Perceived usefulness,ease of use and user acceptance of blockchain technology for digital transactions – insights from user-generated content on Twitter

Although blockchain has attracted a great deal of attention from academia and industry there is a lack of studies on acceptance drivers. This study explores blockchain acceptance by mining the collective intelligence of users on Twitter. It maps blockchain user acceptance drivers to technology acceptance constructs. The analysis shows that users are attracted by security, privacy, transparency, trust and traceability aspects provided by blockchain. On Twitter more discussions on blockchain benefits than on drawbacks. Initial coin offering (ICO) is extensively discussed. The study provides guidelines for managers and concludes by presenting the limitations of the study along with future research directions.     

Managing Beliefs about Monetary Policy under Discretion

In models of monetary policy, discretionary policymaking is typically constrained in its ability to manage public beliefs. However, when a policymaker possesses private information, policy actions serve as signals to the public about unobserved economic conditions and belief management becomes an integral part of optimal discretion policies. This article derives the optimal time‐consistent policy for a general linear‐quadratic setting. The optimal policy is illustrated in a simple New Keynesian model, where analytical solutions can be derived as well. In this model, imperfect information about the policymaker's output target leads to lower policy losses.     

Fair valuation of cliquet-style return guarantees in (homogeneous and) heterogeneous life insurance portfolios

Participating life insurance contracts allow the policyholder to participate in the annual return of a reference portfolio. Additionally, they are often equipped with an annual (cliquet-style) return guarantee. The current low interest rate environment has again refreshed the discussion on risk management and fair valuation of such embedded options. While this problem is typically discussed from the viewpoint of a single contract or a homogeneous* insurance portfolio, contracts are, in practice, managed within a heterogeneous insurance portfolio. Their valuation must then – unlike the case of asset portfolios – take account of portfolio effects: Their premiums are invested in the same reference portfolio; the contracts interact by a joint reserve, individual surrender options and joint default risk of the policy sponsor. Here, we discuss the impact of portfolio effects on the fair valuation of insurance contracts jointly managed in (homogeneous and) heterogeneous life insurance portfolios. First, in a rather general setting, including stochastic interest rates, we consider the case that otherwise homogeneous contracts interact due to the default risk of the policy sponsor. Second, and more importantly, we then also consider the case when policies are allowed to differ in further aspects like the guaranteed rate or time to maturity. We also provide an extensive numerical example for further analysis.     

The double‐edged effect of knowledge acquisition: How contracts safeguard pre‐existing resources

Research summary : Acquiring knowledge on a partner's pre‐existing resources plays an important yet ambiguous role in collaborative relationships. We formally model how contracts trade off productive and destructive uses of knowledge in a buyer‐supplier relationship. We show that, when the buyer's pre‐existing resources are vulnerable to the revelation of sensitive knowledge, the supplier overinvests in knowledge acquisition as it expects to use the knowledge as a threat in price negotiations. A non‐renegotiable closed‐price contract prevents such overinvestment and reduces the supplier's ability to expropriate the buyer ex post. Our results extend to the cases of renegotiable closed‐price contracts, repeated interactions between a buyer and a supplier, and the use of nondisclosure policies. We draw theoretical, empirical, and managerial implications from our model. Managerial summary : This study yields new insights regarding the use of contract design in protecting pre‐existing, nonrelationship specific assets in buyer‐supplier arrangements. Anecdotal examples illustrate the “dark side” of these arrangements where opportunistic suppliers exploit knowledge of buyers' pre‐existing resources to seek rent and appropriate value. When a supplier is likely to act harmfully, a closed‐price contract that specifies the price of the supplier's component upfront may reduce the supplier's incentives to overinvest in acquiring and exploiting knowledge of the buyer's pre‐existing resources. As such, when a buyer's pre‐existing resources are highly valuable, and thus more vulnerable to use by the supplier outside of the arrangement, a non‐renegotiable closed‐price contract is more efficient. Additionally, limited disclosure policies and informal agreements based on repeated interactions complement indirect governance via price contracts. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

