General‐to‐Specific Model Selection Procedures for Structural Vector Autoregressions*

Structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models have emerged as a dominant research strategy in empirical macroeconomics, but suffer from the large number of parameters employed and the resulting estimation uncertainty associated with their impulse responses. In this paper, we propose general‐to‐specific (Gets) model selection procedures to overcome these limitations. It is shown that single‐equation procedures are generally efficient for the reduction of recursive SVAR models. The small‐sample properties of the proposed reduction procedure (as implemented using PcGets) are evaluated in a realistic Monte Carlo experiment. The impulse responses generated by the selected SVAR are found to be more precise and accurate than those of the unrestricted VAR. The proposed reduction strategy is then applied to the US monetary system considered by Christiano, Eichenbaum and Evans (Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 78, pp. 16–34, 1996) . The results are consistent with the Monte Carlo and question the validity of the impulse responses generated by the full system.     

Syndicated Loan Announcements and Borrower Value

Announcements of syndication loans increase borrowers' shareholder wealth if they are revolving credit agreements but not if they are term loans. Share price responses to revolving credit announcements are positive and significant, whereas the wealth effect for term loans is negative and significant. The results show that announcements from both the financial press and commercial information providers can affect borrower share price reaction. Overall, single syndication announcements appear to be more newsworthy than multiple announcements reported in the financial press, and we find evidence of information leakage, post‐announcement drift, or both.     

企业合同管理制度创新初探

合同是企业与外部进行物流、资金流、信息流交换的基本形式；当前我国市场规则和秩序还不很规范，合同极易被不法分子利用，进行各种违法犯罪活动，企业就可能因此蒙受巨大的经济损失。因此，搞好合同管理，是维护企业合法权益的最基本的要求。文章从分析目前企业合同管理中存在的问题人手，提出完善和创新企业合同管理的建议。     

Noise Trading and the Management of Operational Risk; Firms,Traders and Irrationality in Financial Markets*

abstract Efficient market models cannot explain the high level of trading in financial markets in terms of asset portfolio adjustment. It is presumed that much of this excessive trading is irrational ‘noise’ trading. A corollary is that there must either be irrational traders in the market or rational traders with irrational aberrations. The paper reviews the various attempts to explain noise trading in the finance literature, concluding that the persistence of irrationality is not well explained. Data from a study of 118 traders in four large investment banks are presented to advance reasons why traders might seek to trade more frequently than financial models predict. The argument is advanced that trades do not simply occur in order to generate profit, but it does not follow that such trading is irrational. Trading may generate information, accelerate learning, create commitments and enhance social capital, all of which sustain traders' long term survival in the market. The paper treats noise trading as a form of operational risk facing firms operating in financial markets and discusses approaches to the management of such risk.     

The dynamics of moonlighting in Russia1

This paper uses the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to analyse the dynamics of moonlighting by the working‐age population. We find that moonlighting is transitory and that a desire to switch jobs expressed in the past is positively related to moonlighting in the present and to actual job changes in the future. We also find that workers who moonlighted as self‐employed in the past represent 26.5 percent of the new self‐employed. These results suggest that moonlighting in Russia can be seen as an effective incubator for setting up new self‐employed businesses, thereby providing long‐term benefits for the economy.     

Improved estimation of portfolio value‐at‐risk under copula models with mixed marginals

Portfolio value‐at‐risk (PVAR) is widely used in practice, but recent criticisms have focused on risks arising from biased PVAR estimates due to model specification errors and other problems. The PVAR estimation method proposed in this article combines generalized Pareto distribution tails with the empirical density function to model the marginal distributions for each asset in the portfolio, and a copula model is used to form a joint distribution from the fitted marginals. The copula–mixed distribution (CMX) approach converges in probability to the true marginal return distribution but is based on weaker assumptions that may be appropriate for the returns data found in practice. CMX is used to estimate the joint distribution of log returns for the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) index and the associated futures contracts on SGX and TAIFEX. The PVAR estimates for various hedge portfolios are computed from the fitted CMX model, and backtesting diagnostics indicate that CMX outperforms the alternative PVAR estimators. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 26:997–1018, 2006     

辩证看待年轻项目经理

为了培养一支年轻的项目经理队伍，推动我国建设事业，必须用对立统一的观点认识年轻项目经理，用具体问题具体分析的方法对待年轻项目经理，在实践中选拔培养年轻项目经理。     

The Effect of Earnings–Announcement Timing on Earnings Management

This paper examines whether firms which delay earnings announcements engage in earnings management. The cross–sectional version of the modified Jones 1995 model is used to estimate 'normal' accruals. Prior research has documented that, on average, delayed earnings announcements are associated with negative earnings surprises. Our evidence suggests that the market anticipates unfavorable earnings news when it observes reporting delays. As a consequence, late reporters appear to make the most of a bad situation by employing income–decreasing accruals in big–bath–type earnings management and in contractual renegotiations. We find that the magnitude of income–reducing abnormal accruals is related to the reporting lag.     

中国企业在新加坡

谈起新加坡和中国的经济合作发展,有一连串的数据可以佐证其密切。今天,我们以另外一种方式,中国企业——中化国际和易保网的两位"掌门人",谈他们在新加坡的创业经,来佐证。中化国际新加坡公司董事总经理冼明在新加坡我们"如鱼得水""那段日子充实而又宁静。"中化国际新加坡公司董事总经理冼明谈到2004年在新加坡的8个月,眼光中仍有些神往。那时候,     

用AD9852与FPGA结合实现中频线性调相

本文介绍了直接数字频率合成（DDS）芯片AD9852与可编程门阵列（FPGA）相结合采用数字方法实现中频线性相位调制（PM）及试验结果。