Managerial Ownership and Financial Analysts’ Information Environment

Despite the importance of sell‐side financial analysts as information intermediaries in the capital market, little is known about how managerial equity ownership is associated with their information environment. Using Barron, Kim, Lim and Stevens’ (1998) framework for measuring the precision of financial analysts’ information, we observe that managerial ownership is positively associated with the precision of financial analysts’ public (common) and private (idiosyncratic) information, largely consistent with the alignment view of managerial equity ownership. These results are robust to controlling for various economic and statistical factors that might affect the inference.     

Robust and Powerful Tests for Nonlinear Deterministic Components

We develop a test for the presence of nonlinear deterministic components in a univariate time series, approximated using a Fourier series expansion, designed to be asymptotically robust to the order of integration of the process and to any weak dependence present. We show that our proposed test has uniformly greater local asymptotic power than the existing tests of Harvey, Leybourne and Xiao (2010) when the shocks are I(1), identical local asymptotic power when the shocks are I(0), and also improved finite sample properties. We also consider the issue of determining the number of Fourier frequencies used to specify any nonlinear deterministic components.     

The profitability of regression-based trading rules for the Shanghai stock market

This paper uses daily Shanghai A share data to evaluate the profitability of trading rules based on the predictability found in the return series. We find that the value of the trading-rule-based portfolio at the end of our sample is between 2 and 11 times that of an equity-buy-and-hold portfolio. We assess the robustness of the results in various ways: by carrying out various statistical tests, by varying the period over which the evaluation is carried out, by using a recursive estimation procedure for the forecasting equation, by incorporating transactions costs, and by considering weekly and monthly data.     

REGULATION AND THE NATURAL PROGRESS OF OPULENCE

Adam Smith taught us how government regulation can counteract the market forces that produce economic growth. Here I explore a more complex interplay between regulation and economic growth. Regulation creates behavioural incentives that weaken or offset entirely the goal of the regulation. Growth produces many of the benefits ascribed to regulation while also hiding the costs and failures of regulation.     

The Impact of Asymmetric Information on Proxy Outcomes: An Empirical Test

If a manager-shareholder is better informed about the true value of a firm's shares than outside shareholders, then the management of an undervalued firm is hypothesized to use its incumbent advantage to win proxy contests to maintain control and to benefit from share revaluations induced by the positive signal value of the contest. Using insider trades as indicators of management's beliefs, this study finds an association between insider beliefs and proxy contest outcomes. In particular, when insider trades over a five-to-six month period preceding the proxy date are net purchases, the odds in favor of management winning are significantly higher.     

The Range Adjusted Measure (RAM) in DEA: A Response to the Comment by Steinmann and Zweifel

Journal of Productivity Analysis -     

Changes in Assortative Matching and Inequality in Income: Evidence for the UK*

The extent to which like-with-like marry is important for inequality as well as for the outcomes of children who result from the union. In this paper, we present evidence on changes in assortative mating and its implications for household inequality in the UK. Our approach contrasts with others in the literature in that it is consistent with an underlying model of the marriage market. We argue that a key advantage of this approach is that it creates a direct connection between changes in assortativeness in marriage and changes in the value of marriage for the various possible matches by education group. Our empirical results do not show a clear direction of change in assortativeness in the UK between the birth cohorts of 1945–54 and 1965–74. We find that changes in assortativeness pushed income inequality up slightly, but that the strong changes in education attainment across the two cohorts contributed to scale down inequality.     

Imitator‐to‐innovator S curve and chasms

Over the past 20 years, some latecomer firms in Korea and China have successfully transformed themselves from imitators into innovators. In this article, we focus on the imitator‐to‐innovator transformation process. We try to answer the following questions: What are the evolutionary paths and mechanisms? What may be the challenges in the transformation process? In this article, we suggest the technological capability building in latecomer firms can be characterized by successive S curves. And we use a five‐phase model and dynamic S curve to analyze their transformation from imitator to innovator. We also discuss the four chasms in the transformation and identify the challenges and three‐level factors facilitating chasm crossings. This article makes two contributions: proposing a new framework for and introducing the S curve and chasm into studying the latecomer firms' development, and elaborating key challenges in and major differences among the four chasms in the imitator‐to‐innovator transformation, which have been neglected in the literature. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Zeitgeist of Futures?

This paper seeks the Zeitgeist of Futures from 1968 to the present. The primary effort is to discern the topics addressed by Futures over the years, how these have changed, what methods, time horizons, and moods are expressed. One goal is to shed light on questions such as whether FUTURES, or “futures studies” in general, anticipates the future or simply adds commentary on the present. If the former, by how much: if the latter, is the commentary useful? Another goal, assuming the answer is positive is to assess whether articles in FUTURES provide a “data base” for scenario building, modeling, or Delphi? Although the starting point addressed in this article is to explore trends in the use of vocabulary, and its correlations with “real world events” the goal is to comprehend connections and associations as revealed in FUTURES articles, as a step toward paradigm recognition and Zeitgeist.