On the Competitive Land Market: Evidence from Hong Kong

This paper examines both theory and empirical evidence on the relationship between market concentration and profitability in Hong Kong's land market. Such a relationship has been the subject of substantial debate among academics and practitioners. The study highlights several distinctive characteristics of property development in Hong Kong, and particularly various competitive strategies. In Hong Kong, land can be acquired through public auction, redevelopment and lease modifications. Thus, those developers without a sufficient land bank tend to be very aggressive in land auction. However, in the land auction market, competition is keen and the land acquired expensive. This study found that the leading property developers do not take the largest share in the land auction market. We argue that the developers tend to locate themselves in a suitable market position or strategic domain, within which they sustain competitiveness by increasing their market share. We also found that the property developers undertaking a relatively high proportion of large-scale projects tend to have a higher proportion of profits from such projects.     

Air pollution,affect, and forecasting bias: Evidence from Chinese financial analysts

We document a negative relation between air pollution during corporate site visits by investment analysts and subsequent earnings forecasts. After accounting for analyst, weather, and firm characteristics, an extreme worsening of air quality from “good/excellent” to “severely polluted” is associated with a more than 1 percentage point lower profit forecast, relative to realized profits. We explore heterogeneity in the pollution-forecast relation to understand better the underlying mechanism. Pollution only affects forecasts that are announced in the weeks immediately following a visit, indicating that mood likely plays a role, and the effect of pollution is less pronounced when analysts from different brokerages visit on the same date, suggesting a debiasing effect of multiple perspectives. Finally, there is suggestive evidence of adaptability to environmental circumstances – forecasts from analysts based in high pollution cities are relatively unaffected by site visit pollution.     

CCPS guidelines for chemical process quantitative risk analysis

This paper focuses on the new Guidelines for Chemical Process Quantitative Risk Analysis recently published by the AIChE Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS). CCPS was formed soon after the disasters in Mexico City and Bhopal. CCPS was established in 1985 by the AIChE to develop and disseminate technical information for use in the prevention of major chemical accidents. The center is supported by over 60 industrial sponsors in the chemical process industry (CPI), who provide the necessary funding and professional guidance to its technical committees. The major product of CCPS activities has been a series of guideline books. Table I presents a list of the currently available CCPS guidelines. The first book, Guidelines for Hazard Evaluation Procedures (HEP), presented various structured qualitative techniques (HAZOP, FMEA, etc.) that could be used to identify possible hazards in a chemical facility. The Technical Steering Committee of CCPS decided that a sequel to HEP should be developed which would present quantitative methods for acute process hazards. The Guidelines for Chemical Process Quantitative Risk Analysis (CPQRA) resulted from that decision.