黑天鹅未现，油市勿慌

市场正在评估两种对立的尾部风险：日本灾后需求下降,以及利比亚禁飞区和沙特阿拉伯军队进入巴林,这让各地的油市交易人员晕头转向。不过在未知事件发生前,供应相对充足的石油料将打压布伦特原油价格,最终跌至100美元下方。     

Are Investment Banks Special Too? Evidence on Relationship‐Specific Capital in Investment Bank Services

The question of whether optimal provision of these services comes mainly from established relationships between banks and client firms or can result from arms'‐length market transactions has been the topic of considerable recent debate. This discussion has paralleled the debate in the commercial banking literature on the “specialness” of banks and whether lending can and should be relational or purely transactional. Whether the provision of investment bank services is relationship‐based or transactional is especially relevant now thanks to recent trends that have blurred the distinction between commercial and investment banks, and changed the competitive landscape for investment bank services. In their study summarized in this article, the authors examine whether investment bank‐client relationships create valuable relationship‐specific capital using stock market evidence from the period surrounding the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Specifically, they studied the effect of the Lehman collapse on companies that used Lehman for (1) underwriting equity offerings, (2) underwriting debt offerings, (3) advice on mergers and acquisitions, (4) analyst research services, and (5) market‐making services. The study addressed two specific questions. First, which investment bank services, if any, are associated with the creation of relationship‐specific capital; and second, what are the value drivers of this relationship capital? The authors report finding that companies that used Lehman as lead underwriter for public equity offerings experienced significantly negative abnormal stock returns in the days surrounding Lehman's bankruptcy announcement. By contrast, they find no significant reaction to the announcement for Lehman's debt underwriting clients or any of the other client categories they examine. While most of these investment bank services have at least the potential to create relationship‐specific capital, the authors' findings suggest that except for equity underwriting, all the other investment bank services appear to be transactional rather than relationship‐based, at least in the average case. Moreover, the authors report significant differences even among different groups of Lehman's equity underwriting clients. An equity underwriting relationship with Lehman appears to have been especially valuable for smaller, younger, and more financially constrained firms—those firms which presumably had a high degree of dependence on Lehman to access the capital market.     

Bimodal issues,the median voter model,Legislator's ideology,and abortion

The median voter model is widely used in the public choice literature to explain legislator's behavior. According to the model, if voter preferences are unimodal, a vote-maximizing legislator should mirror the position of the median voter. However, the median voter model has not been tested on bimodal issues. This paper fills this critical void by empirically testing the applicability of the median voter model on an issue which clearly meets the criteria for being bimodal: abortion. Using a variety of attitudinal measures from large sample public opinion polls and constituency demographics, this study finds that Senate voting on the 1994 Freedom of Abortion Access bill was highly related to the senator's personal characteristics—especially ideology—and not to constituent opinion or demographics.     

Beyond radical affordability in the base of the pyramid: The role of consumer self-confidence in product acceptance

When developing products and services for base of the economic pyramid (BoP) consumers, it has been widely assumed that organizations must set extremely low prices that are dependent on substantial product acceptance and economies of scale. However, such pricing is often not feasible. Growing evidence suggests that more moderate price levels are needed for organizations to viably serve the needs of low-income consumers. However, price sensitivity is less understood in low-income contexts. To promote the success of social enterprises through fresh insight, we reexamine the extremely low-price BoP assumption by investigating product acceptance among low-income consumers using two experiments in Latin America. Results reveal that a belief in one's capabilities to make effective consumption decisions, consumer self-confidence, helps explain the acceptance of moderately-priced products. Discussion highlights directions for stimulating acceptance of socially beneficial products in low-income contexts.     

The executive suite: Are women perceived as ready for the managerial climb?

In a developing profession, emphasis is placed on two key ingredients for a successful climb to the executive suite — namely, interpersonal skills and an appropriate personality structure than can cope with forms of stress and uncertainty. The data presented in this study were collected from one of the major accounting firms and offers insights into men and women on the upward climb within the accounting profession. Analysis of this data shows that although appropriate personality characteristics are predicated on a male managerial model, women and men perceive themselves similarly with respect to these characteristics. However, others' perceptions of women, male accountants as well as clients, seemed more skeptical of women's ability to succeed. Furthermore, there are indications that women and men have different job assignments along their career paths. Our data collected in the latter half of the seventies tend to corroborate many of the findings in the first half — in general women are not perceived as ready for the managerial climb.     

Semantics and capital market efficiency: Testing the market's reaction to the naming of stock distributions as splits or dividends

The AICPA and NYSE urge corporations to avoid the term “stock dividend” and use the term “stock split” when referring to large common stock distributions. Theoretically these large distributions do not convey any economic value to the stockholders. Therefore a rule was considered necessary so as not to mislead them as to the actual nature of the distributions. The purpose of this study is to examine security price reactions to the differential naming of these distributions. The results strongly suggest that security returns are not differentially affected by naming a large common stock distribution a stock dividend rather than a stock split. That is, the capital market appears to be semantically efficient between terminologies.     

A framework for analyzing money stock control under the Monetary Control Act

This paper analyzes the money stock effects of the Monetary Control Act (MCA) under a nonborrowed reserve (NBR) operating procedure. Prior to the passage of the MCA, policy was conducted under an interest rate operating target where reserve requirement reforms such as those introduced by the MCA had little influence on money stock variability. Under an NBR procedure however, the structure of reserve requirements may have a significant impact on monetary control. Our analysis indicates that the relative improvement in monetary control greatly depends on the degree of tightness exercised by the Federal Reserve over total reserves in an MCA regime. The tighter the control, the more significant the estimated monetary control benefits of the MCA under an NBR procedure.     

Third world strategies for regulating drug advertising and marketing

In the pharmaceutical area, third world countries have been particularly subjected to excessive pricing and manipulative marketing practices by multinational corporations. Sri Lanka has gained some experience in curbing abuses by establishing a State Pharmaceuticals Corporation. It has been able to achieve substantial price cuts for pharmaceuticals and to adapt to changing economic and political circumstances. The control of advertising and marketing practices remains a problem but has been tackled in Sri Lanka by an Act of 1980. Until similar laws are enacted greater attention should be given to the individual patient by doctors becoming more circumspect in prescribing drugs.

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Strategien der Länder der Dritten Welt zur Regulierung des Vertriebs und der Werbung von Arzneimitteln

Zusammenfassung Länder der Dritten Welt sind für multinationale Unternehmen auf dem Arzneimittelsektor ein bevorzugtes Objekt für Ausbeutung durch überhöhte Preise oder manipulatives Marketing. Der Autor, mit diesen Problemen an leitender Stelle persönlich vertraut, beschreibt Versuche in Sri Lanka, Mißbräuche ausländischer Unternehmen durch Errichtung einer staatlichen pharmazeutischen Gesellschaft (State Pharmaceuticals Corporation) zu bekämpfen.Das Unternehmen hat wesentliche Preisreduzierungen für Arzneimittel erreicht und sich an geänderte wirtschaftliche und politische Verhältnisse anpassen können. Werbung und Vertriebsmethoden werden neuerdings in Sri Lanka — wie in anderen Ländern der Dritten Welt — durch ein Gesetz von 1980 kontrolliert, das allerdings für homöopathische und ähnliche Produkte nicht gilt. In der Zukunft kommt es darauf an, den individuellen Patienten durch eine vorsichtigere Verschreibung von Arzneimitteln mehr Aufmerksamkeit zu widmen.

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D. C. Jayasuriya is Attorney-at-Law and Senior State Counsel. His address is 40/12, Swarnadisi Place off Koswatte Road, Nawala, Sri Lanka.