“人类技术”:丹尼埃尔·G·安杜哈

"人类技术"(Technologies To The People,下称TTTP)于1996年问世,当时它作为展览"反调——现实的毁灭"的一部分,在汉堡艺术协会和汉堡美术馆展出。起初,"人类技术"呈现给众人的是一个致力于将先进的科技带给下层社会的虚拟企业形象,以及一系列模糊的企业形象,展览效果极具威慑力。展览中的这些身份认知的动摇、视觉原型都与信息时代中的商业公司有关。数字科技发展的初始阶段,上市公司所持股票贬值,企业形     

Storm surge disaster risk management: the Xynthia case study in France

In recent years, a series of catastrophic storm surges have occurred in Europe. The large number of fatalities and high material damage are mainly due to an increase in vulnerability and exposure to coastal flooding of hit regions. It is, therefore, necessary to intensify research activities in order to better understand this kind of disasters, to reduce their impacts and to reinforce risk management. This study describes the consequences of Xynthia windstorm that hit France in 2010: strong wind gusts, associated to high-coefficient tides and very low pressure, caused a phenomenon of storm surge in the Atlantic coastal area of France. Sea walls, lacking maintenance and originally built to defend agricultural land, were not able to protect houses. Fourty-seven people were killed, most of them from drowning, and direct losses amounted to more than 2.5?billion Euros. Around 10,000 people were forced to evacuate after the inundation of their properties. Uncontrolled urbanization was involved in the increase of stakes, as demonstrated by the fact that all the 29 victims in the city of la Faute-sur-Mer were living in houses built after 1980. The paper describes the event considering the aspect of increased vulnerability in the affected area, the lack of preparedness that exacerbated the final damage, the emergency response phases and the adaptation strategies adopted by the French Government after the disaster. We conclude that an attentive governance should include a balanced approach to risk protection, to reduce vulnerability and exposure.     

Research Strategies in Science-based Start-ups: Effects on Performance in Danish and Swedish Biotechnology

Although biotech start-ups fail or succeed based on their research, few attempts have been made to examine if and how they strategise in this core activity. Using a unique comprehensive dataset on Danish and Swedish biotech start-ups in drug discovery this paper adopts a Simonean approach to analysing the research strategies of small dedicated biotech firms (DBFs), focusing on three interrelated issues: (i) characterising the problem architectures addressed by different types of DBFs; (ii) testing and confirming that DBFs form requisite research strategies, by which we refer to problem-solving approaches developed as congruent responses to problem architectures; and (iii) testing and confirming that financial valuation of firms is driven by achievements conforming to requisite research strategies. These strategies, in turn, require a careful combination of multiple dimensions of research. The findings demonstrate that Schoonhoven's argument that 'strategy matters' is valid not only for the larger high-tech firms covered by her study, but also for small research-based start-ups operating at the very well-springs of knowledge where science directly interacts with technologies. Although more research is needed along these lines, these findings offer new implications for the understanding, management and financing of these firms.     

Corporate Diversification and Credit Constraints: Real Effects across the Business Cycle

We study whether differences in access to credit cause focusedfirms to perform differently from diversified firms in the productmarket. Prior work has identified binding credit constraintsfor bank-dependent firms during recessions. We assess whethercorporate diversification alleviates these constraints. We findthat during recessions sales growth rates drop more for bank-dependentfocused firms than for rival segments of bank-dependent diversifiedfirms. We also find that during recessions inventory growthrates drop more for bank-dependent focused firms than for bank-dependentdiversified firms even after we control for contemporaneoussales growth. Consistent with a credit constraint explanation,we find no difference in the sensitivities to recessions ofbank-independent focused and bank-independent diversified firms.(JEL G30, G31, G32)     

Smooth minimum distance estimation and testing with conditional estimating equations: Uniform in bandwidth theory

To study the influence of a bandwidth parameter in inference with conditional moments, we propose a new class of estimators and establish an asymptotic representation of our estimator as a process indexed by a bandwidth, which can vary within a wide range including bandwidths independent of the sample size. We study its behavior under misspecification. We also propose an efficient version of our estimator. We develop a procedure based on a distance metric statistic for testing restrictions on parameters as well as a bootstrap technique to account for the bandwidth’s influence. Our new methods are simple to implement, apply to non-smooth problems, and perform well in our simulations.     

Does Victim Responsibility Influence Nonprofit Volunteerism?

Volunteers provide billions of dollars of nonpaid labor to nonprofit organizations every year. The purpose of this study is to better understand why volunteers join nonprofit organizations. The central research question examines victim responsibility. That is, does the circumstance of the victim influence a volunteer's willingness to donate time? A survey was designed to investigate the research question. The survey contained nine questions related to age and circumstance of the victim and the likelihood of volunteering. One hundred and seventy-five surveys were completed. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the data. The results indicate that volunteers are more likely to volunteer to help when the victims are not responsible for their circumstance.     

Regulating short‐term rental housing: Evidence from New Orleans

This study examines the effects of regulations targeting Airbnb and other short‐term rental (STR) suppliers in the urban center of New Orleans. I show that although the new ordinances reduced participation in the STR market as intended, STR usage actually increased in the neighborhoods adjacent to areas the most affected by the regulations. I subsequently show that the new regulations depressed property values in the neighborhoods facing the tightest regulations by approximately 30%, implying that homeowners factor into their housing purchasing decisions the option to participate in the STR market.     

Sell on the news: Differences of opinion,short-sales constraints,and returns around earnings announcements

Miller [1977. Risk, uncertainty, and divergence of opinion. Journal of Finance 32, 1151–1168] hypothesizes that prices of stocks subject to high differences of opinion and short-sales constraints are biased upward. We expect earnings announcements to reduce differences of opinion among investors, and consequently, these announcements should reduce overvaluation. Using five distinct proxies for differences of opinion, we find that high differences of opinion stocks earn significantly lower returns around earnings announcements than low differences of opinion stocks. In addition, the returns on high differences of opinion stocks are more negative within the subsample of stocks that are most difficult for investors to sell short. These results are robust when we control for the size effect and the market-to-book effect and when we examine alternative explanations such as financial leverage, earnings announcement premium, post-earnings announcement drift, return momentum, and potential biases in analysts’ forecasts. Also consistent with Miller's theory, we find that stocks subject to high differences of opinion and more binding short-sales constraints have a price run-up just prior to earnings announcements that is followed by an even larger decline after the announcements.