桃花江航运枢纽整体水力学试验研究

桃花江旅游景观船闸在布置上因受到枢纽地形与河道防洪的限制,难以满足规范要求.采用几何比尺为1∶25的整体水工模型进行了试验研究,2座枢纽的控制运行条件均为最高通航水位组合,主河道中流速较大,特别是上下游口门处引航道的横向流速较大,不能满足规范要求.修改方案主要通过减小2座船闸上下游引航道与桃花江主河道夹角,并对口门附近地形进行了相应的疏浚.试验结果表明,修改方案有效降低了2座船闸上游口门处横向流速等不利因素.     

滑坡滑动前后稳定性分析及治理方案

某水电站引水线路通过一高阶地前缘滑坡体,前期勘察时对该滑坡稳定性进行过稳定分析,但未作有效支挡处理,渠道施工开挖2 a后发生滑动,对渠道造成严重破坏,并推迟发电日期。滑动后对滑坡体进行了勘察和稳定性分析,估算出支挡结构断面处的下滑推力,并提出治理建议,为滑坡治理设计提供了可靠依据。     

内部评级法在国内商业银行实施的本土化研究

内部评级法的实施需要建立在一定的前提基础之上,中国目前的实施条件还存在一定的缺陷,因此如何在内部评级体系的构建过程中体现本土化的原则将成为有效实施的关键。中国特有的金融生态决定了地区之间的金融风险差异较大,因此在具体实施过程中,应将地区金融风险差异作为调整系数对内部评级法的评级结果进行调整。中国的商业银行尚处于内部评级法实施的准备或开始阶段,受实施条件和金融生态的限制,本土化将是一个长期的、渐进的创新过程。本土化并不仅仅是内部评级法相关标准的本地化应用,同时也要求在这一过程中有创造性地发挥内部评级法对银行风险管理的积极作用。     

商业银行分支机构绩效评价系统的设计与实证分析

本文回顾了商业银行分支机构绩效评价理论的发展和实践现状,从追踪战略实施效果和评价流程角度建立了一套完善的绩效评价系统。具体包括按照商业银行经营的安全性、流动性、盈利性和发展性要求建立了基本指标及其修正体系,并引入评议指标完善评价体系;运用Delphi法和AHP相结合的方法设置权重;借鉴分段函数取代传统直线型处理“倒U型”指标的不利做法;基于相对绩效评价思想,建立了评价标准体系和功效系数法评价模型;并以某商业银行为例进行了实证分析。最后给出了本文研究的局限性和后续研究建议,并特别就引入效率评价维度来完善绩效评价系统设计进行了比较分析。     

Relative accuracy and predictive ability of direct valuation methods, price to aggregate earnings method and a hybrid approach

In this paper, we assess the relative performance of the direct valuation method and industry multiplier models using 41 435 firm‐quarter Value Line observations over an 11 year (1990–2000) period. Results from both pricing‐error and return‐prediction analyses indicate that direct valuation yields lower percentage pricing errors and greater return prediction ability than the forward price to aggregated forecasted earnings multiplier model. However, a simple hybrid combination of these two methods leads to more accurate intrinsic value estimates, compared to either method used in isolation. It would appear that fundamental analysis could benefit from using one approach as a check on the other.     

Managers’ segment disclosure choices under IFRS 8: EU evidence

We examine the impact of proprietary and agency cost motives on segment disclosure quality and quantity and how the adoption of the principle IFRS 8 affects this impact. By using hand-collected data, our results show that proprietary and agency costs play a relevant role in determining the quality and quantity of segment disclosure. We find that proprietary costs are a particularly relevant reason for providing lower segment disclosure quality post-IFRS 8. Our results also suggest that firms’ segment disclosure choice is dependent on disclosure dimension. These results contribute to the ongoing debate regarding IFRS 8 and have valuable implications for accounting regulators.     

Genetic risk and value

A conceptual truth about risks is that they involve a possible and future adverse effect or a negative value of some kind. The genetic risks that individuals may face in the health care setting differ in some crucial respects to other kind of risks. The aims of this paper are to analyse the notion of value in the context of genetic risk in the setting of health care, and to suggest a conception of the evaluative aspect of genetic risk that is fruitful for genetic risk information. Two influential and relevant approaches to value, preferentialism and the capability approach, are discussed in the light of certain distinctive features of genetic risk and a third, a sensibility theory of value is suggested. According to this view, the concept of risk is a so-called ‘thick’ evaluative concept that has both a world-guiding function as well as an action-guiding or normative function. It is argued that this provides a more promising way to think about genetic risks in the clinical setting.     

Responsiveness of Auditors to the Audit Risk Standards: Unique Evidence from Big 4 Audit Firms

We examine the effect of changes in audit risk standards on the conduct of financial statement audits in a European setting. We investigate this by analysing the audit hours and audit fees for clients of Big 4 audit firms in Finland in 1996 and 2010. Our results show that audit firms became more sensitive to clients’ business risk due to the introduction of the new audit risk standards, with more audit hours allocated to owner-managed companies in 2010 than in 1996, and fewer audit hours allocated to low-risk clients in 2010 than in 1996. Also, the labour mix in the audit team changed for owner-managed companies, with a greater work load carried by junior auditors in 2010 than in 1996. Regarding the price of audit, we find an increase in audit fees for clients with high business risk, while audit fees remained at roughly the same level for low-risk clients. These findings should be of interest to the auditing profession and those involved in the development of auditing regulations.     

Learning to bid in sequential Dutch auctions

We propose an agent-based computational model to investigate sequential Dutch auctions with particular emphasis on markets for perishable goods and we take as an example wholesale fish markets. Buyers in these markets sell the fish they purchase on a retail market. The paper provides an original model of boundedly rational behavior for wholesale buyers׳ behavior incorporating learning to improve profits, conjectures as to the bids that will be made and fictitious learning. We analyze the dynamics of the aggregate price under different market conditions in order to explain the emergence of market price patterns such as the well-known declining price paradox and the empirically observed fact that the very last transactions in the day may be at a higher price. The proposed behavioral model provides alternative explanations for market price dynamics to those which depend on standard hypotheses such as diminishing marginal profits. Furthermore, agents learn the option value of having the possibility of bidding in later rounds. When confronted with random buyers, such as occasional participants or new entrants, they learn to bid in the optimal way without being conscious of the strategies of the other buyers. When faced with other buyers who are also learning their behavior still displays some of the characteristics learned in the simpler case even though the problem is not analytically tractable.     

Consideration of technological and environmental heterogeneity in cost efficiency analysis

In order to evaluate and compare the efficiency levels across banking industries, we adopt the meta-frontier model that can assess the technological difference among countries. Given the importance of country specific conditions, we include in our analysis the different specificities of each country to incorporate the technological as the environmental differences in the evaluation of banking efficiencies. Using data on the banking industries of several countries in the MENA region, over the period 1991–2011, the results of the efficiency scores corrected by the technological and environmental gap led us to conclude that Egyptian banks are the most efficient in terms of cost compared with banks in other countries. Egyptian banks enjoy a very favourable banking technology. Our results support the hypothesis that traditional techniques of efficiency analysis based on the efficiency scores of a specific and pooled frontier tend to mystify efficiency levels and may incorrectly identify efficient banks. This paper contributes to the efficiency literature by incorporating technological and environmental heterogeneities in the evaluation of efficiency. This helps to characterize the production process of a bank and provides common standards by which the efficiencies of banks in different countries can be compared in a meaningful way with each other.