Shareholder Activism and Voluntary Disclosure Initiation: The Case of Political Spending

Demand for disclosures on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues has increased dramatically. Using corporate political spending disclosures as our setting, we conduct a detailed inquiry of 541 political spending‐related shareholder proposals from 2004 to 2012 to highlight the role of shareholder activism as a mechanism to motivate ESG disclosure. Unlike earlier studies, we examine both proposals that went to a vote and proposals that were withdrawn by the activist, allowing us to assess more comprehensively the success of shareholder activism. We find that 20 percent of firms targeted by disclosure proposals begin disclosing in the subsequent year, although implementation rates vary by proposal type—8 percent for proposals subject to a vote versus 56 percent for proposals withdrawn. The sponsor is also important: unions and public pension funds are less likely than other activists to target firms with agency problems and are less successful in having proposals withdrawn, and the implementations they obtain are viewed more negatively by the broader investor base. Our findings highlight shareholder proposals as one mechanism through which investors can successfully express their preferences for corporate disclosure policies. Given activists' long‐standing interest in environmental and social disclosure policies, we believe our findings generalize to a broader set of ESG disclosures.     

Banks’ deferred tax assets during the financial crisis

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Prior studies have demonstrated that the net deferred tax liabilities of industrial firms are valued by market participants in a manner consistent...     

Machine learning for financial transaction classification across companies using character-level word embeddings of text fields

An important initial step in accounting is mapping financial transfers to the corresponding accounts. We devised machine-learning-based systems that automate this process. They use word embeddings with character-level features to process transaction texts. When considering 473 companies independently, our approach achieved an average top-1 accuracy of 80.50%, outperforming baselines that exclude the transaction texts or rely on a lexical bag-of-words text representation. We extended the approach to generalizes across companies and even across different corporate sectors. After standardization of the account structures and careful feature engineering, a single classifier trained on 44 companies from 28 sectors achieved a test accuracy of more than 80%. When trained on 43 companies and tested on the remaining one, the system achieved an average performance of 64.62%. This rate increased to nearly 70% when considering only the largest sector.     

LT码新型度分布及其在电力线通信中的应用

Luby变换(Luby Transform,LT)码作为信道编码应用于电力线通信(Power Line Communication,PLC)，可实现电信号的可靠传输。度分布对LT码编译码性能的影响至关重要。为了得到更优的度分布，首先调整二进制指数分布(Binary Exponential Distribution,BED)中的度数比例，获得一种译码性能更优的改进的二进制指数分布(Improved BED,IBED)。然后，根据IBED在冗余度较小时译码成功率高，而冗余度增大后鲁棒孤子分布(Robust Soliton Distribution,RSD)的译码性能表现更佳的特点，通过求和归一化的方式将IBED与RSD两种度分布的优势进行有机结合，提出一种新型二进制鲁棒孤子分布(Binary RSD,BRSD)。仿真结果表明，与其他方法及传统的RSD相比，采用新度分布进行LT编码，可明显降低译码开销，并节约编译码耗时。将新型度分布应用于基于LT码的PLC系统中，能有效地抑制PLC信道中各种噪声对电信号的干扰，并提高通信效率。     

INSURANCE‐INDUCED MORAL HAZARD: A DYNAMIC MODEL OF WITHIN‐YEAR MEDICAL CARE DECISION MAKING UNDER UNCERTAINTY

This study quantifies the moral hazard effect of health insurance on medical expenditure by estimating a dynamic model of within‐year medical care consumption that allows for insurance selection, endogenous health transitions, and individual uncertainty about medical care prices in an environment where insurance has nonlinear cost‐sharing features. The results suggest that moral hazard accounts for 53.1%, on average, of total annual medical expenditure when insured. This estimate is significantly different, and generally larger, than that produced by an alternative model that is representative of the annual medical care decision‐making models commonly found in the literature.     

基于AD9361的掌上型LTE RRU设计与开发

当前小体积远端射频单元（Remote Radio Unit,RRU）主要是皮站级别的Pico-RRU，其重量和体积仍然难以满足掌上型的要求。为此，采用高集成度的AD9361芯片来实现长期演进（Long Term Evolution，LTE）宽带收发信机功能，配合时钟同步模块、放大器模块和控制接口电路等一起构建低成本的掌上型RRU。主要解决了基于AD9516的时钟同步、低相位噪声设计和高灵敏度接收机设计三个技术难点，成功实现了掌上型、高性能、低成本的设计目标。整个RRU样机尺寸为18 cm×10 cm×2 cm，质量约500 g，量产成本千元以内。测试表明，该RRU下行误差向量幅度（Error Vector Magnitude，EVM）小于3%，优于3GPP要求的8%；10 MHz带宽时上行接收机灵敏度优于3GPP要求的-93.5 dBm。     

天地一体化信息网络中天基卫星网络架构设计

为了充分利用各种空间设施资源，提升天基信息网络覆盖与传输能力，分别从天基信息网络体系架构和逻辑功能架构角度进行了系统性设计。与以往天基网络的设计不同，该设计更注重各类卫星网络的深度融合应用，为此将网络虚拟化技术引入天基卫星网络。同时，还提出了解决新架构下卫星组网难题的方法，将电磁涡旋、卫星灵活载荷和边缘计算技术设计到天基网络。仿真表明，所提出的架构能有效提升频谱利用率和减少卫星网络信令开销。