Geography, skills or both: What explains Fed watchers’ forecast accuracy of US monetary policy?

The paper shows that there is a substantial degree of heterogeneity in the ability of Fed watchers to forecast US monetary policy decisions. Based on a novel database for 268 individual professional forecasters since 1999, the average absolute forecast error of FOMC decisions varies 5–10 basis points between the best and worst-performers across the sample. This heterogeneity is found to be related to both the skills of analysts – such as their educational and employment backgrounds – and to geography. In particular, forecasters located in regions which experience more idiosyncratic economic conditions perform worse in anticipating monetary policy. This evidence is indicative that limited attention and heterogeneous priors are present even for anticipating important events such as monetary policy decisions.     

K. William Kapp's theory of social costs and environmental policy: Towards political ecological economics

The paper analyzes the contribution of K. William Kapp, widely considered one of the founders of Ecological Economics. This paper will demonstrate how K. William Kapp developed his theory of social costs into a framework for environmental policy development, i.e. the basis for Political Ecological Economics. The latter provides the most comprehensive and non-utilitarian alternative to the main neoclassical approaches provided by Arthur Pigou and Ronald Coase. Kapp determined basic human needs to be necessary values operational for policymaking via politically derived and scientifically determined social minima (criteria) and socio-ecological indicators. This “rational humanism” was inspired by Weber's concept of substantive rationality and informed by John Dewey's pragmatic instrumentalism. The paper concludes that Kapp's contribution is important enough to cement its place in the broader school of Ecological Economics.     

The effects of focus versus diversification on bank performance: Evidence from Chinese banks

This paper investigates the effects of focus versus diversification on bank performance using data on Chinese banks during the 1996–2006 period. We construct a new measure, economies of diversification, and compare the results to those of the more conventional focus indices, which are based on the sum of squares of shares in different products or regions. Diversification is captured in four dimensions: loans, deposits, assets, and geography. We find that all four dimensions of diversification are associated with reduced profits and higher costs. These results are robust regardless of alternative measures of diversification and performance. Furthermore, we observe that banks with foreign ownership (both majority and minority ownership) and banks with conglomerate affiliation are associated with fewer diseconomies of diversification, suggesting that foreign ownership and conglomerate affiliation may play important mitigating roles. This analysis may provide important implications for bank managers and regulators in China as well as in other emerging economies.     

Discussion of Valuation of Internet Stocks—An IPO Perspective

The discussion reviews BMS's analysis of how summary financial data from the IPO prospectus are associated with the IPO offer price and the initial market price. The authors focus on whether the value drivers associated with these prices differ between internet and non-internet firms, and between the offer price and the day one ending price. They conclude that there are differences in the value drivers used to value Internet versus non-Internet firms, and further differences in the value drivers used to arrive at the offer price and the day one ending price. The review raises several concerns about these conclusions. One concern is that the reader confronts a challenge in trying to interpret the differences between the value drivers affecting the offer price and the day one ending price. The review discusses two factors for the reader to consider before interpreting these differences. The review also critiques the paper's avoidance of disaggregated financial statement information in the value driver analyses and details several research design concerns.     

Qualitative sampling in a multi-method survey

Because method triangulation is able to reduce disadvantages of one method by using another one, it has been demanded in social science for many years. Nevertheless, it is seldom applied in practical research. To show the importance of multi-method-research for improving the results of social science investigation, one possibility of method triangulation and its execution is presented. Out of a representative youth survey about sexual behavior and AIDS-prevention with 1500 German respondents a sample of 15–20 respondents for depth-interviews is extracted by combining clusteranalysis and random-sampling. The aim of that multi-method procedure is to get more detailed information about subgroup specific topics and problems. At first the paper shows the necessity of method triangulation and its application in our survey. After that the procedure and the results of the clusteranalysis are presented. In the last chapter the sampling and its results are discribed and discussed.     

解读资产管理公司的成功要素

在未来资产管理行业的竞争中,强大的品牌、有效的渠道、丰富的产品组合和深度的客户细分将成为关键的成功要素。个人用户的发展对于资产管理公司具有重要的意义。在中国,随着商业银行的进入,资产管理的行业格局将发生巨大的变化。对于独立的资产管理公司,在品牌和渠道处于弱势的情况下,如何通过产品管理、渠道建设和品牌建设提升自身的竞争实力至关重要;而对于商业银行,尽管具有品牌和渠道的天然优势,但只有能够提供有竞争力的产品才可以满足客户的需求,同时商业银行在拥有自身产品的情况下是否仍然代为销售竞争性产品也需要进行仔细衡量,从而在满足客户多样化需求和实现自身利益最大化中找到最佳平衡点。     

Teaching Business-Communication Ethics with Controversial Films

Two recent films by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, David Mamet, can provide opportunities for observing student reactions to ethically troublesome situations and for discussing business-communication ethics in the classroom. The key question addressed in this article is whether business-communication courses, for example, those in public relations, can encourage students to make the "metaphoric leap" and apply Mamet's messages to class readings and discussions on ethical problems or challenges. Through showing two films in their entirety and conducting focus groups among upper-level undergraduates, the authors find that there is instructional value in using Mamet's films to discuss ethics in business-related settings.     

The Effects of Geographic Expansion on Bank Efficiency

We assess the effects of geographic expansion on bank efficiency, using cost and profit efficiencies estimated for over 7000 U.S. banks from 1993 to 1998. We find both positive and negative links between geographic scope and bank efficiency. Parent organizations exercise some control over the efficiency of their affiliates, although this control tends to dissipate with the distance to the affiliate. However, on average, distance-related efficiency effects tend to be modest, and our results suggest that some efficient organizations can export efficient practices to their affiliates and overwhelm any effects of distance. The results imply there may be no particular optimal geographic scope for banking organizations—some may operate efficiently within a single region, while others may operate efficiently on a nationwide or international basis.     

Public financing of health expenditures,insurance, and health outcomes

The effects of public financing of health expenditures, insurance coverage and other factors on health outcomes are examined within health production models estimated using 1960–1992 data across 20 OECD countries. Mortality rates are found to depend on the mix of health care expenditures and the type of health insurance coverage. Increases in the publicly financed share of health expenditures are associated with increases in mortality rates. Increases in inpatient and ambulatory insurance coverage are associated with reduced mortality. The effects of GDP, health expenditures and age structure on mortality are similar to those in previous studies. Tobacco use, alcohol use, fat consumption, female labour force participation, and education levels are also significantly related to overall mortality rates. Increases in income inequality are associated with lower mortality rates, suggesting that the negative relationship between inequality and health outcomes suggested by some previous studies does not remain when a more complete model is estimated. The result that increases in public financing increase mortality rates is robust to a number of changes in specifications and samples. Thus, as countries increase the level of their health expenditures, they may want to avoid increasing the proportion of their expenditures that are publicly financed.     

WHICH VARIABLES EXPLAIN DECISIONS ON IMF CREDIT? AN EXTREME BOUNDS ANALYSIS

This paper analyses which economic and political factors affect the chance that a country receives IMF credit or signs an agreement with the Fund. We use a panel model for 118 countries over the period 1971–2000. Our results, based on extreme bounds analysis, suggest that it is mostly economic variables that are robustly related to IMF lending activity, while most political variables that have been put forward in previous studies on IMF involvement are non-significant. To the extent that political factors matter, they seem more closely related to the conclusion of IMF agreements than to the disbursement of IMF credits.