New Belgian Stock Market Returns: 1832–1914

The limited availability of high quality and computer readable data seriously impedes research in history and finance. We introduce a new monthly return series for Belgian owned equity based on Brussels Stock Market data for the period 1832–1914 as an improvement to the popular Drappier index. Over this period, our dataset includes 446,374 prices, 23,976 dividends, 371 stock and reverse splits (or other capital operations) on 2037 stocks of 1387 (foreign and Belgian) companies. Our dataset includes all shares and bonds but also high-quality information on prices, dividends, shares outstanding and market capitalization. In addition, company, country and sector information is available. We construct value weighted, price weighted and equally weighted indices as well as dividend yields. We find three important results. First, total nominal returns hover between 3.29% and 5.35% per annum, depending on how individual stocks are aggregated into the index. Second, dividend income constitutes the major part of total return and dividend distributions have a clear seasonal pattern. Third, the results highlight several drawbacks of the Drappier indices, especially an upward bias in expected equity performance.     

When did firms become more different? Time-varying firm-specific volatility in Japan

We document how firm-specific volatility in sales, earnings and employment growth evolved year by year in Japan. Our volatility measure also indicates the evolution of firm turnover. We find that patterns in firm-specific volatility have changed when macroeconomic circumstances have. Firm turnover declined during the economic stagnation of 1991–1997. The deep downturn of fiscal years 1998–2002 coincided with a substantial increase in turnover in market, profit and employment shares. Firm volatility tended to decline during the recovery after 2002. We assess whether the rise in firm turnover and deep downturn in 1998–2002 indicate that after a period of stagnation, weak firms were finally allowed to shrink or fail. Our evidence suggests that the widening in the firm growth distribution at that time did not reflect weak firms shrinking relative to healthy firms, indicating that the two recessions in 1998–2002 were not “cleansing”.     

广西信息产业链集群模式探析

信息产业是新时期经济增长的重要"引擎",是国家经济增长的"倍增器"、发展方式的"转换器"、产业升级的"助推器",其发展水平是国家创新能力的突出体现。广西要抓住北部湾发展的契机,进一步发展信息产业,促进广西经济的发展。文章从产业链构建角度,分析了广西信息产业产业链情况,结合广西信息产业最新的发展方向,提出了信息产业产业链集群模型。     

Problems of measuring money supply in the Euro Area

With just a few weeks left to go before responsibility for monetary policy is transferred from the EMU member countries to the European Central Bank, there is still no standardised concept for measuring a euro area money supply which could serve as a statistical basis for a money-supply oriented monetary policy strategy. Which problems remain to be solved?     

洗钱罪刑事立法之完善——以《联合国反腐败公约》为视角

《联合国反腐败公约》对洗钱犯罪作了规定,我国现行《刑法》对洗钱罪的规定与《公约》存在较大差异,从而使我国对洗钱罪及其上游犯罪的预防和打击的效果受到影响。我们有必要根据《公约》的规定完善我国关于洗钱犯罪的立法。     

Improving the efficiency of monitoring adherence to antiretroviral therapy at primary health care level: a case study of the introduction of electronic technologies in Guguletu,South Africa

This paper presents a case study of the efficiency gains resulting from the introduction of electronic technologies to monitor and support adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in Guguletu, South Africa. It suggests that the rollout of HAART to such resource-poor communities can be assisted significantly by the introduction of modified cellphones (to provide home based support to people on HAART and improve the management of adherence data) and simple bar-coding and scanning equipment (to manage drug supplies). The cellphones have improved the management of information, and simplified the working lives of therapeutic counsellors, thereby enabling them to spend less time on administration and to devote a constant amount of time per patient even though their case loads have risen threefold. It has helped integrate the local-level primary health service provision of HAART with the kind of centralised data capture and analysis that could potentially support a national HAART rollout.     

基于MATLAB的基金最优投资计划

根据组合投资中"存款期长者优先"的投资准则。应用线性代数的知识建立了基金投资的最优化模型,给出了求解此类问题的MATLAB通用程序,利用该程序可以准确快捷地制订出基金存取计划。     

The relevance of currency risk in the EMU

We investigate how the elimination of intra-European exchange risk may affect international financial markets using a conditional version of the International CAPM. We estimate the EMU and non-EMU components of aggregate currency risk and document significant exposures to both. The premium for EMU risk is positive and associated with exposure to the French, Italian and Spanish currencies. The premium for non-EMU risk is consistently negative and accounts for most of the aggregate currency premiums. In the 1990s, exposures to EMU risk declined significantly while exposures to non-EMU risk increased. Hence the adoption of the Euro is unlikely to have a large impact on aggregate currency risk premiums.     

1999年度我院自然科学基金项目中标率高的几点思考

国家自然科学基金申报是科学性与艺术性高度结合的创造性劳动。高中标率背后离不开高效务实的科技管理。思想重视、措施得力、主攻目标明确,迎来了我院 1999年基金项目申报的大丰收。