Escalating penalties for repeat offenders: a note on the role of information

The severity of the sanction for a given offense is often determined by the offense history of the offender. We establish that this policy can be welfare-maximizing if individuals are imperfectly informed about the magnitude of the sanction. Imperfect information distorts individuals’ perception of the expected sanction of the first offense. Once detected, individuals learn about the sanction applicable to their act, making this argument less relevant for consecutive offenses.      

地勘单位会计信息失真的原因与对策

文章分析了当前会计信息失真的原因,有针对性地提出了解决问题的根本办法和具体办法.     

Determining farm effects attributable to the introduction and use of a dairy management information system in The Netherlands

Yearly production and reproduction data on dairy farms in The Netherlands were obtained to determine whether management information systems significantly improved herd performance variables (management information systems (MIS) effects). The analysis included 357 adopters of a management information system and 357 herds were used as controls. The data comprised years 1987 through 1996, and included for the adopters both the ‘before’ and ‘after’ period. Panel data analysis enabled to estimate MIS effects both within and between farms, allowing for a separation of farm‐specific effects and common (trend) effects. Adoption and use of a management information system resulted in a significant annual increase in rolling herd average milk (carrier) and protein production of 62 and 2.36 kg per cow, respectively. Calving interval was shortened by 5 days. The pay‐back period was approximately 5 years of the system (including the hardware), and therefore, MIS appears to be economically profitable.     

Insider ownership and signals: evidence from stock split announcement effects

This study examines whether investors regard the level of insider ownership of a firm as useful for evaluating stock split decisions. Results show that the abnormal returns at the announcement of stock splits are positively related to the level of insider ownership. The results prevail even after controlling for other relevant factors. Further analysis indicates the positive relation exists for small firms, but not for large firms. This indicates the market evaluates stock split decisions within the context of both insider ownership and information asymmetry.     

Reinforcement-Based Adaptive Learning in Asymmetric Two-Person Bargaining with Incomplete Information

The sealed bidk-double auction is a mechanism used to structure bilateral bargaining under two-sided incomplete information. This mechanism is tested in two experiments in which subjects are asked to bargain repeatedly for 50 rounds with the same partner under conditions of information disparity favoring either the buyer (Condition BA) or seller (Condition SA). Qualitatively, the observed bid and offer functions are in agreement with the Bayesian linear equilibrium solution (LES) constructed by Chatterjee and Samuelson (1983). A trader favored by the information disparity, whether buyer or seller, receives a larger share of the realized gain from trade than the other trader. Comparison with previous results reported by Daniel, Seale, and Rapoport (1998), who used randomly matched rather than fixed pairs, shows that when reputation effects are present this advantage is significantly enhanced. A reinforcement-based learning model captures the major features of the offer and bid functions, accounting for most of the variability in the round-to-round individual decisions.     

Contracts with endogenous information

I study covert information acquisition and reporting in a principal agent problem allowing for general technologies of information acquisition. When posteriors satisfy two dimensional versions of the standard First Order Stochastic Dominance and Concavity/Convexity of the Distribution Function conditions, a first-order approach is justified. Under the same conditions, informativeness and riskiness of reports are equivalent. High powered contracts, that make the agent's informational rents more risky, are used to increase incentives for information acquisition, insensitive contracts are used to reduce incentives for information gathering. The value of information to the agent is always positive. The value of information to the principal is ambiguous.     

Quality of Provisions for Bad Debts and Earnings Information Contents

We measure the quality of provisions for bad debts, based on both the cross-sectional and time-series basis. Empirical tests show the impacts on earnings information contents, as well as on the incremental information content of cash flows.     

Computerized management of tourism marketing information

This article discusses the benefits of applying computers to the management of marketing Information by the tourism industry. It looks at the role of regional tourism associations, and the monitoring of promotional programmes and details how such a system operates and draws together its potential applications.