Has the IASB Been Successful in Making Accounting Earnings More Useful for Prediction and Valuation? UK Evidence

When producing International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), one of the main goals of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) was to create a set of standards which were more useful to investors as a predictive tool. We assess the success of the IASB in achieving this goal by investigating the effects of the introduction of IFRS on the relative information content of reported earnings and forecasted earnings under UK generally accepted accounting practices (GAAP) and IFRS. Results indicate that the value relevance of forecasted earnings is significantly lower under IFRS while the value relevance of reported earnings is significantly larger. These findings suggest that IFRS substitutes price‐relevant information previously provided to the market in the form of analyst forecasts with information encoded by companies in their reported earnings. This implies that the IASB was indeed successful in its stated goal and points towards IFRS forecasts being more accurate and less dispersed than UK GAAP forecasts. This, in turn, implies that analysts are able to provide more informative forecasts under IFRS than under pre‐IFRS regimes and that the aforementioned substitution effect is not a consequence of any decrease in the quality of forecasts under the new regime.     

Determining fair values of performance‐vested and forfeiture‐embedded employee stock options

This study provides a new approach to determine the fair value of ESOs by extending the performance‐vested option pricing model. The model developed in this study takes both vesting period and forfeiture rate into consideration to capture characteristics of ESOs. Empirical and sensitivity analyses give evidence for the importance of these two elements. Empirical results also support that the derived model can be employed to increase the accuracy of ESOs’ fair value.     

国外AVM技术在批量评估中的应用

AVM(自动评估模型)是批量评估方法体系的关键技术。本文系统地介绍了AVM的技术原理,并论述了模型设定理论层面与模型校准技术层面以及两者相互的联系,提出了开发和应用国内AVM,建立税基批量评估方法体系的一些构想。     

The Sophisticated and the Simple: the Profitability of Contrarian Strategies

A variety of variables have been used to form contrarian portfolios, ranging from relatively simple measures, like book‐to‐market, cash flow‐to‐price, earnings‐to‐price and past returns, to more sophisticated measures based on the Ohlson model and residual income model (RIM). This paper investigates whether: (i) contrarian strategies based on RIM perform better or worse than those based on the Ohlson model; (ii) contrarian strategies based on more sophisticated valuation models (e.g. Ohlson and RIM) perform much better than the relatively simpler ranking variables that have been used so extensively in the finance literature. Given that the RIM and Ohlson models require greater information inputs and technical know‐how, and make different implicit assumptions on future abnormal earnings, it is important to ascertain if they offer significantly greater contrarian profits to outweigh the increased costs that they entail. Indeed, our surprising finding is that simple cash flow‐to‐price measures appear to do almost as well as the more sophisticated alternatives. One would have expected the sophisticated models to significantly outperform the simple cash flow to price model for the reasons given by Penman (2007) .     

Effects of Firm Size,Financial Leverage and R&D Expenditures on Firm Earnings: An Analysis Using Quantile Regression Approach

As documented in the literature, the effects of firm size, financial leverage, and R&D expenditures on firm earnings are inclusive. Our hypothesis is that the inconsistent empirical results of such effects may be driven by the regression models implemented in data analysis. Using the quantile regression (QR) approach developed by Koenker and Basset (1978), this study analyses S&P 500 firms from 1996 to 2005. We find that the effects of firm size, financial leverage and R&D expenditures on firm earnings differ considerably across earnings quantiles. Comparing the results from the QR approach with those from the ordinary least squares (OLS) and least absolute deviation (LAD) methods, this study further explains the puzzling relationship between firm size, financial leverage, R&D expenditures and firm earnings.     

双背压凝汽器抽空气系统的改造及效益分析

分析了某电厂600MW超临界机组双背压凝汽器背压差偏小的原因,为发挥双背压凝汽器的技术优势,对其抽空气系统进行了改造.通过时改造前后抽空气系统不同运行方式的对比试验,证明对双背压凝汽器抽空气系统连接方式的改造,技术上可行,经济效果明显,值得其他同类机组借鉴.     

Does the Stock Market Compensate Banks for Diversifying into the Insurance Business?

This paper explores a wide range of corporate restructurings, all available deals from wire services, in the banking and insurance sectors that led to bancassurance ventures. An event study methodology is employed to calculate excess returns on and around the deals’ announcement date. Using both univariate and multivariate analysis the paper finds bank driven mergers, deal's size and regional categorization all triggering positive and significant market reactions. Unlike the univariate framework, multivariate analysis shows that geographic focus and language are not significant factors. The results also indicate that markets are indifferent with respect to bank withdrawals from the bank‐insurance operations. Finally, Canadian, U.S. and European bank‐insurance deals produce positive results, while Australasian bidders offer statistically insignificant equity returns.     

The optimal multi-stage contest

This paper investigates the optimal (effort-maximizing) structure of multi-stage sequential-elimination contests. We allow the contest organizer to design the contest structure using two instruments: contest sequence (the number of stages, and the number of contestants remaining after each stage), and prize allocation. When the contest technology is sufficiently noisy, we find that multi-stage contests elicit more effort than single-stage contests. For concave and moderately convex impact functions, the contest organizer should allocate the entire prize purse to a single final prize, regardless of the contest sequence. Additional stages always increase total effort. Therefore, the optimal contest eliminates one contestant at each stage until the finale when a single winner obtains the entire prize purse. Our results thus rationalize various forms of multi-stage contests that are conducted in the real world.     

高新技术产品出口对中国经济增长的拉动效应及外溢分析

本文从在当今世界贸易中占有重要地位的高新技术产品出口的角度出发,以中国各省市的数据为基础。将Feder模型拓展为四部门,即非出口部门、初级产品出口部门、工业制成品中非高新技术产品出口部门扣高新技术产品出口部门,并且通过东部与中西部比较来考察高新技术产品出口对中国经济的拉动效应和技术外溢作用。实证结果表明,高新技术产品出口对东部经济拉动效应已经很显著而对中西部则不明显,从外溢角度来看,其对东部非出口部门外溢效应很微弱,仅仅为0.07。而对中西部则基本上还没有外溢效应。