The investment performance,attributes, and investment behavior of ethical equity mutual funds in the US: an empirical investigation

This paper examines the investment performance of US ethical equity mutual funds relative to the market and their traditional counterparts using a survivorship-bias-free database. We detect selectivity and market timing performance of fund managers using two models. First, we use Treynor and Mazuy’s (Harv Bus Rev 44:131–136, 1966) model to determine these performances from a quadratic regression of fund returns on market returns. Second, we use a comprehensive and integrated model derived by Bhattacharya and Pfleiderer (A note on performance evaluation. Technical Report 714, Stanford, California, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business, 1983) and Lee and Rahman (J Bus 63:261–278, 1990) to simultaneously capture stock selection and market timing skill of fund managers. This model extracts timing skill from the relationship between managers’ forecast and realized market return. In addition, the R² approach developed by Amihud and Goyenko (Rev Financ Stud 26:667–694, 2013) for evaluating selectivity is also used in this paper. Our empirical results indicate that ethical funds perform no worse than their traditional counterparts, although ethical and traditional funds do not outperform the market. We find some evidence of superior security selection and/or market timing skill among a very small number of ethical and traditional funds. It appears that matching traditional funds have slightly more abnormal (superior as well as inferior) performance than ethical funds in our sample.     

Does the Presence of Female Executives Curb Earnings Management? Evidence from Korea

We investigate the role of female executives in curbing earnings management behaviour in Korea, a country known for its strong male‐dominant culture. In a sample of Korean firms from 2002 to 2010, we find that female presence in top management is negatively associated with discretionary accruals, suggesting that gender diversity in senior management deters opportunistic financial reporting even in a highly male‐dominant corporate environment. Further, this association is primarily observed in firms with stronger (weaker) female (male) dominance. This finding is consistent with the idea that female executives can exert more influence on corporate decisions in a more female‐friendly environment. These findings have implications for academics and practitioners seeking to understand the impact of the role of top executive gender diversity in corporate accounting practices.     

Time-varying relationship of news sentiment,implied volatility and stock returns

I examine the relationship between aggregate news sentiment, S&P 500 index (SPX) returns, and changes in the implied volatility index (VIX). I find a significant negative contemporaneous relationship between changes in VIX and both news sentiment and stock returns. This relationship is asymmetric whereby changes in VIX are larger following negative news and/or stock market declines. Vector autoregression (VAR) analysis of the dynamics and cross-dependencies between variables reveals a strong positive relationship between previous and current period changes in implied volatility and stock returns, while current period and lagged news sentiment has a significant positive (negative) relationship with stock returns (changes in VIX). I develop a simple trading strategy whereby high (low) levels of implied volatility signal attractive opportunities to take short (long) positions in the underlying index, while extremely negative (positive) news sentiment signals opportunities to enter short (long) index positions. The investor fear gauge (VIX) appears to perform better than news sentiment measures in forecasting future returns.     

Just looking for a good game: competitive balance in the Korean Professional Baseball League

Rottenberg’s uncertainty of outcome hypothesis is about preferences that can vary across fans and sports. We provide the first evidence of the empirical power of the hypothesis in the Korean Professional Baseball League (KPBL). In a panel data set, team-level aggregation over years shows that fans of this league attend in ways consistent with the hypothesis at the level of game uncertainty and consecutive season uncertainty, but only the first is statistically significant. KPBL fans appear to just be looking for a good game. This is consistent with the nearly complete concentration of post-season participation among a very few teams outside of the major population centre in Seoul and a lack of local team identification among KPBL fans. Our work adds to the diversity of league structures in the competitive balance literature since talent levels in KPBL are the result of parent company advertising choices rather than geographic identification. There are research questions and a policy implication.     

Young startup firm exports and productive efficiency

We employ the United States Census Bureau’s 2007 Survey of Business Owners to examine the relationship between the productive efficiency of startup firms and their level of exports. We find, consistent with previous work in the literature, that a small firm’s exports are positively related to their level of productive efficiency. This result holds after controlling for various individual owner, as well as firm, characteristics. Our results are also robust to the inclusion of a two-stage estimation strategy to control for the effects of endogeneity in the efficiency–exports relationship.     

