Long‐Term post‐merger announcement performance. A case study of Australian listed real estate

This study examines the long‐term postmerger performance of Australian Real Estate Investment Trusts (A‐REITs). The A‐REIT sector is used as a case study being less vulnerable to agency issues due to its regulatory structure (Eichholtz and Kok, 2008; Ratcliffe et al., 2009). Research on conventional firms has shown, on average, shareholders are worse off in the long run (Alexandridis et al., 2012). In contrast, we find that shareholders experience significantly positive abnormal returns, after accounting for the financial crisis. This outcome suggests that when managers are restricted with the use of retained earnings and the type of investment, they may be less susceptible to hubris and/or agency issues.     

Level of business insights in the MD&A and nonprofessional investors' judgments

This study examines how the level of business insights in a firm's MD&A interacts with its current financial performance to influence nonprofessional investors' judgments. Following the observations and guidance of the ASIC and SEC to define low‐and high‐insight MD&A, this study finds that low‐insight MD&A, when provided for a negative earnings surprise, increases investors’ judgments of the negative earnings persistence and hurts management reputation more than if no MD&A had been provided. High‐insight MD&A, when including a plausible external attribution, increases investors’ judgments of management reputation in the negative earnings surprise condition and decreases investors’ judgments of positive earnings persistence.     

Trend in aggregate idiosyncratic volatility

We suggest that price interaction among stocks is an important determinant of idiosyncratic volatility. We demonstrate that as more (less) stocks are listed in the markets, price interaction among stocks increases (decreases), and hence stocks, on average, become more (less) volatile. Our results show that price interaction has a significant positive effect of idiosyncratic volatility. The results of various robustness checks indicate that the effect of price interaction is still significant to the presence of liquidity, newly listed firms, cash flow variables, business cycle variables, and market volatility. Once the price interaction effect is taken into account, no trend remains in idiosyncratic volatility. We conclude that there is no trend, but a reflection of the positive effect of price interaction on idiosyncratic volatility.     

A Ranking of Journals in Economics and Related Fields

Abstract. This paper presents an update of the ranking of economics journals by the invariant method, as introduced by Palacio‐Huerta and Volij, with a broader sample of journals. By comparison with the two other most prominent rankings, it also proposes a list of ‘target journals’, ranked according to their quality, as a standard for the field of economics.     

乡镇政府在社会主义新农村建设中的作用

新农村建设的主要推动者有农民、农村社会组织、政府和市场,这些推动者在新农村发展建设中有其各自的作用。正确把握和发挥好政府组织,特别是乡镇人民政府在建设新农村中的职能,对推进社会主义新农村建设起着非常关键的作用。探讨乡镇政府在新农村建设中的作用应该从农民利益诉求出发。