Can you handle failure?

Handling failure and blame is key to managerial success. But roughly 70 % of Americans have a personality type that tends to react inappropriately when things go wrong. Some people are extrapunitive, always pointing a finger at someone else. Others are impunitive, denying there's a problem or that they played any role. And still others are intrapunitive, heaping too much blame on themselves and seeing disasters where none exist. Fortunately, there are ways to fix such flawed responses. The first step is to cultivate self-awareness; several personality tests can help you assess your interaction style. Next, deepen your political awareness to better understand what messages others are receiving. Once you've identified your bad habits, you can move toward more-adaptive responses. Dattner and Hogan describe several strategies that can benefit any of the personality types. You should make sure to listen and communicate well, reflect on the situation and the people involved, think carefully before acting, and look for lessons when mistakes do happen. Using detailed examples, the authors illustrate how people with the various personality types are apt to react to specific failures and explain what they might do differently. They also offer insights to help you recognize when your bosses, peers, or subordinates fit into one of the problematic categories and suggest ways to influence their behavior. The taxonomy and tactics they present will help you approach failure with an open mind and react in a balanced, constructive way.     

Management succession and financial performance of family controlled firms

This paper examines the immediate and long-term impacts on financial performance of 124 management successions within Canadian family controlled firms. When family successors are appointed, stock prices decline by 3.20% during the 3-day (−1 to +1) event window, whereas there is no significant decrease when either non-family insiders or outsiders are appointed. However, a cross-sectional analysis indicates that the negative stock market reaction to family successors is related to their relatively young age which may reflect a lack of management experience rather than their family connection per se. Investors are uncertain about the “management quality” of family successors who have less established reputations than more seasoned non-family insiders and outsiders. Non-family member appointments tend to follow periods of poor operating performance implying that there might be more scope for improvement when a non-family successor is appointed. Unlike the US sample in McConaughy et al. [McConaughy, D.L., Walker, M.C., Henderson, G.V., Mishra, C.S., 1998. Founding family controlled firms: efficiency and value, Review of Financial Economics 7, 1–19.], which indicates that the median percentage of votes held by controlling families is less than 15%, the Canadian sample indicates a more concentrated ownership with the median percentage of family controlled votes exceeding 51%. Of the firms in our sample, 62% use dual class capitalization to maintain control within the family.     

农民住房财产权抵押能否激发农村金融市场——基于银行贷款数据的实证分析

扩展抵押品范围是缓解农村金融困境的重要途径。在这一思路下,农民住房财产权抵押被寄予厚望,成为近年来农村政策改革的重要方向。本文使用2010—2016年1 024家农信社和农商行的数据,利用2015年12月国务院在天津市蓟州区等59个试点县(市、区)开展为期两年的农民住房财产权抵押贷款试点这一"准自然实验",对农民住房财产权抵押对涉农贷款供给的影响进行了检验。本文认为,现阶段农民住房面临着价值评估难、抵押物处置难的问题,抵押效果不佳。实证结果显示,农民住房财产权抵押没有显著增加涉农贷款供给,对农村金融的供给作用有限。本文在考虑了农民住房财产权抵押对其他担保方式的替代作用、农地经营权抵押和"三块地"改革的影响之后,上述结果依然稳健。本文的政策启示是,政府应着力做好农房抵押贷款改革的配套措施,推动宅基地制度改革,探索扩大农民住房财产权的受让范围,充分挖掘住房财产权的价值潜力,缓解抵押物处置难问题。     

How Robust is the Kearney/Foreign Policy Globalisation Index?

We argue that the Kearney/Foreign Policy (KFP) index of globalisation is constructed by making some problematic assumptions about the measurement, normalisation and weighting of the variables included in the index. We propose alternative measurement, normalisation and weighting rules, and using these rules, recalculate the ranking of the fifty countries, using the original KFP data. Specifically, we use, in various combinations: (i) variables ‘adjusted’ for geographical characteristics of countries; (ii) statistically optimal weights obtained by principal components analysis; (iii) a normalisation rule that treats different years of observations separately. We find that the country rankings change significantly when adjusted variables are used, indicating that the original KFP index is partially measuring geographical differences between countries.     

Effectiveness and Efficiency of Cross-Border Knowledge Transfer: An Empirical Examination

abstract    Based on a sample of 102 US organizations, this study examines the impact of knowledge characteristics, recipient learning intent, source attractiveness, and relationship quality on the effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge transfer from the international business affiliates of these organizations. Findings indicate that recipient learning intent and source attractiveness positively impact the effectiveness of knowledge transfer. In addition, recipient learning intent was found to have a positive effect on knowledge transfer efficiency. In particular, results highlight the strong positive impact that the quality of the relationship between the source and the recipient has on both the efficiency and effectiveness of cross-border knowledge transfer. The study also indicates that knowledge value is positively associated with recipient learning intent and that knowledge value, rarity and non-substitutability influence source attractiveness. Finally, findings suggest that the relationship between knowledge characteristics and knowledge transfer is partially mediated by recipient learning intent and source attractiveness.     

HOUSE PRICES AND CONSUMPTION INEQUALITY

I characterize how house price shocks affect consumption inequality using a life cycle model of housing and nonhousing consumption with incomplete markets. I derive analytical expressions for the dynamics of inequalities and use these to analyze large house prices swings seen in the United Kingdom. I show that movements in consumption inequality were large, that they correspond with the theoretical predictions qualitatively, and that the model explains a large fraction of the movements quantitatively. I demonstrate the accuracy of this analysis using an extended model's full nonlinear solution. Finally, accounting for house price shocks alters estimates of labor–income risks using cross‐sectional data.     

Audit pricing and nature of controlling shareholders: Evidence from France

This study examines whether auditors are employed as a monitoring mechanism to mitigate agency problems arising from different types of controlling shareholders. In a context of concentrated ownership and poor investor protection, controlling shareholders can easily expropriate wealth from minority shareholders and profit from private benefits of control. However, this agency conflict has been rarely studied, as the most commonly assumed agency conflict occurs between managers and shareholders. Using an audit fee model derived from Simunic (1980), we study the impact of the nature of controlling shareholders on audit fees in French listed firms. Our results show: (1) a negative relationship between audit fees and government shareholdings; (2) a positive relationship between audit fees and institutional shareholdings; and (3) no relationship between audit fees and family shareholdings. These results illustrate the mixed effects of the nature of ownership on audit fees.     

Why panel tests of purchasing power parity should allow for heterogeneous mean reversion

Recent studies of purchasing power parity (PPP) use panel tests that fail to take into account heterogeneity in the speed of mean reversion across real exchange rates. In contrast to several other severe restrictions of panel models and tests of PPP, the assumption of homogeneous mean reversion is still widely used and its consequences are virtually unexplored. This paper analyzes the properties of homogeneous and heterogeneous panel unit root testing methodologies. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we uncover important adverse properties of the panel approach that relies on homogeneous estimation and testing. More specifically, power functions are low and assume irregular shapes. Furthermore, homogeneous estimates of the mean reversion parameters exhibit potentially large biases. These properties can lead to misleading inferences on the validity of PPP. Our findings highlight the importance of allowing for heterogeneous estimation when testing for a unit root in panels of real exchange rates.     

经济欠发达地区基于物流的家电业多渠道营销模式

目前国内较为先进的家电经营模式主要由连锁经营及渠道代理两种。实施多渠道营销策略,建立物流核心竞争力,与大型连锁卖场实施差异化竞争,在竞争中得以生存发展,不失为经济欠发达地区家电业有效的经营模式。