Are the Best Small Companies the Best Investments?

Previous research finds that large companies previously judged to be excellent growth companies have subsequently been poor investments. We examine small companies selected by Business Week on the basis of multiple criteria used in annual articles featuring highly rated growth companies. We study the investment performance over the three years before eleven annual Business Week publications and the three years after publication. We find positive excess returns in the pre‐publication period, but negative excess returns in the post‐publication period. This reversal in investment performance appears to be due to a mean‐reversion tendency in operating performance, in which the earnings and the past rates of return on capital of such companies subsequently decrease significantly.     

Demographic and Economic Pressure on Emigration out of Africa*

Two of the main forces driving European emigration in the late nineteenth century were real wage gaps between sending and receiving regions and demographic booms in the low‐wage sending regions. Our new estimates of net migration for the countries of sub‐Saharan Africa show that exactly the same forces driving African across‐border migration are at work today. The results suggest that rapid growth in the cohort of potential young emigrants, population pressure on the resource base, and slow economic growth are likely to intensify the pressure for migration out of Africa and into high‐wage OECD countries over the next two decades.     

Moore's Law and the Semiconductor Industry: A Vintage Model*

In this paper we develop a vintage model to gain a better understanding of the semiconductor industry and its role in recent U.S. productivity gains. Unlike previous work, in our model the observed price declines of individual chips are driven by the introduction of better vintages rather than by learning economies. Dominated chips, nonetheless, continue to be produced, for a time, due to sunk investments in chip‐specific production equipment. The model lends partial support to Jorgenson's hypothesis that an exogenous increase in Moore's Law could have generated the more rapid price declines, and faster productivity growth, seen after 1995.     

Intertemporal Equity and Hartwick's Rule in an Exhaustible Resource Model*

In a standard exhaustible resource model, it is known that if, along a competitive path, investment in the augmentable capital good equals the rents on the exhaustible resource (known as Hartwick's rule), then the path is equitable in the sense that the consumption level is constant over time. In this paper, we show the converse of this result: if a competitive path is equitable, then it must satisfy Hartwick's rule.     

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED,TAXES DRIVE THE JANUARY EFFECT

The multitude of explanations for the January effect leaves the reader confused about its primary cause(s): is it tax‐loss selling, window dressing, information, bid‐ask bounce, or a combination of these causes? The confusion arises, in part, because evidence has generally been presented in support of a particular hypothesis though the same evidence may be consistent with another hypothesis. Furthermore, prior work does not adequately control for the bid‐ask bounce. In this article we try to disentangle different explanations of the January effect and identify its primary cause. We find that tax‐related selling is the most important cause, overshadowing other explanations.     

CAN INEFFICIENT TRADERS CREATE VALUE?

I examine the aggregate expected profit generated by informed traders of diverse ability in a competitive market. I assume that efficient traders get perfect information on asset values whereas inefficient traders get noisy information. In the presence of order size restrictions, I show that the aggregate expected profit generated by efficient and inefficient traders together can be higher than that generated by efficient traders alone. Thus, inefficient traders can create value in a constrained trading environment.     

Syndicated Loan Announcements and Borrower Value

Announcements of syndication loans increase borrowers' shareholder wealth if they are revolving credit agreements but not if they are term loans. Share price responses to revolving credit announcements are positive and significant, whereas the wealth effect for term loans is negative and significant. The results show that announcements from both the financial press and commercial information providers can affect borrower share price reaction. Overall, single syndication announcements appear to be more newsworthy than multiple announcements reported in the financial press, and we find evidence of information leakage, post‐announcement drift, or both.     

Initial Public Offerings: CFO Perceptions

We examine four issues pertaining to initial public offerings (IPOs) using a survey of 438 chief financial officers (CFOs). First, why do firms go public? Second, is CFO sentiment stationary across bear and bull markets? Third, what concerns CFOs about going public? Fourth, do CFO perceptions correlate with returns? Results support funding for growth and liquidity as the primary reasons for IPOs. CFO sentiment is generally stationary in pre‐ and post‐bubble years. Managers are concerned with the direct costs of going public, such as underwriting fees, as well as indirect costs. We find a negative relation between a focus on immediate growth and long‐term abnormal returns.     

Cr3+-H3PO4光度法测定磷酸体系中的Cr3+

Cr3 与H3PO4生成绿色配合物,其最大吸收峰在660nm,摩尔吸光系数为1.4×102L·mol-1·cm-1,Cr3 在0～0.5mg/30ml范围内符合比尔定律,用加入法直接测定磷酸体系中的Cr3 ,结果满意。     

On the Statistical Significance of Event Effects on Unsystematic Volatility

We develop a method for determining the significance of the effect of a certain event (stock split, corporate restructuring, change in regulation, etc.) on unsystematic volatility of asset returns. Simulations show that the suggested tests reject the true null hypothesis of no effect on volatility at appropriate levels, whereas the rejection rates of a false null hypothesis increase with the magnitude of the effect. An application of the method to corporate spin‐offs reveals statistically significant and long‐lasting estimated increases in unsystematic volatility of parent companies' returns.