A copula-VAR-X approach for industrial production modelling and forecasting

World economies, and especially European ones, have become strongly interconnected in the last decade and a joint modelling is required. We propose here the use of copulae to build flexible multivariate distributions, since they allow for a rich dependence structure and more flexible marginal distributions that better fit the features of empirical data, such as leptokurtosis. We use our approach to forecast industrial production series in the core European Monetary Union (EMU) countries and we provide evidence that the copula-Vector Autoregression (VAR) model outperforms or at worst compares similarly to normal VAR models, keeping the same computational tractability of the latter approach.     

Accounting academic elites: The tale of ARIA

“Golden age” accounting theorists Robert Sterling, George Staubus, Yuji Ijiri and Arthur Thomas joined together to create an elite organisation, the Accounting Researchers International Association (ARIA) in 1974, with its chief instigator Robert “Bob” Sterling serving as its first President. Written correspondence between the early members, in conjunction with oral testimony, suggest that ARIA’s formation was motivated by a desire to protect and advance normative-based research. The early members also shared a mutual zeal for intellectual progress and a common passion to rid accounting practices of its defects. They shared a conviction that bringing together a well-recognised, dedicated group of scholars would create an environment in which individual differences would wilt under the pressure of scholarship.     

对企业拓展东南亚市场的建议

对希望在东南亚市场有所作为的企业,我想提几点建议：首先，要认识到在中国东盟自由贸易区的建设中还有很多困难。就是东盟本身的建设也有许多困难；比如，对现行《东盟自由贸易协定》的一些条款，马来歪亚和泰国之间就产生了争执。泰国表示．在马来西亚终止汽车进口许可制度前．泰国将不会降低马来西亚汽车的进口关税。     

推进生态产品价值创造的流域综合治理项目管理模式优化研究——以深莞茅洲河流域水环境治理项目为例

在全国大力发展生态文明背景下,生态产品价值对流域综合治理项目效益提出了更高的要求。生态产品价值创造视角下流域综合治理项目更加关注生态、经济、社会效益的统一,而传统的流域综合治理项目在推进生态产品价值创造的过程中仍然存在如协同治理的缺失、源头治理的忽视、施工效率的低下等诸多问题,严重影响了生态产品价值挖掘的充分性与高效性。文章基于系统均衡理论,以中国电力建设股份有限公司所开展的深莞茅洲河流域水环境治理项目为例,总结流域综合治理项目管理模式经验,并提出科学顶层设计、完善实施路径、创新项目实施模式三个维度的优化措施,助力流域提高生态产品供给量,实现人和自然和谐共生的流域综合治理目标。以生态产品价值创造的视角研究流域综合治理项目效益,进一步深化了流域综合治理理论的发展,为全国流域综合治理提供可参考的经验。     

Poverty and probability: aspiration and aversion to compound lotteries in El Salvador and India

Some experimental participants are averse to compound lotteries: they prefer simple lotteries that depend on only one random event, even when the simple lotteries offer lower expected value. This paper proposes that many behavioral “investments” represent more compound risk for poorer people—who often face multiple dimensions of deprivation—than for richer people. As a result, identical aversion to compound lotteries can prevent investment among poorer people, but have no effect on richer people. The paper reports five studies: two initial studies that document that aversion to compound lotteries operates as an economic preference, two “laboratory experiments in the field” in El Salvador, and one Internet survey experiment in India. Poorer Salvadoran women who choose a compound lottery are 27 percentage points more likely to have found formal employment than those who chose a simple lottery, but lottery choice is unrelated to employment for richer women. Poorer students at the national Salvadoran university choose more compound lotteries than richer students, on average, implying that aversion to compound lotteries screened out poorer aspirants but not richer ones. Poorer and lower-caste Indian participants who choose compound lotteries are more likely than those who choose simple lotteries to have a different occupation than their parents, which is not the case for better-off participants. These findings suggest that the consequences of aversion to compound lotteries are different in the context of poverty and disadvantage.     

An Analysis of the Marginal Products of the One- and Two-Semester Introductory Economics Courses

The authors examine whether the administrative location of an economics department in a business versus liberal arts school alters the character of the economics program provided to undergraduate majors. To test this hypothesis, they constructed a curricular character index (CCI) based on a detailed accounting of assorted dimensions of an economics major. The CCI served as the dependent variable in a regression model that controlled for other institutional attributes that could influence curricular character. The sample of 148 primarily undergraduate institutions was selected to impose some semblance of a ceteris paribus environment. Contrary to earlier findings, the empirical results strongly indicate that the administrative location of an economics department in business versus liberal arts schools significantly changes the character of the program offered to majors.     

Assessing the Impact of an Instructional Innovation on Achievement Differentials: The Case of Computer-Assisted Instruction

In this article the authors offer “an alternative to the conventional procedure for assessing the quantitative impact of an instructional innovation on achievement differentials.” Although computer-assisted instruction is the medium discussed here, the authors claim that any innovative technique that affects the student's allocation of time can be analyzed in a similar fashion. Thus, this piece should be of interest not only to those experimenting with computer-assisted instruction but to all who are engaged in experimental economic education research.     

Parasitic universes: Organisational and technological meddling in the social

Debates about technology theorising ‘the social’ solely on dyadic and fixed positional terms fail to grasp important ways that new financial technologies participate in work organisations. As an alternative, we build on the work of Michel Serres to propose that these technologies already inhabit triadic and relational parasitic universes in which they introduce interruptions that do much more than mediate between degrees of technological and social determinism. To understand the forms of agency this affords, we analyse two contrasting studies of workplaces where financial technologies were introduced. In a UK non-profit social care organisation, relations of care were fundamentally disrupted by disorderly, dysfunctional forms of agency, whereas in UK retail banking, management used disorder to strategically obscure their own agency. Technological innovation and ‘future of work’ narratives are shown to feed each other, in service to interests that benefit from the repurposing of technologies, people and organisations.     

Managing negative emotions from entrepreneurial project failure: When and how does supportive leadership help employees?

Drawing on Affective Events Theory and a sample of 112 matched manager-employee dyads involved in failed corporate entrepreneurial projects, we develop and test a model of when and how managerial leadership can foster high employee performance in their subsequent endeavors. Through path analysis modeling, we show that perceptions of supportive managerial leadership behaviors can limit the detrimental effects of recalled negative emotions from prior project failures on employee job satisfaction, and through job satisfaction, on employee performance. However, the benefits of supportive managerial leadership behaviors dissipate with more time since the project has failed.     

Show me the money: Option moneyness concentration and future stock returns

Informed traders often use options that are not in-the-money due to higher potential gains for a smaller upfront cost. Thus, trading activity by option moneyness should be a gauge of informed option trading. We construct a dollar volume-weighted average moneyness measure to capture option trading activity at different moneyness levels. Stock returns increase with this measure, suggesting more trading activity in options with higher leverage predicts future stock returns. Our results hold cross-sectionally and at the portfolio level yielding a Fama–French five-factor α of 12% per year for all stocks and 33% per year for high implied volatility stocks.