Trading volume,return variability and short-term momentum

We propose short-term averages of daily stock-level trading volume and return variability as proxies for latent corporate news flow. Conditioning momentum strategies on these two proxies give a significant boost to winner-minus-loser alphas. Regardless of the portfolio formation and holding periods, price drift is larger after elevated levels of volume and variability, supporting the view that prices underreact to news. This pattern is not driven by micro-cap stocks and it is robust to corrections for systematic risk factors and stock characteristics such as liquidity and credit quality.     

The Forward Premium in the Nord Pool Power Market

This article investigates the forward premium of futures contracts in the Nordic power market for the time period from January 2004 to December 2013. We find that futures prices are biased predictors of the subsequent spot prices and that there is a significant forward premium in the Nord Pool market, particularly during the winter and autumn. We analyze the impact from several factors on the forward premium. The spot price, and the deviation of water inflow from its usual level, positively affect the forward premium. The variance of the spot price also has a positive effect on the forward premium, but only for the contract closest to delivery.     

Cost Liability and Residential Space Heating Expenditures of Welfare Recipients in Germany*

Within the German welfare system, recipients’ heating expenditures are generally fully covered by the government. This paper empirically tests the hypothesis that households receiving welfare payments turn to overconsumption of residential space heating. We use micro‐data from two different data sources to explore whether the conditional heating expenditures of these households differ significantly from those of other households. Our empirical findings suggest that even when controlling for a range of other factors, this is indeed the case, as their heating expenditures lie about 7–8 per cent above those of other households. These results are fairly robust to sensitivity analyses. Comparing the results with those for a control group, expenditures for heating are still more than 5 per cent higher. Our results imply that there is potential scope for cost savings if this policy is changed.     

Unbundling of insurance contracts according to IFRSs – applicability and limitations

Insurance contracts are difficult to report on in financial statements because they often – or even regularly – contain both an insurance component and a so-called deposit component. Both IFRS 4 “Insurance Contracts” and the IASB's recent Discussion Paper entitled “Preliminary Views on Insurance Contracts” require an insurer to unbundle those components under certain conditions. In this regard, unbundling refers to accounting for the deposit component separately from the insurance component as if they were independent contracts. However, the Discussion Paper contains no guidelines on how the process of unbundling shall be carried out. It is the authors' aim to develop a solution for the separation problem which is innovative, theoretically correct and practically applicable. The principal innovation is the way of distinction between different types of deposit components. Dividing them into “implicit” and “explicit” deposit components delivers the theoretically correct results for unbundling of insurance contracts for accounting purposes. While unbundling can be carried out without major difficulties in the case of insurance contracts containing an explicit deposit component, it is only implementable in exceptional cases for insurance contracts containing an implicit deposit component.     

Can Space Syntax Help Us in Understanding the Intraurban Office Rent Pattern? Accessibility and Rents in Downtown Stockholm

The effect of accessibility upon rent is investigated for office properties located in Downtown Stockholm. Starting from the firm’s cost minimization problem, a translog hedonic model is derived. The results suggest the model has good predictive power in explaining the variation in the log of the rent. A negative rent gradient is obtained with a base approximately 90 m from the postulated focal point. It appears as if Space Syntax adds important information to the understanding of the intraurban office rent pattern.

Setting a fox to keep the geese — Does the comply-or-explain principle work?

The German Corporate Governance Code works according to the comply-or-explain principle. One of its recommendations was to publish the remuneration of the members of the executive board on an individual basis. We examine the characteristics of the firms that complied with the code requirement. Our results indicate that firms that paid higher average remunerations to their management board members were less likely to comply, whereas firms with higher Tobin's Q were more likely to comply. We also document a non-monotonic relation between ownership concentration and the probability of compliance that is consistent with standard corporate governance arguments.Due to the fact that the number of firms complying with the disclosure requirement was low, a new law was passed that mandates disclosure unless the shareholders' meeting (with a 75% majority) decides otherwise. We find that this “loophole” in the new legislation is exploited by smaller firms, firms with comparatively high levels of executive remuneration, and firms with concentrated ownership. We discuss the implications of our results for the effectiveness of the comply-or-explain regulation.     

Strategische Steuerung der betrieblichen Gesundheitsförderung mit Strategy Maps

Zusammenfassung  Der vorliegende Beitrag widmet sich der Steuerung und Bewertung von Ma?nahmen der betrieblichen Gesundheitsf?rderung. Gesellschaftliche Ver?nderungen wie bspw. die Globalisierung oder der demografische Wandel führen dazu, dass die Gesundheit der Mitarbeiter in vielen Bereichen zu einem Engpassfaktor der Leistungserstellung geworden ist. Eine zentrale Rolle zur gezielten unternehmerischen Beeinflussung der personellen Ressourcen eines Unternehmens und damit auch der Gesundheit der Mitarbeiter spielt das Wissen über Ursache-Wirkungsbeziehungen im Bereich der betrieblichen Gesundheitsf?rderung und deren Einfluss auf den Erfolg der Leistungserstellung. Zur gezielten Steuerung der betrieblichen Gesundheitsf?rderung wird ein Rahmenkonzept vorgestellt, das aus der Logik der Balanced Scorecard und Strategy Maps abgeleitet wird und auf Ursache-Wirkungsbeziehungen basiert.

Book briefs

Food policy: Integrating supply, distribution and consumption, EDI series in economic development, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1987

Food poverty and consumption patterns in Kenya, International Labour Office, Geneva, 1986