An Investigation into the Equilibrium Structure of the Commodity Futures Market Anomaly

Commodity futures contracts are shown to be characterized by indivisibility problems and tax disadvantages. An empirical test demonstrates that long futures investors were compensated for these drawbacks prior to the mid-1970s. However, compensation for the investment disadvantages of commodity futures ceased to exist after 1974. The year 1974 is significant because barriers to institutional investment in the futures market were removed in that year.     

The role of the revolutionary state in the Nicaraguan food system

The Nicaraguan state carried out a structural transformation of the food system within the context of a mixed economy. It simultaneously combined direct ownership with many forms of market regulation and supported a mass movement of peasant cooperatives. The Nicaraguan food system combined economic decision-making by the state, large and small individual producers, cooperatives and communities. Many difficulties were encountered and mistakes made and although many problems remain, significant production and consumption gains were achieved. After only 4 years of revolution, the Sandinista development model faced the challenge of coping with the costs of external economic and military aggression while maintaining its pragmatic approach.     

On and Off the Liability Bandwagon: Explaining State Adoptions of Strict Liability in Hazardous Waste Programs

We test a model of states' adoption of the hazardous waste liability regime (negligence, strict liability) providing greater net benefits. The likelihood of adopting strict liability increases in a state's number of chemical-intensive manufacturing plants, decreases in the number of large mining establishments. Also predictive: severity of state's hazardous waste problem, effectiveness of other state environmental programs, and political climate. States may view strict liability as better for industrial than mining pollution, and may be partly motivated by "precaution targeting" and "deep pockets" mentality. Non-adopters may wish not to discourage business or have other programs that substitute for strict liability.     

Downsizing decisions: The joint influence of equity incentives and behavioral biases

Although new investment can be viewed as a decision to pursue projects from a wide number of growth opportunities with easily discernible (and presumably preferable) risk profiles, downsizing (e.g., through layoffs, plant closings, asset divestitures, etc.) is a dichotomous choice to either abandon or continue an existing project where the relative risk between these options is not clear. Our evidence suggests that vega in the pre-downsizing period is associated with risky investment that necessitates future downsizing. We further find that contemporaneous vega is associated with a greater likelihood of downsizing. On the other hand, our evidence suggests that delta is a significant impediment to downsizing. We examine the influence of behavioral factors in the decision-making process and find downsizing decisions are discouraged by managerial overconfidence but encouraged by managers’ aversion to ambiguity. Finally, we investigate whether equity incentives and behavioral factors lead to better downsizing decisions. We find that downsizing firms with high ambiguity perform better after downsizing relative to their matched pair with lower ambiguity.     

Accounting fundamentals and CEO bonus compensation

Research indicates that there is a positive association between accounting earnings and chief executive officer (CEO) cash compensation; however, evidence also suggests that this positive association ceases to exist when earnings performance is poor or declining. This latter result has led some critics of corporate compensation policies to conclude that CEOs are not penalized for poor or declining firm performance. The purpose of this study is to further illuminate the pay-performance debate by expanding the traditional executive bonus compensation model to include a set of accounting fundamentals that prior research indicates are related to both current and future firm performance. Our results indicate that there is a highly significant relationship between accounting fundamentals and the level of and change in CEO bonus compensation. Moreover, we find a highly significant relationship between accounting fundamentals and both bonus omissions and bonus reductions. When earnings are negative or declining, we find that the above relationships remain intact. In contrast, when earnings are negative or declining, we find that the relationship between aggregate earnings and bonus compensation is weak or insignificant in most of our analyses. Taken together, our results suggest that the apparently weak relationship between accounting earnings and CEO bonus compensation (particularly when earnings are negative or declining) is partly due to the fact that the bonus compensation model excludes accounting fundamentals which are strongly associated with bonus compensation. Thus, we conclude that (i) bonus compensation is more closely tied to firm performance than critics sometimes claim and (ii) bonus compensation awarded to CEOs when earnings performance is poor is at least partially explained by the presence of favorable accounting fundamentals.     

Assessing the performance of the national park authorities: a case study of Northumberland National Park,England

Although the legislation for the designation of national parks in England dates back to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949, it was not until 1997 that free-standing and independent national park authorities were established to help manage these landscapes. In 2014–15, the 10 English national park authorities were allocated £44.6 million from the Department for Food, the Environment and Rural Affairs to deliver their conservation and recreation purposes and their socio-economic duty. This paper discusses how the performance of the national park authorities has been assessed, using the Northumberland National Park Authority as a case study.     

蒲公英原则:挖掘创新人才

正就如草坪中的蒲公英,明明具备很多有益作用却总被当作杂草除去一样,人群中的"异类"(无论是行为还是思维层面有别于普通人群)总是不适合标准化的工作。然而,如果能够根据这些"异类"的能力安排相应的工作环境,往往会产生意想不到的价值