Unit initial public offerings: Staged equity or signaling mechanism?

We investigate the use of unit (i.e., package) initial public offerings by Australian industrial firms and conclude that their use reflects their role as a signaling mechanism (Chemmanur and Fulghieri, 1997), as distinct from the agency–cost explanation offered by Schultz (1993). From a sample of 394 IPOs between 1976 and 1994, the 66 firms making unit offerings are typically riskier, use less prestigious underwriters and have a lower level of retained ownership than other IPO firms. While these results are also consistent with Schultz's agency cost explanation, other results we report are not. We find no difference in underpricing etween unit IPOs and other IPO firms, nor are there any significant differences in the planned uses of proceeds reported in the prospectus, post–listing failure rates or secondary equity offerings of the type predicted by Schultz. We do however, report evidence consistent with a prediction unique to the signaling explanation. After controlling for the level of ownership retained by insiders, the proportion of firm value sold as warrants is increasing in IPO firms' riskiness.     

IOSCO《证券监管目标和原则》述评

在评估监管机构效率的标准上，《目标和原则》为新兴市场和发达市场的监管均提出了应当达到的最佳实践标准，并且还为新兴市场监管提供了与国内相关各方特别是和政府谈判的筹码。     

The technological gatekeeper

The present study identifies a two-step flow process of communication mediated by technological gatekeepers for scientific and technical fields characterized by dynamic information environments. Peer identification and a supervisory recognition of the phenomenon validate the gatekeeper finding. Certain characteristics of this study differ from previous research. The external communication needs of military in-house researchers are mitigated greatly by the infusion of technical information into the laboratory which is a part of the everyday activities of the organization. Gatekeepers are differentiated by topic and not the media monitored. Finally, the gatekeeper phenomenon is implicitly recognized, even though the development may be spontaneous; development that results because either the formal media leave a void in information needs or that engineers are not trained in the use of the formal information sources. In either case, the technological gatekeeper is a natural response to an information need.     

Economic forecast quality: information timeliness and data vintage effects

This paper investigates the impact of the timeliness of information releases and data vintage variation on economic forecast quality. Specifically, using a set of 63 key US economic series, we provide a concise measure of the forecast accuracy associated with use of economic activity indices with different publication lags. A forecasting model based on an economic activity index that is subject to a short publication lag (viz. the Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti index) is more efficient than competing models. Moreover, if this publication lag advantage is removed (by artificially imposing a publication lag restriction comparable to that of a competing indicator) this efficiency largely disappears. The final part of the analysis employs a novel (simulation-based) method of assessing the impact of data vintage variation on forecast accuracy, and finds that the results are somewhat sensitive to such variation.     

Portrayals of Minorities and Women in Super Bowl Advertising

Portrayals of women and minorities advertising have long been of interest to advertising scholars. While research has found that the overall representation of these groups has increased, some stereotypes persist, and so do questions about the quality and prominence of portrayals. This study examines portrayals of minorities and women in Super Bowl advertising, the main “pop culture” showcase for US advertising. A content analysis of 10 years of Super Bowl ads is conducted and a multinomial logit regression model is employed to delve deeper into the content analysis results. Findings show that while the overall representation of women and various minority groups is strong, a deeper analysis shows that these groups are seldom depicted as primary characters by themselves and that some subtle stereotypes persist. We also find that ads featuring female principal characters are more likely to feature home settings, sexual appeals, emotional messages, and music as a major element and that it is less likely for female (vs. male) celebrities to be used. Minority principal characters are more likely to be celebrities and be included in ads with music or for technical products but are less likely to be included in ads featuring corporate social responsibility messages.     

Small Area Estimation for Disease Prevalence Mapping

Small area estimation (SAE) entails estimating characteristics of interest for domains, often geographical areas, in which there may be few or no samples available. SAE has a long history and a wide variety of methods have been suggested, from a bewildering range of philosophical standpoints. We describe design-based and model-based approaches and models that are specified at the area level and at the unit level, focusing on health applications and fully Bayesian spatial models. The use of auxiliary information is a key ingredient for successful inference when response data are sparse, and we discuss a number of approaches that allow the inclusion of covariate data. SAE for HIV prevalence, using data collected from a Demographic Health Survey in Malawi in 2015–2016, is used to illustrate a number of techniques. The potential use of SAE techniques for outcomes related to coronavirus disease 2019 is discussed.