Pension Fund Manager Tournaments and Attitudes Towards Corporate Characteristics

Abstract:  This paper explores the relationship between the tournament incentives of pension fund managers and the characteristics of equities they choose to hold. Using a comprehensive data set on pension fund portfolio holdings, we determine the intensity of fund manager tournaments by sorting pension funds into portfolios based on the number of concurrent managers each pension fund employs. We then investigate which corporate characteristics are preferred by each of these portfolios by estimating share selection models that include a range of corporate characteristics that are expected to shape the returns to investment in stocks over the short and long run. We find that the intensity of the tournament faced by fund managers plays a significant role in shaping preferences over corporate characteristics. Managers facing more intense tournaments exhibit significantly weaker preferences for attributes associated with long run payoffs, such as social performance and growth potential, and significantly stronger preferences for short term attributes, such as operational efficiency, when compared to managers that face weak or no tournament incentives.     

中国煤炭短缺局面短期内难有改观

短期困境凸显长期问题 据路透社报道，中国已有13个省区采取了限电措施。就我们所知，贵州、广东和广西三个南方省份的电力不足问题最为突出，南方电网领导层已请求中央政府寻求对策。通过与上市独立电力公司的讨论，我们得知，电煤库存水平已经大大低于正常水平。     

Role redesign in a modernised NHS: the case of health care assistants

This article examines role redesign in the National Health Service (NHS), which has been central to the Labour government's modernisation agenda, focusing on the role of health care assistants (HCAs). Drawing on data from two acute hospital trusts, this article focuses on variation in HCA roles between trusts, indicating that there may not have been a uniform expansion of the HCA role as the government's HR agenda and most commentators suggest. Although the modernisation agenda has curtailed registered nurses' role in direct care, there are significant variations in the degree to which HCAs undertake a ‘relief’, ‘substitute’ or ‘apprentice’ role at trust level. These variations in HCA role stem from distinctive models of the nursing workforce with differing assumptions about the respective roles of registered and non‐registered nurses. The variations in HCA role have important consequences for the prospects for role redesign and HR policy in the NHS.     

Contestability, Complementary Inputs and Contracting: The Case of Harbour Towage

It has been argued that competitive tendering for contracts can be used to overcome problems of natural monopoly and to make markets 'contestable'. The recent Productivity Commission (2002) report into harbour towage in Australia noted the potential benefits of competition for contracts. Using the example of harbour towage, we investigate these claims when competitive tendering involves one segment of a vertical production chain. We show that direct customer contracting will not result in a perfectly contestable outcome if there is a complementary input provider with market power. We consider whether this situation improves when customers delegate the contracting process. Delegation only improves the outcome from the customers' perspective if the authority is able to receive side payments from the towage operators. Such side payments a priori would appear to be against the interests of the customers. We show, however, that side payments help the port authority to overcome the problems of market power, benefiting both the port authority and the customers. Further, these contracting outcomes are socially preferred to the unregulated outcome where port authorities and towage operators set prices and quality independently. This analysis sheds light and generally supports the Productivity Commission's recommendations.     

Gender schema and fashion consciousness

Psychologists, consumer researchers, and marketers have long measured psychological traits related to gender, especially gender schema. This study assesses various psychological gender measures, including a new one, gender consciousness, in relation to a marketing variable of interest, fashion consciousness. Results indicate that biological sex is predominant when assessing the two sexes together. However, other variables emerge as important when within-sex differences are assessed: public self-consciousness for females and private gender consciousness (a new measure) for males. Marketing implications are discussed, primarily on the basis of these within-sex differences, since fashion marketers usually target separately one or the other sex in their campaigns.     

Statistics and the Wealth of Nations

The relationship of statistics and national prosperity is not a simple causal one, but some historical examples suggest a persistent association. A number of examples are considered, from the political arithmetic of the seventeenth century to the quality assurance methods of the 1950s, and a few speculative conclusions are offered.     

Incorporating international strategic alliances into overall firm strategy: A typology of six managerial objectives

This research differentiates between international strategic alliance (ISA) structures, functions, and objectives, focusing on the latter and the link to overall firm strategy. Six objectives are put forward–learning, leaning, leveraging, linking, leaping, and locking out–with a discussion of the strategic implications of each. From a theoretical perspective, it is suggested that more emphasis should be placed on ISA objectives as a means of supporting overall firm strategies, as opposed to focusing on ISA structures or functions. From an applied perspective, managers are encouraged to consider the long-term strategic implications inherent in specific alliance arrangements. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Privatization and economic performance throughout the UK business cycle

Since 1979, many state-owned industries in the UK have been sold to private shareholders. Initial studies of the impact of privatization on performance were unable to distinguish once-and-for-all shake-out effects and those that were part of a continuing process. Moreover, the immediate post-privatization period often coincided with the boom conditions of the late 1980s. Using two standard performance ratios, this paper examines these issues by tracking the record of eleven firms that were privatized in the 1980s. The results make it difficult to sustain the hypothesis that private ownership is unequivocally more efficient than nationalization.