Similarly traded securities: Greek common vs. preferred stock

This paper examines the price spread between voting (common) and non‐voting (preferred) stocks during the period 1990–95 for a sample of 55 Greek companies. Because in Greece preferred stocks are not essentially different from common stocks, a number of hypotheses were tested to explain the observed differences. The data reveal an average spread of 27.5% for the entire period which, however, varies across years considerably. In cross‐sectional regressions it was found that the volatility of common stock returns, the liquidity of common shares relative to preferred shares, the ownership concentration, and the minimum dividend yield guaranteed to preferred stockholders explain a significant portion of the spread.     

A note on Heckman-type corrections in models for zero expenditures

In Heien and Wessells (1990), a two-step estimation procedure, that makes use of Heckman-type corrections, is proposed to estimate consumption on household budget surveys. It is shown that this approach, which draws from switching regressions models, leads to inconsistent estimates.     

Monopoly Power and Stagflation

Post Keynesian economists have followed Joan Robinson's criticism of general equilibrium theory as abolishing history by allowing all contracts to be executed today for all future contingencies. This was the justification for the support of financial innovation to provide for the completeness of futures markets. The recent crisis has shown that force of history. Instead, many evolutionary and Keynesian economists have suggested the approach of cumulative causation as an approach that includes history and eschews equilibrium. This approach may provide a way to take history seriously in economic analysis.     

The winner-loser anomaly: recent evidence from Greece

This article finds evidence of significant reversals in returns over the medium term in Greek stocks. In contrast with previous research, return reversals are more pronounced for past winners, suggesting that the market overreacts to a greater extent to good news. These contrarian returns are particularly elevated when portfolios are formed using quartiles and during tranquil and bull markets. The optimum contrarian strategy involves skipping the first 6 months of the holding period and implementing the contrarian strategy for a period of 18 months, as returns exhibit continuation followed by reversal. The profitability of the contrarian investment strategy is robust to adjustments for risk and seasonalities. It is the tranquil times and not the crisis/volatile times that generates a significant and profitable contrarian strategy. The recent credit crisis and resulting stock market falls, resulted in extreme movements in some Greek stocks and testing of the contrarian strategy problematic, especially when portfolios are decile ordered. Our findings also highlight the importance of survivorship bias and also suggest that contrarian strategies that just use market beta may be ill-equipped to take into consider extreme market movements, illiquidity and short-sales constraints.     

社会资本的累积效应及其家庭福利改善

采用贫困家庭的调查数据,从社会资本的五个维度探讨累积效应对家庭福利的影响。这五个维度中,尤其是其中的社会网络规模、信任及其参与公共事务对家庭福利的影响系数为正,且在统计上显著。研究发现,对贫困家庭而言,社会资本的收入补偿效应很大。因此,在政策设计上,应提升贫困家庭的社会资本累积程度,从而提高贫困家庭的福利水平。     

Influence Allocation Methods in Group Decision Support Systems

Influence allocation processes are voting and opinion aggregating methods that allow members to distribute some or all of their decision making influence to others in the group in order to exploit not only the group's knowledge of the alternatives, but its knowledge of itself. Only with the common use of group decision support systems (GDSS) has their use become practical. In this paper we reconsider SPAN, an influence allocation process introduced by MacKinnon (1966a). Experimental comparison shows SPAN to be significantly better at selecting a correct option from a set of options than two common voting methods. An alternative influence allocation process that we call RCON (Rational Consensus), is based on a weighting method proposed by DeGroot (1974) and has been explicated as a normative standard for combining opinion by Lehrer and Wagner (1981). The judgmental inputs to SPAN would appear to be logically related to those for RCON. Submitting the SPAN inputs from the experiment, transformed in this logical way, to the RCON process results in somewhat better performance than with SPAN. However, evidence indicated that the two methods are conceptually and psychologically sufficiently different that an experimental comparison is needed between them.     

Measuring voting power in an international institution: the United States and the inter-American development bank

This paper applies a measure of relative voting power to the weighted voting system of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). Almost all assessments of internal governance of the IADB and other international financial institutions make reference to members' votes as a proxy for relative influence. But as this paper demonstrates, voting weights are misleading. The number of votes a country has in a weighted voting system does not necessarily denote its ability to affect outcomes. The conventional wisdom holds that the United States is omnipotent in the IADB because it has a large number (over 30 percent) of all the votes. This paper reveals that the U.S. obtains much more control over outcomes than originally intended by the institutions' designers. Received: September 2000 / Accepted: October 2001     

Extensions of linear diagonal-parameter symmetry and quasi-symmetry models for cumulative probabilities in square contingency tables

For square contingency tables with ordered categories, CAUSSINUS [Annales de la Faculté des Sciences de l'Université de Toulouse (1965) Vol. 29, pp. 77–182] and AGRESTI [Statistics and Probability Letters (1983) Vol. 1, pp. 313–316] considered the quasi-symmetry and the linear diagonal-parameter symmetry models, respectively, which have multiplicative forms for cell probabilities. This paper proposes two kinds of models that have the similar multiplicative forms for cumulative probabilities that an observation will fall in row (column) category i or below and column (row) category j (> i ) or above. The endometrial cancer data are analyzed using these models.     

Empirical Analysis of the Market Effects of China＇s Listed—— Company＇s Dividend Policy ——Empirical Evidences from Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2004 to 2005

Dividend policy is one of the three core contents of financial management in listed companies. On one hand, it is the extension of financial and investment activities; on the other hand, appropriate dividend policy can not only set up a good company reputation, but also arouse enthusiasm of many investors to continue invest in this company, consequently acquire long and stable development opportunities and conditions. In this paper, the author has put forward some suggestions in order to solve the problems which existing in Chinese listed companies＇ dividend policies based on the result of positive test. Firstly, optimize the structure of equity title and perfect the corporate governance. Secondly, to establish wholesome shareholder protection mechanism, and also it is important measure for investors, especially medium and small investors to protect their rights and interests. According to the present situation of Chinese stock market, the authors consider we can protect the shareholder＇s benefits by carrying out cumulative vote system, establishing hortative derive lawsuit system, perfecting civil compensation system and establishing shareholder voting removing system and so on. Thirdly, the establishment of listed companies＇ dividend policy and the release of message should be standardized for the sake of good relationship of melon-cutting and corporation＇s refinancing plan. Finally, listed companies＇ dividend policy can be optimized by modifying and perfecting stock dividend distribution mode of accounting management, perfecting exit mechanism of listed companies.     

Condorcet's Jury Theorem and the reliability of majority voting

The effect on the Jury Theorem of dependency among votes is discussed. Condorcet's original model and theorem depend crucially on the assumption of independence and the applicability of the binomial distribution. Two simple extensions of the binomial distribution are used to illustrate the effects of dependency on the quality of group decision making. With the correlated binomial model, it is possible to isolate the effect of pairwise dependency. In the presence of fairly strong pairwise dependency, we are not even guaranteed the natural property of monotonicity with respect to voters. A Pólya-Eggenberger model illustrates the effect of contagion on group competence. A special case of the beta-binomial distribution is used to demonstrate that, even in the presence of synergetic group effects, we are not guaranteed infallible decisions from a very large group. Consequences for an epistemic theory of democracy are indicated.