Earnings disaggregation and analysts＇ forecasts

Accounting concepts dictate that separately disclosed components should contain separate useful information. This paper examines the relations between income statement components and analysts＇ earnings forecasts and forecast errors. Regressions explaining earnings forecasts using earnings components provide a better fit than regression using just aggregate income to explain forecasts. We interpret this as consistent with the hypothesis that analysts use incremental information in components not available in aggregate income. However, additional tests based on predictability of forecast errors indicate that analysts do not incorporate all information available in components into earnings forecasts. In addition, this inefficiency appears to increase at longer forecast horizons.     

What moves housing markets: A variance decomposition of the rent–price ratio

We apply the dynamic Gordon growth model to the housing market in 23 US metropolitan areas, the four Census regions, and the nation from 1975 to 2007. The model allows the rent–price ratio at each date to be split into the expected present discounted values of rent growth, real interest rates, and a housing premium over real rates. We show that housing premia are variable and forecastable and account for a significant fraction of rent–price ratio volatility at the national and local levels, and that covariances among the three components damp fluctuations in rent–price ratios. Thus, explanations of house-price dynamics that focus only on interest rate movements and ignore these covariances can be misleading. These results are similar to those found for stocks and bonds.     

Post-Earthquake Land Appropriations and the Dispossession of Rural Women in Haiti

ABSTRACT

This study examines the trajectory of rural women’s labor in the wake of post-earthquake land appropriations in Haiti. Drawing on ethnographic field research conducted between 2010 and 2013, it explores gendered access to land in Haiti in both historical and contemporary contexts, paying attention to the nature of rural gender relations and how they influence women’s access to land and their roles in petty commerce. The study describes the stratification of rural market women, their lived experience, and how losing land access will affect their traditional roles as market women. Ultimately it argues that without access to land, and a paucity of available wage work, recent dispossession will intensify existing vulnerabilities for rural women and narrow their means of household production by forcing them to depend on informal market activity in their roles as machann (market women).     

PROMETHEE Group Decision Support System and the House of Quality

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a multi-step method that monitors customer needs throughout a product development process. The House of Quality (HOQ) exercise undertaken in the first phase of QFD is considered as the most important, since customer needs must be accurately translated into a set of technical requirements for the final product. This paper provides a PROMETHEE group decision support system (GDSS) approach that integrates the design preferences of the QFD team. We highlight the selection and ranking of the technical requirements in the HOQ exercise, where a group of multidisciplinary decision makers (DMs) in a globally dispersed QFD team is required to input their individual preferences. Our approach advances the HOQ group decision making context in three important areas. First, it treats each criterion and DM as unique in terms of the preference function and threshold levels. Second, it seeks a multi-criteria approach for the HOQ process, where some DMs may play a more important role than others on a certain criterion. Third, sensitivity analysis through the Geometrical Analysis for Interactive Assistance (GAIA) plane provides valuable information about the conflicts, similarities, or independencies between the criterion and the DMs, respectively. A case on an automotive part illustrates the performance of the PROMOTHEE approach with GAIA.     

ASEAN‐5 bond market development: Where does it stand? Where is it going?

Since the late 1990s' Asian crisis, ASEAN‐5 countries have expended considerable effort in developing their bond markets. However, the size of these markets relative to GDP has hardly changed. Can we explain this? And does it mean that domestic markets have not, in fact, developed? The article argues that bond market growth has been held back by a sharp fall in business investment, which has left firms with little need for bond borrowing. Even so, markets have developed in other ways, to such an extent that substantial amounts of foreign portfolio investment have begun to flow into ASEAN‐5 bonds. These developments have important ramifications. With the investor base growing and infrastructure investment likely to rise, ASEAN‐5 bond markets could expand rapidly, holding out the prospect that the region could finally achieve ‘twin engine’ financial systems in the near future.     

AIDS treatment and intrahousehold resource allocation: Children's nutrition and schooling in Kenya

The provision of antiretroviral medications is a central component of the response to HIV/AIDS and consumes substantial public resources from around the world, but little is known about this intervention's impact on the welfare of children in treated persons' households. Using longitudinal survey data from Kenya, we examine the relationship between the provision of treatment to adults and the schooling and nutrition outcomes of children in their households. Weekly hours of school attendance increase by over 20% within 6 months after treatment is initiated for the adult patient. We find some weak evidence that young children's short-term nutritional status also improves. These results suggest how intrahousehold allocations of time and resources may be altered in response to health improvements of adults.     

Optimal wage re-negotiation in a closed and open economy

This paper investigates an economy in which there are short-term wage contracts that are re-negotiated under certain conditions. The paper determines the optimal frequency of wage re-negotiation and shows that it depends positively on measures of aggregate variability and Phillips curve slope. The role of optimal wage re-negotiation is to mitigate the output effects of various shocks. In the context of an open economy, it is shown that the desirable exchange rate regime in an economy with optimal wage re-negotiation depends on the stochastic structure of the economy.     

Basic human needs: The plateau curve

The satisfaction of basic human needs in developing countries follows a nonlinear curve relative to per capita income, asymptotically approaching a limiting level. Within this general relationship, some countries are more ‘efficient’ than others in improving basic needs at lower per capita income levels. Infant mortality rates in 116 countries, from 1950 to 1980, are analyzed to identify factors affecting a country's efficiency in reaching infant mortality targets relative to its Gross Domestic Product per capita. The determinants of efficiency include export structure, internal distribution, late development and access to education. Implications for development policy are discussed.