The influence of oil price uncertainty on stock liquidity

Using high-frequency intraday data, this study provides strong empirical evidence that elevated oil price uncertainty has a significant and negative influence on stock liquidity. More specifically, the results suggest that large oil-related corporations are most affected, followed by small-listed firms more generally. Further analysis reveals that liquidity providers widen the bid-ask spreads to protect themselves during periods of high oil price uncertainty for large-listed firms, particularly those in the oil industry. These findings are robust to various measures of oil price uncertainty, different market conditions, structural break analysis and show the influence of oil price movements extends to stock liquidity.     

Exploring the mediating role of utilitarian value and hedonic value in the formation of oppositional loyalty in online communities

Our research expands the scope of the research on oppositional loyalty from brands to online communities. Online communities allow members to freely express their opinions and promote the occurrence of oppositional loyalty behaviours towards the communities. Oppositional loyalty is defined in this article that, for the purpose of strengthening the market position of their preferred community, members of the online community may express negative views or even show oppositional behaviour towards adversarial communities. In view of social capital theory, the study examines the effect of hedonic value and utilitarian value on oppositional loyalty in online communities. The results show that only hedonic value significantly affects oppositional loyalty; hedonic value mediates the effect of the three dimensions of social capital (network ties, identification, and common language) on oppositional loyalty. The study identifies that community type moderates the impact of social capital (identification and common language) on hedonic value but does not moderate the effect of social capital on utilitarian value. Finally, we find that members' oppositional loyalty towards their community can promote their community participation. This research provides recommendations for online community managers to manage and benefit from members' oppositional loyalty.     

Uniform pricing effect: The influence of uniform pricing on product value judgement and purchase intention

Uniform pricing, which is a pricing strategy that sets a unified price for all products in the store or all products in the same category, is becoming increasingly popular over the past decades. However, scarce attention has been paid to investigating its impact on consumer behaviour. This research investigates the influence of uniform pricing on product value judgements and purchase intentions. Four studies demonstrate that uniform pricing (vs. non-uniform pricing) could induce stronger promotion perception, which leads to more positive product value judgements and purchase intentions. Moreover, price sensitivity and product involvement moderate this effect, and this effect only exists for high price-sensitive consumers and low product involvement consumers.     

Health shocks and mortgage debt payoff among American homeowners over age 50: A survival analysis

Mortgage debt is financially burdensome for many older homeowners in the United States. As people age, declining health can bring about increased healthcare costs. Focusing on homeowners aged 50 and older in the U.S., we investigate two research questions: (1) To what extent does a heath shock affect the likelihood of paying off a mortgage voluntarily or involuntarily? and (2) how long does a health shock delay the time it takes to pay off a mortgage? We used eight biannual waves (2004–2018) of the Health and Retirement Study containing 11,772 borrowers to build survival regression models. Results showed that a health shock reduced the likelihood of voluntary payoff by 12%, while it increased the probability of involuntary payoff by 18%. A health shock delayed voluntary and involuntary payoffs for 30 and 21 months, respectively. We discuss tax deduction and HELOCs as strategies to reduce older homeowners' mortgage strain.     

The effectiveness of information interventions to improve domestic food safety among rural consumers

Consumer education on food handling behavior is regarded as an effective method to improve domestic food safety and prevent foodborne illness, but is usually overlooked in rural areas. Using a presurvey and two rounds of postsurveys targeted at rural consumers from China included in a randomized controlled trial, this study investigated the effectiveness of two information interventions—a leaflet with tips for best practices and the leaflet plus consumer education sessions conveyed by phone—and compared them with a control group. Cloth use behavior was the target in the trial and five specific aspects were evaluated: (1) whether the cloth was made of old clothes, (2) whether the one used to clean kitchen tables was also used to wash dishes, (3) whether it was hung to dry, (4) how it was disinfected, and (5) how long the cloth was used before being discarded. Firstly, consumers' behavior was scored by summing the above-mentioned five behaviors. The results estimated using the difference-in-difference model showed that respondents in the leaflet-only group improved to a greater extent than those in the control group, but their difference in progress was not statistically significant until the second round of the postsurvey. Respondents in the leaflet-plus-phone group were quicker to adopt suggested practices and made discernible improvements compared with those in the leaflet-only group in the first round of the postsurvey, but the gap between these groups narrowed to statistically insignificant in the second round of the postsurvey. It was concluded that one consumer education session was effective and made a difference in the long term, whereas more education sessions produced normative behavior at faster rates, showing a significant improvement in the short term. Then, the study estimated the effectiveness of interventions on the five specific behaviors separately. The results were estimated using a probit difference-in-difference model and showed that the suggested behaviors with lower costs or a greater difference from past behaviors were more likely to be adopted by consumers. Consumer education facilitates proper food handling practices among rural households, which should be considered by policy makers.     

