On the informational content of advice: a theoretical and experimental study

This paper examines the market for advice and the underlying perception that advice is useful and informative. We do this by first providing a theoretical examination of the informational content of advice and then by setting up a series of experimental markets where this advice is sold. In these markets we provide bidders with a demographic profile of the “experts” offering advice.The results of our experiment generate several interesting findings. The raw bid data suggest that subjects bid significantly more for data than they do for advice. Second, in the market for advice there appears to be no consensus as to who are the best advisors although on average economists demand the highest mean price and women suffer a discount. In addition, we find that whether a subject suffers from a representativeness bias in the way he or she processes data has an impact on how he or she bids for advice and on his or her willingness to follow it once offered. Finally, we find that on average people impute a low level of informativeness onto advice, consistent with their bidding behavior for data versus advice.This work was done under grant number SES-0425118 of the National Science Foundation. The authors would like to recognize the Center for Experimental Social Science at New York University for its additional support. We also acknowledge the help of Elizabeth Potamites for her research assistance.     

Growth and welfare effects of business cycles in economies with idiosyncratic human capital risk

This paper uses a tractable macroeconomic model with idiosyncratic human capital risk and incomplete markets to analyze the growth and welfare effects of business cycles. The analysis is based on the assumption that the elimination of business cycles eliminates the variation in idiosyncratic risk. The paper shows that a reduction in the variation in idiosyncratic risk decreases the ratio of physical to human capital and increases the total investment return and welfare. If the degree of risk aversion is less than or equal to one, then economic growth is enhanced. This paper also provides a quantitative assessment of the macroeconomic effects of business cycles based on a calibrated version of the model. Even for relatively small degrees of risk aversion (around one) the model implies that the elimination of business cycles has substantial effects on investment in physical and human capital, economic growth, and welfare.     

基于风险控制的高校经济责任审计流程初探

高校经济责任审计随着高校规模的扩大和经济活动的频繁和复杂显得越来越重要.鉴于内部审计的特殊性,经济责任审计还存着着诸多问题,其中由于审计流程不规范引起的审计风险不容忽视.论文从规范高校领导干部经济责任审计流程入手,结合高校经济责任审计的现状和问题,分析审计各阶段的审计风险,提出完善审计流程的方案和防范审计风险的措施.     

Subsampling the distribution of diverging statistics with applications to finance

In this paper we propose a subsampling estimator for the distribution of statistics diverging at either known or unknown rates when the underlying time series is strictly stationary and strong mixing. Based on our results we provide a detailed discussion of how to estimate extreme order statistics with dependent data and present two applications to assessing financial market risk. Our method performs well in estimating Value at Risk and provides a superior alternative to Hill's estimator in operationalizing Safety First portfolio selection.     

What Drives Quality of Firm Risk Disclosure? : The Impact of a National Disclosure Standard and Reporting Incentives under IFRS

This paper examines the impact of a detailed national disclosure standard on the quality of firms' overall risk reviews under IFRS. We use data from a sample of listed Finnish firms around the introduction of the standard and find that national regulatory bodies have been able to raise the quality of risk disclosure on several dimensions even under IFRS. We find increases in the quantity of risk disclosure with more extensive and more comprehensive information. We do not, however, find a corresponding increase in quantitative disclosures and therefore there is some question regarding the influence of the standard on the substance of the risk information provided. In addition to the coercive effect of the standard, several important reporting incentives, such as firm size, profitability, and foreign listing status are documented. We also find some evidence that the impact of the standard on quality is more pronounced among less profitable firms. Additional findings are that larger firms and firms reporting under the requirements of the SEC disclose more quantitative risk information, and that the quality improvements are permanent in the subsequent years. The findings have implications for standard-setters evaluating different strategies with the aim to increase the quality of the narratives in annual reports.     

Estimation of tail‐related risk measures in the Indian stock market: An extreme value approach

The purpose of the study is to estimate tail-related risk measures using extreme value theory (EVT) in the Indian stock market. The study employs a two stage approach of conditional EVT originally proposed by McNeil and Frey (2000) to estimate dynamic Value at Risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES). The dynamic risk measures have been estimated for different percentiles for negative and positive returns. The estimates of risk measures computed under different quantile levels exhibit strong stability across a range of the selected thresholds, implying the accuracy and reliability of the estimated quantile based risk measures.     

Multivariate risk aversion and uninsurable risks: Theory and applications

The objective of this paper is to develop conditions for global multivariate comparative risk aversion in the presence of uninsurable, or background, risks, and thus generalize Kihlstrom and Mirman [1974] and Karni [1979,1989]. We analyze von Neumann-Morgenstern (VNM) utility functionsas well as smooth preference functionals which are nonlinear in distribution but locally linear in probabilities. In each case we provide an economic application which illustrates how our theorems can be used. We analyze a risk sharing, a portfolio choice, and a labor supply problem for VNM utility functions, and the optimal allocation of effort to risky technologies in the presence of a random supply (or quality) of a public good for nonlinear preference functionals. We consider thecase where the random variables are mean-independent as well as the case where they are independent. In the labor supply application for VNM utility functions, we show that if the two risks are independent, the comparative statics effect of greater risk aversion on labor supply in the presence of a background non-wage income risk is determined by a monotonic relationship between labor supply and the wage rate under certainty. That is, we extend the applicability of the Diamond-Stiglitz [1974]-Kihlstrom-Mirman [1974]single-crossing property to the case where an independent background risk is present.     

Derivative activities and the risk of international banks: A market index and VaR approach

The results of a comparison of international banks using a three-factor multi-index model and a modified value-at-risk (VaR) analysis indicate that the use of options increases the interest rate beta for all banks, while both interest rate and currency swaps generally reduce risk. The results are the strongest and the most consistent for U.S. dealer banks, followed by European banks, and then Japanese banks. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that the VaR approach to risk management can effectively be used by both domestic as well as international banks, although the results appear to be somewhat sensitive to the regulatory environment in which the bank operates.     

Discrepancies between ex ante and ex post efficiency under identical subjective probabilities

Summary. Starr (1973) showed that, if people have different subjective probabilities, ex ante and ex post efficiency conflict. Conversely, under the simple preferences that he considered, the discrepancy between ex ante and ex post efficiency disappears when subjective probabilities are identical. Here I consider identical subjective probabilities, but more general preferences. First, risk attraction is admitted. Second, I dispense with the double requirement (dubbed IZU) of additive separability and state-independence of the utility of zero-date consumption, an unrealistic requirement when modeling the investment in durable goods. I find that, under IZU, and as long as ex post preferences satisfy the natural assumption of quasiconcavity (and satisfy some technical qualifications), an ex ante efficient allocation is indeed ex post efficient, but the converse is not necessarily true under risk attraction. If, on the other hand, IZU is violated, then one can have ex ante efficient allocations that are not ex post efficient, and vice-versa, even under risk aversion. Received: June 25, 1999; revised version: March 2001