Noise-trading, costly arbitrage, and asset prices: Evidence from US closed-end funds

The behavior of US closed-end funds is very different from that of UK funds. There is no evidence that the US funds' discounts are constrained by arbitrage barriers, no evidence that higher expenses increase discounts and no evidence that replication risk increases discounts but strong evidence that noise-trader risk is priced. The differences between US and UK funds may be due to the fact that small investors dominate US funds while institutional investors dominate UK funds, or because the sample selection method for the UK funds chooses only funds that are relatively easy to arbitrage.     

责任投资趋势下的报告发布机遇

据一月份Financial Times报道,几家大型资产管理公司2011年将把部分责任投资团队搬到亚洲地区。不管其在亚洲责任投资团队的大小,该决定的重要意义在于,将会给亚洲企业带来许多新的机会。     

Does culture still matter?: The effects of individualism on national innovation rates

Does a society's culture affect its rate of inventive activity? This article analyzes several independent datasets of culture and innovation from 62 countries spanning more than two decades. It finds that most measures of individualism have a strong, significant, and positive effect on innovation, even when controlling for major policy variables. However, the data also suggest that a certain type of collectivism (i.e. patriotism and nationalism) can also foster innovation at the national level. Meanwhile, other types of collectivism (i.e. familism and localism) not only harm innovation rates, but may hurt progress in science worse than technology.     

Earnings Forecast Revisions and Security Returns: Canadian Evidence

The impact that revisions of financial analysts' forecasts of earnings have on Canadian security returns during the 1979-1988 period is tested using an event study methodology. A post-revision announcement drift in security prices is documented; the Canadian capital market displays a marked delay in reacting to positive revisions in earnings forecasts. Contingent on revision size, positive and significant excess returns are apparent for up to seven months following their release. The returns, before transaction costs, are not marginal; over a 12-month holding period, excess returns are 18.2%. The results for negative and non-revisions in earnings forecasts suggest that the market reacts quite efficiently to the information implicit in these events. An explanation for the asymmetrical results for the positive and negative revision portfolios is offered. These findings are robust to five control procedures used to test the sensitivity of the reported results to changes in the methodology. A number of explanations for this result are proposed including overlapping excess returns and beta shifts; none reconciles the anomalous results.     

Comparing operationalizations of dual commitment and their relationships with turnover intentions

This study evaluates the meaning behind the different approaches to measuring dual commitment in a sample of 2568 unionized South Korean electronics employees. Results show that individuals can be simultaneously committed to both the union and the organization. We then examine the utility of dual commitment by examining its prediction of intention to stay. Analysis of variance provides support that individuals who are dually committed have significantly higher intentions to stay within the organization than those who are uncommitted or unilaterally committed. A new direction to reinvigorate the future of dual commitment research is offered.     

Financial reporting in the context of crisis: reconsidering the impact of the 'mania' on early railway accounting

The patterns of change in the financial reporting practices of the early railway companies, and their causes, are important aspects of the evolution of accounting practice more generally. They have accordingly been widely discussed in the literature, although the views expressed have rarely been supported by reference to any very substantial or systematically derived bodies of empirical evidence. One of the most interesting and important suggestions in this literature is the claim that the early UK railway companies voluntarily made both quantitative and qualitative changes to their published accounting statements, in response to a crisis in shareholder confidence in the second half of the 1840s, consequent upon the collapse of the railway mania of 1845–47. The quantitative response involved the disclosure of far more information and the qualitative led to changes in the conceptual basis of reporting, from a cash to an accruals basis, changes that met with the satisfaction of the shareholders concerned and were important parts of the gradual evolution of financial reporting. The paper undertakes a systematic analysis of the financial accounting practices of the major early railway companies from 1840 until 1855. The mapping of the variety of such practices, and their changes over time, enable a re-examination of these important claims concerning the nature of the financial reporting response to one of its earliest crises.     

CSR报告绩效披露应更体现外部诉求

从2007年至今，企业发布社会责任报告的数量在快速地增长。从客观角度来看，企业透明度已经达到有史以来的最高点。但与此同时，大多数报告尽管介绍了企业大量的优秀实践，仍难以识别出企业运营是否符合可持续性的原则。这一社会责任报告的问题可能一部分来自越来越成熟的相关标准、评级系统以及专业培训，导致企业发布的报告也越来越相似，包含的主题很一致，介绍的活动很雷同，编写的风格也有很多共同的地方。     

Displaying things in common to encourage friendship formation: A large randomized field experiment

Quantitative Marketing and Economics - Friendship formation is of central importance to online social network sites and to society, but can suffer from significant and unequal frictions. In this...     

How Quickly Do Firms Adjust to Optimal Levels of Tax Avoidance?

The trade‐off literature asserts that managers weigh the direct benefits of tax avoidance against the associated nontax costs. This literature implies each firm has a unique optimal level of tax avoidance that balances these costs and benefits. Our study is the first to document how quickly the average firm moves toward its optimal level of tax avoidance. We find that the typical firm converges toward its optimum at a rate that ranges from approximately 69 to 84 percent over a three‐year period, depending upon model specifications. Consistent with asymmetric levels of frictions across the tax avoidance distribution, we find the speed of adjustment is greater for firms below their optimal level of tax avoidance than for firms above. We perform additional cross‐sectional analyses to provide insight into some of the frictions that prevent firms from adjusting completely to their optimal level of tax avoidance. We generally find growth firms exhibit slower adjustment speeds and provide limited evidence that both multinational firms and income‐mobile firms exhibit faster adjustment speeds.     

The effects of in-store themed events on consumer store choice decisions

Retailers are increasingly using in-store events to provide shoppers with unique experiences that will enhance shopping value and help differentiate their stores from competitors. However, relatively little is known about how consumers respond to experiential retail events in terms of their store choice decisions. The purpose of this research was to find out how in-store retail events affect consumers in terms of their store choice decisions. The paper presents findings from a discrete choice experiment that manipulated the presence of different types of in-store themed events in a do-it-yourself (DIY) category. Participants were 312 randomly recruited residents of Melbourne, Australia, who had recently shopped at a hardware store. The experiment was implemented as a mail-back survey. Using logit models the authors assess the effects of the in-store events along with those of various traditional store attributes, including store appearance, price image and distance, on consumer store choice decisions.