浅议某大桥工程项目竣工决算审计工作——北城大桥工程项目决算审计侧记

东台市审计局去年在对一大桥进行了竣工决算审计,该工程报审时建设单位已请中介机构进行了一审,并核减工程造价1001.63万元。该局精心组织审计力量,对所报送的资料详细审核及现场察看,发现在投资回报上存在重大疑点。最终该工程在一审的基础上再次核减了工程造价358万元,核减率7.45%。     

Promotion systems and career development in Thailand: a case study of Siam Cement

This paper examines the promotion systems and career development of managers of Siam Cement Public Company Limited, the largest manufacturing conglomerate in Thailand. Since the 1980s, the company has grown into a full-blown conglomerate and is widely considered to be Thailand's most modernized corporation. In the aftermath of the 1997–8 Asian crisis, the meltdown forced the company and other debt-addicted business groups to streamline their debts and organization structures drastically. However, just five years later, the company had bounced back into profitability and first-class corporate governance, and stands firmly in the front rank. Undoubtedly, the company's successful recovery and its current strengths have been driven by the capability and dedication of its managers. This paper focuses on interviews with the company's personnel managers during 1999–2001, and on the personnel profiles of 128 managers (general manager level), in order to examine Siam Cement's human resource management policies and practices, and to draw from this its overall strategies for the development of managerial careers. The main finding was that well-planned recruitment, competitive promotion, concrete performance appraisal and wide-ranging training and development programmes, including job rotation and sending managers to study abroad, are all essential career development strategies.     

Conditional performance evaluation for German equity mutual funds

We investigate the conditional performance of a sample of German equity mutual funds over the period from 1994 to 2003 using both the beta-pricing approach and the stochastic discount factor (SDF) framework. On average, mutual funds cannot generate excess returns relative to their benchmark that are large enough to cover their total expenses. Compared to unconditional alphas, fund performance sharply deteriorates when we measure conditional alphas. Given that stock returns are to some extent predictable based on publicly available information, conditional performance evaluation raises the benchmark for active fund managers because it gives them no credit for exploiting readily available information. Underperformance is more pronounced in the SDF framework than in beta-pricing models. The fund performance measures derived from alternative model specifications differ depending on the number of primitive assets taken to calibrate the SDF as well as the number of instrument variables used to scale assets and/or factors.     

资产周期特性与保险公司资产配置策略

在竞争激烈的保险市场上,作为盈利的两大支柱之一,保险公司资产管理的能力日趋重要,而保险公司资产配置是保险资产管理的核心,其研究意义就显得尤为重要。本文首先给出保险资产配置的意义与总体原则,然后从保险资金的来源和特性入手,在详细分析了美国、中国不同经济周期和市场周期下大类资产风险收益特性的基础之上,给出保险公司资产负债管理和资产配置的战略决策建议。     

APPLYING A GENETIC ALGORITHM TO INTERNATIONAL DIVERSIFICATION OF EQUITY PORTFOLIOS: A SOUTH AFRICAN INVESTOR PERSPECTIVE

This paper uses the genetic algorithm (GA) approach to generate a portfolio optimisation scenario of a South African investor who seeks to maximise return from investing in S&P500, FTSE100, NASDAQ, DOWJONES, CAC40 and the DAX from January 1, 2005, to January 31, 2008, but facing exchange rate risk. The GA searches for the optimal solution in the entire set of financial constraints without looking for partial derivatives of the utility function. Whereas most financial problems require a non‐linear and time‐varying model, the GA, with its survival principle of offspring chromosomes, is better suited to this type of problem than local optimisation methods. The performance of the GA is compared with two non‐linear models, namely the quadratic mean‐variance (QMV), which maximises the portfolio mean‐variance, and the quadratic variance minimisation (QVM), which minimises the portfolio variance. The results show that neither the QMV nor the QVM takes into account the domestic investors' risk attitude towards investing in foreign equities and therefore does not provide any international diversification benefits. In addition, the bootstrapping scenario of 10,000 simulations reveals that neither the QMV nor the QVM outperforms the GA in terms of Sharpe ratio and flexibility in dealing with investors' risk attitude towards investing in foreign equities denominated in foreign currencies.     

政府行为对风险投资回报率影响研究

国际上西方主流观点认为,风险投资最好是由民间资本为主,政府不应该操纵风险投资,而中国现在的风险投资大多是由政府主导的资金对政府感兴趣的公司进行投资,风投公司大多是政府主导建立的,民营上市公司参与风投的比例较低,民间资本创立的风投机构更是少之又少。而通过对四类风险投资公司的分析,初步探究出中国政府应该:第一,转变政府在风险投资中的干预职能和行为方式,放宽进入门槛,建成风险投资的多元性投资主体。第二,要利用其所掌握的管理权资源和政策制度引导,通过适当的政府行为选择指引,将大部分精力放在风险投资需要的外部环境建设、制度的制定与完善上。第三,提升政府在风险投资发展中的决策水平。政府应根据风险投资运行的本质规律,建立科学的经济决策程序和决策体系。     

The return to education and its distribution in urban China: evidence from quantile regression analysis

Based on Chinese Households Income Projects in 2002, this paper discusses the relationship between the return to education and the quantiles of income distribution. The findings in this paper show that the return to education is lower for the higher quantiles, while the estimators also depend on the choice of control variables. The methodology of the quantile regression might be helpful in adjusting the ability bias in the estimation on return to education. The policy implications of the paper highlight the impact of the education expansion in boosting the income growth for those in lower quantiles.     

South Africa's economics of education: A stocktaking and an agenda for the way forward

This paper reviews some of the existing economics of education literature from the perspective of South Africa's education policymaking needs. It also puts forward a suggested research agenda for future work. The review is arranged according to five areas of research: rates of return, production functions, teacher incentives, benefit incidence analysis and cross-country comparisons. Production functions, especially if translated to cost-effectiveness models, can point to important policy solutions. Teacher incentives is a policy area that is in need of a better theoretical and empirical basis. Rates of return are difficult for policymakers to interpret, but suggest a need for a qualification below the Grade 12 level. While benefit incidence analysis can demonstrate large improvements in the equity of public financing, cross-country comparisons reveal that not only is the distribution of schooling outcomes particularly unequal, on average it is well below what the country's level of development would predict.