Beyond risk-based portfolios: balancing performance and risk contributions in asset allocation

Asset allocation using a new Performance/Risk Contribution measure improves the performance of risk-based portfolios     

The winners know how to change--do you?

Major change is always costly, but when maintaining the status quo is even more expensive, a strategic imperative for change has been created. The process of managing change is not focused on what to change, but how change decisions can be implemented successfully. Successful organizations achieve their change objectives (human and technical) on time and within budget. Unsuccessful organizations either never accomplish what they plan or do so only after consuming a great deal more time and money than they anticipated. This article introduces an abbreviated review of the ten best practices associated with change management. The reader will recognize the multitude of variables that can be relevant to any change effort and begin to assess the matrix relationship between these interdependent variables.     

How family spending has changed in the U.S

Since the Monthly Labor Review began, the proportion of family expenditures allocated for food has dropped by half, the incidence of homeownership has doubled, and spending for transportation, medical care, and recreation has increased significantly.     

Health,height, and the household at the turn of the twentieth century

This article examines the health and height of men born in England and Wales in the 1890s who enlisted in the army at the time of the First World War, using a sample of recruits from the army service records. These are linked to their childhood circumstances as observed in the 1901 census. Econometric results indicate that height on enlistment was positively related to socio‐economic class, and negatively to the number of children in the household in 1901 and the proportion of household members who were earners, as well as to the degree of crowding. Adding the characteristics of the locality has little effect on the household‐level effects. However local conditions were important; in particular the industrial character of the district, local housing conditions, and the female illiteracy rate. These are interpreted as representing the negative effect on height of the local disease environment. The results suggest that changing conditions at both household and locality levels contributed to the increase in height and health in the following decades.     

The impact of patient choice and waiting time on the demand for health care: results from the London Patient Choice project

In a number of countries where health care is publicly funded, policies to introduce greater patient choice are being implemented. In most cases patient choice is seen as an instrument to reduce waiting times for elective (non-emergency) hospital services. An important issue is whether facilitating greater patient choice will increase the demand for health care and thereby undermine the achievement of reduced waiting times. A large scale pilot of choice in the London metropolitan area permits a test of the hypothesis that choice will affect demand. This paper estimates a model of the demand for elective surgery using a panel of 150 English acute hospitals over the period 1995 to 2004 for three surgical specialties. It examines whether demand shifted following the introduction of the London Patient Choice Project in 2002. The results suggest that the choice project only shifted NHS inpatient demand in orthopaedics and that this shift was inwards.     

Technological change and human resource development practices in Asia: a study of Singapore‐based companies

Technological change is a constant phenomenon in contemporary organizations. How to prepare employees for technological change has increasingly become an issue for human resource development theory and practice. This study investigated the human resource development practices of organizations in Singapore, where companies are continuously responding to rapid technological changes in order to remain competitive. The results show similar patterns of responses across business sectors; however, some differences were found in the transport and communications sectors. On‐the‐job training was reported as the most frequently used training method to address organizational change needs. The discussion and recommendations focus on the need for improved change management approaches.     

Product and Process Modularity's Effects on Manufacturing Agility and Firm Growth Performance

Modularity in product design has been hailed as a way to speed new product development (NPD), to reduce NPD cost, and to enhance customization possibilities for consumers. Modularity in process design may speed new product manufacturing setup times, reduce costs, and enhance the profitability of the lower volumes that customization often entails. However, empirical evidence is scarce that either product or process modularity—individually, jointly, or sequentially—actually produce these or other proposed benefits (e.g., performance growth). This study builds on general modular systems theory (GMST) by examining the theoretical relationship between product and process modularity and the effects of each on firm growth performance. Using structural equation modeling, partial versus complete mediation by manufacturing agility is also scrutinized. In one pair of models, product modularity and process modularity are separate direct antecedents to manufacturing agility, which is modeled to affect firm growth performance; in a second pair of models, product and process modularity are related antecedents to manufacturing agility, with product modularity preceding process modularity. Results from the best‐fitting model show that product modularity directly and positively affects process modularity, manufacturing agility, and firm growth performance. Process modularity was unrelated to manufacturing agility, and neither process modularity nor manufacturing agility predicted growth performance. Consistent with GMST, the study provides empirical evidence of the power of one element of a modular system to orchestrate a fit between a firm's product and manufacturing strategies and to directly drive system performance. Thus, modularity in product design is revealed as the key to understanding GMST effects concerning how changes in one system generate changes in other systems.     

Losing sight of the trees for the forest? Attention allocation and anomalies

This paper tests asset pricing implications of the investor attention shift hypothesis proposed in theoretical work. We create a novel proxy for the dynamics of inattention towards firm-specific information and explore its impact on prominent return anomalies. As hypothesized and with all else equal, the proxy positively predicts the post-earnings announcement drift as well as the profitability of pairs trading, and negatively predicts the success of momentum strategies. Taken together, our findings highlight the importance of time-varying investor attention allocation for the price discovery process.     

Trade policy and industrial development: iron and steel in a small open economy, 1870−1913

In this paper we argue that effective tariff protection associated with the 1879 National Policy and the 1887 Tupper tariffs triggered investment in new, technologically advanced blast furnaces that were capable of accommodating rapid output expansion. This conclusion is based on an appreciation of the timing of late nineteenth‐century investments in Canada and their connection to changes in government policy and other demand determinants. In our empirical investigation we use new information on westbound transatlantic freight rates, intra‐continental transport costs, and furnace‐specific micro‐data, and we acknowledge the endogenous relationships linking investment to domestic demand, labour costs, and tariffs.