Bimodal issues,the median voter model,Legislator's ideology,and abortion

The median voter model is widely used in the public choice literature to explain legislator's behavior. According to the model, if voter preferences are unimodal, a vote-maximizing legislator should mirror the position of the median voter. However, the median voter model has not been tested on bimodal issues. This paper fills this critical void by empirically testing the applicability of the median voter model on an issue which clearly meets the criteria for being bimodal: abortion. Using a variety of attitudinal measures from large sample public opinion polls and constituency demographics, this study finds that Senate voting on the 1994 Freedom of Abortion Access bill was highly related to the senator's personal characteristics—especially ideology—and not to constituent opinion or demographics.     

Contextual marketing--the real business of the Internet

The painful truth is that the Internet has been a letdown for most companies--largely because the dominant model for Internet commerce, the destination Web site, doesn't suit the needs of those companies or their customers. Most consumer product companies don't provide enough value or dynamic information to induce customers to make the repeat visits--and disclose the detailed information--that make such sites profitable. In this article, David Kenny and John F. Marshall suggest that companies discard the notion that a Web site equals an Internet strategy. Instead of trying to create destinations that people will come to, companies need to use the power and reach of the Internet to deliver tailored messages and information to customers. Companies have to become what the authors call "contextual marketers." Delivering the most relevant information possible to consumers in the most timely manner possible will become feasible, the authors say, as access moves beyond the PC to shopping malls, retail stores, airports, bus stations, and even cars. The authors describe how the ubiquitous Internet will hasten the demise of the destination Web site--and open up scads of opportunities to reach customers through marketing "mobilemediaries," such as smart cards, e-wallets, and bar code scanners. The companies that master the complexity of the ubiquitous Internet will gain significant advantages: they'll gain greater intimacy with customers and target market segments more efficiently. The ones that don't will be dismissed as nuisances, the authors conclude. They suggest ways to become welcome additions--not unwelcome intrusions--to customers' lives.     

沃顿商学院中国的第二次经济大转型

我一直密切关注着中国近年来增长与繁荣。现在是中国的第二次经济转型．即构筑统一的国内市场的时候了。我认为这一转变势在必行．只有如此．那些有能力在国内竞争中获胜，继而挺进国际市场的企业才能脱颖而出。     

Time series momentum and moving average trading rules

We compare and contrast time series momentum (TSMOM) and moving average (MA) trading rules so as to better understand the sources of their profitability. These rules are closely related; however, there are important differences. TSMOM signals occur at points that coincide with a MA direction change, whereas MA buy (sell) signals only require price to move above (below) a MA. Our empirical results show MA rules frequently give earlier signals leading to meaningful return gains. Both rules perform best outside of large stock series which may explain the puzzle of their popularity with investors, yet lack of supportive evidence in academic studies.     

Staged investments in entrepreneurial financing

Venture capitalists deliver investments to entrepreneurs in stages. This paper shows staged financing is efficient. Staging lets investors abandon ventures with low early returns, and thus sorts good projects from bad. The primary implication from staging is that it is efficient to invest more in later rounds. The model yields a number of predictions on how the ratio of early to late round financing varies with uncertainty, the outside options of both parties, the value of the venture, the costs of investment, and project difficulty. We test these predictions against data on venture capital financings and find significant empirical support for the theory.     

Tourism development and behavioural changes: evidences from Ratanakiri province,Kingdom of Cambodia

This research paper presents the findings of a research undertaken in Ratanakiri province, Kingdom of Cambodia (Under the RETA 6190 ADB TA project on ‘Preventing the Trafficking of Women and Children and Promoting Safe Migration in the GMS’), with the aim to evaluate the impact of an airport rehabilitation project. It highlights the role that infrastructure development, with a focus on tourism-related projects, can play in a remote rural area and its consequences on local population, especially ethnic minorities. For remote areas, tourism is considered as an accelerating influence on globalisation and in-migration, which, in turn, are seen as the main factors affecting remote local communities to modify behaviours changing from valuing utility to valuing exchange. The rapidity of these cultural changes increase rural depopulation and the vulnerability of human beings to a range of negative situational factors, including loss of land, erosion of community structures and coping mechanisms, and as well as exploitative practices such as debt bondage, prostitution and human trafficking.     

Explaining the slow U.S. recovery: 2010–2017

This paper argues that the slow U.S. recovery after the 2008–2009 recession was due to sluggish government spending. The analysis uses a structural macroeconometric model. Conditional on government policy, the errors in predicting output for the 2009.4–2017.4 period are within what one would expect historically. Productivity and labor force participation are endogenous variables in the model, and so their behaviors in this period are a consequence of the slow growth rather than a cause.     

Too Good to be True? An Analysis of the Options Market's Reactions to Earnings Releases

Using option implied risk neutral return distributions before and after earnings announcements, we study the option market's reaction to extreme events over earnings announcements. While earnings announcements generally reduce short‐term uncertainty about the stock price, very good news does not reduce uncertainty and slightly bad news actually increases uncertainty. We also find that left tail probabilities decrease over earnings releases while right tail probabilities increase. We interpret these findings as evidence of maintained investor expectations that very good news is generally not released during earnings announcements, combined with skepticism in the form of lingering uncertainty at the release of such very good news.     

Foreign banks in Japan: A study of a Japanese deregulation process

The deregulation of foreign banks in Japan, although corresponding in broad outline to world-wide trends, has diverged substantially in many particulars from patterns seen elsewhere. It has tended to be excruciatingly slow and piecemeal and to have been of minimal benefit to foreign banks. A review of this process leads to the conclusion that these characteristics result from organisational and political-bureaucratic factors inherent to the Japanese style of government which is, in turn, partially a reflection of Japanese culture. Although these non-economic factors have influenced the specific pattern of change, its overall direction appears to have been consistent with the broader national interest.The authors wish to acknowledge financial support from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Florsheimer Center for Policy Studies, and the Krueger Center for Financial Research.