群体评估在机器设备评估中的应用

制造业企业的机器设备数量较多,总价值也较高。而在采用资产基础法评估制造业企业的整体价值时,其机器设备评估侧重的是机器设备评估总值的准确性,而非每台设备评估值的准确性。那么,能否找到一种既保证机器设备评估总值准确度又高效合理的评估方式呢?     

Big hat, no cattle: managing human resources

When faced with business problems, managers naturally make identifying the trouble their priority. Once that is done, at least half the job is over; finding solutions is just a matter of time. This hasn't been so, however, with the human resources problem: how to motivate employees. Sixty years ago, the Hawthorne experiments revealed the issue, and ever since, managers, researchers, and consultants have been searching for the answer to the human resources problem. Why aren't employees as productive, loyal, and dedicated to their companies as their managers know they can be? The author of this article proposes four reasons why actuality has fallen so far below expectation in personnel management, namely, that managers' expectations have been too high in the first place, that the concepts staff professionals offer managers are frequently contradictory, that the corporate role of personnel has always been problematic, and finally, that managers hold assumptions concerning their employees that undermine efforts to motivate them.     

Determinants of the corporate decision to capitalize interest

Until 1974, firms could choose, within GAAP, to capitalize or expense interest costs associated with capital expenditures. The predominant practice had been to treat interest as a period expense. However, in 1974, the Securities and Exchange Commission imposed a moratorium on further adoption of interest capitalization by non-regulated firms. This study empirically examines economic factors potentially influencing firms' decisions to expense or capitalize interest prior to the SEC moratorium. We hypothesize that the choice may be affected by (1) the existence of management compensation agreements tied to reported earnings, (2) debt covenant constraints, and (3) the political costs (for some firms) of reporting higher earnings.When compared to the control group, our findings are that (1) the frequency of explicit management compensation packages was not greater for the interest capitalization group, (2) firms with financial ratios closer to likely debt agreement constraints (on dividends, interest coverage, and leverage) tended to elect interest capitalization, and (3) other than the largest firms in the ‘politically sensitive’ petroleum refining industry, the larger firms were more likely to capitalize interest.     

SEC product-line reporting and market efficiency

This study tests the efficiency of the securities market with respect to non-public segment earnings data for 1967–1969 which was first made public by many firms in 1970 SEC 10-K reports. Trading rule strategies are proposed in which segment-based earnings forecasts are compared to consolidated-based forecasts to anticipate ‘unexpected’ changes in earnings. Using the ‘market model’ to eliminate market related movements in security prices, average monthly abnormal returns conditional on this segment-based strategy are estimated for 1968, 1969, and 1970 for two groups of firms: (1) ‘Non-disclosure’ firms that did not publicly report either segment revenue or profit data prior to 1970, and (2) ‘partial disclosure’ firms that publicly reported segment revenue information, but no segment profits, prior to 1970.The results suggest that the market was not efficient with respect to the non-public segment revenue and profit data of non-disclosure firms for 1968–1969. However, this finding could not be replicated for 1970. The average monthly abnormal returns conditional on the segment-based trading rule strategy were found to be relatively small for the partial disclosure firms. This suggests that segment revenue data can be used to successfully anticipate changes in total entity earnings which would otherwise be ‘unexpected’ if only consolidated data were available.     

The effect of estimation risk on optimal portfolio choice

This paper determines the effect of estimation risk on optimal portfolio choice under uncertainty. In most realistic problems, the parameters of return distributions are unknown and are estimated using available economic data. Traditional analysis neglects estimation risk by treating the estimated parameters as if they were the true parameters to determine the optimal choice under uncertainty. We show that for normally distributed returns and ‘non-informative’ or ‘invariant’ priors, the admissible set of portfolios taking the estimation uncertainty into account is identical to that given by traditional analysis. However, as a result of estimation risk, the optimal portfolio choice differs from that obtained by traditional analysis. For other plausible priors, the admissible set, and consequently the optimal choice, is shown to differ from that in traditional analysis.     

'Nonprofits' need surplus too

By definition profit refers to the difference between revenue and expenses. In for-profit organizations profit or surplus gives a return to the owners of the company and serves as a source of financing for capital acquisitions and working capital. Nonprofit organizations, which are not allowed a surplus, don't suffer on the first count because they have no owners. But they do suffer on the second count because, if expected to grow, they need to finance asset replacement and growth. In these days when funds for long-term debt are becoming scarcer, this author asserts, the need for regulators to allow 'nonprofits' to keep a surplus is increasing. In this article, he argues for a surplus and then discusses how managers and regulators can determine how much a nonprofit organization should be allowed. He presents a combination of a modified version of the return-on-asset pricing model used in for-profit organizations and a model for assessing working capital needs associated with growth.