最优控制下民办高校科研激励的共享努力合同设计——基于间接原料供应模型的思考

长期以来,科研工作的突破一直是我国民办高校的困扰,其难点在于如何确定在最优控制科研投入水平下的激励教师提高科研产出水平。本文首先确定民办高校科研产出的最优水平,然后以间接原料供应模型为基础,通过共享努力合同的设计以提高学校和教师双方的努力程度,最终达到动态最优化。     

Impact of contract farming on land productivity and income of maize and potato growers in Pakistan

While the positive income effect of contract farming is well established in the literature, the heterogeneity of effects for different crops has not been widely investigated. This study compares the income and productivity effects of large-scale contract farming under contract schemes for potatoes and maize in Pakistan. In the area of the study, maize is a common staple crop, widely available in the market, while the potatoes produced by contract farmers are a special variety not sold in the market. We find that potato contracting is associated with significantly higher income for participating farmers, while maize contracting has no association with either income or productivity. We found no negative association between contract participation and income from other sources. Taken together, these results show a higher total household income for potato contract farmers. We also show unique evidence that potato contract farmers tend to employ more skilled workers under a salary system for the management of farms, which implies that contract farming may have positive spillover effects in the skilled labor market. Neither scheme, however, is associated with larger employment of agricultural labor for simple tasks.     

Regulating smart contracts: Legal revolution or simply evolution?

Blockchain-based smart contracts have triggered polarised discussions. They have been applauded as a significant technological achievement, but also criticised as a dumb idea. Their application is rapidly expanding in the financial sector, public sector, supply chain management, and the automobile, real estate, insurance, and health care industries. With the growing use of smart contracts and an increasing variety of smart contracts applications, the debate over the legal implications of this phenomenon has intensified and many legal issues related to smart contracts are being examined. Legal scholars have highlighted potential legal pitfalls, controversies and incompatibilities with existing legal frameworks. Blockchain technology and smart contracts have also been fuelling an interest of legislators, who have begun to recognise regulatory uncertainties and are making the first attempts to introduce legislative solutions to address them. This paper aims to highlight the fervour of the scholarly debate surrounding smart contracts and contrast it with a rather modest response from the legislators thus far. The paper reiterates that smart contracts represent the future. Even though they challenge practitioners, scholars, and legislators, current legislative initiatives indicate that under most legal systems there are no major obstacles for smart contracts and to accommodate smart contracts within the existing legal frameworks we should expect legal evolution rather than revolution.     

CEO政治关系与薪酬-回报的非对称敏感性

本文从信任角度研究了公司如何设计针对具有政治关系CEO的薪酬契约。具体来说,分析并验证了两个推论:第一,由于股东对CEO不完全信任,CEO现金薪酬对负股票回报的敏感性要大于对正股票回报的敏感性;第二,CEO的代表委员类政治关系会增进股东对CEO的信任,从而这类CEO薪酬-回报的非对称敏感程度较低。本文从薪酬契约角度发展了当前高管政治关系的研究,并且为薪酬契约设计研究提供了新的经验证据。     

MUTUAL FUND PORTFOLIO CHOICE IN THE PRESENCE OF DYNAMIC FLOWS

We analyze the implications of dynamic flows on a mutual fund's portfolio decisions. In our model, myopic investors dynamically allocate capital between a riskless asset and an actively managed fund which charges fraction‐of‐fund fees. The presence of dynamic flows induces “flow hedging” portfolio distortions on the part of the fund, even though investors are myopic. Our model predicts a positive relationship between a fund's proportional fee rate and its volatility. This is a consequence of higher‐fee funds holding more extreme equity positions. Although both the fund portfolio and investors' trading strategies depend on the proportional fee rate, the equilibrium value functions do not. Finally, we show that our results hold even if investors are allowed to directly trade some of the risky securities.