Bilateral political relations and sovereign wealth fund investment

We examine the role of bilateral political relations in sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investment decisions. Our empirical results suggest that political relations play a role in SWF decision making. Contrary to predictions based on the FDI and political relations literature, we find that relative to nations in which they do not invest, SWFs prefer to invest in nations with which they have weaker political relations. Using a two-stage Cragg model, we find that political relations are an important factor in where SWFs invest but matter less in determining how much to invest. Inconsistent with the FDI and political relations literature, these results suggest that SWFs behave differently than rational investors who maximize return while minimizing risk. Consistent with the trade and political relations literature, we find that SWF investment has a positive (negative) impact for relatively closed (open) countries. Our results suggest that SWFs use—at least partially—non-financial motives in investment decisions.     

Changes in analysts’ stock recommendations following regulatory action against their brokerage

Review of Accounting Studies - Despite the importance of sell-side analysts in the capital markets, we know little about the effectiveness of routine monitoring of the sell-side industry. We...     

A Simple Bayesian Procedure for Sample Size Determination in an Audit of Property Value Appraisals

The article proposes a simple Bayesian technique for auditing property appraisals to determine whether state accuracy guidelines are met. The proposed technique addresses elicitation of appraisers' prior beliefs, computation of reappraisal sample sizes and reporting of audit results. To facilitate communication of quantitative audit findings to nonstatistician stakeholders, the concept of variance appears nowhere in prior elicitation or reporting. In contrast to classical frequentist techniques, the Bayesian procedure easily integrates expert judgment and responds flexibly to the arrival of new information. In addition, the Bayesian procedure significantly reduces the number of reappraisals required to regulate appraisal systems when they are functioning well. The technique can be applied in other settings where government officials audit their own work and must convince overseers, especially the public, that accuracy requirements are satisfied.     

The 3‐day Week of 1974 and Earnings Data Reliability in the Family Expenditure Survey and the National Child Development Study*

In early 1974, an energy conservation policy limited the British workweek to 3 days. Researchers fear that earnings reports given by survey respondents during this period may not be comparable with those given in more typical circumstances. This study uses responses during and after the 3‐day week policy to estimate the degree of misreporting in the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the Family Expenditure Survey (FES). The estimates show that very few respondents gave ‘incorrect’ 3‐day figures. In the FES, the estimated fraction of misreports is no larger than 3.2%; in the NCDS, the best estimate is 0.     

工业品公司品牌和市场战略

经过二十年的发展, 跨国企业在中国的消费品品牌营销手段已十分娴熟,但对于工业品的品牌战略,即使是在全球市场上有相当丰富经验的跨国企业,在中国的市场实践上仍存在种种认识的误区,采用的手段或自相矛盾,或片面单一,缺乏统一完整的策略。     

Sustainable humanitarian supply chain management – exploring new theory

Disaster response operations aim at helping as many victims as possible in the shortest time, with limited consideration of the socio-economic context. During the disaster rehabilitation phase, the perspective needs to broaden and comprehensively take into account the local environment. We propose a framework of sustainable humanitarian supply chain management (SCM) that facilitates such comprehensive performance. We conceptualise the framework by combining literature from the fields of sustainable and humanitarian SCM. We test the framework through an analytic induction process by means of multiple case studies of four relief organisations. Our framework suggests that supply chain design needs to be aligned not only to relief organisations’ enablers, but also to the population's long-term requirements as well as any socio-economic and governmental contingency factors. A good fit between these dimensions leads to sustainable performance. The framework provides an instrument for relief organisations to achieve sustainable performance in the disaster rehabilitation phase.     

Diversification to mitigate expropriation in the tobacco industry

While it is well established that diversifying acquisitions by large, cash-rich firms destroy shareholder wealth, we document positive abnormal returns to such acquisitions in the tobacco industry. We show that these abnormal returns are associated with proxies for lower expected expropriation costs. Specifically, we show that wealth creation increases in the degree of domestic geographic expansion afforded by the acquisition (increasing tobacco firms’ influence in more political districts) and in the liquidity of tobacco firms’ assets (converting cash to harder-to-expropriate operating assets). We also show that the threat of expropriation constrains payments to shareholders before expropriation becomes certain in 1998.