Frontiers of futures research: What's next?

This paper describes some important frontiers of futures research with the aim of identifying new opportunities for improving the value and utility of the field. These frontiers include the exploration and/or the reexamination of

(a) Potential for integrating new technology with futures research methods,

(b) Ways to reduce the domain of the unknowable,

(c) Ways to account for uncertainty in decision making,

(d) Strategies for planning and management of nonlinear systems operating in the chaotic regime,

(e) Ways to improve understanding of psychological factors that lead to irrational decisions

(f) Appropriate levels of aggregation in investigation of forecasting problems.

(g) The potential offered by new sources of social data.

Framing the first-price auction

We revisit the result that, in laboratory independent private values auction, the first-price sealed bid and descending clock (or Dutch) implementations are not isomorphic. We investigate the hypothesis that this arises from framing and presentation effects. Our design focuses on a careful construction of subject interfaces that present the two environments as similarly as possible. Our sessions also consist of more auction periods to test whether any initial framing effects subsequently decrease over time. We find the difference between the implementations persists. To further investigate the difference, we report on an intermediate implementation which operates like the Dutch auction, but in which the clock continues to tick to the lowest price without informing bidders when others have bid on the object. JEL Classification D44, C90 Deceased     

Future issues of science and technology

The Millennium Project involved 237 scientists, futurists, and policymakers around the world in a two-round Delphi on the future issues of science and technology (S&T) over the next 25 years. This is the first of a 3-year study. The study began by asking science attaches to Washington, DC, what questions were worth asking to their leading scientists and issues that were important to explore on an international basis. A series of questions were identified and rated. Actions to address the questions were also suggested and rated. The results are presented in this paper with some regional differences discussed. The next year of the study interviewed S&T policymakers for the management and policy implications of these findings, and the third year developed scenarios based on these implications.     

Contrarian strategy and overreaction in foreign exchange markets

This paper investigates patterns to assist investors to forecast future exchange rate movements. We test for overreaction and underreaction examining exchange rate changes following excess 1-day fluctuations for currencies in two emerging (Turkey, Brazil) and two developed (US, UK) countries. Using euro as the base currency, we identify that the Turkish lira, the Brazilian real and the US dollar overreact, while the British pound underreacts. In the case of British pound, asymmetric responses and lack of volatility are two crucial factors to reject overreaction. Also, we find that contrarian strategy can be used in all currency markets for profitable investments.     

Creating a Bigger Bath Using the Deferred Tax Valuation Allowance

Abstract:  The provisions of SFAS No. 109 allow US companies to make an earnings big bath even bigger through the establishment of a deferred tax valuation allowance. At the time a firm recognizes a non-cash charge, it also recognizes a deferred tax asset to represent the future tax benefits of the charge. Recognition of the deferred tax asset partially mitigates the negative earnings impact of the special charge. However, if the firm does not expect to have sufficient future taxable income to utilize the future tax benefits of the charge, SFAS No. 109 requires the firm to establish a deferred tax valuation allowance, effectively eliminating the recognized deferred tax asset. Thus, the establishment of the valuation allowance amplifies the negative earnings impact of the non-cash charge. We use a valuation allowance prediction model to identify firms that create a larger-than-expected valuation allowance; these firms may be creating a large valuation allowance as a reserve to be used to manage earnings in a subsequent period. We find that the vast majority of these larger-than-expected valuation allowances apparently reflect informed management pessimism about the future in that these firms actually do have poorer operating performance in subsequent periods. We do not find any evidence that subsequent reversals of valuation allowances are used to turn a loss into a profit. However, we do find a very small number of firms that appear to have used a valuation allowance reversal to meet or beat the mean analyst forecast.     

The relevance of quantifiable audit qualifications in the valuation of IPOs

How useful are audit qualifications to financial statement users? We analyze a sample of 204 firms that went public at the Athens Stock Exchange over the period 1987–2002. For 149 of these firms, auditors report quantitative estimates of the amount by which assets are overstated and/or liabilities are understated in reported financial statements. We find that underwriters and their affiliated analysts do not incorporate the negative information provided by these qualifications into offer prices and earnings forecasts. Investors, however, appear to efficiently impound the negative implications of the audit qualifications into stock market prices within the first day of trading. The results suggest that underwriters tend to align their interests with the interests of their clients, the old stockholders, at the expense of the new stockholders. They also suggest that the practice of reporting quantifiable qualifications in audit reports is valuable to investors given that they are disclosed by an expert.     

Discussion of “Evidence of differing market responses to beating analysts’ targets through tax expense decreases”

Gleason and Mills (2008, Review of Accounting Studies) extend prior research investigating whether investors detect obvious earnings management. They improve on previous efforts to answer this question by examining firms with a clear motivation to manage earnings and by investigating a specific earnings management tool. They investigate firms that fall short of analysts’ expectations when income tax expense is based on the third quarter effective tax rate but meet expectations by reducing the fourth quarter tax expense below predicted tax expense. Their results suggest that investors are sophisticated enough to identify a transparent earnings management tool and that they discount the fact that firms meet expectations using such an obvious tactic. Specifically, the authors find evidence suggesting that the reward for meeting analysts’ expectations is 86% lower when managers use the tax expense as an earnings management tool to meet expectations. The puzzling feature of their results is that, although it is diminished, investors still reward firms for meeting expectations when they can only do so through an apparently obvious manipulation of tax expense.     

Dictating Liberty

Andrew Farrant and Edward McPhail demonstrate Hayek's willingness to support, under certain circumstances, a transitional dictator who seeks to implement an institutional structure conducive to liberty, understood to mean economic freedom. This comment links this support to Hayek's mistaken rejection of democracy as a constitutive component of freedom, which is the result of his overestimation of the epistemological abilities of judges.     

A nonlinear pairwise approach for the convergence of UK regional house prices

We examine the long-run convergence across 12 UK regional house prices using a pairwise approach. The time period spans from 1983:1 to 2012:4. Linear, nonlinear and asymmetric unit root tests are considered for assessing the stationarity of all possible pairs. The test statistic for convergence is based on the percentage of unit root test rejections across all regional house price differentials. The percent of the pairs that reject the null increase from 6% in the linear ADF case to 53% for the nonlinear unit root. Probit analysis reveals that house price differentials in the South are more likely to be stationary and as a result tend to converge more compared to the North.