What Drives TBL Reporting: Good Governance or Threat to Legitimacy?

This paper provides two complementary explanations for the adoption of triple bottom line (TBL) reporting by Australian companies. The first explanation is that companies adopt TBL reporting to legitimise their relationship with society because of adverse publicity from the media. The second explanation is that TBL reporting is adopted because of the company's desire to achieve high‐quality reporting and transparency inferred by strong corporate governance. Companies with TBL reporting had significantly more adverse media coverage before implementing TBL reporting than non‐TBL companies. TBL reporting is also significantly and positively related to the existence of an environmental or sustainable development committee and the frequency of meetings of the audit committee.     

What drives housing price dynamics in Greece: New evidence from asymmetric ARDL cointegration

In this paper, we study the dynamics between house prices and selected macroeconomic fundamentals in Greece. The empirical analysis applies the asymmetric ARDL cointegration methodology proposed by Shin, Yu and Greenwood-Nimmo (2011) over the period from January 1999 to May 2011. The evidence suggests that ignoring the intrinsic nonlinearities may lead to misleading inference. In particular, the results reveal significant differences in the response of house prices to positive or negative changes of the explanatory variables in both the long- and short-run time horizons. The obtained evidence of asymmetry could be of major importance for more efficient policymaking and forecasting in the Greek house market.     

R＆D项目中期评估信息采集方法研究

本文从R＆D项目中期评估与立项评估相比较的角度出发，讨论了中期评估所具有的异于立项评估的信息采集的特点以及信息采集渠道和范围。在此基础上，通过提出R＆D项目中期评估信息采集方法的选择和设计原则，对现有的采集方法进行比较，得出R＆D项目中期评估信息采集方法集成图。     

武汉市科技投入结构分析及优化政策

本文通过对科技投入与经济增长的关系进行概括分析,在2002～2007年《武汉科技统计年鉴》数据的基础上,阐述了科技投入对武汉市经济和社会发展的重要意义;分析了武汉市的科技投入现状,并通过与国外一些发达国家及地区科技投入结构的系统比较,提出了优化武汉市科技投入结构的一些政策及建议。     

Foreign Institutional Ownership and the Global Convergence of Financial Reporting Practices

This paper investigates whether foreign institutional investors affect the global convergence of financial reporting practices. Using several measures of reporting convergence, we show that U.S. institutional ownership is positively associated with subsequent changes in emerging market firms’ accounting comparability to their U.S. industry peers. We identify this association using an instrumental variable approach that exploits exogenous variation in U.S. institutional investment generated by the JGTRRA Act of 2003. Further, we provide evidence of a specific mechanism—the switch to a Big Four audit firm—through which U.S. institutional investors affect reporting convergence. Finally, we show that, for emerging market firms, an increase in comparability to U.S. firms is associated with an improvement in the properties of foreign analysts’ forecasts.     

Explaining House Price Dynamics: Isolating the Role of Nonfundamentals

This paper examines the role of nonfundamentals‐based sentiment in house price dynamics, including the well‐documented volatility and persistence of house prices during booms and busts. To measure and isolate sentiment's effect, we employ survey‐based indicators that proxy for the sentiment of three major agents in housing markets: home buyers (demand side), home builders (supply side), and lenders (credit suppliers). After orthogonalizing each sentiment measure against a broad set of fundamental variables, we find strong and consistent evidence that the changing sentiment of all three sets of market participants predicts house price appreciation in subsequent quarters, above and beyond the impact of changes in lagged price changes, fundamentals, and market liquidity. More specifically, a one‐standard‐deviation shock to market sentiment is associated with a 32–57 basis point increase in real house price appreciation over the next two quarters. These price effects are large relative to the average real price appreciation of 71 basis points per quarter observed over the full sample period. Moreover, housing market sentiment and its effect on real house prices is highly persistent. The results also reveal that the dynamic relation between sentiment and house prices can create feedback effects that contribute to the persistence typically observed in house price movements during boom and bust cycles.     

Housing and the Macroeconomy: Inflation and the Financial Accelerator

Three themes connecting housing and the macroeconomy are discussed. First, evidence is presented for the property market as one of the drivers of U.S. consumer price inflation. Second, key drivers of house prices are explained to account for the remarkable diversity of international experience. Finally, three potential links between housing, credit, and the financial accelerator are discussed. These are the consumption channel, the investment channel, and feedback between bad loans and risk‐spreads via the financial system—and how institutional differences between countries can explain the presence, absence and magnitudes of these linkages.     

Semiparametric Model of Hedonic Housing Prices in Japan

We propose a semiparametric hedonic model of housing prices with nonlinearity in age and cohort effects. The model avoids the simultaneity problem among age, cohort and year effects, which is a common problem in linear hedonic models. Applying the model to housing prices in Tokyo between 1990 and 2008 revealed significant nonlinearities in both the age and cohort effects, and significant interactions between these effects, with the shape of the age effect differing across housing cohorts. Estimates of the year effect indicated a declining trend in prices that was more pronounced compared with those of conventional linear hedonic models.     

国际股票市场收益率和波动率的长记忆性研究

股票市场长记忆性问题是金融学研究的一个热点问题,对于市场有效性的研究和系统非线性结构的分析有着重要的意义。本文运用修正R/S分析和V/S分析两种方法对世界上28个国家(地区)的股票指数的日、周收益序列和日、周收益波动序列进行了完整的长记忆性研究。结果表明:对于收益序列,以美国为代表的大多数发达国家股市一般不存在长记忆性,而中国等发展中国家大多存在显著的长记忆性,尤其中国股市的长记忆性最强;对于收益波动序列,所有国家(地区)都具有长记忆性,并强于收益序列。     

New business formation and employment growth: some evidence for the Spanish manufacturing industry

This paper explores the effects of new business formation on employment growth in Spanish manufacturing industries. New firms are believed to make an important contribution to economic growth but the extent of this contribution is unclear. We consider time lags of new firm formation as explanatory variables of employment change and identify how long the effect of new firm entries on employment lasts. Our main results show that the effects of new business formation are positive in the short term, negative in the medium term and positive in the long term, thus confirming the existence of indirect supply-side effects found in similar studies for other countries.