Behavioral biases of mutual fund investors

We examine the effect of behavioral biases on the mutual fund choices of a large sample of US discount brokerage investors using new measures of attention to news, tax awareness, and fund-level familiarity bias, in addition to behavioral and demographic characteristics of earlier studies. Behaviorally biased investors typically make poor decisions about fund style and expenses, trading frequency, and timing, resulting in poor performance. Furthermore, trend chasing appears related to behavioral biases, rather than to rationally inferring managerial skill from past performance. Factor analysis suggests that biased investors often conform to stereotypes that can be characterized as Gambler, Smart, Overconfident, Narrow Framer, and Mature.     

The value of a story in organisation learning

Projects of Organisation Learning (OL) are designed to facilitate a change in an organisation's ability to engage or construct their futures. However, OL remains difficult to explain and operationalise. Traditional views of Organisational Learning, by relying on implicit views of individual learning, distort the importance of the social/cultural context of learning. A Communities of Practice perspective is used to focus on locally negotiated and situated meanings in the context of the practice of valued work. A narrative approach is employed to access the values of a group of advisers required to learn and change according to the requirements of a central government department. The findings show a pattern of values not entirely disconnected from the requirements for change. However, by relying on the assumption of the diffusion of change, a change agent was unable to gain the acceptance of advisers to the requirements. It is suggested that future thinking about OL and change need to examine how talk is used to make new realities with others.     

实时嵌入式领导厂商翻身了吗?

尽管嵌入式软件由世界各地众多OEM设计者制造,但大多数的支持却由少量的软件供应商提供,他们供应操作系统、开发工具和通用开发环境,比如安全和通讯环境。     

Contributing Factors to the Spread of Sexually Transmitted Diseases

A bstract .   Economists have long studied the determinants and effects of income transfers. This article examines an indirect effect of welfare payments on participating individuals: an increase in the incidence of sexually transmitted disease ( STD ) rates.
Several studies have found a significant and positive link between the size of welfare benefits and out-of-wedlock fertility rates. Higher welfare payments reduce the cost of bearing and raising a child, and thus reduce the full cost of engaging in unprotected sex. An unintended consequence of unprotected sex is exposure to contagious diseases. This implies that states with higher welfare payments per child will experience higher rates of STDs.
We test this hypothesis using statewide data on the incidence of three types of bacterial STDs, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis, for the years 1994 through 1998. The empirical specification is based on the standard microeconomic model of utility-maximizing behavior. The included explanatory variables are demographic proxies reflecting differences in state population characteristics. These characteristics capture unobservable or intrinsically unmeasureable differences in the perceived costs and benefits of engaging in unprotected sex.
The explanatory variable of primary interest is the size of the real welfare payment per recipient. Our empirical results indicate that states with higher real welfare payments are associated with greater rates of STDs.     

Board Pay and the Separation of Ownership from Control in U.K. SMEs

This paper examines Board pay for a sample of 571 U.K. SMEs from 1991 to 1995. Approximately half of the sample were closely-held (i.e., owner-managed) firms which allowed empirical testing of models of the relationship between Board pay and ownership from control characteristics. Consistent with their need to align shareholder and manager incentives, the results indicate that the change in nonclosely-held SME Board pay is significantly related to both external market pay comparisons and “benchmark” profits. This contrasts with the empirical results for the closely-held firms where Board pay awards are typically highly sensitive to current total profits but wholly unrelated to external market pay levels.     

Reviews

Who gets access to training? Machin, S. and Wilkinson, D. 1995: EMPLOYEE TRAINING: UNEQUAL ACCESS AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE. London: Institute for Public Policy Research, £3.95 paper.

Spatial planning. Williams, R.H. 1996: EUROPEAN UNION SPATIAL POLICY AND PLANNING. London: Paul Chapman, £16.95 paper.

Small firm growth. Barkham, R., Gudgin, G., Hart, M. and Hanvey, E. 1996:. THE DETERMINANTS OF SMALL FIRM GROWTH: AN INTER-REGIONAL STUDY IN THE UK 1986-90. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, £19.95 paper.

Krakow — transition to capitalism. Hardy, J. and Rainnie, A. 1996:. RESTRUCTURING KRAKOW: DESPERATELY SEEKING CAPITALISM. Mansel, £50.00 cased.