Febuxostat in the management of gout: a cost-effectiveness analysis

Objective:

To determine the cost-effectiveness of febuxostat vs allopurinol for the management of gout.

Methods:

A stochastic microsimulation cost-effectiveness model with a US private-payer perspective and 5-year time horizon was developed. Model flow based on guideline and real-world treatment paradigms incorporated gout flare, serum uric acid (sUA) testing, treatment titration, discontinuation, and adverse events, chronic kidney disease (CKD) incidence and progression, and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) incidence. Outcomes were estimated for the general gout population and for gout patients with CKD stages 3/4. Modeled treatment interventions were daily oral febuxostat 40–80?mg and allopurinol 100–300?mg. Baseline patient characteristics were taken from epidemiologic studies, efficacy data from randomized controlled trials, adverse event rates from package inserts, and costs from the literature, government sources, and expert opinion. Eight clinically-relevant incremental cost-effectiveness ratios were estimated: per patient reaching target sUA, per flare avoided, per CKD incidence, progression, stages 3/4 progression, and stage 5 progression avoided, per incident T2DM avoided, and per death avoided.

Results:

Five-year incremental cost-effectiveness ratios for the general gout population were $5377 per patient reaching target sUA, $1773 per flare avoided, $221,795 per incident CKD avoided, $29,063 per CKD progression avoided, $36,018 per progression to CKD 3/4 avoided, $71,426 per progression to CKD 5 avoided, $214,277 per incident T2DM avoided, and $217,971 per death avoided. In patients with CKD 3/4, febuxostat dominated allopurinol for all cost-effectiveness outcome measures.

Conclusions:

Febuxostat may be a cost-effective alternative to allopurinol, especially for patients with CKD stages 3 or 4.     

Patents,R&D subsidies,and endogenous market structure in a schumpeterian economy

This study explores the different implications of patent breadth and R&D subsidies on economic growth and endogenous market structure in a Schumpeterian growth model. We find that when the number of firms is fixed in the short run, patent breadth and R&D subsidies serve to increase economic growth as in previous studies. However, when market structure adjusts endogenously in the long run, R&D subsidies increase economic growth but decrease the number of firms, whereas patent breadth expands the number of firms but reduces economic growth. Therefore, in accordance with empirical evidence, R&D subsidy is perhaps a more suitable policy instrument than patent breadth for the purpose of stimulating long‐run economic growth.     

International Involvement and Production Efficiency among Startup Firms

The economic theory of small firms often requires a reasoning process distinct from those typically used for large multinational enterprises (MNEs), since small firms typically do not possess the resources MNEs commonly employ to outperform similar domestic firms. In the current analysis, we argue that new small firms with international sales can better predict their revenue stream than can comparably aged firms with only domestic sales, and, as a result, international selling firms have higher levels of technical productive efficiency. We employ 7829 firm-year observations from the 2007 to 2011 years of the Kauffman Firm Survey microdata sample in our analysis. A stochastic frontier model empirically supports the result that technical productive efficiency is positively related to the foreign sales ratio. These results hold after controlling for multiple relevant owner and firm characteristics, as well as accounting for potential endogeneity concerns.     

The price effects of cross‐market mergers: theory and evidence from the hospital industry

We consider the effect of mergers between firms whose products are not viewed as direct substitutes for the same good or service, but are bundled by a common intermediary. Focusing on hospital mergers across distinct geographic markets, we show that such combinations can reduce competition among merging hospitals for inclusion in insurers' networks, leading to higher prices (or lower‐quality care). Using data on hospital mergers from 1996–2012, we find support that this mechanism operates within state boundaries: cross‐market, within‐state hospital mergers yield price increases of 7%–9 % for acquiring hospitals, whereas out‐of‐state acquisitions do not yield significant increases.