Why do analysts issue forecast revisions inconsistent with prior stock returns? Determinants and consequences

We examine the informativeness of analyst forecast revisions that are directionally inconsistent with prior stock price movements (sign‐inconsistent revisions). Sign‐inconsistent revisions represent approximately one‐half of the forecast revisions from 1995 through 2010. Our tests indicate that sign‐inconsistent revisions are less informative than are sign‐consistent revisions. Sign‐inconsistent revisions are less likely to be closer to actual earnings realizations and they generate smaller stock price reactions. We also find evidence that sign‐inconsistent revisions are associated with analysts' economic incentives to generate trading volume and their behavioural limitations related to information uncertainty. These results suggest that sign‐inconsistent revisions do not necessarily benefit investors.     

农村金融风险分担与补偿机制设置

中国农村金融发展过程中所积聚的农村金融风险正日益影响农村经济、金融发展的速度和质量,同时加剧了农村经济区域发展的不平衡。而中国农村金融风险表现出农村金融体系较高程度的脆弱性以及农村金融对农村经济风险的易感性。中国建立适应农村金融体系的风险分担与补偿长效机制,已经存在一定的现实基础。     

From Frontier to Bridgehead: Cross‐border Regions and the Experience of Yunnan,China

Drawing on recent theoretical tenets regarding cross‐border regions, this article analyzes China's state spatial policies that aim to transform Yunnan from a peripheral frontier into an economic bridgehead. The purposes of the present study are threefold: to contextualize the formation of Yunnan as China's frontier; to examine why Yunnan has been strategically selected as a bridgehead to promote China's transnational economies; and to explore the central–provincial alliance as an innovative institutional arrangement and look at how this alliance can convert Yunnan into a space of exception or new state space of development. This study finds that in order to convert regional assets into real competitiveness, the Chinese state (national, provincial and local) emphasizes transnational cooperation, endeavors to maximize Yunnan's place‐specific locational advantages and promotes the differentiation of regional developmental trajectories across China's national territory. The article contributes to studies of institutional arrangements for cross‐border cooperation in a non‐Western context and sheds light on China's regional development policies in its hinterland.     

The evolution of an industrial cluster in China

We use two rounds of surveys, taken in 2000 and 2008 in the Zhili Township children's garment cluster in Zhejiang Province, to examine in depth the evolution of this industrial cluster. Firm size has grown on average in terms of output and employment, and increasing divergence in firm sizes has been associated with a significant rise in specialization and outsourcing among firms in the cluster. Although the investment amount needed to start a business has more than tripled, this amount remains low enough that formal bank loans remain an insignificant source of finance. Because of low entry barriers, the number of firms in the cluster has risen, driving down profits and bidding up wages, particularly since the year 2000. Facing severe competition, more firms have begun to upgrade their product quality. By the year 2007, nearly half of the sampled firms had established registered trademarks and nearly 20 percent had become International Office of Standardization (ISO) certified.     

Patterns of China's industrialization: Concentration,specialization, and clustering

This paper presents a few stylized facts on the patterns of China's industrialization by computing a set of multi-dimensional measures on industrial concentration, regional specialization, and clustering based on census data at the firm level in 1995 and 2004. Our results show that China's rapid industrialization is characterized by the following patterns: industries have become more spatially concentrated; regions have become increasingly specialized; and firms have become more interconnected, both within industries and within regions. In addition, the number of firms is growing faster in clustered areas than non-clustered ones. Together these patterns suggest that China's industrialization process is largely cluster-based—a phenomenon in which a large number of highly interconnected firms are located within a well-defined geographic region.     

Estimating Crop-Specific Production Technologies in Chinese Agriculture: A Generalized Maximum Entropy Approach

A generalized maximum entropy approach is adapted to empirically estimate crop-specific production technologies in Chinese agriculture. Despite a modest behavioral assumption about equal marginal returns of nonland inputs among crops, this method does not require price information, which is usually distorted in a centrally planned economy such as China. A multi-output technology for Chinese agriculture is estimated and input allocations for each province are recovered simultaneously. The estimated multi-output production technology and input allocations imply that China may have greater grain production potentials than previously thought.     

针对广东地区进口机械加工设备安全性能的研究

对广东检验检疫局辖区内的进口机械加工设备进行了专项检测和调研。根据检测结果,从不同侧面分析了进口机械加工设备存在的问题以及解决方法,为今后的进口机械加工设备检验监管提供了技术依据,也为国内广大机械加工设备制造企业提供了借鉴。     

Commitment,satisfaction, and customer loyalty: a theoretical explanation of the ‘satisfaction trap’

This paper examines the relationship between satisfaction and customer loyalty and the moderating effects of affective and calculative commitment. The results suggest that while customer loyalty increases monotonically with the enhancement of satisfaction, the marginal effect of satisfaction on customer loyalty actually decreases. Calculative commitment positively moderates the curvilinear relationship of satisfaction and customer loyalty, i.e. enhancing calculative commitment could intensify the relationship between satisfaction and customer loyalty. Affective commitment has no significant moderating effect on the relationship of satisfaction and customer loyalty, but it can directly enhance the customer loyalty. The research findings can help us to explain the phenomenon of the ‘satisfaction trap’.     

A study on the effect of different levels of research capability on invention performance

This paper aims to search the threshold point during the technology accumulation process and investigate the interaction mechanism for human capital and technology acquisition. Related data of patent application and invention patent granted suggests that there is a significant paradigm shift between the two sides of the threshold point, which means that factors contributing to invention have shifted from external to internal. Further, some simple implications are made based on the moderate effect. Firstly, technology acquisition has been attached with great importance to the improvement of invention performance. Secondly, technology acquisition also plays a substitutive role in building up internal technology capability when internal technology is low, but it will change to be a complementary resource for local technology build-up when local technology is high enough. So building up internal technology capability seems critical.