Estimating cost of capital in firm valuations with arithmetic or geometric mean – or better use the Cooper estimator?

We test the extent and determinants of bias effects of the arithmetic as well as the geometric mean estimator and the estimator of Cooper [1996. Arithmetic versus geometric mean estimators: Setting discount rates for capital budgeting. European Financial Management 2 (July): 157–67] regarding discount rate estimation for firm valuation by way of a bootstrap approach for 13 different countries. The Cooper estimator is superior to both the geometric and the (conventional) arithmetic mean estimator. However, a ‘truncated’ version of the arithmetic mean estimator leads generally to better estimation outcomes than the Cooper estimator. This means that, in order to reduce problems of upward-biased firm value estimates, expected cash flows beyond a certain time horizon are completely neglected in terminal value estimation. Such an approach seems particularly reasonable for the valuation of young growth companies as well as for companies from quickly developing countries such as Brazil, China, or Thailand, because the bias in terminal value estimation is increasing in the growth rate of future expected cash flows.     

The generalized value at risk admissible set: constraint consistency and portfolio outcomes

Generalized value at risk (GVaR) adds a conditional value at risk or censored mean lower bound to the standard value at risk and considers portfolio optimization problems in the presence of both constraints. For normal distributions the censored mean is synonymous with the statistical hazard function, but this is not true for fat-tailed distributions. The latter turn out to imply much tighter bounds for the admissible portfolio set and indeed for the logistic, an upper bound for the portfolio variance that yields a simple portfolio choice rule. The choice theory in GVaR is in general not consistent with classic Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility functions for money. A re-specification is suggested to make it so that gives a clearer picture of the economic role of the respective constraints. This can be used analytically to explore the choice of portfolio hedges.     

The impact of redistributive policies on inequality in OECD countries

Due to behavioural effects triggered by redistributional interventions, it is still an open question whether government policies are able to effectively reduce income inequality. We contribute to this research question by using different country-level data sources to study inequality trends in OECD countries since 1980. We first investigate the development of inequality over time before analysing the question of whether governments can effectively reduce inequality. Different identification strategies, using fixed effects and instrumental variables models, provide some evidence that governments are capable of reducing income inequality despite countervailing behavioural responses. The effect is stronger for social expenditure policies than for progressive taxation.     

央行货币政策使用的工具及其在我国的具体运用

2007年,经济“过热”,物价涨幅“过快”,通货膨胀“压力”等字眼频频见报,中央银行采取什么措施应对成为大家关注的焦点。从2007年初至今,中国人民银行已经多次调整了存款准备金率,多次上调人民币存贷款基准利率,这些都是为了控制经济过热。最明显的“过热”,恐怕是2007年大盘指数上扬步伐,在第四次加息声刚落,上证指数就轻松地突破5000点。人们一方面对股市充满了信心,经中报调整后的动态市盈率仍然高于国际平均水平的2倍。男一方面人们的信心改变不了殷价高悬、风险增大酌事实．     

民营企业跨国经营的渐进式发展模式选择——以华为为例

在经济全球化的影响下,我国民营企业实施跨国经营,但由于我国民营企业跨国经营起步晚,其规模还不够完善,面临着许多问题,所以选择渐进式模式,本文就以我国民营企业跨国经营做出研究,什么是渐进式跨国经营模式,为什么要选择渐进式模式,如何实现渐进式模式。为我国民营企业跨国经营做出更好的建议。     

The management of professional employees: linking progressive HRM practices,cognitive orientations and organizational citizenship behavior

Abstract

The present research examines the relationships between progressive HRM practices and the organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) of professional employees. Drawing on recent HRM literature, our research model includes a perceived organizational support (POS)-commitment mediation hypothesis. Taking into account previous studies on professional employees, a job satisfaction-commitment pathway is also integrated. We tested both mediational pathways as part of a single structural equation model using a sample of 329 professional employees. Our results show that the relationship between recognition and OCB is mediated by the POS-commitment pathway, while the relationships between fairness of rewards, skills development and OCB are mediated by the job satisfaction-commitment pathway. The specificities of the HRM of professional employees related to their multiple cognitive orientations are discussed.     

Forecasting performances of three automated modelling techniques during the economic crisis 2007–2009

In this work we consider the forecasting of macroeconomic variables during an economic crisis. The focus is on a specific class of models, the so-called single hidden-layer feed-forward autoregressive neural network models. What makes these models interesting in the present context is the fact that they form a class of universal approximators and may be expected to work well during exceptional periods such as major economic crises. Neural network models are often difficult to estimate, and we follow the idea of White (2006) of transforming the specification and nonlinear estimation problem into a linear model selection and estimation problem. To this end, we employ three automatic modelling devices. One of them is White’s QuickNet, but we also consider Autometrics, which is well known to time series econometricians, and the Marginal Bridge Estimator, which is better known to statisticians. The performances of these three model selectors are compared by looking at the accuracy of the forecasts of the estimated neural network models. We apply the neural network model and the three modelling techniques to monthly industrial production and unemployment series from the G7 countries and the four Scandinavian ones, and focus on forecasting during the economic crisis 2007–2009. The forecast accuracy is measured using the root mean square forecast error. Hypothesis testing is also used to compare the performances of the different techniques.     

基于格规约辅助的MIMO系统GMD-TH预编码方案

现有的GMD-TH(Geometric Mean Decomposition-Tomlison Harashima)预编码方案在发射 端未对获得MIMO（Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output）信道增益矩阵优化,因而 其误码率和分集增益无法获得令人满意的效果。为此,在原有MIMO系统GMD-TH预编码的基础 上,提出一种基于格规约辅助的GMD-TH预编码方案。该方案采用基于格规约的算法对信道 矩阵进行优化,经过优化的信道矩阵其列向量之间具有更好的正交性并且向量的长度更短, 并且采用优化的信道矩阵提高了GMD-TH预编码MIMO系统的分集增益。仿真结果表明：相比于 传统的线性预编码方案,该预编码方案有效地提高了MIMO分集增益,相同误码率下,信噪 比降低3 dB以上,具有实用价值。     

ARE LONG-HORIZON STOCK RETURNS PREDICTABLE? A BOOTSTRAP ANALYSIS

This paper examines empirical evidence of predictability of long-horizon real and excess stock returns in the UK using univariate as well as multivariate Variance Ratio tests. In order to estimate the sampling distribution of the test statistics, artificial histories ofstock returns are generated from their empirical distribution using the bootstrap method. This allows the construction of significance levels of the test statistic which are free from distributional assumptions. The empirical results indicate that there is no evidence of mean reversion in stock prices even if a wider information set to forecast stock returns is used and that the significance of historical Variance Ratio statistics has been overstated by previous studies.     

Mean reversion of short-run interest rates: empirical evidence from new EU countries

This article deals with the analysis of the mean reversion property of short-term interest rates in Central and Eastern European countries, using daily data from January 2000 to December 2008. For this purpose, we use long memory (fractionally integrated) models, and employ non-parametric, semi-parametric and parametric techniques to check if our results are robust across different methods. The results indicate that the mean reversion only takes place in the case of Hungary. For the remaining countries, the short-term interest rates are clearly non-stationary and non-mean reverting. Allowing for one break in the data, the break date takes place about 2001/2003 in all the series except in Lithuania, where the break occurs in 2007. In general, we observe an increase in the degree of dependence after the break in the majority of the series.