FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN UNDERGRADUATE INSURANCE EDUCATION: ACADEMIC AND REAL WORLD PERSPECTIVES

Abstract: The authors discuss the hiring patterns of some insurers and examine why insurers do not always seek out students with risk management and insurance backgrounds. The authors suggest that it is important for universities and insurers to work more closely so that students coming out of college insurance programs are well prepared to work in the insurance industry.     

Governance,media and the quality of environmental disclosure

Given the rising emphasis on environmental disclosures and the expressed importance of ‘good’ governance in determining the extent of information disclosure in general, we examine the relation between specific aspects of governance and media coverage and the quality of voluntary environmental disclosure (VED). Using a sample of 127 firms over a 6-year period (2000–2005), we empirically test characteristics of governance and media in relation to VED. Our results suggest that VED quality is positively associated with environmental media coverage, negative environmental media and board attributes of independence, diversity, and expertise. Results from supplemental analysis suggest that institutional investors exert influence over managerial decisions on environmental reporting only in the face of negative environmental media. Additionally, results from longitudinal analyses indicate that the quality of environmental disclosures increases over time. Our conclusion discusses the implications of these findings.     

Short term real earnings management prior to stock repurchases

This study examines whether firms engage in income-decreasing real earnings management before open market stock repurchases to reduce the cost of stock buybacks. In the short run, managers have the ability to underproduce inventory and increase discretionary expenditures, thus decreasing current period earnings. We find that managers engage in both of these activities before repurchasing their firms’ shares, especially the latter. Also, companies increase their discretionary spending before making repurchases to a greater extent following the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 as well as when they are financially healthy and have high marginal tax rates. Finally, we document that firms with the most income-decreasing real earnings management experience the largest positive abnormal returns during the subsequent period. Our findings highlight the importance of considering firms’ use of real operating decisions, as opposed to just opportunistic disclosure practices, around significant corporate events, such as the repurchase of their own stock.     

Technology choice under changing peanut policies

The effect of marketing quotas and price supports on technology adoption are examined for peanut production in the southeastern United States using a real options model of investment with output price and yield uncertainty. The optimal choice of peanut production technology (dryland versus irrigated) in the southeast is shown to depend on price supports and how they change. The manner in which price supports change will have an effect on the choice and rates of abandonment or adoption of production technologies.     

Tactical Opportunities,Risk Attitude and Choice of Farming Strategy: an Application of the Distribution Method

When assessing farming strategies, it is important to account for the opportunities provided for tactically adjusting to outcomes of risk. The hypothesis that accounting for tactical adjustment is more important than accounting for risk attitude was supported in this study with regard to identifying the optimal drainage recirculation strategy for an irrigated dairy farm. Failing to account for tactical adjustment would lead to a sub-optimal choice, costing the farmer about A$3 100 in present value terms. In contrast, failing to account for risk aversion would not affect the strategy chosen. The distribution method was found to be well suited to modelling tactical adjustment.     

The Limits to Artist‐Led Regeneration: Creative Brownfields in the Cities of High Culture

Despite the burgeoning literature on creative cities, seldom explored is the context of cities rich in cultural capital but more orthodox in their approach to preserving the autonomy of culture. This article discusses the status of artistic spaces occupying abandoned industrial premises (‘creative brownfields') in historic cities that traditionally shape their policies around prestigious cultural institutions (‘cities of high culture'). Based on comparative insights from St Petersburg and Lausanne, the article explores the relations and tensions between mainstream cultural governance and creative brownfields. While there is no lack of creative brownfields in these cities, their wider urban impact is found to be marginal; moreover, these sites represent dispersed instances of temporary occupations rather than situated clusters of creative actors. More than coincidental, this (lack of) spatialization is argued to result from a particular governmentality—that of high culture—which disregards, rather than promotes, spaces of alternative cultural governance. The article conceptualizes creative brownfields in cities of high culture as the ‘soft infrastructure' of cultural production, in contrast with those in ‘creative cities' as the ‘hard infrastructure' of urban production. The article also calls for a recognition of the local context of regulation and accumulation in understanding the cultural/urban interplay.     

Are Investors the Bad Guys? Tenure and Neighborhood Stability in Chelsea,Massachusetts

In this article, we examine the role of investors and occupant‐owners in an urban context during the recent housing crisis. We focus on Chelsea, Massachusetts, because it is a dense city, dominated by multifamily housing structures with high rates of foreclosure for which we have particularly good data. We distinguish between occupant‐owners and investors using local data, and we find that many investors are misclassified as occupant‐owners in the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. Then, employing a competing risks framework to study ownerships during the period 1998 through mid‐2010, we find that local investors, who tend to invest more in relation to purchase prices and sell more quickly, experienced approximately 1.8 times the mortgage foreclosure risk of occupant‐owners, conditional on financing. Nonlocal investors have no statistically significant difference in foreclosure risk from occupant‐owners. Nonetheless, those owners with subprime purchase mortgages (most of whom are occupant‐owners) faced the highest foreclosure risk when house prices fell.     

Time series momentum and moving average trading rules

We compare and contrast time series momentum (TSMOM) and moving average (MA) trading rules so as to better understand the sources of their profitability. These rules are closely related; however, there are important differences. TSMOM signals occur at points that coincide with a MA direction change, whereas MA buy (sell) signals only require price to move above (below) a MA. Our empirical results show MA rules frequently give earlier signals leading to meaningful return gains. Both rules perform best outside of large stock series which may explain the puzzle of their popularity with investors, yet lack of supportive evidence in academic studies.