Should sequels differ from original movies in pre-launch advertising schedule? Lessons from consumers' online search activity

Sequels have become a profitable strategy in the U.S. motion picture industry because of their strong name recognition. However, while the established positioning of a sequel may help insulate it from competing firms' advertising messages, its familiarity may cause moviegoers to be more easily satiated with advertising from the sequel. Therefore, this study examines how sequels differ from original concept movies in terms of their ad effectiveness. We focus our analysis on pre-launch periods, given these periods' importance in shaping the financial outcomes of motion pictures. We consider the weekly online search volume of a movie as a measure of consumer interest in it, and thus as an intermediate response to pre-launch advertising. We then develop a model that assumes ad effectiveness can decline, due to copy and repetition wearout, and increase, due to forgetting, over time. We find that copy wearout is greater for original movies, while repetition wearout and forgetting are greater for sequels. These findings suggest that sequels should allocate more in early pre-launch periods and less immediately before release, relative to originals, to maximize pre-launch consumer interest.     

Alternative balanced scorecards built from paradigm models in strategic HRM and employment/industrial relations and used to measure the state of employment relations and HR system performance across U.S. workplaces

This paper constructs alternative balanced scorecards based on high‐performance work system (HPWS) and employment relations system (ERS) models. The models are depicted and compared in diagrams and used as framework skeletons for building separate HPWS and ERS scorecards, intended to provide a detailed data picture of the operational health and performance of an organization's employment/HR system and its operations, processes, and inputs/outputs. The scorecards are filled in with nationally representative data from 2,000+ U.S. workplaces using more than 50 employment/HR indicators, as reported by separate panels of managers and employees. The indicators for each workplace are aggregated into an overall HR/employment system score, ranked from low‐to‐high, and graphed as frequency distributions. These distributions provide a unique snapshot picture of the mean and dispersion of the state of employment relations and HR system performance for companies across the United State. They also reveal that “models matter” since the HPWS and ERS scorecards provide distinctly different evaluation assessments.     

Policy capturing in small‐group decision making: Using linear programming to assign factor weights for the NCAA Selection Committee's ranking decisions in the 2016 through 2018 men's basketball tournaments

We present a general approach for applying policy capturing to small‐group decision making and demonstrate the approach with the NCAA Selection Committee's rankings of the 68 teams in the three most recent Division I Men's Basketball Tournaments. We develop a linear programming model that minimizes the extent to which the evaluation of a lower‐ranked team exceeds that of a team ranked immediately above it. The result is a set of linear weights that approximates a group decision when the decision itself is demonstrably internally inconsistent in that a group ranks some teams higher than others despite a lower implied evaluation.     

LT码新型度分布及其在电力线通信中的应用

Luby变换(Luby Transform,LT)码作为信道编码应用于电力线通信(Power Line Communication,PLC)，可实现电信号的可靠传输。度分布对LT码编译码性能的影响至关重要。为了得到更优的度分布，首先调整二进制指数分布(Binary Exponential Distribution,BED)中的度数比例，获得一种译码性能更优的改进的二进制指数分布(Improved BED,IBED)。然后，根据IBED在冗余度较小时译码成功率高，而冗余度增大后鲁棒孤子分布(Robust Soliton Distribution,RSD)的译码性能表现更佳的特点，通过求和归一化的方式将IBED与RSD两种度分布的优势进行有机结合，提出一种新型二进制鲁棒孤子分布(Binary RSD,BRSD)。仿真结果表明，与其他方法及传统的RSD相比，采用新度分布进行LT编码，可明显降低译码开销，并节约编译码耗时。将新型度分布应用于基于LT码的PLC系统中，能有效地抑制PLC信道中各种噪声对电信号的干扰，并提高通信效率。     

基于AD9361的掌上型LTE RRU设计与开发

当前小体积远端射频单元（Remote Radio Unit,RRU）主要是皮站级别的Pico-RRU，其重量和体积仍然难以满足掌上型的要求。为此，采用高集成度的AD9361芯片来实现长期演进（Long Term Evolution，LTE）宽带收发信机功能，配合时钟同步模块、放大器模块和控制接口电路等一起构建低成本的掌上型RRU。主要解决了基于AD9516的时钟同步、低相位噪声设计和高灵敏度接收机设计三个技术难点，成功实现了掌上型、高性能、低成本的设计目标。整个RRU样机尺寸为18 cm×10 cm×2 cm，质量约500 g，量产成本千元以内。测试表明，该RRU下行误差向量幅度（Error Vector Magnitude，EVM）小于3%，优于3GPP要求的8%；10 MHz带宽时上行接收机灵敏度优于3GPP要求的-93.5 dBm。     

天地一体化信息网络中天基卫星网络架构设计

为了充分利用各种空间设施资源，提升天基信息网络覆盖与传输能力，分别从天基信息网络体系架构和逻辑功能架构角度进行了系统性设计。与以往天基网络的设计不同，该设计更注重各类卫星网络的深度融合应用，为此将网络虚拟化技术引入天基卫星网络。同时，还提出了解决新架构下卫星组网难题的方法，将电磁涡旋、卫星灵活载荷和边缘计算技术设计到天基网络。仿真表明，所提出的架构能有效提升频谱利用率和减少卫星网络信令开销。     

Debt Issue Costs and Issue Characteristics in the Market for U.S. Dollar Denominated International Bonds

This paper analyzes the issue costs and initial pricing of bonds in the international market. In particular, we investigate the determinants of three components of issue costs: underwriter fee, underwriter spread (the difference between the offering price and the guaranteed price to the issuer), and underpricing (the difference between the market price and the offering price). Total underwriter compensation increases with the bonds' credit risk and maturity, but it is insignificantly related to issue size. Interestingly, underwriters appear to price some issue characteristics directly (by adjusting the fee) and other characteristics indirectly (by setting the guaranteed price). The two compensation components (fee and spread) are negatively related to each other. We provide evidence that this trade-off is consistent with income tax considerations, as well as with two-tier pricing by underwriters. We find no evidence of underpricing.     

Intraday Lead-Lag Relationships Between the Futures-, Options and Stock Market

In rational, efficiently functioning and complete markets, returns on derivative and underlying securities should be perfectly contemporaneously correlated. Due to market imperfections, one of these markets may reflect information faster. The use of high-frequency data and the choice for a small unit time interval to measure these lead-lag relations comes at the cost of some or many missing observations, causing traditional estimators to either under- or overestimate covariances and correlations. We use a new estimator to estimate lead-lag relationships between the cash AEX index, options and futures. We find that futures returns lead both options and cash index returns by approximately 10 minutes. The relationship between options and the cash market is not completely unidirectional.