Major league baseball division standings,sports journalists' predictions and player salaries

This paper analyzes the accuracy of predictions of division baseball winners and rankings for the 1982 to 1990 seasons. The forecasts in Sport, Sports Illustrated and the New York Times are more accurate than purely random forecasts except at predicting the National League winners. The journalists are better at predicting division winners, but not division rankings, than a naive model that assumes this season's rankings, will be the same as last seasons's. Combining the forecasts in the three publications does not result in greater forecasting accuracy. A model that uses the relative average salaries of teams significantly outperforms the journalists at predicting division rankings and, when allowance is made for ‘George Steinbrenner effect’, also at predicting division winners.     

Are employers pursuing value-based purchasing?

Some employers have begun to undertake a variety of initiatives, collectively termed value-based purchasing (VBP), which aim at factoring quality into the purchasing decision-making process when negotiating costs with providers and insurers. There is evidence that the VBP movement has begun gaining momentum; yet it is unclear whether employers are firmly committed to VBP principles. By surveying a national sample of employers, this study investigates the extent to which employers are currently engaged in VBP activities and also increases our understanding of barriers hampering the broader implementation of these activities.     

The European Union preventive restructuring framework: A hole in one?

While traditionally (Continental) Europe has not been known for an in particular debtor‐ or restructuring‐friendly insolvency practice, in recent decades, important reforms were implemented that would foster restructurings in Europe. In this article, we comparatively look a the status quo of insolvency and restructuring practice in five different European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, UK). We place our observations into the context of the preventive restructuring directive, to be implemented within the next two years after its publication on 26 June 2019. The directive leaves quite some room implementation, from a watered‐down restructuring tool with high access threshold to a pre‐insolvency debtor‐friendly US‐style restructuring procedure.     

Detection of Financial Time Series Turning Points: A New CUSUM Approach Applied to IPO Cycles

This paper presents a new Cumulative Sum approach for the detection of turning points in financial time series that are subject to cyclical mean level and volatility regime shifts. The new CUSUM approach is applied to the problem of detecting turning points in hot issue markets for Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), thus providing a multi-dimensional characterization of states of the IPO cycle.     

Spotting patterns on the fly

Recognizing and anticipating change in industry patterns is a core competence for companies today, allowing managers to capitalize on opportunities before they are apparent to others. Yet despite the growing realization that recognizing patterns is important, companies are far from mastering how to do it, especially at the strategic level, where information is usually less profuse and much less precise. Pattern recognition is not a new skill, though, at least not to people outside the business world. Since antiquity, naturalists have relied on their ability to spot patterns to make sense of their surroundings. And surprisingly, there is much businesspeople can learn from bird-watching--as removed as it may seem from the fast-paced, bruising world of business--in terms of the cognitive demands pattern recognition requires. To learn more, HBR spoke with David Sibley, perhaps the nation's foremost birdwatcher and illustrator, and Julia Yoshida, a birder since 1965 and a physician at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts. Sibley explains how expert birders draw on a wealth of tacit knowledge built up over the years to make identifications in a matter of seconds: "Once you've mastered common patterns, the real trick is to educate yourself about where discrepancies are most likely to appear--and to concentrate your attention on those areas." Although so fast as to be almost unconscious, the process he describes seems to be as methodical as one of Yoshida's medical diagnoses. "Recognizing a pattern involves knowing what to look for, what the possibilities are, and then sorting out those patterns when you are actually confronted with the patient," Yoshida says. "I don't think it's a eureka moment at all. It's a methodical process."     

Corporate Diversification: What Gets Discounted?

Prior literature finds that diversified firms sell at a discount relative to the sum of the imputed values of their business segments. We explore this documented discount and argue that it stems from risk–reducing effects of corporate diversification. Consistent with this risk–reduction hypothesis, we find that (a) shareholder losses in diversification are a function of firm leverage, (b) all equity firms do not exhibit a diversification discount, and (c) using book values of debt to compute excess value creates a downward bias for diversified firms. Overall, the results indicate that diversification is insignificantly related to excess firm value.     

Learning about Internal Capital Markets from Corporate Spin-offs

We examine the investment behavior of firms before and after being spun off from their parent companies. Their investment after the spin-off is significantly more sensitive to measures of investment opportunities (e.g., industry Tobin's Q or industry investment) than it is before the spin-off. Spin-offs tend to cut investment in low Q industries and increase investment in high Q industries. These changes are observed primarily in spin-offs of firms in industries unrelated to the parents' industries and in spin-offs where the stock market reacts favorably to the spin-off announcement. Our findings suggest that spin-offs may improve the allocation of capital.     

GP PRACTICE BUDGETS: AN EVALUATION OF THE FINANCIAL RISKS AND REWARDS

This paper considers the progress to date of those GP practices which have decided to become fundholding practices. We note that already, within the first year of operation, both GP fundholders and District Health Authorities have developed a number of budget ploys. As part of our work we report on the findings of a pilot survey of GP budget holders in the Kent Family Health Service. We conclude that if budget holding becomes the normal pattern of general practice, there will need to be a considerable development of the financial skills and managerial capabilities of the practices and it may be time for the new GP practice manager to come of age.     

Experimental evidence on the relationship between class meeting time compression and accounting student performance, evaluations and drop-out experience

The present paper contains experimental results concerning the effect of class meeting time compression on accounting student performance (as measured by final course grades), evaluations (of the course, the instructor, accounting as a discipline, etc.), and drop-out experience. Two experimental sections (one for each of Introductory Accounting I and Introductory Accounting II) were created and matched with two conventional (control) sections taught by the same pair of instructors at a large, northeastern university. Results indicate that the experimental treatment had little impact on student performance. While the treatment had some impact on drop-out experience and on evaluations, the impact could be explained by an instructor effect. These results suggest that, at the Introductory Accounting level, and especially for better-rated instructors, courses can be offered on a compressed meeting basis without regard for negative effects on performance, attitudes, or drop-out behavior.     

Buildings for the Japanese information economy : Neighbourhood and resort offices

A new physical infrastructure to support activities based on communications and the transmission of information is being developed. Part of this infrastructure includes the construction of ‘intelligent’ buildings which are seen to play as important a role in improving efficiency of office workers as automation has played on the shopfloor of manufacturing industry. The location of these buildings is important. This article focuses on two types of experimental office development—neighbourhood offices and resort offices.