The dynamics of positive action in UK trade unions: the case of women and black members

This paper considers positive action strategies amongst UK trade unions, aimed at increasing membership and levels of participation and representation among women and black workers. It provides an overview of women’s, black members’ and race structures within large Trades Union Congress unions and a detailed case study of one large UK trade union. We find that there are salient differences in the way that unions approach issues of gender equality, compared with the approach adopted towards race equality. The paper explores possible explanations, justifications and implications of these differences.     

聚集纺纱工艺原理及优越性

聚集纺纱是一种新型纺纱技术 ,其在设备上的实现主要通过对传统牵伸装置的改进。 Rieter和 Suessen等设备采用多孔皮圈或透气的网格皮圈在气流的作用下聚集纤维 ,也有的设备采用大直径的有孔空心滚筒代替原有的前下输出罗拉 ,并在气流的作用下对纤维进行有效而又柔和的约束 ;同时介绍了聚集纺纱的优越性及其对后道工序的影响     

物流热的冷思考

物流圈内好热闹自2000年以来,随着各种物流高峰会、研讨会、展览会的召开,“物流”和“网络”并驾齐驱,驰骋于各种媒体之上。如果说去年物流圈内热闹纷繁还只局限于理论炒作上,那么去年众多高科技企业和上市公司的强力介入,物流“热”似乎显得实在了一些。中国诚通集团在上海宣     

General‐to‐Specific Model Selection Procedures for Structural Vector Autoregressions*

Structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models have emerged as a dominant research strategy in empirical macroeconomics, but suffer from the large number of parameters employed and the resulting estimation uncertainty associated with their impulse responses. In this paper, we propose general‐to‐specific (Gets) model selection procedures to overcome these limitations. It is shown that single‐equation procedures are generally efficient for the reduction of recursive SVAR models. The small‐sample properties of the proposed reduction procedure (as implemented using PcGets) are evaluated in a realistic Monte Carlo experiment. The impulse responses generated by the selected SVAR are found to be more precise and accurate than those of the unrestricted VAR. The proposed reduction strategy is then applied to the US monetary system considered by Christiano, Eichenbaum and Evans (Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 78, pp. 16–34, 1996) . The results are consistent with the Monte Carlo and question the validity of the impulse responses generated by the full system.     

Syndicated Loan Announcements and Borrower Value

Announcements of syndication loans increase borrowers' shareholder wealth if they are revolving credit agreements but not if they are term loans. Share price responses to revolving credit announcements are positive and significant, whereas the wealth effect for term loans is negative and significant. The results show that announcements from both the financial press and commercial information providers can affect borrower share price reaction. Overall, single syndication announcements appear to be more newsworthy than multiple announcements reported in the financial press, and we find evidence of information leakage, post‐announcement drift, or both.     

Noise Trading and the Management of Operational Risk; Firms,Traders and Irrationality in Financial Markets*

abstract Efficient market models cannot explain the high level of trading in financial markets in terms of asset portfolio adjustment. It is presumed that much of this excessive trading is irrational ‘noise’ trading. A corollary is that there must either be irrational traders in the market or rational traders with irrational aberrations. The paper reviews the various attempts to explain noise trading in the finance literature, concluding that the persistence of irrationality is not well explained. Data from a study of 118 traders in four large investment banks are presented to advance reasons why traders might seek to trade more frequently than financial models predict. The argument is advanced that trades do not simply occur in order to generate profit, but it does not follow that such trading is irrational. Trading may generate information, accelerate learning, create commitments and enhance social capital, all of which sustain traders' long term survival in the market. The paper treats noise trading as a form of operational risk facing firms operating in financial markets and discusses approaches to the management of such risk.     

The dynamics of moonlighting in Russia1

This paper uses the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to analyse the dynamics of moonlighting by the working‐age population. We find that moonlighting is transitory and that a desire to switch jobs expressed in the past is positively related to moonlighting in the present and to actual job changes in the future. We also find that workers who moonlighted as self‐employed in the past represent 26.5 percent of the new self‐employed. These results suggest that moonlighting in Russia can be seen as an effective incubator for setting up new self‐employed businesses, thereby providing long‐term benefits for the economy.     

现阶段我国阶层分化状况及原因探析

社会阶层分化是社会转型期最重要的社会现象之一,对社会稳定和发展都具有重大影响。中国特色社会主义的实践促进了社会重大变革,以社会主义市场经济体制的建立和完善为目标的经济体制改革导致了传统经济体制变化。经济制度的创新、科技革命的推动和收入政策的调整等因素导致了社会阶层分化。     

约翰·拉格里奇:活跃于环球的投资家与学者(二)--投资学掀开生活的红盖头

投资!当人们手里握着余钱的时候，多数会口里喊着或心里念着：投资!——特别是在这个时代的中国，财富神话每时每刻都在上演，渴望在市场上逮住机会的人们，对于投资，是如此的热衷!但是“真理”掌握在少数人手里。这个“真理”，就是投资之道；那些近年赚得盆满钵盈的机构投资和管理们，他们运作大资金的智慧，往往能为我们的“投资”之道点燃一把火。[编按]     

Improved estimation of portfolio value‐at‐risk under copula models with mixed marginals

Portfolio value‐at‐risk (PVAR) is widely used in practice, but recent criticisms have focused on risks arising from biased PVAR estimates due to model specification errors and other problems. The PVAR estimation method proposed in this article combines generalized Pareto distribution tails with the empirical density function to model the marginal distributions for each asset in the portfolio, and a copula model is used to form a joint distribution from the fitted marginals. The copula–mixed distribution (CMX) approach converges in probability to the true marginal return distribution but is based on weaker assumptions that may be appropriate for the returns data found in practice. CMX is used to estimate the joint distribution of log returns for the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) index and the associated futures contracts on SGX and TAIFEX. The PVAR estimates for various hedge portfolios are computed from the fitted CMX model, and backtesting diagnostics indicate that CMX outperforms the alternative PVAR estimators. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 26:997–1018, 2006