Tunneling,propping, and expropriation: evidence from connected party transactions in Hong Kong

We examine a sample of connected transactions between Hong Kong listed companies and their controlling shareholders. We address three questions: What types of connected transactions lead to expropriation of minority shareholders? Which firms are more likely to expropriate? Does the market anticipate the expropriation by firms? On average, firms announcing connected transactions earn significant negative excess returns, significantly lower than firms announcing similar arm's length transactions. We find limited evidence that firms undertaking connected transactions trade at discounted valuations prior to the expropriation, suggesting that investors cannot predict expropriation and revalue firms only when expropriation does occur.     

Utilization of Delphi methods for University planning

A Delphi-type project undertaken from 1970–1972 to explore the long-term aims of Carleton University is described. The desiderata of ten participating groups is compared to actual developments in the decade that followed.     

Significant Issues for the Future: Some Additional Perspectives

The rational elements of management dominated the questions raised by our Editorial Board members in the previous issue of JPIM when they offered their ideas in, "Significant Issues For the Future of Product Innovation." In this article, the discussion is continued with some other Board members but this time the human side of managements gets its due attention. The issues presented here add to the picture of complexity that is the reality of product innovation but they also may provoke the thinking that can lead to an improvement in management performance.     

Resolvable semi-balanced incomplete split-block designs

A method for constructing some new incomplete split-block designs with desirable properties is given. The new class of the designs is characterized with respect to the general balance property. Moreover, the efficiency factors of the designs proposed are given.Received: July 2003 / Revised: November 2003     

The determinants of corruption in transition economies

This paper examines the determinants of corruption in transition economies. We found that the progress of structural reform, comprising marketization, rule of law, and democratization had a crucial impact on the extent of corruption control in former socialist countries.     

Land reforms and social unrest: An empirical investigation of riots in India

This paper considers the effect of agrarian reforms on rioting in India. I find that the adoption of agrarian reforms was associated with a decline in the overall riot rate but the Hindu-Muslim riot rate, an urban phenomenon was largely unaffected by the program.     

Prices vs. Quantities with fiscal cushioning

Enforcement of international environmental quantity regulations (e.g. tradable pollution permits) is often expected to be stricter than that of price regulations (e.g. emission taxes). While both instruments provide opportunities for misrepresenting actual pollution, enforcement of international price-based instruments is additionally hampered by potential fiscal cushioning, i.e. an adjustment of domestic fiscal policies offsetting the tax incentive to reduce emission reductions. The present paper extends the formal debate on Prices vs. Quantities by including the risk of fiscal cushioning. We find the level of the marginal benefit curve and the variance of costs become key elements for instrument choice and can render quantity regulations strictly preferable. Remarkably, in the latter case, the slopes of the marginal curves do not affect optimal instrument choice. Numerical calculations, using data taken from the international climate policy context, support the potential dominance of quantity regulations found in our formal analysis.     

A study of firms surrounding the threshold of Sarbanes–Oxley Section 404 Compliance

This study examines whether firms surrounding the Sarbanes–Oxley Section 404 market value compliance threshold behave opportunistically to reduce their market value to avoid compliance with Section 404. We find evidence that those firms reduce their market value temporarily during threshold measurement quarters, whereas control firms experience increasing market value. We find strong evidence of dampened stock returns and some evidence of insider trading as means to reduce the float. Additionally, we find that downward earnings management is used as a mechanism to alter investors’ expectations of firm value in order to temporarily reduce stock prices. We consider this opportunistic evidence of regulatory avoidance. Finally, we find that the likelihood of avoidance increases with the power of the CEO and decreases with the strength of the monitoring of the CEO, which suggest that avoidance is more likely to happen in firms with poor corporate governance mechanisms.     

氮,磷,钾配合施用对人参质量影响的研究

利用正交试验设计给人参配施氮、磷、钾肥在鲜根重量和人参药效成分－－人参皂甙含量啬的基础上，找出最佳施肥处理组合，用以探讨氮，磷，钾肥与人参质量的关系。     

What constitutes a constitutional amendment culture?

Why are some constitutions amended frequently and others hardly at all? An obvious candidate determinant is constitutional rigidity, i.e., the size and number of procedural barriers to amendment. Given some demand for amendment, greater rigidity implies a smaller supply. However, measures of rigidity often do not correlate significantly (or even with the predicted sign) with amendment rates. Ginsburg and Melton (2015) argue that amendment culture – “shared attitudes about the desirability of amendment” – is a more important determinant of amendment rates. We study up to 128 constitutional episodes from 54 countries and estimate relationships between amendment rates and Hofstede cultural indices. Cultures that are more individualistic and less prone to uncertainty avoidance are associated with higher amendment rates. When cultural dimensions are controlled for, the lagged amendment rate (Ginsburg and Melton’s proxy for culture) is not a robust correlate.