Bonds versus stocks: Investors’ age and risk taking

It has become increasingly popular to advise investors to relocate their funds from a primarily stock portfolio to a primarily bond portfolio as they get older. However, the well-known decision rules such as mean–variance or stochastic dominance rules are unable to explain this common practice. Almost stochastic dominance (ASD) and almost mean–variance (AMV) approaches are used to examine the dominance of stock and bond portfolios. ASD and AMV rules unambiguously support the popular practice of advising higher stock to bond ratio for long investment horizons. Hence, we provide an explanation to the practitioners’ recommendation within the expected utility paradigm.     

Comparison of Mean-Risk Efficient Portfolios in Asia-Pacific Capital Markets

In order to analyze the performance of mean-risk efficient portfolios, several methods of portfolio comparison have been developed. In this paper we analyze the second-order stochastic dominance efficiency of portfolios on the mean-risk efficient frontier assuming that the risk is represented by standard deviations and concordance matrices set up on the basis of Pearson's linear correlation, Spearman's rho, or Kendall's tau. Empirical analysis of the market returns of selected Asia-Pacific stock markets is carried out considering both the U.S. dollar and euro as reference currencies, and different periods: before and during the subprime crisis. Measures and portfolios on the mean-risk efficiency frontier that should be of interest to at least one risk-averse investor are empirically documented.     

The Momentum Effect in Latin American Emerging Markets

We find that momentum strategies yield profits in Latin American emerging markets. Both stock type and country play a major role in explaining the momentum effect in these markets, but stock type is much more important. For risk-averse investors, winner portfolios stochastically dominate loser portfolios in these markets, implying that there are no asset-pricing models consistent with risk-averse investors that can rationalize the momentum effect. The results obtained via the bootstrap procedure without replacement also uphold this conclusion.     

Stochastic Dominance Analysis of iShares

Abstract

Country indices as represented by iShares exhibit non-normal return distributions with both skewness and kurtosis. Earlier studies provide procedures for determining the statistical significance of stochastic dominance measures and the Sharpe Ratio. This present study uses these refinements to compare the performance of 18 country market indices. The iShares are indistinguishable when using the Sharpe Ratio as no significant differences are found. In contrast, stochastic dominance procedures identify dominant iShares. Although the results vary over time, stochastic dominance appears to be both more robust and discriminating than the CAPM in the ranking of the iShares.     

Poverty Comparisons Over Time and Across Countries in Africa

We use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to compare “poverty” at two or more points in time within and between African countries. Our welfare measure is an index resulting from a factor analysis of various household characteristics, durables, and household heads’ education. An advantage of this measure is that for intertemporal and intraregional comparisons, we need not rely on suspect price deflators and currency conversion factors. The wide availability and similarity of questionnaires of the DHS facilitate comparisons over both time and countries. Our results generally show declines in poverty during the previous decade, largely due to improvements in rural areas.     

Strategic Similarity and Emergent Conventions: Evidence from Similar Stag Hunt Games

This paper reports evidence on the origin of convention in laboratory cohorts confronting similar but not identical strategic situations repeatedly. The experiment preserves the action space of the game, while randomly perturbing the payoffs and scrambling the action labels in an effort to blunt the salience of retrospective selection principles. Hence, the similarity between stage games is reduced to certain strategic details, like efficiency, security, and risk dominance. Nevertheless, we do observe conventions emerging in half of the laboratory cohorts. When a convention emerges subjects's behavior conforms to the selection principles of efficiency rather than security or risk dominance. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C78, C92, D83.     

在ASP网站中的SQL注入攻击及其防范措施的探讨

ASP是开发网站的快速工具，但是有些网站管理员只看到ASP的快速开发能力，却忽视了ASP的安全问题，尤其是SQL注入漏洞危害性很大，攻击者可以通过SQL注入攻击来获取一些敏感信息，甚至获取整个网站的管理权限。文章主要探讨SQL注入的防范措施。     

Are Men Always Picked Over Women? The Effects of Employment Equity Directives on Selection Decisions

This study replicates and extends previous work by Oppenheimer and Wiesner [1990, Sex discrimination: Who is hired and do employment equity statements make a difference? Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, Personnel and Human Resources Division], and examined the effects of minority qualifications on hiring decisions, the effects of employment equity directives when minority candidates are less qualified and the effects of different types and strengths of employment equity directives on hiring decisions. The results indicate that when employment equity is in place, people are increasingly more likely to hire underrepresented group members, to the extent that they are more qualified. Men appear to be treated in a positively biased manner, and are more likely to be hired when they are less qualified. Women are less likely to be hired when they are under-qualified, and in the absence of employment equity directives or when there is a suggestion that women are underrepresented. Moreover, when␣employment equity directives are strengthened, there appears to be a subtle backlash for women but not for men. Eddy S. Ng is an assistant professor at Trent University. He was on faculty at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona in 2006–2007. Willi H. Wiesner is an associate professor at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University.     

国防经济的地区性和外部性——中国的国防经济如何与经济建设协调发展

在当今国际关系复杂多变的背景下,即使各国间的博弈逐渐变得缓和,也改变不了国防经济在各国至关重要的作用。而对于世界上发展程度不同的国家,国防经济的发展程度也会不同,且不同的国防经济发展也对经济发展带来了不同的外部影响。本文是在综合了时代特征的情况下,探讨不同国家的不同程度的国防经济建设所揭示的地区性和所带来的外部性影响。     

俄罗斯国防工业技术“寓军于民”金融支持实践

俄罗斯大力推行国防科技工业企业一体化,并在许多领域,特别是在电子技术和信息技术领域都采取了许多有效的措施。同时国家政策倾向于对国防工业进行各种形式融资支持,其实践经验对中国有所启示。