Asymptotic subadditivity/superadditivity of Value-at-Risk under tail dependence

This paper presents a new method for discussing the asymptotic subadditivity/superadditivity of Value-at-Risk (VaR) for multiple risks. We consider the asymptotic subadditivity and superadditivity properties of VaR for multiple risks whose copula admits a stable tail dependence function (STDF). For the purpose, a marginal region is defined by the marginal distributions of the multiple risks, and a stochastic order named tail concave order is presented for comparing individual tail risks. We prove that asymptotic subadditivity of VaR holds when individual risks are smaller than regularly varying (RV) random variables with index −1 under the tail concave order. We also provide sufficient conditions for VaR being asymptotically superadditive. For two multiple risks sharing the same copula function and satisfying the tail concave order, a comparison result on the asymptotic subadditivity/superadditivity of VaR is given. Asymptotic diversification ratios for RV and log regularly varying (LRV) margins with specific copula structures are obtained. Empirical analysis on financial data is provided for highlighting our results.     

基于BDS的ADS-B报文生成系统

目前国际民航组织（ICAO）和美国航空无线电技术委员会（RTCA）有关广播式自动相关监视（ADS-B）标准中的报文数据源均规定来自全球定位系统（GPS）,而中国自主建设的“北斗”卫星导航系统（BDS）作为ADS-B数据源是必然趋势。设计了基于BDS的ADS-B报文生成系统的总体架构,利用BDS接收机接收的真实数据仿真生成了ADS-B的6种报文,并以空中位置报文的生成为例,详细阐述了报文产生涉及的关键技术以及报文的生成过程。通过运行集成后的ADS-B报文生成系统以及对所产生的6种报文的仿真验证,证明该系统总体设计思路合理,运行结果正确,可为基于BDS的ADS-B相关技术研究提供稳定可靠的ADS-B报文源。     

Workforce diversity and financial statement readability

The Securities and Exchange Commission has associated readability with a range of linguistic features largely determined by the language style of the information producers, including sentence length and the use of personal pronouns, familiar words, surplus words and active voice. We examine the impact of a firm's workforce ethnic diversity on its financial statement readability. Based on linguistic literature, we argue that a more diverse workforce increases the linguistic heterogeneity of the inputs into financial statements, hindering financial statement readability. We show that financial statement readability decreases with the ethnic diversity of the workforce, and that this effect is more pronounced for firms located in a community with a high crime rate or low social capital. We also find that the market reacts less to the earnings surprises of firms with less readable financial statements. We further find that the impact of white-collar employee diversity on readability is greater than that of blue-collar employee diversity. The results of robustness tests suggest that workplace diversity does not reduce firms' overall information production quality, which rules out the alternative explanation that employee diversity hinders financial statement readability through increasing employee conflict and communication errors. Overall, our study suggests that workforce diversity is an important determinant of financial statement readability.     

中水源热泵地板供暖运行策略分析

为研究中水源热泵地板供暖系统的节能策略,以石家庄市某实际运行小区的中水源热泵地板辐射供暖系统为对象,引入室外综合温度的概念,综合考虑室外气温、太阳辐射热与风速等环境因子的影响,推导得出了地板辐射供暖系统质调节情况下,保证热用户舒适度的二次网供、回水温度调节公式。经实际运行测试,由该调节公式计算得出的二次网供、回水温度作为地板辐射供暖系统分时段质调节的依据,可以在满足热用户舒适度要求的情况下,取得良好的节能效果。中水源热泵系统与地板辐射供暖系统的结合及推广为城市集中供热提供了新思路。     

企业应收账款的风险及其控制刍议

在市场竞争日益激烈、产品同质化竞争的情况下,企业为了抢占市场、扩大销售规模,对客户提供赊销服务成为较常用的手段,但由此可能会导致应收账款回款问题的风险,本文在对企业应收账款形成原因、相关风险分析的基础上,提出了风险控制的具体措施。