Business Ethical Values in China and the U.S.

The research presented in this paper focuses on business ethical values inChina, a country in which the process of institutional transformation has left cultural values in a state of flux. A survey was conducted in China and the U.S. by using five business scenarios. Survey results show similarities between the Chinese and American decision choices for three out of five scenarios. However, the results reveal significant differences in rationales, even forsimilar decisions. The implications of similarities and differences between the U.S. and Chinese samples are discussed.     

Indirect Taxes on International Aviation*

There has recently been much discussion of the possible use of internationally coordinated indirect taxes, or equivalent charges, on international aviation, whether as a source of finance for development or as part of a response to heightened concerns with climate change. This paper considers the strengths and weaknesses of the leading candidate instruments of this kind. It argues that, on both policy and administration grounds, the case for increasing indirect taxes on international aviation is strong: the indirect tax burden on international aviation is very low, yet aviation contributes significantly to border-crossing environmental damage, is just as proper an object of taxation as any other commodity, and incipient tax competition is likely to result in these taxes being set at inefficiently low levels. But the form(s) in which such taxes are levied matters: a tax on aviation fuel would address the key border-crossing externalities most directly; a tax on final ticket values would have greater revenue potential, and perhaps some distributional advantage; departure/arrival taxes face the least legal obstacles, but are much blunter instruments. Optimal policy, it is shown, typically requires deploying both a fuel tax and a ticket tax, and the paper explores, both in principle and by simulation, the key considerations and trade-offs involved in designing a suitable indirect tax regime for international aviation.     

Measuring Residential Real Estate Liquidity

There are many factors, other than price alone, that may affect the liquidity of real estate. This study develops a liquidity measure based on the Cox proportional hazard technique, a statistical model widely used in the epidemiologic and social sciences. The odds ratio, along with an estimate of market value for a home, are used to construct a liquidity measure. This measure can extract from the data a rich statistical profile of the variables that affect liquidity.     

Predicting Stock Returns Using Financial Statement Information

We examine the profitability of the Ou and Penman (1989a) Pr trading strategy and the Holthausen and Larcker (1992) Prob trading strategy over the period 1980–1992 in the UK. This is a test of whether an investor can earn abnormal returns by exploiting fundamental accounting data. We employ alternative abnormal return metrics and research designs to control for risk. Using a UK dataset offers an independent test because the UK differs from the US in its formal and informal financial reporting environment, its structure of share ownership, and the behaviour of its economy over the study period. We find consistent evidence that an investor could have used a summary measure of financial statement information to predict future abnormal returns by indirectly predicting one-year-ahead earnings changes, but only weak and inconsistent evidence that an investor could have used a summary measure of financial statement information to predict one-year-ahead stock returns directly. We offer some thoughts on the reasons for these different results.