff with a kink endogenously determined at the level of optimal capacity. Our results are compared with those in the two literatures on price uncertainty and demand uncertainty, and particularly, with the recent contributions of Eeckhoudt, Gollier, and Schlesinger [1991, 1995].     

发挥金融优势 推动文化产业繁荣发展——一行三会积极贯彻落实十七届六中全会精神

中国人民银行：深入推进金融改革创新加大支持文化产业力度10月19日下午,人民银行党委书记、行长周小川主持召开党委（扩大）会议暨党委中心组会议,学习贯彻党的十七届六中全会精神、并对新形势下充分发挥金融支持作用,推进文化体制深化改革,促进社会主义文化大发展大繁荣进行了深入讨论和研究部署。